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It's a tired subject 'round these parts, but N.Y. Times columnist Frank Rich, having recently seen Errol Morris's Standard Operating Procedure (Sony Classics, 4.25 NY, 5.2 LA), is apparently confronting it for the first time: "Iraq is to moviegoers what garlic is to vampires."
Standard Operating Procedure, he believes, "will reach the director's avid core audience, but it is likely to be avoided by most everyone else no matter what praise or controversy it whips up.
"It would take another column to list all the movies and TV shows about Iraq that have gone belly up at the box office or in Nielsen ratings in the nearly four years since the war's only breakout commercial success, Fahrenheit 9/11. They die regardless of their quality or stand on the war, whether they star Tommy Lee Jones (In the Valley of Elah) or Meryl Streep (Lions for Lambs) or are produced by Steven Bochco (the FX series Over There) or are marketed like Abercrombie & Fitch apparel to the MTV young (Stop-Loss).
"As the New York Times recently reported, box-office dread has driven one Hollywood distributor to repeatedly postpone the release of The Lucky Ones, a highly regarded and sympathetic feature about the war's veterans, the first made with full Army assistance, even though the word Iraq is never spoken and the sole battle sequence runs 40 seconds.
"If Iraq had been mentioned in Knocked Up or Superbad, Judd Apatow's hilarious hit comedies about young American guys who (like most of their peers) never consider the volunteer Army as an option, they might have flopped too.
"This is not merely a showbiz phenomenon but a leading indicator of where our entire culture is right now. It's not just torture we want to avoid. Most Americans don't want to hear, see or feel anything about Iraq, whether they support the war or oppose it. They want to look away, period, and have been doing so for some time."
Posted by Jeffrey Wells on April 13, 2008 at 8:30 AM
comment #1
Ogami Itto
says ...
I wonder if most people genuinely don't care about Iraq (because they're cretins), or if they just don't want to be reminded of Iraq because it's such an awful, bloody mess. When I'm in a good mood I believe the latter; in a bad mood, the former.
Posted by Ogami Itto
at April 13, 2008 10:11 AM
comment #2
Mr. Muckle
says ...
I like Frank Rich and probably also his political POV, but these kinds of columns don't say much. Of what use is it to passively absorb more information about what any sensible person already knows (or knew before it started) is a massive cluster-fuck? And if you're not a sensible person, what good would it do?
Media is in the business, mostly it seems, of commenting on other media so that conventional wisdom is homogenized and whipped to the consistency of margarine and equally as tasty and nutricious.
On the other hand, it isn't media itself that has restricted the showing, daily and on television, the actual results of this war, the killed (both sides) and wounded, the trashed environment, and the insanity of the spokespeople. The perpetrators of the crime have restricted information from the beginning -- another lesson learned and misused by the same kinds of criminals who brought you Vietnam.
Posted by Mr. Muckle
at April 13, 2008 10:40 AM
comment #3
Edward
says ...
Is there still a government embargo on the media not showing the coffins of service people who have been killed in Iraq? There was also the issue of the governement not counting Iraqi casualties accuratly. Not to give the media a pass, but the government not wanting to allow the public to see the results of their war says a lot about the government.
Posted by Edward
at April 13, 2008 10:54 AM
comment #4
deadre
says ...
I really wonder what makes these studio executives and producers think people want to put down their money to be reminded of this mess or even if they support the war, to visit the whole idea of us venturing into a foreign culture just to make absolutely no progress with these huge issues. I guess it speaks to the producer's need to do something nobel but I don't understand why anyone would think there would be people in the theaters.
Posted by deadre
at April 13, 2008 12:12 PM
comment #5
Howlingman
says ...
I'm curious to know if it's the content rather than subject matter that's the turn off. To wit: if there was a gung-ho rah-rah Iraq War movie in the vein of THE DIRTY DOZEN, people would line up to see it?
Posted by Howlingman
at April 13, 2008 12:35 PM
comment #6
Edward
says ...
How big an audience is there for documentaries? "Fahrenheit 9/11" was an anomaly. "As good as Grizzly Man" was, how many people saw it? Was the boxoffice for Decline of Western Civilization that big? Maybe the proper venue for docs should be TV; HBO, Public Broadcasting, IFC, etc.
Posted by Edward
at April 13, 2008 4:24 PM
comment #7
Herpesdating
says ...
In fact many people are care of Iraq. As me know, though being poz , many users on our STD dating site are care about it.
Posted by Herpesdating
at April 13, 2008 6:22 PM
comment #8
will_butler
says ...
The reason these films fail is because nobody (myself included) wants to pay $10 to sit and listen to some self-important twit tell us what a complete clusterfuck the war is. Every newscast, news magazine, and newspaper has been focused on Iraq or Afghanistan or 9/11 or terrorism for more than six years now, and we get the idea. It's screwed up. I make known my opposition to our leaders' policies, and I vote accordingly. But these movies change nothing. When I want to be informed about these subjects, I read The Economist. I love meaningful films, but an audience can smell the didacticism coming off these things a mile away.
Posted by will_butler
at April 14, 2008 6:29 AM
comment #9
EDouglas
says ...
I'm not sure if Judd Apatow would want to do an Iraq comedy knowing that the title "Delta Farce" had already been used.
Posted by EDouglas
at April 15, 2008 4:54 AM
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