Sony Pictures and Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow have already had to deal with the nightmare that resulted from the cynical release date of their upcoming film surrounding the hunt for and the killing of Osama bin Laden. The original idea was for Sony to release the dramatization this October, just a few weeks prior to the presidential election. Lame, dishonest  protestations aside, obviously the goal was to use the film to give President Obama a reelection boost, not only with the film itself but also with the complicit news media using the film as an excuse to resurrect one of the President’s only successes (thanks to the Bush Administrations willingness to waterboard). Last month, Sony wisely blinked and pushed the release date to after the election, but that doesn’t change what might have happened prior to that move.

Many have speculated (including me) that Sony, Bigelow, screenwriter Mark  Boal, and the White House all got into bed together to create a propaganda film that would hit theatres with the kind of exquisite timing that is never an accident. It’s no secret Sony, like the rest of Hollywood, is deep in the tank for President FailureTeleprompter, and this $40 to $70 million propaganda film would most certainly serve as an in-kind propaganda contribution  that delivered the kind of deus ex machina that can only be dreamed up in Hollywood. Yesterday, and for very good reason, the story turned once again when the Pentagon and CIA got involved.

Apparently, it’s not just us extreme right-wing Republicans who are concerned over the possibility that the White House might have given the studio and filmmakers classified information they weren’t cleared to receive:

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Sony, director Kathryn Bigelow, and screenwriter Mark Boal will now have a full year to try and fix the damage done to this project after the attempt to politicize it created the kind of PR nightmare that can only bring death to the box office.

Over the past five years, a dozen-plus anti-war films have flopped at a 100% rate (Boal and Bigelow’s Oscar-winning “Hurt Locker” only grossed $17 million domestically — and in my opinion it did not look favorably on our military), and if that doesn’t prove the power New Media has to compete with and even defeat The Hollywood PR Machine, nothing does. Why Sony ever believed they could get away with  releasing into the 2012 election narrative a multi-million dollar feature focusing on one of President Obama’s very few successes is beyond me.

Sony’s plan was an obvious one. Not only would the release of the film in the crucial weeks leading up to the election bring this event back to the forefront of voter’s minds, it would also give Obama’s Media Palace Guards the excuse and cover they desire to resurrect this story just when the President might need it most. This was cynical, sinister, and the worst kind of exploitation of our Military.

I don’t give credit when people do what they should’ve done in the first place, but I am glad Sony came to their senses. However, their excuse for bumping the release date is a laugh-out-loud howler. Apparently they were askeert of Kevin James, you know, because his ”wacky shenanigans” might compete for the same ticket-buyers:

Sony Pictures has set Kathryn Bigelow‘s untitled hunt for Bin Laden drama (unofficially titled Kill Bin Laden) for December 19, 2012.  The studio had originally set the film for October 12, 2012, but moved it to make way for Kevin James‘ wacky shenanigans in Here Comes the Boom.

And if this is indeed the case, it’s almost as entertaining…

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Sony Pictures, director Kathryn Bigelow, and screenwriter Mark Boal have already done a ton of damage to their own film with these intelligence-insulting claims that the current release date, set just a few weeks before the 2012 presidential election, is in no way motivated by partisan politics. Then what is it motivated by? Oscar season rolls well into December, long after the election, so it can’t be that. Sony has also claimed that that particular weekend is “the best available spot for an action-thriller on a crowded schedule.” Well, unless they’re using the Mayan calendar, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense either.

If the studio and filmmakers want to begin to repair the damage they’ve created by pretending their multi-million dollar film’s release date wasn’t intended to be a multi-million dollar in-kind contribution to the Obama 2012 campaign, they need to bump the picture well into 2013. Or…

They can be honest about what they’re up to, like the “Atlas Shrugged” producers have been, and admit their desire to impact the election.

“Who, us?” just isn’t going to cut it. The good news is that someone over at Sony might be coming to their senses.

Hollywood Wiretap:

Sony’s planned October 12, 2012 release of Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal’s film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden may be shifting. The New York Times on Wednesday reported that the picture may be moving from its slot – which would have fallen shortly before next year’s presidential election – to a post-election date, and possibly not until 2013.

In its report, The NYT cited two people who were briefed on the studio’s plans.

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After nearly a decade of treating the War on Terror as an act of hubris and greed perpetrated by the proxies of multi-billion-dollar corporations, Hollywood has found a new storyline. But in his August 26 piece for the Wall Street Journal, “Hollywood Tries a New Battle Plan,” John Jurgensen incorrectly identifies the source of the change.

It was not the public’s ambivalence to the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq that caused director Nick Broomfield to portray our soldiers as adrenalized murderers in “Battle for Haditha” or cinema legend Brian De Palma to do the same in “Redacted.” Nor is it a sudden focus on capitalism, as filmmaker Peter Berg suggests in the article, that is motivating Universal Studios suddenly to produce “Lone Survivor” four years after its publication. It is politics.

Numerous books have analyzed politics in Hollywood, including Ben Shapiro’s recent Primetime Propaganda: The True Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV. So, the fact that Hollywood is an unabashedly liberal community is no revelation. But filmmakers’ covert attempts to shift public opinion to the left needs to be understood better. (more…)

Now that director Kathryn Bigelow, screenwriter Mark Boal, and Sony Pictures have conspired to completely undermine any chance they had at garnering our goodwill with the upcoming saving Obama’s ass killing Osama bin Laden movie, we should look at it as a savings — a savings of the ticket price of around $10.

Those of us appalled by the idea that Sony Pictures and their politically-mercenary filmmakers would use a universal American triumph and our selfless troops in this partisan manner, need to find something to do with our sudden ten-dollar windfall. It’s quite likely that by the time the film’s released, just a few weeks prior to the election, America might need that ten bucks to buy a gallon of gas or milk. But let’s be optimistic and dream a little…

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FADE IN:

INT.   HOLLYWOOD STUDIO CONFERENCE ROOM – DAY

“Hurt Locker” scribe MARK BOAL slams his mighty fist down hard on the conference room table, making the HOLLYWOOD EXECUTIVES surrounding him jump in their leather seats.

MARK BOAL

Now listen up.  I don’t care about your liberal preconceptions and your smug certainty that you’re somehow better than those men and women out there in Afghanistan and Iraq just because you work in the movie industry and they actually work!

EXECUTIVE NO. 1

But, but…

MARK BOAL (pointing an accusing finger)

Put a sock in it, meat puppet!  You want to use those American heroes as a backdrop for some politician’s reelection campaign?  Well, you can take my Oscar and stick it in your Fonda-hole!  I’m not having any part of it!

Ed. Note:  We now pause for a photo of sensitive, introspective hipster Boal:

Big Hollywood has been all over the story of screenwriter Mark Boal’s collaboration with the Obama campaign’s usurpation of the work of our SEALs and other covert warriors in hunting down Osama bin Laden.  It’s outrageous – you know you’ve crossed a line in the sand of decency when even Jurassic liberal-saur Maureen Dowd seems creeped out by your shameless SEALS-ploitation.

As Big Hollywood has pointed out before, Boal is Hollywood’s go-to guy for sending the leftist message du jour about our troops.  When President Bush was in office and the party line was that fighting terrorists was a bad thing, Boal was there with In the Valley of Elah (2007).  That one painted our soldiers as hideous psychopaths driven crazy by the war, so nuts and evil they murdered one of their own because of, well, Bush or something.

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Rep. Lynn Jenkins, a Republican from Kansas, has introduced a bill that would stop the administration’s use of taxpayer money to help Sony Pictures, director Kathryn Bigelow, and screenwriter Mark Boal produce what is obviously going to be a $50 – $75 million Obama 2012 campaign commercial — and one that is currently (and not coincidentally) scheduled to be released just a few weeks prior to the 2012 election.

Bigelow and Boal

The Hill:

A Republican lawmaker from Kansas wants to prevent the administration from helping Sony make a move about the killing of Osama bin Laden.  

The Stop Subsidizing Hollywood Act introduced by Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-Kan.) would stop the Obama administration from spending taxpayer money to share information about the killing of bin Laden with Sony Pictures, which is looking to release a film about that event in October 2012. 

Jenkins said the bill, introduced on Friday, is necessary because the government has no role to play in helping the movie industry at a time of fiscal crisis.  

“In an era of 9 percent unemployment, trillion dollar deficits, credit downgrades, and record debt ceiling extensions it is unconscionable that tax payer dollars are being used to aid the Hollywood film industry in fact checking and script research,” Jenkins said. “American families have been forced to go through their budgets line by line and look for ways to tighten their belts, and it is time the federal government does the same.”

Sony, Bigelow and Boal have been given every opportunity to do the right thing and push the film’s release date into late December and out of the political arena. They have CHOSEN not to do so. Furthermore, they were the ones who chose to play politics with this film to begin with, not Rep. Jenkins and not anyone on the Right.

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In a world in such disarray, it should not be of any surprise that within only a few short days of hearing about one of the most devastating blows to the U.S. Special Operations community, some citizens are doing their best to capitalize on this loss for their own personal gain—Hollywood and our own Administration.

Director Kathryn Bigelow with screenwriter Mark Boal

Screenwriter Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow, those responsible for anti-war film The Hurt Locker, have decided to assist President Obama in his re-election. Together, they have been granted unprecedented access to some of America’s most classified data pertaining the death of Osama Bin Laden and the dark secretive world of our U.S. Navy SEAL’s and Joint Special Operations Command. They will be using this information to create a film about the “heroic leadership” within this administration based upon the U.S. led Navy SEAL kill mission which inevitably made OBL fish food.

It wouldn’t be surprising at all to see anti-war actors like Sean Penn, George Clooney, or Matt Damon partake with leading roles.

Sony Pictures is behind this madness and the same politicians who so tirelessly have gone out of their way to prosecute CIA and military interrogators are supporting them. With an S&P rating lower than any president, Obama needs all the help he can get for re-election.

Timing is everything. The release of this film is scheduled to open October 12th. October leaves just enough time to socially condition a grave amount of Americans in believing President Obama is truly the “chosen one.”

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For ten years we’ve been waiting for Hollywood to engage in the War on Terror in a way that portrays our country and military personnel in a positive light — in a way that actually takes a side against the terrorists and for the Americans fighting and dying to stop them. Finally, just when it appears as though we might actually get that movie, it looks as though Sony Pictures has decided the Kathryn Bigelow directed, Mark Boal scripted October 2012 release should also be a $50 – $75 million re-election campaign commercial for Barack Obama.

What are your thoughts on this?

It’s often said that “time heals.” Although it’s true that time heals a lot of things, we can’t forget that it reveals a lot of things as well. And one of the things that time has most recently revealed is that President Obama’s 2008 mantra of “yes we can” has actually turned into “we probably can’t, but I’ll never admit it.”

Obama is on a downward slide everywhere in the country, except in 10 of the most liberal states in the union (i.e., these states that would still vote for FDR or Woodrow Wilson were either miraculously resurrected and placed back on the ticket). As a matter of fact, Obama-nomics have been so disastrous to America that one of the DRUDGEREPORT’s most recent headlines was “BARACKALYPSE NOW.”

So what’s Hollywood’s response to the first two and half years of Obama? Wel,l duh, they’re helping him out by producing an October 2012 surprise that will highlight the killing of Osama bin Laden just in time to get voters excited for The One again.

In all fairness, let me say that from the moment I first learned bin Laden had been killed, I immediately thought Obama would release the pictures of the terrorist’s body during October 2012 in hopes of making us think he really is a war president worthy of re-election. Now it appears he won’t have to do that, because Hollywood is going to use a gazillion dollar movie set to provide us scenes that look even better than the real ones. At least they’ll look better to Obama: our wonderful president who, after meeting SEAL Team 6 said, “They looked less young and fearsome than he expected, and more like guys working at Home Depot.” (According to Maureen Dowd)

The movie, directed by Oscar-winner Kathryn Bigelow and written by Oscar-winner Mark Boal, will likely cast Obama isn the most positive light possible and the White House is so desperate for eager to get some kind of boost in the polls that they’ve even allowed Boal into parts of the White House and Pentagon that are normally off-limits (which included allowing Boal into a “CIA ceremony celebrating the hero seals”).

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Accusing a film studio of exploiting our military and their heroism for partisan political purposes is a pretty serious accusation. Accusing the White House of cooperating with this kind of propaganda is also a serious accusation.  But that’s exactly what New York Times’ Leftist Maureen Dowd said is happening.

What do you think?

ADDED: Wonder what the Federal Election Commission thinks about this? This is a terrible thing Sony’s doing, using the bravery of these men to help Obama – politicizing their heroism. The decent thing to do is to move the release date well into December.

Screenwriter Mark Boal with director Kathryn Bigelow

Our utter failure of a president is looking to Hollywood for an October 2012 Surprise to save his hopes for a second term. Maureen Dowd says out loud what we all knew the moment the movie’s release date was announced:

The White House is also counting on the Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal big-screen version of the killing of Bin Laden to counter Obama’s growing reputation as ineffectual. The Sony film by the Oscar-winning pair who made “The Hurt Locker” will no doubt reflect the president’s cool, gutsy decision against shaky odds. Just as Obamaland was hoping, the movie is scheduled to open on Oct. 12, 2012 — perfectly timed to give a home-stretch boost to a campaign that has grown tougher.

The moviemakers are getting top-level access to the most classified mission in history from an administration that has tried to throw more people in jail for leaking classified information than the Bush administration.

It was clear that the White House had outsourced the job of manning up the president’s image to Hollywood when Boal got welcomed to the upper echelons of the White House and the Pentagon and showed up recently — to the surprise of some military officers — at a C.I.A. ceremony celebrating the hero Seals.

“To the surprise of some military officers.” There’s an interesting statement.

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Oscar-winning screenwriter Mark Boal must be thrilled about this whole Libya thing, since he seems to be making a cottage industry out of articles, books and movies about American soldiers and how they are a bunch of incorrigible psychos whose desire to murder everyone they see is constrained only by their limited intellect.  Who knows what doors the latest “kinetic military action” might open for him in Tinseltown.

His current anti-soldier hit piece, The Kill Team, is about a group of disgraceful scumbags in Afghanistan who decided to murder several civilians.  With it, Boal seems to be following his tried and true formula – write something for publication in a past-its-prime magazine that makes American troops look like cro-magnons then work to turn it into a movie.  He took a Playboy article on Americans murdering each other and soon we had In the Valley of Elah.  You may have seen it – though the odds are stacked against it.  It was ignored by popular demand.

Another article, this one on bomb disposal experts, became The Hurt Locker, which took some of the bravest and most dedicated people in our armed forces and made them out as undisciplined, drunken, unprofessional clowns.  In fact, Boal got sued by one of the guys he allegedly wrote about.  To be fair, it did win an Academy Award . . . from the same band of geniuses who passed over Saving Private Ryan in favor of Shakespeare In Love and once picked as “Best Song” the unforgettable hit “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.”  So, there’s that.

Boal’s technique is to chronicle the most degenerate fringes of the warfighters’ experience and repackage the most sordid episodes as its totality.  One can easily imagine the Rolling Stone editors eager for the chance to please their dwindling audience of aging Garfunkel-digging hippies and Chomsky-devouring clove-smokers with another prejudice-reinforcing piece about how those Middle-American Army guys are barely one step above gorillas.  Rolling Stone even promises a glimpse at the grim photos the mean old Pentagon doesn’t want you to see – as if there was some moral imperative for the military to provide gist for the jihadi propaganda mill.  Hey, that’s Boal and Rolling Stones’ job!

What is particularly cunning in his approach is that there is no excuse for the crimes these savages committed, and Boal uses this fact to deflect any kind of perspective.  Hundreds of thousands of young, heavily-armed and stressed American men and women have served overseas since 9/11.  Several dozen have murdered people.  You won’t find any city in America with a murder rate like that for that demographic. 

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Ed. Note: This article is relevant to Big Hollywood because the author of the piece Michael Yon is responding to here is Mark Boal, the screenwriter who won the Oscar for “The Hurt Locker.”  Much more to come.

Usually when I’m moved to write a searingly original piece for Big Hollywood, I do a quick search of the Internet to see if my thoughts might not really be as groundbreaking as I thought. More often than not, I come across an article that says exactly what I was trying to say, only more clearly and eloquently. I then post a link to it on Twitter with the caption “good read!” and I’m done.

Blogging is easy!

Such was the case with my analysis of  The Hurt Locker. I loved the film. After watching it, however, the thing that bothered me was the quote at the beginning, “War is a drug.” In the end, it serves as the theme of the film, but I found it to be way off the mark, and not even supported by the film itself. To me, The Hurt Locker seemed to be clearly not about addiction, but about purpose. What would motivate someone to return to a horrific war zone, to face death and dismemberment on a daily basis? A sense of purpose. That is what motivates people, not “a rush.”

I set to writing. Then I read Walter Owen’s piece in Vanity Fair, who put it together better than I would have: (more…)

Press Release:

Plaintiff, Master Sgt. Jeffrey S. Sarver, is, in fact, the film’s main character “Will James” or “Blaster One” [which was Master Sgt. Sarver's "call signal" during his tours of duty in Iraq]. 

Screenwriter Mark Boal with Director Katherine Bigelow

The suit alleges that the screenwriter of “The Hurt Locker,” Mark Boal, was allowed, as part of an armed services press program, to be embedded in Master Sgt. Sarver’s unit. Virtually all of the situations portrayed in the film were, in fact, occurrences involving Master Sgt. Sarver that were observed and documented by Screenwriter Boal.  Master Sgt. Sarver also coined the phrase, “The Hurt Locker” for Boal.

Ultimately, a magazine article about Master Sgt. Sarver, written by Screenwriter Boal, appeared in Playboy Magazine. That story was later adapted by Boal for the screenplay of “The Hurt Locker.” The suit alleges that the film’s makers falsely claim that the characters portrayed in the film are fictional when, in fact, the film’s main character “Will James,” IS Master Sgt. Sarver. (more…)

At the bottom of this L.A. Times piece there’s a fascinating story explaining why “The Hurt Locker” lost their support from the Defense Department at the last minute. It appears as though the government was perfectly willing to support the production until a couple of last minute scenes were added that included detainee abuse (possibly the David Morse scene I describe here)[emphasis mine]:

The Los Angeles Times:

At one point, “The Hurt Locker” might have been made with government cooperation. But just 12 hours before Lt. Col. J. Todd Breasseale was to fly to Jordan to serve as the Army’s technical advisor to “The Hurt Locker,” he said in an interview that he heard there might be problems. A Jordanian official told him that scenes were being shot that were not in the script that the Army had approved. Breasseale accused the producer of shooting a scene in which soldiers act violently toward detainees. (The military does not provide help to films depicting violations of the laws of war, unless their consequences are shown.) He also charged that the production had driven a Humvee into a Palestinian refugee camp in order to film angry crowd scenes.

This might refer to a scene where what are supposed to be Iraqi kids are seen angrily throwing rocks at an American Humvee. A scene that seems to say we don’t want you here. (more…)

Katherine Bigelow’s direction of “The Hurt Locker” is masterful and might very well place her back where she belongs, at the top of anyone’s list looking for a top-shelf action director. But that’s not enough to save the film from episodic plotting, jarring and unnecessary political statements, a troubling depiction of our troops and an even worse portrayal of the Iraqi people. This is a movie you want to like, but an unsettling after-taste lingers long after the thrill of the set-pieces fades.

Produced and scripted by Mark Boal (who embedded with a U.S. Army bomb squad operating in Baghdad), the year is 2004 and Iraq is a country under siege, thanks mainly to determined insurgents and roadside IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) that seem to be everywhere and frequently come with nearby triggermen lying in wait for the opportunity to do the most amount of damage, preferably to American servicemen and women.  Charged with the dangerous and technically complicated job of defusing these bombs is a three-man EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) team led by Staff Sergeant James (an excellent Jeremy Renner) and his squad mates Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Eldridge (Brian Geraghty). (more…)

I jumped at the opportunity to join “The Hurt Locker” press junket. The film’s director, Kathryn Bigelow (“Point Break,” “Strange Days,” “Blue Steel”), has been a favorite of mine since catching a 3 a.m. Cinemax screening of “Near Dark” some twenty-five years ago. No director — not the Scott brothers, not Michael Bay or even Clint Eastwood understand or are able to get inside the skin of driven men of action like Bigelow. This makes even her rare misstep like “K:19 The Widowmaker” much more watchable than it deserves to be (actually, I watch it all the time).

The junkets are simple. You sit in a hotel room with other writers and one by one the film’s participants stop by for a few minutes. So, in no particular order, as a group we had the chance to interview Bigelow, screenwriter Mark Boal (“In the Valley of Elah”), who researched the film in Iraq, and actors Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty.

All were charming and personable to be sure, but whenever politics or previous Iraq War films came up, things would get a little tense and surreal as each responded by assuring us they weren’t worried because “Hurt Locker” wasn’t at all political. Again and again, the film was described as a straight-forward war picture that just happened to be set in Iraq. (more…)