Day: August 11, 2010

The MPAA’s decision to give Amir Bar Lev‘s The Tillman Story an R rating is not cool, but it’s not the end of the world either. Kids under 17 will be technically barred from seeing it, yes, but c’mon, guys — how many teens are ever interested in seeing any documentary about anything, even one as good as this?

The MPAA’s decision is nonetheless grotesque.

The Tillman Story is about an orchestrated governmental obscenity that tried to exploit the memory of former Arizona Cardinals safety and U.S. Army Ranger Pat Tillman, who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan in 2004, for political ends. U.S. military and Bush administration officials initially floated a story that claimed Tillman was killed by Taliban troops, and that he died saving his fellow troops. Rah-rah, sis-boom-bah.

“Excessive language” is the MPAA’s reason for the R rating. They’re referring to three uses of the word “fuck.” It apparently matters not to the ratings board that each time the word is spoken with a sense of moral righteousness and/or outrage.

The first time Pat Tillman, Sr. quotes a letter he wrote to military investigators who’d bungled their inquiry into his son’s death. He ended it with this line: “In sum, fuck you…and yours.” The second time viewers are told the very last words of Pat Tillman, words he shouted just before being shot by fellow troops: “I’m Pat fucking Tillman!”

The third time Tillman’s younger brother is shown dismissing the notion that his brother is with God. That’s a nice idea, he says during a memorial serivce, but the truth is that “Pat is fucking dead.” Again — the “f” word used to express blunt despairing truth.

As always, context is everything. And sometimes the use of a vulgar word is absolutely the right thing. It’s appalling to consider that the MPAA is apparently too thick or obstinate to understand this.

“Of course there is excessive language,” said Tillman Story producer John Battsek in a statement. “This is a film that follows a truly exemplary family torn apart by the death of their loved one and the barrage of government deceit they encountered in their pursuit of the honest truth. We should be looking at this film as a way to show our younger generation the power of true family values and the sometimes unfortunate failings of our government.”

Bar Lev adds that “the language in this film is not gratuitous. I think this is how many people would react when faced with the unthinkable. Giving this film an R rating prevents young people from seeing this film; the very people who should be exposed to a great American like Pat Tillman.”

“This is one of the most important films I’ve distributed in my career,” says Tillman Story distributor Harvey Weinstein. “I want my teenage daughter and the nation’s young adults to be able to watch Pat’s story. We need to learn from this story and limiting who can see it is not the answer.”

Update: The R rating was yesterday upheld after an appeal.

The director of this Ben Quayle political spot is an amateur. It’s pathetic when Quayle walks off-screen toward the camera and to the left as he mutters, “And I approved this message.” The work of a rank amateur. A political candidate who can’t find better people to shoot his political spots isn’t that bright, trust me. I’m sure Quayle didn’t intend to indict himself with this shortcoming, but he has.

I’ve just spoken to an exceptionally bright female industry professional who’s an Eat Pray Love-hard. She saw the big Ryan Murphy-Julia Roberts film last night at the Grove in L.A., and her basic reaction is (a) she was a wee bit disappointed that the pic didn’t tap into the spiritual and metaphysical currents that the book uncovered but (b) she wasn’t that disappointed and was more or less happy with it.

“I was sitting next to a woman who hadn’t read the book and she thought it was great,” my source says, “but if you’ve read the book, and I’m a superfan…I think it’s hard to live up to great expectations. So it was good, not great, but perfectly enjoyable.

“I totally didn’t buy the Billy Crudup-is-a-problem-husband thing…not a bit. He and Julia didn’t look like they fit together. In the book this breakup section went on a long time, and it ended with her curled up on the bathroom floor, and there’s really no question that she has to leave this guy. But they don’t explain it much in the film. In the movie she’s lying in bed next to Crudup and saying ‘I don’t want to be married.’ He’s kind of a wanderer, and seems to be in love with her. He’s said he doesn’t want to go to Arruba, but that’s no reason to get divorced! She’s doing okay and has a book deal so what’s her problem? She’s like some some whiny chick.

“The Italy section was fine, the India section is fine, the Bali section is fine. The Richard Jenkins character was very prominent in the book and he’s very good here. The Javier Bardem character, whom she got married to in real life, is great. The James Franco character is good and believable. It matched what I remember from the book, which I read twice.

“The bottom line is, when you have a book that has resonated so much with readers on a spiritual basis, its very hard to translate that into a film. I know in order to reach a movie audience, you have to sacrifice the in-depth spiritual metaphysical stuff because that doesn’t translate well in [filmic] terms. But in the book, I underlined passages. It’s a very enjoyable movie, but I didn’t cry once. Reading the book, I was sobbing.”

The Time Warner “wideband” service is still screwed up. A new cable guy is here now — this makes the third TW visit today. The last guy tried to do it twice, but, as Howard Hawks would say, “he just wasn’t good enough.” I’ve been tooling around with my backup Toshiba and the AT&T air card in the kitchen, but there have been other issues besides. I have to leave for a 6:30 pm Eat Pray Love screening in about 90 minutes so the whole day has been a wash. Update: The third guy finally fixed it. (I think.) He went outside and re-wired something — that did the trick.

My entire morning was destroyed by the geniuses at Time Warner cable. A guy came by to install TW’s new wideband service (“speeds up to 50 mbps”), and it took him well over 90 minutes to figure things out with the TW brainiacs back at TW command central. And then he couldn’t type in the right password, and we spent nearly a half-hour trying to decipher that mystery.

And then we discovered than only two computers could use the wireless service at the same time, and not three. (Which I have.) Then I couldn’t access Gmail, either through the online platform or via Thunderbird. And then that eventually resolved itself but only after much arguing and exasperation and trying to understand certain nouns and verbs as spoken by tech support guys with New York Hispanic accents.

And then a tech support guy from Metropolitan Cable named Juan (whom I later learned is actually a member of SPECTRE — special executive for counter-intelligence, terrorism, revenge and extortion) called to explain that I actually hadn’t had TW’s wideband service installed, but something less fast. He called it “torrbough.” What? “Torrbough.” What’s torrbough? I don’t know what youre sayin’, man. “Torrbough,” he repeated. Could you please spell it? “T-U-R-B-O,” he said. Oh, turbo….fine! So you’re saying I have turbo and not wideband? “That’s what it says on my computer.”

The service guy came back an hour later and explained that Juan is some kind of mental defective impostor (like that guy Tony Curtis played in The Great Impostor) and that he’d taken flight about 20 minutes earlier and that he’s now being hunted down by Time Warner agents. The service guy said I was cool, that I had wideband, and that I really didn’t need to worry or even think about turbo or “turrbough” or anything along those lines.