THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2012
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EXCESS HOLLYWOOD WITH LANDON MCDONALD
Do movies influence violence?
"D don't you blame the movies. Movies don't create psychos. Movi-
ies make psychos more creative! So says Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich), one of the trivia-spouting slashers from Wes Craven's
"Scream," an incisive horror film that considered the cultural and psychological impact of visual media nearly three years before the Columbine
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Craven
massacre made the topic inescapable. Now, in the wake of the "Dark Knight Rises" theater shootings and the anti-American furor sweeping the Middle East as the result of one shoddlily produced YouTube video, the media incitement debate has returned, sporting fresh blood and a global wingspan.
James Holmes, accused of killing 12 people in an Aurora, Colo. movie theater, appears in district court with defense attorney Tamara Brady on Monday, July 23 in Centenial. Colo. Holmes identified himself as the joker to police after the shooting.
The issue stretches back as far as 1915, when D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation," already controversial for its revisionist portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan, was accused of encouraging violence against African Americans by depicting the brutalization of a white woman by a sexcrazed Union soldier in blackface. Griffith's historical epic, which went on to become a recruitment tool for the KKK, opened amidst vehement protests and was banned in a number of cities. Even as recently as 2004, threats of arson forced exhibitors to cancel a screening of the film in Los Angeles.
There are many examples of life imitating celluloid with dire acuity. Jodie Foster's performance as an underage prostitute in Martin
Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" earned her the twisted affections of John Hinckley Jr., who non-fatally shot President Ronald Reagan in a bid to impress the actress.
Stanley Kubrick famously pushed for the banning of his own "A Clockwork Orange" in the United Kingdom, after the press blamed his film for a bizarre crime wave, including the murder of a homeless man by a gang of teenagers dressed as Alex DeLarge and his Droogs. Oliver Stone's thrill-kill romance "Natural
Scorsese
Born Killers", itself a mordant commentary on our nation's love affair with violence, sparked a record number of copycat slayings. Then we have suspected Aurora shooter James Holmes, whose grip on reality was fractured to the point where he allegedly told police he was the joker.
The current unrest in Libya and Egypt recalls the fate of Theo van Gogh, whose extremist-baiting short film "Submission" led to the Dutch filmmaker's gruesome public execution by an Islamic fundamentalist in 2004. Now "Sam Bacile," the online cipher behind the inflammatory YouTube video, seems intent on courting the same outrage.
The fanatics responsible for last Tuesday's embassy attack have a lot in common with domestic terrorists like James Holmes. They are psychopaths with tripwire ideologies that no amount of misguided censorship can hope to disarm (although stricter firearm regulations wouldn't hurt). And while the spectacular ignorance of Bacile's video certainly qualifies as irresponsible hate speech, it also falls firmly under the protection of his First Amendment rights. The man may be a thoughtless, gutless rabble-rouser, but he clearly understands the power of film to wound and inspire.
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MOVIES
Pre-screen record broken by cult film
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LOS ANGELES — Paul Thomas Anderson's cult drama "The Master" commanded a huge following in its opening weekend, smashing records on just a handful of screens.
The Weinstein Co. release made $729,745 in five theaters in New York and Los Angeles for a record-setting per-screen average of $145,949, according to Sunday studio estimates. The hugely anticipated film, which just won several of the top awards at the Venice Film Festival and will open in more cities in upcoming weeks, stars Philip Seymour Hoffman as a charismatic cult leader and Joaquin Phoenix as his wayward protege.
Paul Dergarabedian, box-office analyst for Hollywood.com, said the No. 1-opening for the latest "Resident Evil" movie came as a bit of a surprise He figured "Finding Nemo" would come out on top, given the track record of the Pixar brand and the strong opening a year ago of Disney's "The Lion King" in 3-D, which debuted at No. 1 with $30.1 million.
"The Screen Gems label, they know how to create a profit-making franchise," Dergarabedian said. "It's become so important if you have a star who resonates in the international marketplace — you can have a real winner worldwide."
Among the other new movies this weekend, "Arbitrage" opened in 12th place in limited release with nearly $2.1 million. Richard Gere stars as a hedge-fund billionaire
Part of the allure was the rare opportunity to see the film projected in lush 70mm, which was possible at four of the five locations where it was playing. Expertly paced trailers released over the past few months revealed nothing, and unannounced screenings in select cities created more buzz. And some of the film's mystique may have come from its parallels to the origins of the secretive Church of Scientology. Anderson has said the church's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, provided inspiration for Hoffman's character.
The huge opening for "The Master" beats the per-screen-average record for a live-action feature debut set earlier this year by Wes Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom," which made $522,996 when it opened on four screens in May for an average of $130,749.
Asked who the audience was for "The Master," Weinstein Co. president of the theatrical distribution Erik Lomis said: "We didn't do exit polls but from eyeballing the ArcLight (Cinemas), everyone in Los Angeles showed up."
juggling scandals that could destroy him personally and professionally.
"We knew we would do a lot of business but we didn't think it would be this big," Lomis said. "We knew from not only the pop-up screenings and the guerrilla marketing PTA does but also from the Venice Film Festival and the Toronto (International) Film Festival that we had something special. But you can never expect these kinds of numbers — it blew the doors off
the theaters."
As Dergarabedian phrased it: "Paul Thomas Anderson, among film buffs and film fans, is a directing god. He's on Mount Rushmore with Christopher Nolan and some other great filmmakers. When he puts out a movie, it's a long lead time — we're forced to wait for a new Paul Thomas Anderson film. 'There Will Be Blood' was 2007.
"In the independent world, directors are the stars," he added. "They draw people to the theater and fill theaters."
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Where available, latest international numbers are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
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