Saturday, March 29, 2008

Why They Keep Cranking Out These Expensive Bombs

The returns are in and it looks as if the latest anti-Iraq war flick, Stop-Loss, is a turkey of the first rank, bringing in only $1.6 million on opening day. No surprise there, all of its predecessors have done as poorly and so will its many successors (which will be made, count on it). The studio execs are reacting in usual fashion, along the lines of, "the American people (read "those benighted morons") just don't want to watch a picture about the Iraq war, no matter how well made it is." Meanwhile, we in the real world ask bemusedly, "Why can't those idiots give us a picture about the Iraq war that's well made and sympathetic to the cause? They'll clean up." A very good question indeed and the answer is, they don't do it because they can't.

To the Hollywood community, monolithic in its antipathy toward George Bush, the military and patriotism in general, the idea of making a movie offering a positive view of the Iraq war is as odious to them as a sympathetic account of Stalin starving the Kulaks into submission is to the rest of us. So blinkered are the Hollywood elite, they will continue pouring money into lavishly produced two-hour, anti-Iraq screeds and with each release hopefully imagine that with this brilliant director and that pretty-boy star, this is the one the American people will flock to. They will not. As a much smarter and savvier producer of years past, Sam Goldwyn, would have told them, the people will stay away in droves.

(h/t the Instapundit.)

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