World Trade Center

[maggiethecat]

Ladies and gentlemen, Hell has officially frozen over.

LOS ANGELES, July 26 — Oliver Stone, that symbol of everything about Hollywood that conservatives love to hate, is getting help in marketing his newest movie from an unlikely ally: the publicity firm that helped devise the Swift boat campaign attacking John Kerry’s Vietnam record in the 2004 presidential race.

And so Mr. Stone, the director of the antiwar movies “Platoon” and “Born on the Fourth of July,” now finds himself sharing something in common with a group of Vietnam veterans who insisted that their comrades who demonstrated against the war were misguided, misled or traitorous.

Mr. Stone said that he knew nothing of the firm’s political work until he was contacted by a reporter on Wednesday. The director’s “World Trade Center,” a largely factual drama about the rescue of two police officers from ground zero after the 9/11 attacks, is to be released on Aug. 9 by Paramount Pictures. But it is already drawing rave reviews in some unlikely quarters.

L. Brent Bozell III, president of the conservative Media Research Center and founder of the Parents Television Council — best known for its campaigns against indecency on television and for stiffer penalties on broadcasters — called it “a masterpiece” and sent an e-mail message to 400,000 people saying, “Go see this film.”

Cal Thomas, the syndicated columnist, wrote last Thursday that it was “one of the greatest pro-American, pro-family, pro-faith, pro-male, flag-waving, God Bless America films you will ever see.”

(Mr. Stone, for his part, has insisted in the past that the film is “not a political movie,” while acknowledging in a recent interview that this “mantra” had been handed to him by his employers.)

To top it all off, a writer on The National Review’s Web site, Clifford D. May, actually wrote the words “God Bless Oliver Stone.”

This about a filmmaker whose conspiratorial tirades — not to mention his hyperviolent “Natural Born Killers,” polarizing political films “J. F. K.” and “Nixon,” and the lesser-known television documentary on Fidel Castro — have driven conservatives batty for decades. Only last year, The Washington Times, in an editorial, called the hiring of the “conspiracy-addled” Mr. Stone a “maliciously inspired choice” to direct “World Trade Center.”

Such glowing reviews for an Oliver Stone movie might have seemed blasphemous to many conservatives until recently, when Creative Response Concepts, on retainer for Paramount, began pitching “World Trade Center” to pundits who would not normally be considered part of Mr. Stone’s core audience.

A screening in Washington last week, for example, drew members of the Family Research Council, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the evangelical Wilberforce Forum, along with a producer for William Bennett’s radio show, writers for The Washington Times and a reporter for the Web site of Human Events, which first reported the event. Creative Response Concepts has played a prominent role in promoting conservative causes. Heading into the 2005 Supreme Court nomination battles, it advised members of the Federalist Society on how to handle television interviews and was active in promoting the nominations of John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr. When the AARP came out against President Bush’s plan to overhaul Social Security, the firm went to work for a conservative group that took on the AARP. And it promoted Newt Gingrich’s 1994 political strategy, Contract With America.

[doobrah]

maggiethecat said:

Ladies and gentlemen, Hell has officially frozen over.

I think Stone was a victim of the body snatchers and his pod was hijacked by a Republican.

I saw the Cal Thomas column and almost did a spit take. Now that every other conservative is on board, I figure Stone must have put his politics aside, and decided that this would be his 9/11 legacy: the film that will become THE main feature for cable movie channels on September 11 for decades to come.

[Deleted]

Call me stupid here, but I don't understand why a film has to be made about it at all. Frankly, I've no intention of reliving that horrible day on screen -

If anybody really wants to know, I'll tell them what my thoughts were that day as I walked over a bridge with thousands of people, not getting home for close to four hours, no phone communication with my family (because the cell towers were out), basically thinking I was dead.

And I'm certain those on this board who live and work in the D.C. area can confirm the same.

I just don't think we need to relive it with the "best of Hollywood."

[bjobsessed]

I don't live anywhere close to it and I don't want to relive it either. I won't go see the film. No matter what the intentions of the filmakers, they are capitalizing on a terrible event in history.

I plan to go to the memorial when I'm in NY, but to me that is not the same thing at all.

[Deleted]

This horror affected everybody, no two ways about it. Going to the memorial is not an issue for me, not to worry. But to see the audacity of these Hollywood plastic idiots making a movie about the most horrendous day in history is appauling to me. Maybe because I'm in NYC, I don't know; maybe I'm taking it too personally. Two things I will never forget: the high-pitched screeching sound that came from the buried firemen (it's a device they wear that, when they're buried, this sound goes off so they can be found) and my husband and I sitting on our stoop watching flatbeds of crushed cars, police cars, ambulances, etc., going up our block on their way to the precinct or a yard.

Then the paper the next day of Fr. Mychal Judge being carried out on a chair, the first casualty of that day. Fr. Mychal was my mother's childhood friend and was very close to our family.

So, I need to see this? We need this? Perhaps the survivors of WWII, Korea and Vietnam felt the same way when these movies were made.

But I'm angry about this - it's an atrocity.

[maggiethecat]

I agree, wholeheartedly, with all that's been said.

But can you make the case that no filmmaker should go anywhere near the subject? Maybe it's just because it's Oliver Stone, and he tends to be hamfisted and mawkish at the best of times. Not exactly subtle, thinking back to Born on the Fourth of July and JFK, both of which had their moments, but, in the end, were all about Oliver's Stone's paranoia.

I remember similar discussions before the release of Schindler's List. How can anyone capture the Holocaust, why would anyone want to recreate Auschwitz, why do we need to do this when we have newsreel footage and documentary evidence and while we must never forget, do we need to relive? This all stopped after the film came out. Of course it was -- and is -- not only a masterpiece but valuable in too many ways to enumerate. God knows it was not easy to sit through, but I am eternally glad that I did.

If Steven Spielberg made a film about 9/11 I'd be standing in line on opening day, knowing it would be brutal but also knowing that I was in the hands of a master who would treat the material with honor and dignity and sensitivity, a man who would be wise enough to know this sort of material doesn't need manipulation. In Spielberg's hands, I'd be weeping cathartically, as the Greeks intended great drama to be a release.

I don't like what I've read about Oliver Stone's motives for making the film, and I definitely have no respect for the sort of people who are embracing it before they've even seen it. And maybe we're all to close to the material -- not enough time has elapsed. My memories aren't as immediate and heartbreaking as Bebes's by any means, although from 30 miles away you could smell the smoke in the air all week, and this town lost something like 27 people who worked at Cantor Fitzgerald. And it was a bad 24 hours before we could track down a close friend who is an American Airlines pilot, who, thank you Jesus, had stopped flying out of Boston the month before. So do I want to sit in a movie theater listening to scripted dialogue and watching special effects and thinking to myself, "Nah, the smoke was thicker?" No.

But honestly, as much as we don't like it, Oliver Stone has the right to make any sort of movie he wants to. Just as we have the right to boycott it.

[Deleted]

You're totally right with what you say, Mags, no doubt about it.

It just angers me so.

[shmeep]

My husband's reaction, when he saw the commercial for the movie, was that it was insulting to make a movie like that. I didn't quite agree with him, but had a hard time pinpointing why that would be. I don't know if I find it insulting, but it rubs me the wrong way just the same. I think a lot of it has to do with how recent 9-11 was and how many people on this continent are still reeling from those events and probably don't want to relive them in any way.

Oliver Stone aside (and I agree with what has been said about him here), a movie like this being made in the current political climate of this country is bound to be used as propaganda, no matter how the directer intended it to be perceived. I know Stone is a raging liberal and I even believe him when he says he wasn't trying to be political, but with the War on Terror going nowhere and the Bush administration floundering in the midst of the turmoil they intensified in the Middle East--all in the name of 9-11--the Republicans would like nothing more than to have the raw emotion of that day brought to the forefront of the American consciousness once again so the patriotic fervor that helped Bush garner the support he needed to get us into that mess to begin with can be reignited.

[Deleted]

I can't even comment on Bush except to say housemouse's signature rocks and I, too, am counting the days!

[dogma]

i will not see the movie either,, but not because i feel it is an effort to help the republican cause,, but because i feel it is just too soon
this is not the first movie abou 9/11,, and it won't be the last, and people chose to make of it what they will, with or without seeing it

was it ok to make a movie called farenheit 911? isn't that putting the shoe on the other foot? was that a fair representation with the selective biased editing?

even in erie PA we had losses,, one of the specialists i work with lost his brother, capt foti, in the nyfd

i wasn't nearly as affected by this tragedy as many of you,, but all of us were affected,, no matter how distant we were from the individuals and vicinity

just as certain catholics protested the davinci code,, every one has the right to see or not to see the movie , protest it or endorse it


that is what we are all about, freedom of choice, and speech

[Deleted]

that's absolutely true, I for one won't see it. And the losses certainly go further than NY, Boston and D.C. that's for sure. We were ALL affected.

[shmeep]

dogma said:

was it ok to make a movie called farenheit 911? isn't that putting the shoe on the other foot? was that a fair representation with the selective biased editing?

Fahrenheit 911 can't quite be put into the same category. We all know Michael Moore comes at things with a completely leftist agenda and, while I enjoy that perspective (sometimes even the choir needs to hear a little preaching), I think many of his arguments would be strengthened if he lost some of the points that seem even too far-fetched for me to embrace. That said, his usage of the numbers, 911, was very clever. Obviously the title was taken from the book Fahrenheit 451, a classic about a futuristic society in which all books are outlawed and thinking is done away with by the government. Sticking 911 on the end of that title makes it obvious that his position is that Bush is using what happened on 911 to trick the country into embracing his agenda by scaring the ability to think out of us. I can see why some people wouldn’t like that title (or Michael Moore in general), but I don’t find it offensive, especially since the bulk of the documentary is not directly about 911 at all, but about its political fallout and how it has been used, in the opinion of many, to benefit a certain political party in some unsavory ways. That documentary also set out to prove that Bush was somehow responsible for the tragedy in the first place. Some of his arguments were interesting--particularly those pertaining to the Bush connections with the Saudis in the oil business--but some were not well backed up and were downright extreme.

I was still in Los Angeles on 911 and didn’t know anyone directly affected, but I did have a pilot friend who was flying that day and I was very relieved when she finally called me from Canada to tell me she was safe. It was hard to harbor any partisan feelings at that moment and the way the country came together was really beautiful. Unfortunately, that harmony was squandered and the unity was lost and now we’re in Iraq. I fear this movie will put public opinion behind that war again by making people too afraid and angry to realize that Iraqis didn’t fly those planes.

[Deleted]

Well said, shmeep. Karma for you.

[housemouse]

I have a couple of observations about this movie and this thread in general.

I think my problem with this movie can be summed up in one word: timing. We are still too close to the event to want to look at it in a semi-fictionalized format. 9/11 was a tragedy that will never be forgotten and for a studio to exploit it for profit, especially while our country is still recovering, and terrorists continue to attack in other spots around the world, is wrong. Like Shmeep, I was on the west coast on that day, but I vividly remember crying for days afterward and that eerie quiet because there were no planes in the sky.

Another frightening thing about the timing is the current flare up in the middle east. This thing in Lebanon is terrifying. I have a feeling that Iran's president is loving Bush's comments about Iran being behind Hezbollah, and just aching for Bush to come after his country. That whole area is a powder keg and the fuse is getting shorter by the second, the last thing any of us needs is a film to ignite the jingoistic sentiments of terrified Americans.

Oliver Stone's flim making is not known for its subtlety. I remember coming out of Born on the Fourth of July with a headache because I had spent the previous two hours being beaten over the head with his politics. As evidenced by my signature I am a raging liberal, but there is a time when subtlety and restraint are called for, and this is that time.

[bluedelft]

When my sister and I went to see The DaVinci Code they showed a preview for this movie. Walking into the theater there was a "warning" telling people about it. We went into the theater and when the preview was shown we both turned our heads away from the screen.

As mentioned before the timing on this movie is just so bad.

Living in Boston we went from hearing no planes to hearing the military flying over since we are so close to Logan Airport. I honestly don't know which was worse the silence or the fighter jets keeping watch.

I also can remember crying for days on end and wanting to turn off the TV but leaving it on and watching the scenes over and over again.

When we go to NY both my sister and I have mixed feelings about going to the memorial.

For me this is one movie that I will not go to see or rent.

Reading this thread has brought a tear to my eye