Julia posted:
Post-9/11 Hollywood: The Films They Dare Not Make TodayBy Mimi Brickmeyer, The Hollywood Investigator January 24, 2003
This is an interesting article, and I realize that to some extent Brickmeyer was endulging in a little satire, but I still think she got some things wrong.http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15020
Her biggest claim is that the movies and miniseries that she mentions could not get made post-9-11. But SciFi started production on _Children of Dune_, a follow-up to their _Dune_ miniseries which incorporates the second and third _Dune_ novels, *after* 9-11 (in fact, I think it was announced in December of 2001, when 9-11 was still nice and fresh in everyone's mind). Also, she says that both the SciFi _Dune_ miniseries and the Lynch movie were faithful adaptations, which is definitely not true, although the miniseries comes closer. Her claim that both were faithful is like saying that both the Verhoeven version of _Starship Troopers_ and the animated series from a few years after were faithful (again, the TV show was closer than the movie, but neither could be remotely called "faithful adaptations").
I've commented at length before on why I don't like the Verhoeven version of _Starship Troopers_, so I won't comment too much on what Brickmeyer says about it, except to point out that she claims people who think it's an anti-war movie are wrong; "How clueless do you have to be to post reviews at Amazon praising the film's "war is hell" message?" she says. But we know that Verhoeven intended it to be an anti-war film, at least according to his commentary track on the DVD (I haven't actually watched it myself, but in a previous thread about this movie, Jeff Miller stated "The 'best' part was listening to the director's commentary on the DVD....� Apparently Mr Verhoeven made a
cutting satircal film about the horrors of war and the short-sightedness of human bigotry..."). In this case, I at least agree with Brickmeyer to a point; I didn't get an anti-war message from the movie when I saw it, but at least I'm aware that the director intended for there to be such a message.
I'm not able to comment on what Brickmeyer says about _Fight Club_ since I haven't read the book or seen the movie, but I recently borrowed both from a friend and may have a comment or two to add after I've gotten around to them.
Reggie Bautista
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