Saturday, March 29, 2008

Don't Question Their Patriotism: Hollywood and the War in Iraq

I wouldn't say Hollywood is stupid...wait, yes, I would. Hollywood is stupid to continue to produce anti-American crap like Stop-Loss because (a) Americans won't buy it and (b) they lose any credibility when they try to tell us how patriotic they are.

Via Memeorandum,Nikki Finke says,

I'm told #7 Stop-Loss opened to only $1.6 million Friday from just 1,291 plays and should eke out $4+M. Although the drama from MTV Films was the best-reviewed movie opening this weekend, Paramount wasn't expecting much because no Iraq war-themed movie has yet to perform at the box office. "It's not looking good," a studio source told me before the weekend. "No one wants to see Iraq war movies. No matter what we put out there in terms of great cast or trailers, people were completely turned off. It's a function of the marketplace not being ready to address this conflict in a dramatic way because the war itself is something that's unresolved yet. It's a shame because it's a good movie that's just ahead of its time."

Emphasis mine.

What is wrong with these people? Americans don't want to see anti-American movies, not because the war is on-going, but because they dislike films that bash our country relentlessly. As DRJ at Patterico's Pontifications points out, Hollywood needs to realistically judge its markets and stop cramming this sort of thing down our throats. We don't want to see it.

And as Jaime Sneider of the Weekly Standard says, Hollywood produced plenty of box office hits during World War II. They just weren't America-bashing films. But remember: don't question their patriotism!