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Harvey Weinstein tells the Huffington Post that Hollywood “can’t shirk our responsibility” for depicting violence. During yet another personal publicity push for one of his movies (French import The Intouchables), Weinstein acknowledged, ”It’s a question that I wrestle with all the time. I’ve been involved with violent movies,” said the studio head who has produced all of director Quentin Tarantino’s blood-spattered films, including the upcoming slave-era revenge fantasy Django Unchained, “and then I’ve also said at a certain point, ‘I can’t take it anymore. Please cut it.’ You know, you’ve got to respect the filmmaker, and it’s a really tough issue.” Weinstein also said, “I think, as filmmakers, we should sit down – the Marty Scorseses, the Quentin Tarantinos, and hopefully all of us who deal in violence in movies – and discuss our role in that.” As a successful screenwriter pal of mine emailed about Harvey’s ‘summit’ call: “Wonderful. It’s going to take place at the corner of Hubris St. and Hypocrisy Blvd, in the city of Sanctimony, right near the Self-Righteous Cineplex.”
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Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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Has anybody heard from the MPAA’s Classification and Rating Administration on this? You know, the ones who give an “R” for a bare breast but a “PG-13″ for cutting somebody open (as long as you trim two frames)?
To be quite honest, those ratings really should be reversed. It’s crazy how in America we’re so squeamish when it comes to nudity/sexuality, but we’re incredibly desensitized to violence.
Kudos to Harvey for wanting to take this subject on however.
It’s not that crazy, because the violence is faked whereas the nudity (and to some degree actual sexual activity short of penetration) is all real.
And that’s a problem how, exactly?
ditto, Santayana. Where-T-F is the MPAA on this? How about a practical rating system, rather than an arbitrary/political one.
I think any film where a murder is planned and carried out (other than non-military action-warfare) should become a “V” or an “VR” – and yes, screenwriters, filmmakers and studios who green light violent films, should all be held accountable.
Setting up a Victims Fund and flying in one of the stars of the movie smacks more of damage control than anything.
Pot, meet kettle.
I think they have met before.
i think violent video games and bad parenting are more of a problem than movies
Same here, John. My wife’s little brother just turned 13. It amazes me how obsessed he and his friends at school are about guns. According to her, though, that’s common. Sure wasn’t at my old high school.
That kind of comments really pisses me off. Movies are too good for you, so why not blame it on the other thing that you clearly have no clue about, games?
Fingerpointing violent games is as dumb as fingerpointing violent movies.
The exact same games are played in Japan, Europe etc., and yet we see nothing like the kind of behaviour you describe.
Largest school massacres (3 largest?) have been in Europe. Then there was last year in Norway. Hmm.
And your point about the video games is?
Take out the video games, as you did with the movies and leave only bad parenting, adding laughable gun laws and you may be right.
Right on! Violence has been a part of movies since their inception — war, westerns,gansters, gangs, comics, monsters etc. — but at least they’re in a theatre. Games are played at home and in arcades with much less supervision and far more violence. As for parenting, well that seems to have all but expired, partially due to economics, high divorce rate, increased single parenting, and general pressures that have forced a disconnect between far too many parents and their kids. Dysfunctional seems to be the “new normal.” And the schools are powerless without parental support.
It’s about time. I think we all know that Shakespeare was responsible for the much of the King-killing and teen lover suicide that took place in his day.
People: violent crime in this country has declined steadily for well over a decade. A decade that saw amazingly violent movies and video games. There is no causation. There isn’t even correlation. All Mr. Weinstein is doing is handing ammunition to the Hollywood-haters and the censors and the scolds.
And maybe there would be some slim justification were it not for the fact – again – that violent crime dropped at the same time as video games and movies became more violent. It is easier to make the case (and I won’t, because it would also be stupid) that violent movies and games have caused a drop in real world violence.
Here, here. Some sanity at last.
correct…weinstein is doing his PT Barnum best…stirring the pot, staying in the spotlight…I don’t have a problem with the violence in film I have a problem with the hypocrisy and greed of the studio system and MPAA.
The studios want to make pg-13 movies so they can sell to more people, so they have violence with no consequences and you can’t have it both ways.
No one wants to make adult decisions when they have are determined to sell to children.
I remember in October of 1999 I wrote a column for The Hollywood Reporter blasting the glorification of violence in 20th Century Fox’s “Fight Club” … Fox pulled advertising from the trade and banned me from future screenings.
I called the film irresponsible for a nation that had deteriorated to the point of Columbine.
And today, my cousin Greg buried his 23 year-old daughter Micayla a victim of the Aurora theater shooting.
Too little, too late, Harvey.
A summit?
What we need is a 180 degree CHANGE.
Hollywood needs to be the change it wants to see in the world.
Just do it. For God’s sake.
I can’t believe I just read a post bragging about “blasting” Fight Club for its glorification of violence. Yes, this is what we need, sanitized entertainment. The world would be such a better place if artists and storytellers just avoided the “evils” of violence. I’m sure this Aurora creep would NEVER have picked up a gun had he not seen these mean movies that Hollywood keeps churning out. Never.
Have some respect, Lame. My condolences, Miss Busch.
Dear (appropriately named) Lame:
Video games used to consist of eating dots in a maze, now it’s picking up an automatic rifle and killing other people. The more you kill the more you win.
Think about that for a moment.
Think about this. Not a single “person” is killed in any video game ever. The video game the shooter was obsessed with is GUITAR HERO.
So sorry for your loss.
So sorry for your loss, but I think you completely missed the point of FIGHT CLUB. And I don’t think censoring or banning violence in art is the answer. And yes, I consider FIGHT CLUB art, both the book and Fincher’s film. And I think this is backed up by the fact that it’s become a cult film and so many people from my generation have responded to the film, having an effect on them like say THE GRADUATE did of previous generations.
Is there a difference between the violence in say the SAW sequels (or any variety of horror films where excessive violence is used for little to no reason) and FIGHT CLUB? I would say yes because there is a purpose for it in FIGHT CLUB and if you don’t see that, then again, you missed the entire point of the film – you are like the MPAA who told Fincher to cut the scene where Norton excessively pounds Leto, taking out the actual violence and just showing the crowd, which in essence made the scene much more powerful. But as a society do we want someone making that decision, and/or banning films, books, art due to someone’s preconceived notion of what is violent or not violent. Do we want to start burning books, due to the ideas presented in them?
I think the problem is: we have lost important values in this country.
I think the American Dream that was marketed heavily to our grandparents and parents has been tainted or never really existed and the past two or three generations are discovering that, and they’re angry or lost in a society that only seems to value money and getting ahead at all costs, instead of valuing integrity, family, friends, and nature. There just aren’t enough Lowell Bergman’s and Jeffery Wigand’s out there to act as role models. There are just too many George W. Bush’s, Dick Cheney’s, Kenneth Lay’s, and Bernie Madoff’s.
And when the 1% continually show that they only care about themselves, many bringing down entire companies and pensions and retirement funds for their own greedy interests, and sending out kids off to a war based on false reasons, what do you expect will happen? This generation is discovering that Gordon Gekko’s mantra “greed is good” is too simplistic, that most have followed the mantra of: greed is good at all costs, at the costs of your fellow man and fellow neighbor. I’m no communist or socialist – I’m not saying businesses should not want to profit, but they should not want to profit at all costs – destroying nature and communities (you know what I’m talking about Walmart), wiping out people’s retirement funds, collapsing companies based on false information. Lies and deceit. Loss of integrity.
What do you expect will happen when the masses are continually taken advantage of? People will rise and protest. People will go crazy and shoot up a school or a movie theater. Our society has created these monsters. Not movies and not the violence in movies or other forms of entertainment and art.
I think American society is too focused on consumerism, war, and politics, and this is leading to the degradation of our society. We focus too much on buying our happiness, and we’re continually being sold something every minute of every day on a multitude of devices. We need to go back to a more simpler time and regain our values as a nation and as a society.
I don’t at all condone violence, and acts like Colorado are despicable. But we really need to sit back and ask why, and ask what we can do to change this from happening again. And the answer isn’t ban violence in films or art, which like in the case of FIGHT CLUB can be viewed as a reflection of our society and a way to reflect on that.
The answer is: we need to change our values.
“We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won’t. We’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”
“You are not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis.”
“The things you own end up owning you.”
Very sorry for your family’s loss Anita. Truth is, though, that violence has been part of movies forever, just as it is in life. Nothing will make sense of what happened in Aurora. And Harvey is perhaps one of the last people in the industry to call for anything considering his companies’ filmographies.
I’d just move out of Colorado.
Does Harvey really believe that violent movies causes people act violently? If this was a time before the invention of movies who would he blame for all the voilence in the world, Shakespeare?
Now that I think of it Harvey would make Shakespeare come to his summit.
Well, at the very least, Harvey would NEVER give Shakespeare final cut.
With a follow up summit on the outrage of dating young women, followed up by a healthy eating summit.
I hope they all stop making violent movies. Then mine will sell faster. Thanks Harv!
Hilarious comment captainlashout:))
So people can’t change? He’s older: maybe he’s mellowing.
Maybe he’s getting wiser. Who knows?
Doesn’t mean he can’t re-examine the role he and Hollywood are playing in inspiring shooters. To listen to too many of my liberal Hollywood friends, accountability is something only the NRA should have more of. No. We ALL need to look inside and see where we can be more accountable. Are we contributing to the problem? Or are we trying to solve it? Making smart-ass remarks isn’t helping any.
TBF
And what role is it, exactly, that violent entertainment has played?
Why is it that the exact same movies and games and all are seen and played outside the US, but without any of the side effects they have in the US?
It’s got nothing to do with being liberal or conservative, it just requires people to be pragmatic. If studies show that crazy dudes wouldn’t kill if there weren’t violent movies, then we’ll listen, but not only is this not the case (at best it makes you a bit more angry), for the moment the correlation has a lot more to do with the fact a crazy person can express him or herself with a gun. FACT.
There will always be violent people in the world, it is human nature, movies or not. But society has to ask itself what it’s ready to allow them to handle over the counter if it wants to start somewhere.
@shann: I agree with you and the other posters who have pointed out that people in Japan, (where the video games are often MORE violent) and other countries don’t remotely have the level of killing WITH GUNS that the U.S. has. Michael Moore made this point with Bowling for Columbine and recently wrote an article about this fact:it’s not violent movies & games that enable nutcases in the good old U.S of A to massacre other people–its GUNS,especially the weapons-grade, 100 round nightmares–that anyone can buy. Yes–ANYONE. Background checks don’t exist at gun shows, and this nutcase bought all his ammo online. With what appears to have been federal grant money for his scholarship. Ni-i-ice. Just so f-d up on so many levels its nauseating.Although it is ridiculous that the rating system is skewed toward allowing gore & carnage but not swearing and sex, there is no causation. So…it’s nice of Harvey to naval gaze but it’s not going to change a darn thing and there will be no end to the insanity unless and until the NRA is no longer able to buy our politicians. But that’s a whole other conversation.
I don´t think that he´s getting wiser. He just a clever guy knowing what to say to get some press.
Harvey is one big BLOW HARD !! – He should learn how to control his own temper before he starts to regulate the violence in movies – BLOW HARD !!!!!!
seriously harvey? was this your brilliant idea or was it your new head of publicity, dani weinstein? this is a tasteless attempt to garner attention out of tragedy. you and the rest of the studios should be ashamed of yourselves and how you’ve boggled your response to this tragedy. the studios agree to delay box office reports (oh, that’s big of you), warner bros makes a donation to the victims but not until days after the fact. all these actions are pathetic attempts to grab headlines. instead, try a moment of silence and true respect.
Yes, because a moment of silence does a whole hell of a lot more for the victims than actual financial help.
There has been many moments of silence. Um.
The word “summit” feels very fitting here.
Movies don’t kill people. Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. Harvey needs to stick to producing…and worry about making the best movies, from the best scripts, with the best assembled teams.
That “people kill people” line is getting old and was always feeble and flawed. Let’s be clear, Colorado shooter James Holmes was homicidal and wanted to kill, but there’s no way he could’ve killed 12 and injured dozens more with his bare hands. High powered guns enabled him (ONE MAN!) to massacre a large amount of people in one fell swoop. That’s why we need to look at access to guns.
Good point, except they found IEDs in house. What if he’d decided to use those instead. And the WTC planes were commandeered with box cutters. Not even hand-to-hand weapons; tools. Given forethought and planning, anything can become a weapon. So how is the “people kill people,” cliced though its, wrong?
He could have had a bomb, anthrax and a whole bunch of other options. This guy had a plan and put it together for three months. This isn’t somebody who just snapped. Ever heard of the Uni-Bomber – would gun control change that. Nah.
Worst school killing in USA wasn’t Coumbine
Bath, Michigan – 1927
38 school children
4 adults
1 big bomb
no guns
Im a Brit but everytime I visit the US, you people and your politicians seem to be afraid of having the correct debate: Should you still be selling guns to citizens?? Is 2012 still the Wild West??
I was in WA state last year and heard a debate on the radio about which lethal injection was the most “humane”… Again, wrong debate!
You can refer to an outdated document all you like but the truth is, your country has these monstrous events every few years because for some reason “The Greatest Country On Earth” is still willing to hand over 6000 rounds of ammunition and automatic firearms to any Tom, Dick or Harry who has a driver’s licence. How is it possible that basically anyone can walk into a shop and purchase instruments of unworldly devastation?? My country isn’t perfect but at least the UK government are upholding their side of the Social Contract and have banned firearms (amd lethal knives) and thus doing everything in their power to protect life.
I’m not disagreeing with you per se, but you don’t understand the U.S. Calling the Constitution “an outdated document” would be like telling a religious person the Bible or Koran are outdated. In one sense they are, in another they are their very foundation and bedrock. The Constitution has been revised and amended over its history, but one thing still remains: the right to bear arms. King George is not about to re-inavde, the In… sorry, Native Americans have been pacified, nobody really trusts the federal government and, by golly, if it’s a right then it must be exercised and protected, defended against those who would wish to remove it! For me, I would prefer to see equal emphasis given to the flip side of rights, responsibilities. That all said, Harvey’s the biggest of hypocrites (How about a summit on not screwing people over instead?) and should go swivel.
Thank you from germany! We had a lot of terrible school shootings in the last years. Every of these young murders has parents, who are the so-called “sport shooter” or “hunters”. The only reason for the relative low victim numbers is the illegality of automatic firearms.
Totaly agree with you, A-K87
It is really so simple.
““The Greatest Country On Earth” is still willing to hand over 6000 rounds of ammunition and automatic firearms to any Tom, Dick or Harry who has a driver’s licence”
You should really know what you are talking about before you try to tell us how to run our country.
Yeah, well when you come online and say the Constitution is some “outdated” document but then you have upheld the “Social Contract”…..? Take your bangers and mash and get out.
By the way did you see what happened in Norway earlier this year and the school shootings in Finland a few years back? How did those gun laws work up there?
Some lives shouldn’t be protected, that’s why lethal injection is appropriate in some cases. Take spree shooters like the one in Norway or Martin Bryant in Australia, they both slaughtered dozens of helpless people and yet they got off with just life in prison. Bryant isn’t even in a cell, he resides quite comfortably and happily in a dorm in a mental hospital. US gun policy needs reform but at least we have more empathy for murder victims than for murderers.
I agree. No gun = No bullet to the body.
To other comments: Violence images in movies have a huge affect on human beings. It probably deserves the least blame in tragedies like Aurora, but it deserves some. There is something wrong when a 12 year old boy is made fun of by his peers for turning his head during a violent scene. That fear will soon become a challenge he must conquer in order to be accepted by his peers and he may do this by going home and “practicing” watching violent images.
As far as Harvey, I will make sense of all this after I watch his future movies. As for right now, IMO, if he has the audacity to publicly make this statement after Aurora, he should’ve had the audacity to tone down the violence in his previous films since he “can’t take it”.
So, according to this site, Harvey Weinstein is now a “maker of violent movies”… blame everything on him, people!
Sorry, but Harvey IS a maker of violent movies. But nobody is “blaming” anything on him. By my reading, the posts about him (as opposed to the posts about violence in movies and guns) are all about the outrageous hypocrisy on his part for calling for this summit. Man up, Harvey: Either stand by your films and defend what you’ve done for decades, or totally reject it all, pull the next Tarantino film, and apologize. But don’t pull this “summit” crap, that’s going be nothing more than a holier-than-thou exercise in self-promotion, signifying nothing.
To make this really clear: Hey, Harvey. You wrote the article on Huffington Post. You either think you have blood on your hands or you think you don’t. Which is it? And what are you going to do about it?
No, actually, Harvey is mainly a movie distributer with the sympathy of the Hollywood community. I guess because he was a poor Brooklyn kid, a self made man today. A very good scenario to get votes from the academy I’d say… Good on you Harvey! So clever…
Violence is a reality of the human race. Crazy people come out of the woodwork now and then and commit atrocities. They were doing it before mass media and they will do it well into the future. Its sickening how some people rush to censor free speech or call for limiting of freedoms after a tragedy like this. They’re as bad as the crazies and almost as dangerous.
Remember that classic Simpsons episode ‘Itchy & Scratchy & Marge’?
(7F09, 1990)
You gotta love it. The right wing NRAers blame Hollywood. The left wing Hollywood libbies blame the NRA. What a surprise – nothing but finger pointing. And we wonder why Washington is so disfunctional. We have met the enemy, and they is us.
It is a confluence of many things, what we are discussing. And it is wonderful there is a forum which I hope will grow into something more. Call it a Summit. We are speaking of serious things.
We do not need to disparage each other, because even though democracy is messy, we all deserve a voice. Harvey may not be the most ethical person on the planet, but he brings up issues that we all can discuss.
One could say that the horse is already out of the barn, so why start now? And I say, why not? It is never too late to change course.
People told stories around a campfire and drew pictures on a wall. Then someone stood up and acted out the story. They must have gotten a laugh, and theatre was born. Storytelling. Beginning, middle and end.
Showing the audience their foibles and their desires. Greece.
It held a mirror up to society, and allowed people to see who they are. A radical notion. Art with a message. Shakespeare was profound, along with many of his associates down through the ages.
Then film came along and continued the tradition.
All black and white movies were always OK to watch, right? For
any age, because there was a line in the sand that no film maker or studio would cross. Inherent integrity — But then the Hays Code was too strict and too Puritanical so another system was created by Bless Him Jack Valenti http://www.MPAA.com but as time went by, there were too many loopholes.
This new rating system allowed violence but denied
the other more comparatively benign and creative urge, sex. The Puritanical underpinnings of our country has morphed into tentpole superheros who will kill anyone.
(Point of fact: The Killing Times, brutalized women thought to be witches (who were actually healers) by drowning them…If they were witches they floated, thus should be killed and subsequently were, by burning; if the women drowned, they were pure, but alas, they were dead. Hmm….do we see this trend in movies today?)
This is the history of our country.
Then I remember seeing Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde in 1967, and Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch in 1969, and I knew that the landscape of cinema would be forever changed. IMHO, it showed the ugly truth of violence for the first time to mass audiences. We were shocked and scared. And it was provocative; both well made, well acted art. We’d not seen this before on a hometown screen.
Money started flowing from pictures like these; violent representations of the worst of humanity.
But I think that we are in an age where so much real violence is reported daily through all the media, that we are getting enough gory detail of the worst of humanity.
I watched Vietnam on the 6 o’clock news; it set me up for what was to come. (Don’t get me started on the Military-Industrial Complex.)
So perhaps this is the beginning of a moment in cinema where some producers have fattened their bank accounts enough from the gore, and maybe they are thinking: Enough is enough.
How many newbies want to make horror films as their first attempt at filmmaking, because they might turn a profit, so they can next do that “real good message film” they have stuck in a drawer? The business is set up for profit in horror, violence and degredation.
It is about the theatre owners, distributors, producers, writers, directors and even actors to look at themselves, and ask, what the F are we doing? Netflix, Hulu and all the rest do not have to keep a library of violence.
The great independent movies that find an audience, those films that reflect the human condition as we really are – people searching for love and learning to accept family and friends for their quirks….isn’t that enough to encourage producers to fill theatres with that? If there weren’t the other crap, then audiences would once again be forced to look at themselves.
And while I am on this diatribe (and I do not expect anyone to read this because it is not a soundbite) there is a parallel with what is given to audiences with regard to reality tv.
Audiences are like spoon-fed babies; they have no choice in what they are given; they can either take it or spit it out.
But if all they are given is crap reality tv and violence, and they are conditioned to this, they have to accept what is given because they have no other choices. They are hungry for entertainment, as we all are, but if the choices are Kardashians, Tarantino-esque, Snuff Films, Internet Porn, or Horror….hmm…what will they choose? Probably what is advertised highly. Money buys it.
Isn’t that what the Presidential election is really all about?
Most of the films lately nominated for Oscars have come from Independent Film – there is a reason. The Academy still holds a
standard, in opposition to the plethora of money-making tentpole violent films that propagate pedestrian storytelling.
So is it for money, or is it for Art? How much more money do the studios,and producers in their 3,6,9 houses have to have? How much money do they need, off the backs of actors, who except for the stars, work for scale? Same for the crew.
“If you build it, they will come.”
I think that what has been built has largely been built by, up to now,unconscious people trying to live the American dream. Swimming pools, movie stars. Watch The Queen of Versailles documentary.
But how much is enough? You can only live in one room at a time.
At this time in our history, which is every moment, I believe it is time for a real Summit with not just the people making the movies, but the crew and cast who are making the movies come alive.
Because truly, without cast and crew, the studios and producers have nothing… Unless they want to do reality, which is another abomination to the Art of Storytelling. And unfortunately, this is a trend that doesn’t seem to end. The Art of Storytelling has been lost; no stories are even told; a camera just follows a hapless soul or two looking for their 15 minutes of recognition in a sea of desperation. “Look at me! I exist!”
And that is another form of suble violence that is destroying the fabric of society. People think fame is the only thing.
“Might as well do a snuff film; at least someone put a camera on me.”
“Might as well kill some people, I will be famous during my trial”.
Watch Paddy Chayefsky’s NETWORK – the great Peter Finch as Howard Beale – “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.”
Maybe this time we will all wake up and realize that we’ve all been bamboozled.
There is another way….
What amazing cut n paste skills
It is pretty crazy to blame movie voilence just because a crazy chose to shot up a movie theater. The opening was just the target not the cause.
I hope this doesn’t change the level of sexualized violence in movies. What they need to change is the writers so the material will be good and the directors so they will stop relying on close ups of the actors botoxed faces.
To quote Scream, a movie Harvey produced.
“Don’t blame the movies, movies don’t make the psychos, movies make the psychos more creative.”
Um. What about the guns that are so freely available in American society?
Shouldn’t somebody be talking about the free for all gun control?
Funny, I don’t recall HW complaining when the Scream movies made him and his bro a bundle. This is all a bunch of hogwash. Plain and simple.
Think about the correlation of deadly gun violence in general and the availability of guns in the United States before you start censoring your movies. It’s an undeniable fact that has been proven by sociologists and criminologists all over the world: if guns are easy to get and lie around people’s homes, deadly violence is much more likely to happen.
The idea of increasing protection by buying guns is more than naive. It’s just plain idiotic.
Take away people’s guns and impulse driven as well as planned gun violence will both decline drastically (and not in the ridiculously soft way it was described above). Not all tragedies will be prevented, but their incidence will shrink massively.
The right to carry a gun is no right; it’s a remainder of violent, unenlighted societies of a long disolved past.
Get rid of the idea that your personal freedom is being limited if the government takes away your guns.
Thinking about responsible filmmaking is important, yes, but never castrate the cinematic art by limiting it’s power to depict and denounce injust violence. And if this requires displaying violence; the display is a necessity no matter how difficult it is to watch or to process.
My heart goes out to the families that were struck by this immense tragedy and to all the other parents that will lose their sons and daughters in acts of preventable gun crime. Today, tomorrow and until the day, the gun laws become drastically more strict.
Harvey, be careful that you’re not so caught up in political parties that you’re not thikning independently on your own any longer…than you become their puppet. Hollywood movies are not to be blamed for the recent shooting….of course they’re going to cover up, Barack has to save face for the entire system by talking about gun control ( that is a separate issue in itself )…besides the point and doesn’t solve this murder case in Colorado….talking about gun control is just smoke and mirror to evade the real issue.
How about Harvey and everyone reading this start to research about the case of when the CIA / FBI assassinated JFK and pinned it on ” another crazy guy “, they claimed…..study that trial and the similarities in this trial…..
The is new case, his earlier photos, he looked alive, alert, awake….since jailed, he now looks ” drugged heavily “, probably some form of powder sedative slipped into his food or drinks to make him out of it and appear crazy to seeing eyes of the public, to be more convincing…they’re drugging him in jail right now, so he can’t think, remember, and can’t speak the truth….just like the JFK case, and the real murderers got away with everything!!!!
If you guys want to the truth research the old case of JFK murderer’s trial and compare how similar the tactics are….of course they’re never going to admit it that this was a set up!!! Corruption, murder…..
Great quote from your screenwriting pal, Nikki. I can understand his or her need to remain anonymous but I only wish I knew who they were so I could be first in line for their next movie.
I am betting that the quote is wittier than any line he or she put into a movie, though.
I feel that violence is a storytelling tool that filmmakers use to tell stories. It’s not designed to spread moral disease throughout our society. It’s not designed to wreak havoc. I think what gets lost in these arguments is fundamentally why do we use violence in our stories. I read Anita’s comments earlier, and it really shows that all she saw in Fight Club was the violence, not for what the violence was trying to illustrate, to raise questions of dissatisfaction and nihilism, she just saw violence and completely missed the point of the story. That’s what seems to be happening now as we get this knee jerk reactionary cause without taking the time to examine anything. We, as Americans, do tend to be lazy. It’s easier for us to blame violent movies for these things because it seems so simple. We don’t want to take the time for any sort of introspection into ourselves to figure out the multiple levels that a tragedy like this exists upon. We don’t want to get into our nature, or the delicate line that exists between sanity and insanity, we don’t want to think that there are monsters out there, we don’t want to imagine what the nature of evil truly is. Nope, it’s violence in movies, let’s be done with it, please. And then, we miss the very thing that these storytellers are trying to say. (We are talking about Weinstein who makes independent films that do tend to have something to say, I know that a lot of mainstream films seem to get lost in the four quadrant marketing thing that tend to drown out artistic voices, but anyway, let’s keep moving.)
Again, violence in cinema is a tool for the storyteller to use. Take for example The Dark Knight Rises. Now, Bane’s violence and cruelty, the heightened stakes, the fear that his menace implies, all these things are tools to be used to create the conflict between Bane and Batman. It’s not used to glorify violence or to train an army of mini-Banes. It’s meant to get us rooting for Batman to defeat this despairing violent machine. Would you have been interested if Bane’s fiendish plot was to pet as many puppies as possible? What happens when you remove violence as a tool? Does Fight Club mean the same thing anymore? Is Pulp Fiction just a bunch of people talking about milkshakes and watches up their butts? Where’s the drama within the coffin warehouse that the Reservoir Dogs are holed up in? Without Michael Madsen cutting off the cop’s ear, would we still be rooting for his demise? Would his demise even occur?
My fear here is with a summit like this, where does it end? If car accidents are on the rise, do we have to have a conference on removing car chases in films? If disrespect occurs from a child, does that mean all movie kids will no longer be sassy? Do we water down our entertainment or even are art? And in the end, does that stop the violence? If we do get rid of violent films, can we have them back if it does nothing to limit gun violence in this country?
The tragedy that happened in Aurora is horrendous. It is filled with grief and loss on levels that a majority of us may never know. I’m not even going to begin to pretend that I understand what those families or friends are feeling. My sincere love and condolences go out to them. We may not know truly why it happened, whether it could’ve been prevented or how to come to terms with the pain. But if we want to truly begin to understand, to construct the whys and the hows, we can’t be so clueless to believe that attacking the least likely factor in all this is the answer because it’s probably the easiest thing to do.
To put it simply, all drama is based upon both conflict and suspense. The cinema is the most visual of all forms of entertainment. As such, the most visual form of conflict is that depicting movement–ie, violence. That’s just the nature of cinematic storytelling.
Even the slapstick humor of the Keystone Cops is violent.
The most cinematic thing a movie-maker can film is a “chase sequence”. The more violent it is, usually, the better. The one in BULLITT first comes to mind.
Knowing that DARK KNIGHT RISES will be controversial anyway, criminals like this kid in Colorado intentionally use the platform of a major release to deflect the blame from themselves. Act like a crazy character from the film series and you’re insane. Then the media has to be at fault, right?
None of this has anything to do with movie content.
But for Harvey to use this tragedy to grandstand here is, well, shameful.