“Clint Eastwood made two films about Iwo Jima that ran for more than four hours total, and there was not one Negro actor on the screen.
If you reporters had any balls you’d ask him why. There’s no way I know why he did that … But I know it was pointed out to him and that he could have changed it. It’s not like he didn’t know.”
Lee’s comments came during a press conference to promote his own war film, Miracle at St Anna, at the Cannes film festival last month.
“The story is Flags of Our Fathers, the famous flag-raising picture, and they didn’t do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people’d go: ‘This guy’s lost his mind.’ I mean, it’s not accurate. A guy like him should shut his face.”
Whoa!
Eastwood, who described himself as libertarian - “Just stay out of everybody else’s hair” - has a reputation for outspoken remarks. He once said he would kill fellow film-maker Michael Moore if he showed up uninvited at his house. His 2004 double-Oscar-winning film Million Dollar Baby was criticized by Christian groups who objected to part of the plot involving “assisted suicide”.
Defending the racial make-up in his films as historically accurate, Eastwood referred to another of his films, Changeling, which was set in Los Angeles before the city had a large group of African-Americans.
“What are you going to do, you going to tell a fuckin’ story about that?. Make it look like a commercial for an equal opportunity player? I’m not in that game.
I’m playing it the way I read it historically, and that’s the way it is. When I do a movie and it’s 90% black, like Bird, then I use 90% black people.”
I really had no idea there was so much fire in Clint’s belly. I mean, I know he’s Dirty Harry and all, but really I’m a little shocked.
Michael Moore announced that the Bush Administration has subpoenaed him in the wake of his recent trip to Cuba on the July 26 episode of NBC’s “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”
It boils down to this. Moore took 9/11 rescue workers with him to Guantanamo Bay, while filming his newest move ‘Sicko’. His reasoning? Terrorists being held captive there are receiving free dental, medical and eye care. Something our own rescue workers DON’T get!
“I haven’t even told my own family yet.” Moore began, “I was just informed when I was back there with Jay that the Bush administration has now issued a subpoena for me.”
The trip was part of his new film “Sicko” which tackles the question of affordable health care in the United States. Moore, who brought 9/11 rescue workers with him on his excursion, explains the reason for his trip, saying: “Took them to Guantanamo Bay because I heard the Al Qaeda Terrorists we have in the camps there, detained, are receiving free dental, medical, eye care, the whole deal, and our own 9/11 rescue workers can’t get that in New York City.”
In a continued effort to help the 9/11 rescue workers, Moore stated that on August 11, the Weinstein Company will be donating 11 percent of the box office receipts from “Sicko” to “help these workers and the other workers who need help,” said Moore.
Also Moore told Leno on the show how his studio asked him to cut a certain segment out of his film. “I just tell the truth in our film. (Hillary Clinton) did something very courageous 14-years ago, saying all American’s should be covered. She got beat up badly for it. Now she’s the second-largest recipient of health care industry money in the U.S. Senate.”
Moore continued: “In fact, I don’t know if I should really talk about this on national television, but you know the head of the studio that’s releasing this film…Harvey Weinstein is a big supporter of Hillary Clinton. For the months leading up to the release of the film, he kept calling me every day saying, ‘I want you to take that scene out of the film, attacking Hillary.’ I said, ‘I’m no attacking her, I’m just telling the truth.’”
Michael Moore thinks he has made an even-handed movie about health care that should appeal to the civic-mindedness and decency of all Americans. He fully expects to piss people off.
The gadfly director, who spoke to reporters at an unusual northern Michigan premiere for his documentary “SiCKO,” said he expected the U.S. pharmaceutical and insurance industries to go on the offensive against his call for a sweeping overhaul that would give the United States a national health care system.
“I am anticipating the onslaught of attack. My hope in this film was to reach out across the great divide that exists in this country and say you know, those on the other side, who may disagree with me, can’t we find some common ground on this issue? We’re all Americans.”
“Sicko,” which opens in theaters on June 29, details the painful stories of Americans who say they were denied life-saving treatment by insurers or forced to forego emergency treatment at hospitals because they could not afford to pay.
As counterpoints, Moore tours Canada, Britain and France and feigns amazement when confronted with evidence that those national health care systems provide better basic care.
Moore said he has been notified he could face federal prosecution for visiting Cuba to escort a group of Americans seeking medical care in violation of U.S. travel and trade restrictions.
Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore is under investigation by the U.S. Treasury Department for taking ailing Sept. 11 rescue workers to Cuba for a segment in his upcoming health-care documentary “Sicko”.
The investigation provides another contentious lead-in for a provocative film by Moore, a fierce critic of President Bush. In the past, Moore’s adversaries have fanned publicity that helped the filmmaker create a new brand of opinionated blockbuster documentary.
“Sicko” promises to take the health-care industry to task the way Moore confronted America’s passion for guns in “Bowling for Columbine” and skewered Bush over his handling of Sept. 11 in “Fahrenheit 9/11.”
The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control notified Moore in a letter dated May 2 that it was conducting a civil investigation for possible violations of the U.S. trade embargo restricting travel to Cuba. A copy of the letter was obtained Tuesday by the AP.
“This office has no record that a specific license was issued authorizing you to engage in travel-related transactions involving Cuba,” Dale Thompson, OFAC chief of general investigations and field operations, wrote in the letter to Moore.
In February, Moore took about 10 ailing workers from the Ground Zero rescue effort in Manhattan for treatment in Cuba, said a person working with the filmmaker on the release of “Sicko.” The person requested anonymity because Moore’s attorneys had not yet determined how to respond.
Moore, who scolded Bush over the Iraq war during the 2003 Oscar telecast, received the letter Monday, the person said. “Sicko” premieres May 19 at the Cannes Film Festival and debuts in U.S. theaters June 29.
Moore declined to comment, said spokeswoman Lisa Cohen.
After receiving the letter, Moore arranged to place a copy of the film in a “safe house” outside the country to protect it from government interference, said the person working on the release of the film.
Treasury officials declined to answer questions about the letter. “We don’t comment on enforcement actions,” said department spokeswoman Molly Millerwise.
The letter noted that Moore applied Oct. 12, 2006, for permission to go to Cuba “but no determination had been made by OFAC.” Moore sought permission to travel there under a provision for full-time journalists, the letter said.
According to the letter, Moore was given 20 business days to provide OFAC with such information as the date of travel and point of departure; the reason for the Cuba trip and his itinerary there; and the names and addresses of those who accompanied him, along with their reasons for going.
The Dixie Chicks have been known more for their politics than their music the last four years, so it should have come as no surprise that they won five Grammy awards last night.
After death threats, boycotts and a cold shoulder from the country music establishment, the Dixie Chicks gained sweet vindication Sunday night at the 49th annual Grammy Awards, capturing honors in all five of the categories in which they were nominated.
[...]
The Dixie Chicks took home Grammys for the top three awards: record, song and album of the year. Their “Taking the Long Way” (Open Wide/Columbia) won best country album and “Not Ready to Make Nice” also captured best country performance by a duo or group with vocal. That song is an unapologetic response to the furor set off in 2003 when the band’s lead singer, Natalie Maines, made an off-the-cuff antiwar remark to London concertgoers: “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.”
But Sunday’s awards were the Recording Academy’s rejoinder to the country music radio establishment, which ignored the album. Accepting the award for song of the year, Ms. Maines joked, “For the first time in my life, I’m speechless.” But she found her voice on later trips to the stage. “I’m very humbled and I think people were using their voice the same way this loudmouth did,” she said, self-referentially, after “Taking the Long Way” was named album of the year. The Dixie Chicks’ sweep of the major Grammy categories served as a sharp counterpoint to their shut-out at the Country Music Association awards in November. The Recording Academy consists of members across the nation who work in all genres of music. The Country Music Association’s membership is concentrated among artists, engineers and executives tied to the Nashville establishment.
The Grammys have a long tradition of giving their country category awards to artists with relatively little appeal to country fans, like k.d. lang, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Lucinda Williams. They also have a history of making political statements with their awards, most notably the bizarre award to Hillary Clinton for her narration of “It Takes a Village.”
Then again, the Grammys have a habit of finding a favorite and sticking with it, especially in the country category. Vince Gill has won the Best Male Country Vocal Performance award nine times and Johnny Cash, Ronnie Milsap, and Willie Nelson–all favorites with the critics and fans alike–have won repeatedly. Similarly, the Chicks won for “Fly” in 2000, before their political activism, and “Home” on February 23, 2003 and didn’t make their big statement in London until March 10. So, while there’s little doubt that politics played a role here, Grammy voters always liked the Chicks.
Still, as Lorie Byrd points out, their nomination and award in the “best country album” category is rather much, “since the Chicks said this was NOT a country album and it got practically no play on country stations.”
Duncan Black uploaded the video of their performance of “I’m Not Ready to Make Nice” at the show to YouTube:
The Chicks still sound great but this song is hardly their “A” material, let alone “Song of the Year.”
The politics of this is all rather odd, generating wild overreaction from both sides. Dissing the president at a concert in the capital of our biggest ally is hardly tantamount to Jane Fonda’s activity in Hanoi. On the other had, we get nonsense like Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead’s remark: “I think people are paranoid. I think that if they speak out, they think they’re gonna get whacked by the government. It’s pretty oppressive now. Look at the Dixie Chicks. They got whacked.” As Betsy Newmark points out, “The government didn’t ‘whack’ the Dixie Chicks. Their fans did. Is the position of the cognoscenti now that fans can’t express their opinions of musical artists by deciding not to buy their music?”
Sean Hackbarth and Dan Riehl both think the Hollywood establishment’s open antagonism to Red State America constitutes a large reason that the music industry is in so much trouble. While I don’t doubt that there’s some minor backlash, it seems far more likely that the wide availability of digital music and the record industry’s clinging to a decades-old album packaging system is the main issue. Red Staters have been making fun of “Hollyweird” for as long as I can remember, yet they continue to go to the movies. And it’s unlikely that people will quit buying Toby Keith and Gretchen Wilson albums to teach the Grammy people a lesson.
Seeing the success of Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” and “Colbert Report,” Fox News is working on a conservative news satire show.
Fox News Channel might air two episodes of a “Daily Show”-like program with a decidedly nonliberal bent on Saturday nights in late January, with the possibility that it could become a weekly show for the channel.
The half-hour show is executive produced by “24’s” Joel Surnow and Manny Cota and creator Ned Rice, who previously wrote for “Politically Incorrect” and “Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson” through This Just In Prods. It would take aim at what Surnow calls “the sacred cows of the left” that don’t get made as much fun of by other comedy shows. “It’s a satirical news format that would play more to the Fox News audience than the Michael Moore channel,” Surnow said. “It would tip more right as ‘The Daily Show’ tips left.”
There would certainly be an audience for such a show but the description here does not look promising. For one thing, a once-a-week format is unlikely to work. There are already a flurry of late-night comedians doing their takes on the events of the day, not to mention “Saturday Night Live” and other weekly venues. Immediacy is part of the effectiveness of these shows. Further, it’s not just the format that has done so well for Comedy Central but the hosts. Unless they find someone with the comedic timing and ability to be simultaneously likable and snarky that Stewart and Colbert possess, the show won’t make it.
The international press won’t get their first look at the documentary Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing until its gala premiere at the Toronto Film Festival tonight. But EW.com got an early look at the sure-to-be-controversial doc in Los Angeles and can attest that the film will continue to bring the (ex?) country trio more plaudits from progressives and further condemnation from conservatives. And if you think singer Natalie Maines had some harsh words for President Bush in public, wait till you hear what she had to say about him behind the scenes.
In one memorable scene, Maines watches news footage of the president being interviewed about the furor that followed the singer’s on-stage comment that she was ”ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas,” which resulted in the group being dropped from most radio stations, as well as protests and plummeting sales. ”The Dixie Chicks are free to speak their mind,” Bush told Tom Brokaw at the time, adding, ”They shouldn’t have their feelings hurt just because some people don’t want to buy their records when they speak out. You know, freedom is a two-way street.”
After watching this footage, Maines repeats the president’s comment about how the group shouldn’t have their ”feelings hurt,” incredulous, and then says, ”What a dumb f—.” She then looks into the camera, as if addressing Bush, and reiterates, ”You’re a dumb f—.”
[...]
Initially, sisters Emily Robison and Martie Seidel seem downcast over their apparently nose-diving popularity, but Maines assures them, ”I think this is better for our career.” And when whether to stay quiet or get their backs up becomes an issue, the singer jokes, ”Now that we’ve f—ed ourselves, I think we have a responsibility to continue to f— ourselves,” amid gales of laughter.
[...]
Cameras are rolling when the three women and their cowriters are working on the lyrics for the title song of Taking the Long Way, their latest album — including the moment of creation of a key line: ”Wouldn’t kiss all the asses that they told me to.” One of the band members proposes adding an addendum, quickly scotched: ”Gave a lot of [oral sex], but wouldn’t kiss all the asses!” ”We did kiss SOME asses,” another member adds, in full disclosure. Clearly, though, the days of butt-smooching are over for this gleefully contentious group.
Several concerts on the Dixie Chicks’ “Accidents & Accusations” tour have been canceled after slow ticket sales, but the group says it has replaced them with other dates. Kansas City, Houston, St. Louis, Memphis and Knoxville are among 14 cities no longer on the original schedule released in May, according to a revised itinerary posted Thursday on the Dixie Chick’s Web site. Other shows, including Nashville, Los Angeles, Denver and Phoenix, have been pushed back to later dates.
The North American leg of the tour kicked off July 21 in Detroit. Billboard magazine and other trade publications have reported lackluster sales in some markets, particularly in the South and Midwest. Group spokeswoman Kathy Allmand said Monday that the total number of North American dates remains the same, with several Canadian cities added in place of the U.S. shows.
The trio released a statement last week attributing the changes to attempts to “accommodate demand” and said more dates might be added next year. The group also said the adjustments will allow them to promote the documentary “Dixie Chicks: Shut up and Sing,” for the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
The Canadian, lesbian singer k.d. lang said years ago that when she told people she was a country singer, they asked “What country.” Apparently, for the Dixie Chicks, the answer is “Canada.”
In fairness, it should be reiterated that, by any reasonable standard, the Chicks are still wildly successful despite backlash over their political statements about the president and the war. Indeed, their views are probably closely aligned with the American public’s at this point. Not so much with the core country music audience, though.
Marine Staff Sergeant Raymond Plouhar, the recruiter in “Fahrenheit 9/11,” was recently killed in Iraq. Contrary to his portrayal in Michael Moore’s vile propaganda piece, he was an exemplary human being who spent his life in the service of others.
He was a stern-faced sniper — and a soft-hearted Marine who handed out candy to kids in Iraq. He was a warrior who wrote poetry about life and death. He was featured in Michael Moore’s antiwar documentary, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” portrayed as an overzealous Marine recruiter who targeted poor kids.
But Staff Sgt. Raymond Plouhar was far more complicated than that. And it was that complicated man who died in Iraq in late June, as he served with some of the same men he had recruited years ago. It was that complex man who was buried Friday, by a family that honored his service but would never forget his humanity. “He had a huge heart,” says his widow, Leigha.
Plouhar was a Marine for 10 of his 30 years, but he had dreamed of joining the military ever since he was a little boy who liked to watch “M-A-S-H” on television and dress in fatigues and a camouflage shirt. He entered the Corps straight out of high school, was trained as a sniper and traveled the world — Bosnia, Sudan and Israel. He had a ramrod posture and a fierce pride in his appearance: He once ironed his uniform and polished its brass buttons for two hours before allowing his mom to photograph him.
“He told me lots of times that he learned what could be accomplished .. if you put your heart and soul in it — and he put his heart and soul in the Marine Corps,” says his father, also named Raymond. “He was gung-ho from the time he signed his name until the day he died.”
[...]
Plouhar was killed on June 26 by a roadside bomb in Anbar province in his second tour of duty in Iraq, weeks before he was to return home. He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force in Camp Pendleton, Calif.
[...]
Plouhar did step back from active duty for four years and worked as a recruiter in Flint so he could donate a kidney to his uncle.
It was as a recruiter that Plouhar was seen in Moore’s award-winning “Fahrenheit 9/11.” The segment shows Plouhar and another Marine in a mall parking lot in a depressed suburb of Flint; it suggests the two men were cynically hunting for poor teens to sign up, rather than go to a wealthy suburb where they’d likely be rejected.
Plouhar’s father says his son told him he had been misled and believed he was being filmed for a documentary that would appear on the Discovery Channel. (Moore’s office didn’t return calls or e-mail messages seeking comment.) “He cried when he found out what it really was,” his father says. “He never dreamed that it was going to be something to slam the country, which he dearly loved.”
[...]
His parents say they’ve seen only the segment featuring their son. Leigha Plouhar says her husband asked her not to watch the film — and she never has. Nor has Stephen Wandrie, his friend of 20 years, who says Plouhar was hurt by the film, but told him: “‘You know what? I know what I do is good for this country and every one of those people I’m recruiting — those guys are my brothers.’ ”
Rest in peace, Marine, secure in the knowledge that the contributions you made in your short life far exceeded Michael Moore’s.
“Clint Eastwood made two films about Iwo Jima that ran for more than four hours total, and there was not one Negro actor on the screen.
“I haven’t even told my own family yet.” Moore began, “I was just informed when I was back there with Jay that the Bush administration has now issued a subpoena for me.”
The gadfly director, who spoke to reporters at an unusual northern Michigan premiere for his documentary “SiCKO,” said he expected the U.S. pharmaceutical and insurance industries to go on the offensive against his call for a sweeping overhaul that would give the United States a national health care system.
The investigation provides another contentious lead-in for a provocative film by Moore, a fierce critic of President Bush. In the past, Moore’s adversaries have fanned publicity that helped the filmmaker create a new brand of opinionated blockbuster documentary. 
