October 11, 2007
Video of the Day: De Palma Defends Redacted
Recently, IFC News was at the Walter Reade Theater for a New York Film Festival Press Conference for the Brian De Palma film Redacted, where the director was found defending his edit. At the end of the film disturbing images are shown in a montage sequence, photographs that Brian De Palma says "all exist on the internet." That may be so, but Magnolia Pictures owner Mark Cuban doesn't want them on the big screen.
On team Cuban is Magnolia President Eamonn Bowles, who interjects from the audience, and on team De Palma is producer Jason Kliot, who gets up on stage to defend the director. Perhaps the two sides should team up, as it seems the photos were not "redacted" from the film because of their graphic nature, but because they could all be sued for using them without authorization. Movie Indie City has a recap of the conference, and another statement from Eamonn Bowles, who said: "De Palma has been on a toot about how we've compromised his film, and then he stated publicly at the official NYFF press conference that in no uncertain terms Mark Cuban, for aesthetic reasons, wanted the photos out of the film. The sole reason that the photos are redacted, is that it is legally indefensible to use someone's unauthorized photo in a commercial work."
Our own Karen Wilson, who saw the movie at NYFF, says "DePalma's movie looks amateurish and half baked (maybe on purpose, maybe not). But for him to conclude his sensationalist tirade against the ineffectual and boorish nature of the US armed forces in Iraq with brutal photos of war atrocities is just plain gross. These pictures of burned babies don't further his simplistic thesis that War is Bad, they just exploit the suffering people depicted in them. Oh, and did I mention that the movie is really horrible and boring?" The IFC blog also gives a double-thumbs down by saying "To take on such a topic and then fumble it so badly reveals in De Palma either profound arrogance or a general contempt for the American people he's apparently looking to inform."
|
he was on brian leher this morning.
i think the attendance at the press conference really speaks to how irrelevant de palma has become.
oh, and so does this list of his last five films:
Snake Eyes (1998)
Mission to Mars (2000)
Femme Fatale (2002)
The Black Dahlia (2006)
Redacted (2007)
what an asshole.
Snake Eyes and Blow Out, both directed by De Palma, are two of the worst movies I have ever seen.
Hey, if you American asswipes have the balls to invade another country and commit horrendous war crimes such as rape, murder, torture etc then HAVE THE BALLS to LOOK at it when someone makes a film about WHAT THE US IS DOING IN IRAQ. You f@cking American PERVERTS.
Having not seen the film, I can't comment on its quality, but I pretty much agree with guest #4. What's at issue in this post isn't whether the film is good or bad, but whether the Magnolia's motivation is really grounded in legal reasons. I find this hard to believe; the media shows much less gory images from the war all the time - are the wounded in those situations all signing release forms? Has one single Iraqi so far demonstrated any ability whatsoever to gain redress in an American court for ANYTHING? DePalma thinks Magnolia's reasons are spurious and he may very well be right. But what is incontrovertible is that most Americans blithely slept through the build-up to this catastrophe and are now spared even the slightest discomfort of having to look at the horror, not even in two dimensional photographs.
Fortune Cookie Say "Americans like to kill babies but NOT like others see pictures of it"
what does mark cuban care what people think?
you would think he has enough "F You" money to not care.
I agree with 4, 5 and 6.
while depalma's at it, show the Blackwater guys laugh at the civilians they've killed.
Agree with #4 & #5.
Just another example of Mark Cuban being an anti-artist douchebag...
I can't believe I'm agreeing with JDS.
Since he is a movie director I'm going to have to go for profound arrogance over general contempt for the American people, though the two probably go hand in hand.
Welcome to the fold, guest 10!
#4 has pointed to what the discussion is about:WAR.
A movie about the iraq war that avoids the atrocities and all the abuses for wich the USA will be remebered in that region will be a "hollywood" version. Anything that uses truthful content will be banned. I don't know if the movie sucks, but what dePalma is defending is his integrity as director when using content that he finds relevant when talking about the horrors of war.
Fortune Cookie Say: "Man who try spread 'democracy' and 'freedom' thru rape, torture & war soon become less popular than local tax collector"
SIMPLISTIC THESIS WAR IS BAD?
NEWS FLASH WAR IS BAD!!!!!!
more stuff like this Gothamist, it touches on important and compelling issues in life and art
I am appalled to hear that Redacted has been redacted. As if it were possible to further destroy the identities of the poor, maimed, dead Iraqis whose faces formed the background of the end titles in Brian De Palma’s film, now add the redaction of their images entirely. Are the cost benefit analysts working for the pharmaceuticals, automobile manufactures and the tobacco companies the only ones with any sense of risk or courage anymore? I prefer to think this has less to do with protecting the producers from legal action or the Iraqis from humiliation and invasion of privacy, than a monumental cowardice when it comes to confronting of the American moviegoer with a little too much reality. De Palma’s initial acquiescence to the insurers forced him to abandon the use of any actual footage in the body of the film. This has already resulted in the Right Wing warmongers accusing him of “making it all up” because he restaged rather than using the real footage. This colossal inability on their part to understand the difference between art and life is too outrageous to even deserve comment.
What this chronic failure of nerve on the part of underwriters will do to the future of actual documentary filmmaking I leave to cynical speculation. I am convinced however that eventually the entertainment industry, corporations and the insurance pencil pushers will so lobotomize the creative spirit in this country, that the only artists left in our culture will be members of the Britney Spears Ilk’s Club.
If you wish to see an unrepentant, unredacted piece of filmmaking that is not afraid of lawsuits and not afraid to show the real face of war, I recommend to you a moving three minute video on YouTube called “Kindertotenlied”.
http://youtube.com/results?search_query=kindertotenlied&search=Search
I hope that when the producers, whose footage was stolen for use in this video, finally get around to suing the filmmaker, they will learn exactly how much blood can be squeezed from a rock (as opposed to Iraq). Abject poverty, my friends, does have its privileges.
Peace,
Bob Boldt
Too bad the two gentleman don't like existing "fair use" copyright laws. They shold have been asked, "Mind if I privately copy and distribute your entire movie on my own?" And when they screamed bloody murder, than be asked, "Well, just how much may I illegally reproduce before you get mad?"
Their arguments for not seeking the owners of the photographs in question are weak.