Screenwriter/show-runner John Rogers has had it with the right-wing myth that Hollywood keeps making anti-war movies that flop, proving how out of touch the Liberal Elite are with the will of the peeepul. So he's written a masterful takedown of this notion, looking at every war-related film in 2007/8 and calculating how profitable they were. Conclusion: Hollywood makes a modest number of films with anti-war messages, and most of them make a decent amount of money. Then he goes on to offer a compelling account of the process by which potentially risky "message" films get made by big, bottom-line oriented studios.
The whole thing was prompted by a comment by John "Dirty Harry" Nolte, whose site offers this epithet to describe himself: "[a] right-wing, Tim Robbins-loathing blogger."Nolte posted, "Between narratives and documentaries I’ve counted 16 anti-Iraq war films over the last two years. All have flopped, miserably. More are on the way." As Rogers demonstrates, this is just not true, as a purely factual matter.
Well, first off, for a trillion dollar industry dedicated to pushing anti-War movies on America, dedicating to this cause less than 5% of the last 300 movies kind of indicates our hearts aren't really into it. Not to mention the limited number of release theaters for most of the movies we discussed. FIFTEEN THEATERS for Redacted, for chrissake. Here's a quick clue — when Hollywood wants to sell something, we make it as widely available as possible for purchase. Crazy, I know. What sort of marketing mumbo-jumbo is this?
You'll note thay evil "Hollywood" kind of lay down on the oppression job, allowing An American Carol to be released in 1600+ theaters, and Proud American to be released in 750 theaters, and Expelled to be released in over 1000 theaters, the widest release of a documentary in history. As far as soul-crushing propaganda machines go, we are not getting the memos out, apparently.
