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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Uh, Welcome To The Munich Campaign, Dumbass

After a while, it’s just too easy.
Of course, you have to have the right bait. Eastwood a year after an Oscar nomination with a movie unlike anything else in the marketplace… Spielberg… the right Scorsese… Godfather IV…
The story is really, really old. Before Spielberg shot a frame of Munich, he told everyone who would listen that he would not be doing press for Munich. Universal denied even hearing about it, but there was a moment mid-production when his DreamWorks team was analyzing whether or not to even screen the movie for the press… or even having one-sheets or a trailer. And given the absurd amount of media attention Spielberg behaving just like Spielberg repeatedly has in the past is garnering, his idea might have been even better! (The downside is that the very same writers who are humming endlessly about Spielberg not whoring for Munich would be talking about him hiding the movie if the privileged chattering class did not get its early taste.)
Even more amazing is that in all of this HYPE, Spielberg’s personal front man of decades, Marvin Levy, still hasn’t actually ruled out anything. Steven is likely to speak to Time Magazine this week. (How does the press corps know? Time staffers have told everyone in town.) The other actors will do some interviews “after the movie’s been seen,” which means anytime after next Wednesday. Banners have already been up. TV spots are already running in prime time. The trailer’s been out for weeks.
As Anne Thompson writes in her Risky Business column, ” Editorial coverage off the entertainment pages is a great way to build interest in a movie.” Apparently.
This all started with Tony Angellotti doing his job and informing the junket press in a missive, along with info on The Producers and King Kong, that no junket was planned. Five days later, Nikki Finke ran a story that suggested that this was news and added some negative spin as only Nikki can do. Then the LA Times had 2 reporters write a story that added nothing but quotes that said nothing. Now, Anne Thompson adds more nothing.
At least Thompson smartly connects the Malick film to the story… though Malick not doing interviews is a decades old story, Farrell is on Miami Vice duty, and Q’Orianka Kilcher is 17… of course this is the strategy. It’s not like New Line has a choice.
Then Thompson repeats another non-story that is being propagated – “If Munich is a huge success, there is one side benefit. It will lend Spielberg and his DreamWorks partners some much-needed leverage in their ongoing talks about selling their company to NBC Universal — which are at an impasse, according to sources close to the negotiations, over the fine points of Spielberg’s obligations under the new deal.”
Munich could be the biggest success imaginable – $250 million worldwide and a Best Picture win – and it still wouldn’t have an effect on General Electric’s willingness to throw a potential extra $100 million or $200 million in the fire in a DreamWorks deal. This is Old Hollywood thinking

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40 Responses to “Uh, Welcome To The Munich Campaign, Dumbass”

  1. mutinyco says:

    Seems to me that they’re just playing it cautious. Wait till the press sees the movie. Gauge their reaction. Then decide how to proceed.
    Considering Schinder’s List did $97-mil and Ryan did $205, history would suggest this film will be an unlikely box office success. Spielberg has a unique way, by virtue of a long-established relationship with audiences, where they’ll go with him to places like this because they trust him.

  2. Terence D says:

    Terry Malick not doing press? I am shocked on that.

  3. BluStealer says:

    I don’t think they’re playing it cautious at all. I think it’s a marketing strategy that is working since all the mainstream types are now writing about it. Free publicity. Can’t beat it.

  4. Hopscotch says:

    It should also be pointed out that there haven’t been any “For Your Consideration” ads in Variety or Hollywood Reporter yet for Munich. I saw one today for Tom Cruise for “War of the Worlds”, go figure.
    Steven’s playing this hand close to his chest. I don’t think the anti-Zionist angle will become serious…but Fox News will do a piece about “Liberal Hollywoods softening up the image of terrorists by its jewish leader Steven Spielberg” airing in 3…2…

  5. Josh says:

    As a Jew, I will kick and scream til the cows come home if he makes the PLO seem justified for what they did and if he makes the Israeli’s guilty of something other than proper vengeance. I can’t see SS doing that but I am starting to get scared here.

  6. jeffmcm says:

    Well, prepare to be scared.

  7. Josh says:

    I am. It’s too bad too. Because this is the kind of story that should be a huge film. And I think they’re going to ruin it by soft selling and by trying to rationalize what a bunch of murderous thugs did to innocent people.

  8. LesterFreed says:

    David’s buddy, Roger Friedman, has a review of “A New World” up today. I can’t tell whether he likes it or hates it. Seems like he is one of the guys who is afraid to say what he really means in order not to offend the cool kids ie other critics.

  9. Haggai says:

    Hi everyone, first comment here from a frequent reader in these parts.
    As a movie fan, I find it more than a little hard to believe any speculation that Spielberg is somehow going to make the Munich massacre seem justified in any way. I would presume that there’ll be at least some treatment of the terrorists’ point of view, which no mature person should think is an automatic sign of sympathizing with what they did. If there was some sort of sympathetic view of the terrorists’ actions as they saw them, then what the heck is the movie about? Where’s the internal conflict for the main characters? That would make the terrorists into the “good guys,” and the Israeli agents into the “bad guys.” How can anybody really think that Spielberg would make a movie that way?
    As the son of an Israeli family, and with most of my relatives still living in Israel (which is where I’ll be when Munich opens, ironically, so I won’t get to see it until I get back to the US a week later, since it doesn’t open in Israel for another month), I can say that the issue of hunting down and assassinating terrorists is still very much the subject of debate in Israeli society. The question that people there wrestle with, though, isn’t exactly fodder for great cinematic conflict: the debate is almost entirely focused on whether it makes them safer from terror or not, more of a political question than a moral one. But moral questions certainly enter into it as well, including the possibility of harming innocent lives in the process of targeting terrorists, which is something that’ll obviously be in the movie. I see little reason to worry about any of this.

  10. David Poland says:

    Josh… if that’s your standard, I think you’ll be fine.
    But if you are expecting the assassins, righteous though they may be, to look into the windows of the people they must kill and to see men drinking the blood of children, you will be upset. And unfortunately, that may be the standard some people hold this story to.
    It is obvious from the trailer that Bana is the moral center of the film and that he has doubts about murdering people… even murderers. And we all should have primal doubts about murdering people… even murderers. That doesn’t mean that we can’t agree that the choice to kill them is right.
    I can’t imagine that this film will end up saying, “Maybe those guys had a good reason to kill Israelis at the Olympics.” But isn’t there a moment when vengence feels served? Or should Israel be planning the extermination of 6 million Germans?

  11. Josh says:

    I think the same thing but with Hollywood and liberal filmmakers and marxist screenwriters? You never know. That’s why I’m a little scared of it.

  12. mutinyco says:

    Well…
    So, if we’re talking about manufactured hype. What’s the deal, a producer or somebody involved is orchestrated to leak a small piece of information that in return, a writer looking for a story, takes as bait? I’d say, journalists can’t be that dumb. But then I turn on the nightly news.

  13. Josh says:

    It’s Spielberg. Maybe I should have a little more faith in him.

  14. bicycle bob says:

    it wouldn’t be an interesting movie if the characters weren’t conflicted about taking lives. even if its justified and morally right. and im sure these great actors wouldn’t have signed on if the characters were one dimensional killing machines. thats a van damme flick.

  15. Haggai says:

    Yeah, I don’t think Spielberg, of all people, is the type to value political view X or Y in his movie-making if it comes at the expense of drama. Nobody should be expecting a lecture from this movie. Regardless of any praise or criticism one might have of Saving Private Ryan, for instance, what did Spielberg’s political views have to do with it?

  16. jeffmcm says:

    Remember that one of the most interesting facets of Schindler’s List was the character played by Ralph Fiennes, who was probably the most complex Nazi ever seen in movies. He was loathsome, yet you could understand him. He was a character who came from a particular context, made specific choices, and met the consequences. I would imagine that Munich will follow along those lines.

  17. Haggai says:

    Amon Goeth is a good precedent to cite with Spielberg. Somewhat similar questions arose earlier this year regarding the German movie Downfall, about whether it would humanize Hitler to the point of sympathy, etc. I thought it was a brilliant film, and it was also very well received in Israel.

  18. Bruce says:

    It is very hard to humanize real evil. Showing how bad there parents treated them doesn’t really work too well.

  19. jeffmcm says:

    Did you see Downfall, Bruce? They did a pretty good job there with no reference to childhood. Just good acting and writing.

  20. Haggai says:

    In the case of something like Downfall, a lot of the achievement is simply in having a good actor portray them as a human being, as Bruno Ganz did. Everyone always thinks of Hitler as a monster, so just seeing him portrayed as a complete person, as evil and manipulative as he was, is a pretty strong start.

  21. Bruce says:

    Didn’t catch that movie.
    I hope Hitler wasn’t just a raving psycho loony because it doesn’t say much for millions of people that followed him if he was. He had to have a little something on the ball. Don’t you think?

  22. Hopscotch says:

    I’m glad to see films take on complex issues. Spielberg got some points because he did not just make a war movie with SPR, he made a war movie with the central question: is it right to sacrifice more than one man to save more than one man, even in war? The central question in Munich, as seen my Golda Meir in the trailer, is it right for a society/government to compromise its own values?
    That’ll be the recurring theme, not “oh these Palestinians aren’t that bad”.

  23. Hopscotch says:

    I meant to say… sacrifice more than one man to save one man…. sorry.

  24. mutinyco says:

    “It is very hard to humanize real evil.”
    That’s because something evil no longer chooses. Evil implies that something is inhuman and, therefore, incapable of choice. People aren’t evil. As long as people are made of carbon, consist of cells, eat, drink, fuck to reproduce, they’re human. And no matter how ill-conceived and misguided their actions, they cannot be evil. Evil dehumanizes our perspectives so that we make no attempt to understand what could cause such actions. Without that knowledge — without empathizing with your “enemies” or trying to decipher what we fear — knowledge will be lacking. And you will never defeat your enemies or fears.

  25. Mark Ziegler says:

    If you really want to get into it, mutiny, you can also say evil has succeeded. Probably a lot of times. The losers don’t write the history books. If Hitler would have signed a peace treaty with England in 1939 and never invaded Russia? He would have been a victor.

  26. joefitz84 says:

    I don’t want to deal with being told “the PLO wasn’t that bad”. Set up some good action scenes. Show the Israeli’s having doubts but going thru with it for there people. It is the most highly anticipated movie of the year. A lot of expectations on it.

  27. mutinyco says:

    But Hitler didn’t. And now we use him as a boogey man. Rather than accept that he was human, and made choices — choices not unlike a lot of other leaders. Don’t mistake this as an excuse for genocide (there isn’t), but the reason we don’t prevent it is because we don’t deal with its reality. If we make people like Hitler or Pol Pot or Stalin or whoever else “evil,” then its a way for us to not really deal with who they were. By calling them evil, we’re dehumanizing them, denying that what they did was the work of a human being — and therefore representative of a face of humanity.

  28. Crow T Robot says:

    “Is there a doggie hell?”
    “Well… Of course, there couldn’t be a heaven if there weren’t a hell.”
    “Who’s in there?”
    “Oh, uh… Hitler’s dog… and that dog Nixon had.”

  29. Blackcloud says:

    That moratorium sure lasted long, didn’t it, Crow?
    Don’t worry, I won’t hold you to it if you don’t hold me to it.

  30. jeffmcm says:

    Joefitz, did you only pay attention to the action scenes in Schindler’s List too and nod off for the rest?

  31. Nicol D says:

    Mutinyco,
    Evil does exist and people can be evil. It is indeed very rare and very few humans are evil…but to say that it doesn’t exist is to then also deny that good also exists. Everything then becomes the classical modernist argument of a swath of grey. Which is of course a very black and white argument.
    Without having a benchmark of good and evil on the extremes, how can one differentiate between the different shades of grey in between?
    If there is no pure evil and therefore no pure good , then all one is left with is relativism both moral and intellectual, which is bankrupt in both cases.

  32. KamikazeCamelV2.0 says:

    I’m sorry Dave, I defend you as much as I can, but can you please stop talking about stories that you say are “non-stories” or “months old”. They’re not non-stories or months old to everyone. We don’t all read every article on MCN.
    The stuff about Spielberg not wanting to do any press (or trailers or posters, or whatever) for Munich was news to me (and a few others if I remember correctly) when you mentioned it the other week.
    And not all of us were following these sorts of stories in 1998.
    But, moving on…

  33. jeffmcm says:

    Moral relativism is the BEST THING EVER. No argument, hands down. If you don’t agree 100% with me you are a coward.

  34. David Poland says:

    Now THAT sounds like Jeff McWells

  35. jeffmcm says:

    I was thinking of more like Bill O’Reilly.

  36. Angelus21 says:

    Jeff McWells. LOL.

  37. David Poland says:

    But the reason it matters, Kami, is that you wouldn’t be chewing on this unless it was being reported as news. Maybe it’s of interest to you and I can understand that.
    But understand that I not interested in running around saying that Nikki Finke or whomever is making mountain out of a molehill because not only is it work, but it makes me look like a bad sport or a sore scoop misser.
    The story that Spielberg is playing this game is a story. Reporting that there is no campaign is sloppy, false, and embarrassing.

  38. Crow T Robot says:

    “That moratorium sure lasted long, didn’t it, Crow?”
    I know, black. I know. I went ahead and entered a 12 step for my addiction. Even hugged a man with bitch tits tonight.

  39. Chucky in Jersey says:

    I saw the “Munich” trailer in front of “Capote”. From that trailer I can tell what “Munich” is gonna be: All Arabs Bad, All Jews Good, “Israel Right or Wrong”. Utterly simplistic — and breathtakingly stupid.
    The only ones who will bite for “Munich” are the ones who get their news from the Liberal Media.

  40. jeffmcm says:

    Wow, Chucky, that’s in pretty stark contrast to the ‘Jewish revenge bad, all Arab terrorists good’ opinion that plenty others on the blog have formed. You want to go into greater detail?

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon