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News :: Arts : Civil & Human Rights : Elections & Legislation : Globalization : Media : Political-Economy : Regime |
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Disney Forbidding Distribution of Film That Criticizes Bush |
Current rating: 7 |
by Jim Rutenberg
(No verified email address) |
04 May 2004
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Timid Mouse afraid Jeb Bush will move its cheese |
WASHINGTON, May 4 β The Walt Disney Company is blocking its Miramax division from distributing a new documentary by Michael Moore that harshly criticizes President Bush, executives at both Disney and Miramax said Tuesday.
The film, "Fahrenheit 911," links Mr. Bush and prominent Saudis β including the family of Osama bin Laden β and criticizes Mr. Bush's actions before and after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Disney, which bought Miramax more than a decade ago, has a contractual agreement with the Miramax principals, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, allowing it to prevent the company from distributing films under certain circumstances, like an excessive budget or an NC-17 rating.
Executives at Miramax, who became principal investors in Mr. Moore's project last spring, do not believe that this is one of those cases, people involved in the production of the film said. If a compromise is not reached, these people said, the matter could go to mediation, though neither side is said to want to travel that route.
In a statement, Matthew Hiltzik, a spokesman for Miramax, said: "We're discussing the issue with Disney. We're looking at all of our options and look forward to resolving this amicably."
But Disney executives indicated that they would not budge from their position forbidding Miramax to be the distributor of the film in North America. Overseas rights have been sold to a number of companies.
"We advised both the agent and Miramax in May of 2003 that the film would not be distributed by Miramax," said Zenia Mucha, a company spokeswoman, referring to Mr. Moore's agent. "That decision stands."
Disney came under heavy criticism from conservatives last May after the disclosure that Miramax had agreed to finance the film when Icon Productions, Mel Gibson's studio, backed out.
Mr. Moore's agent, Ari Emanuel, said that Michael D. Eisner, Disney's chief executive, asked him last spring to pull out of the deal with Miramax. Mr. Emanuel said Mr. Eisner expressed concern that it would endanger tax breaks Disney receives for its theme park, hotels and other ventures in Florida, where Mr. Bush's brother, Jeb, is governor.
"Michael Eisner asked me not to sell this movie to Harvey Weinstein; that doesn't mean I listened to him," Mr. Emanuel said. "He definitely indicated there were tax incentives he was getting for the Disney corporation and that's why he didn't want me to sell it to Miramax. He didn't want a Disney company involved."
Disney executives deny that accusation, though they said their displeasure over the deal was made clear to Miramax and Mr. Emanuel.
A senior Disney executive elaborated that the company has the right to quash Miramax's distribution of films if it deems their distribution to be against the interests of the company. Mr. Moore's film, the executive said, is deemed to be against Disney's interests not because of the company's business dealings with the government but because Disney caters to families of all political stripes and believes Mr. Moore's film could alienate many.
"It's not in the interest of any major corporation to be dragged into a highly charged partisan political battle," this executive said.
Miramax is free to seek another distributor in North America, although such a deal would force it to share profits and be a blow to Harvey Weinstein, a big donor to Democrats.
Mr. Moore, who will present the film at the Cannes film festival this month, criticized Disney's decision in an interview on Tuesday, saying, "At some point the question has to be asked, `Should this be happening in a free and open society where the monied interests essentially call the shots regarding the information that the public is allowed to see?' "
Mr. Moore's films, like "Roger and Me" and "Bowling for Columbine," are often a political lightning rod, as he sets out to skewer what he says are the misguided priorities of conservatives and big business. They have also often performed well at the box office. His most recent movie, "Bowling for Columbine," took in about $22 million in North America for United Artists. His books, like "Stupid White Men," a jeremiad against the Bush administration that has sold more than a million copies, have also been lucrative.
Mr. Moore does not disagree that "Fahrenheit 911" is highly charged, but he took issue with the description of it as partisan. "If this is partisan in any way it is partisan on the side of the poor and working people in this country who provide fodder for this war machine," he said.
Mr. Moore said the film describes financial connections between the Bush family and its associates and prominent Saudi Arabian families that go back three decades. He said it closely explores the government's decision to help members of the bin Laden family leave the United States immediately after the 2001 attacks. The film includes comments from American soldiers on the ground in Iraq expressing disillusionment with the war, he said.
Mr. Moore initially planned on producing the film with Mr. Gibson's company, but last May it pulled out.
"The project wasn't right for Icon," said Alan Nierob, a spokesman for Icon, adding that the decision had nothing to do with politics.
Miramax stepped in immediately. The company had previously produced one of Mr. Moore's films, 1997's "The Big One." In return for providing most of the new film's $6 million budget, Miramax was positioned to distribute the film.
While Disney's objections were made clear early on, one executive who spoke on condition of anonymity said the Miramax leadership hoped it would be able to prevail upon Disney to sign off on distribution -β which would ideally hoping happen this summer, before the election and when political interest is high.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com |
Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
Comments
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Re: Disney Forbidding Distribution of Film That Criticizes Bush |
by NRA4Freedom
nra4freedom (nospam) hotmail.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
05 May 2004
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Michael Moore, lying gutless liberal. When you people support liars like this piece of trash, you just make yourselves look more stupid than you really are...
Moore alters "Bowling" DVD in response to criticism
Brendan Nyhan
In the newly-released DVD version of his Academy Award-winning documentary "Bowling for Columbine," filmmaker Michael Moore has altered a caption that he inserted into a 1988 Bush-Quayle campaign commercial -- one of a number of misstatements and deceptive arguments we criticized when the film was released last year. Ironically, on the same day the DVD was released, Moore issued a libel threat against his critics on MSNBC's "Buchanan & Press," saying, "Every fact in the film is true. Absolutely every fact in the film is true. And anybody who says otherwise is committing an act of libel."
While we were among the first to call Moore on the inaccuracies in his film, most notably the alteration of the Bush-Quayle ad and his misleading presentation of US aid to Afghanistan in a timeline sequence, we were far from the only ones. Dan Lyons of Forbes Magazine also revealed several important lies or distortions, including the fact that the scene during which Moore receives a gun at a bank was staged. And David Hardy, an Arizona lawyer specializing in gun issues who has worked for the National Rifle Association, has compiled a voluminous list of allegations, including Moore's heavy and misleading editing of NRA President Charlton Heston's speech in Denver after the Columbine massacre.
Moore has generally refused to concede error in response to critics, in one case writing an angry email to Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert denouncing several charges as "Internet crap" and "not true." In subsequent correspondence for Ebert's online column, Moore wrote, "if I state something as a fact, I need the viewers to trust that those facts are correct."
While promoting the DVD release, he was asked about the charges by guest co-host Jerry Nachman during a August 19 appearance on "Buchanan & Press." Moore then attacked Hardy while accusing critics of libel:
NACHMAN: Michael, I want to start with what your critics chiefly say. And that is, while you criticize President Bush for being a fictitious president, as you called him, winning in a fictitious election, a lot of your critics say that your documentary should have been more like an Oliver Stone movie because of the liberties you took with chronology and facts in both "Roger and Me" and "Bowling for Columbine." You've heard that criticism, I'm sure.
MOORE: Well, yes. No, the NRA and some gun nut Web sites have really come after...
NACHMAN: Well, it's not...
MOORE: ... the film.
NACHMAN: ... it's not just gun nuts. I mean it's people who have tried to lay out a chronology of what you said happened...
MOORE: Like who?
NACHMAN: ... when it happened...
MOORE: Like who has done this...
NACHMAN: Well...
MOORE: ... that is not a conservative right-winger that has a vested interest in wanting to attack me instead of debating me on the issues I'm raising?
NACHMAN: This guy...
MOORE: Every fact in the film is true. Absolutely every fact in the film is true. And anybody who says otherwise is committing an act of libel.
However, the release of Moore's DVD proves otherwise. As we first documented, when "Bowling for Columbine" was released in theaters, it featured a 1988 Bush-Quayle ad called "Revolving Doors" (Real Player video), which criticized a prison furlough program in operation when Michael Dukakis was governor of Massachusetts. Though Horton was furloughed under the program in question, the ad did not explicitly mention him, unlike the more famous ad aired by the National Security Political Action Committee, which had close ties to Bush media advisor Roger Ailes.
But because this part of "Bowling" attempted to show how portrayals of black men are used to promote fear in the public, Moore inserted the caption "Willie Horton released. Then kills again." into the ad, using a text style nearly identical to the ad's original captions. A casual viewer would assume that the text was part of the original ad. The caption is used to support Moore's statement, which runs over the sequence, that "whether you're a psychotic killer or running for president of the United States, the one thing you can always count on is white America's fear of the black man."
However, according to the archived video of the ad linked above, media reports and interviews with a high-level Dukakis official and political experts, the caption did not appear in the original ad. Moreover, it was incorrect -- Horton raped a woman while on furlough, but he did not commit murder.
In a tacit acknowledgment that the caption was both phony and factually incorrect, Moore has altered the text in the DVD version. The caption now reads "Willie Horton released. Then rapes a woman." Clearly, every "fact" in the film was not true, and critics who pointed out the alteration of the Horton ad (among other things) were not committing libel.
Moreover, Moore's correction doesn't make the insertion of text that wasn't in the original ad any more excusable. And he has conspicuously failed to correct the rest of the film's distortions and inaccuracies. While it is too late for the Oscar voters he deceived, Moore still owes it to the public to set the record straight.
Addendum:
The DVD also contains further proof of Moore's tendency to stretch and distort the facts. Hardy has criticized Moore for claiming that the plaque at the US Air Force Academy near a B-52 on display "proudly proclaims that the plane killed Vietnamese people on Christmas Eve of 1972. It was the largest bombing campaign of the Vietnam War." This phrasing insinuates that the plaque praises the bombing of civilians. It actually says the B-52 "shot down a MIG northeast of Hanoi" on that date. The plaque does celebrate "the men and women of the Strategic Air Command who flew and maintained the B-52D throughout its 26 year history in the command," including "Aircraft 55,003, with over 15,000 flying hours," which presumably included bombing runs over Vietnam such as the one on Christmas Eve, but it does not "proudly" proclaim that it was used to kill Vietnamese civilians. According to Ebert, Moore's response to this criticism was as follows: "I was making a point about the carpet bombing of Vietnam during the 1972 Christmas offensive. I did not say exactly what the plaque said but was paraphrasing."
The DVD captures Moore exaggerating this still further, saying during a speech at the University of Denver on February 26, 2003 that the B-52 participated in the massive Christmas Eve bombing campaign. "And they've got a plaque on there proudly proclaiming that this bomber, this B-52, killed thousands upon thousands of Vietnamese -- innocent civilians." In both cases, his representation of the plaque is dishonest. |
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Disney Has Blocked the Distribution of My New Film... |
by Michael Moore via email
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
05 May 2004
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May 5, 2004
Friends,
I would have hoped by now that I would be able to put my work out to the public without having to experience the profound censorship obstacles I often seem to encounter.
Yesterday I was told that Disney, the studio that owns Miramax, has officially decided to prohibit our producer, Miramax, from distributing my new film, "Fahrenheit 911." The reason? According to today's (May 5) New York Times, it might "endanger" millions of dollars of tax breaks Disney receives from the state of Florida because the film will "anger" the Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush. The story is on page one of the Times and you can read it above.
The whole story behind this (and other attempts) to kill our movie will be told in more detail as the days and weeks go on. For nearly a year, this struggle has been a lesson in just how difficult it is in this country to create a piece of art that might upset those in charge (well, OK, sorry -- it WILL upset them...big time. Did I mention it's a comedy?). All I can say is, thank God for Harvey Weinstein and Miramax who have stood by me during the entire production of this movie.
There is much more to tell, but right now I am in the lab working on the print to take to the Cannes Film Festival next week (we have been chosen as one of the 18 films in competition). I will tell you this: Some people may be afraid of this movie because of what it will show. But there's nothing they can do about it now because it's done, it's awesome, and if I have anything to say about it, you'll see it this summer -- because, after all, it is a free country.
Yours,
Michael Moore
mmflint (at) aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com |
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Re: Disney Forbidding Distribution of Film That Criticizes Bush |
by NRA4Freedom
nra4freedom (nospam) hotmail.com (unverified) |
Current rating: -2
05 May 2004
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Mr. Moor don't get it. He thinks "free speech" means lying and making things up. Chances are that they nuked it because it is filled with lies and misrepresentations like everything else Moore has ever made. And, they are probably afraid of being sued because of it.
If he could tell the truth...ever...people might actually care, but being the liar he has already been proven to be, no one with half a brain cell gives a rats behind about it cause none of it will be truth anyway.
So, who really cares... |
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