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News :: Arts |
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GKC Theaters Ban Fahrenheit 9/11 |
Current rating: 0 |
by Mark Dahlquist
Email: dahlquis (nospam) uiuc.edu (unverified!)
Phone: 217-398-0466 |
06 Jul 2004
Modified: 03:49:23 PM |
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For political reasons, the GKC theater chain (owner of Champaign's Beverly Cinema) has refused to show Michael Moore's Fahrenheight 9/11--showing the film on just one of the chain's 268 screens. |
The GKC (George Kerasotes Corporation) theater chain (owner of the Beverly Cinema in Champaign) has refused to show Michael Moore's documentary, due to objections to the film's political content, accoding to an article in Entertainment Weely's subscription-only on-line magazine. Excerpts from the article appeared today at the political blog, The Daily Kos (www.thedailykos.com). According to the article, GCK will allow the film to be show on just one of its 268 screens.
The article describes GKC as one of two midwest theater chains refusing to show Moore's film.
The article text is as follows:
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''Fahrenheit 9/11'' may be breaking documentary box office records all over America, but one Iowa-based theater chain refuses to book it because it allegedly provides aid and comfort to anti-American terrorists. According to the Associated Press, R.L. Fridley, who owns the Fridley chain of 34 theaters across Iowa and Nebraska, won't book ''Fahrenheit,'' citing a policy that his chain will not ''play political propaganda films from either the right or the left.'' So Fridley wrote in a companywide e-mail, AP reports, adding that he believes the Michael Moore film plays into the hands of the terrorists behind the 9/11 attacks and those behind the recent beheadings of Americans in the Middle East. ''I believe this film emboldens them and divides our country even more,'' Fridley wrote.
Variety reports that another Midwest chain, GKC Theaters, has booked the film on just one of its 268 screens, in Traverse City, Mich., and will not expand the booking to its other screens, which are mostly in Michigan and Illinois. Execs at GKC, the country's 15th-largest chain, had political objections to the film similar to Fridley's, Variety reports, though there's been no official statement commenting on the booking decision. There was no indication, however, that either Fridley or GKC made their decisions in response to the e-mail campaign launched by Move America Forward, a conservative group whose supporters have called for a boycott of chains that book Moore's movie. On June 26, the day after the film opened to a packed house in Traverse City, GKC vice president Bryan Jeffries said most people who had contacted the chain wanted it to show ''Fahrenheit.'' ''I would say that the ratio has been 5-1 in favor of bringing the movie, but that doesn't surprise me,'' he told the Traverse City Record Eagle. "The people against it are probably ignoring it and wishing it would go away and I think that makes sense."
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The Daily Kos also provides contact information for the Springfield-based GKC theater chain:
GKC Theaters
George Kerasotes Corporation
755 Apple Orchard Street
Springfield, IL 62703
(217) 528-4981
(217) 528-6490 fax
gkccomments (at) gkctheathers.com
President: Beth Kerasotes x. 105
VP Film & Marketing: Brian Jeffries x. 104
VP of Marketing: James Whitman x. 106
Contacting GCK seems an obvious first step to pressure this group of theaters to correct such an egregious insult to those C-U residents who agree with Moore's views, and to resist on principle such a paternalistic act of commercial censorship. |
This work is in the public domain |
