Page Six, Medved Will 'Che' Anything to Get at Soderbergh
While beady-eyed conservative ideologues have long been the Post’s stock in trade, it takes a special kind of hack to tee off Page-Six style on Steven Soderbergh. The gossip insitiution, which test-drove over the filmmaker’s reputation last fall for no apparent reason (and inaccurately, at that), continues its reactionary blastback today with right-wing critic Michael Medved lashing out at Soderbergh’s Che Guevara biopic, which is now shooting in New York:
“I think to romanticize a mass killer and commie thug is terribly sad. With The Motorcycle Diaries [a recent release about the young Che], at least they could say it was about when he was a young man – before he had power and abused it. But it sounds like this film will be like the 1969 Che movie, with Jack Palance as Fidel Castro and Omar Sharif as Che, which was one of the worst movies ever made.”
Medved continued: “I don’t imagine this film will be a smash with [Cuban exiles] in South Florida, where many people know about the real Che Guevara and his legacy.”
The Page Six crew also grabs reaction from a jaded Cuban-American National Foundation spokeswoman, who gives Soderbergh a typically Post-y, backhanded benefit of the doubt:
“Even in history books, these things aren’t properly documented, so we’d be surprised if this movie does portray the truth accurately. But [Soderbergh] is a great filmmaker, so we’ll wait and see.”
Right. The New York Post, on the other hand, clearly has Guevara’s (and Soderbergh’s) legacy “properly documented” and burnished to a glowing crystalline luster. Let us hope that whoever is handling “historical consultant” credits for Focus Features is paying attention.
Films in the past have glorified Che a little too much. The problem is some kids out there (who wear the shirt thinking its cool without and knowledge of who he is) think all these movies are fact. When they’re not. I hope Soderbergh actually shows the real Che.