Hollywood is getting lent upon by America's politicians 30/1/02

MADELEINE HOLT:
Perceptions of America. How should it present itself both within and beyond its shores? After 11th September, Washington and Hollywood, the two most powerful image-makers in the world, are talking to each other.

JACK VALENTI:
(President, Motion Picture Association of America)
We are at war. If I was in the White House, I'd reach out to the most powerful persuaders on earth, the movie industry, and ask, "What can you do to help?"

MARK McKINNON:
(Advisor to President Bush)
Suddenly it didn't matter if people were Democrat or Republican, people wanted to support the President and the United States.

MADELEINE HOLT:
The White House has exhorted people to pull together, "You're either with us or you're against us," said President Bush. The American news media have taken the cue. It's a natural and well-tested strategy in war time to ask the movie world to promote American values, whatever they may be. Just as the director's cut is always longer than the original movie, it used to go without saying that a Republican in this place would always be less indulgent towards the creative community in Hollywood. Times change. The key meeting happened at the Peninsular Hotel in Beverley Hills. Bush sent his chief political advisor, Karl Rove. He met 45 players, among them executives from all the main studios. The Hollywood 911 committee was born. Washington offered to give the industry access to military sites, to get them onto aircraft carriers, even film in Pakistan, on condition the results weren't critical of the Government. Hollywood sent videos and stars to military bases. The dialogue is to continue. So what more does the White House want?

MARK McKINNON:
We don't want to, or intend to, turn Hollywood into a propaganda machine. It's not in the long-term interests for the effort, Hollywood, or this administration. This administration is very first-amendment minded. This President has no interest in telling people what to do, what to say, or how to say it.

MADELEINE HOLT:
But in Hollywood, the surface, however shiny and seductive, rarely tells you all you need to know. So could this new entente with Washington be more than just a straightforward show of support in unusual times. Is there, as if in a film by David Lynch, something menacing lurking beneath the facade?

DAVID LYNCH:
(Director, Mulholland Drive)
The more deeply you can go into something, the more you discover. So there is a surface and a myriad of layers beneath the surface.

MADELEINE HOLT:
The creator of the film Mulholland Drive isn't usually one to get involved in politics. But when politics gets mixed up with movies, he's willing to talk less elliptically than usual.

DAVID LYNCH:
It's total baloney, in my mind, and this thing of trying to get Hollywood to be something, and this thing about American values... You have to go with your own feelings when you make a film, you have to be true to these ideas that come, that you fall in love with. You have to go in freedom, and any false overlay putrefies it.

MADELEINE HOLT:
You wouldn't expect David Lynch to endorse the official line. But he's not the only one who's detected trouble, even the threat of censorship.

LARRY GELBART:
(Creator, M*A*S*H)
I think they are anxious for us to promote values which we may not share with emissaries from Washington. I don't like closed-doors meetings, in which we're told, "No, we didn't talk about that." I like, "What you did talk about?" What can you talk about besides content?

CHUCK WORKMAN:
(Director, Spirit of America)
The Bush administration will say what they want, and everyone will listen, because everyone wants to be nice to the Government. There are lots of perks from being nice to the Government.

MADELEINE HOLT:
Chuck Workman was commissioned after the Twin Towers attack to produce a three-minute compilation of the best moments in American film, now running as a trailer in US cinemas. He calls himself a patriot, but he thinks politicians are bound to want to influence what films say.

CHUCK WORKMAN:
I can't see why they wouldn't want to influence content. They're trying to say, "We assume that you have the same feeling that we do". It's a very easy kind of message for them to bring. "We don't want to influence content, but we wish you could help us with this problem." Maybe some low- end producers may make patriotic movies, and there will be patriotic elements in every film about America. People will be very careful not to make anti-American movies. I don't think that will happen.

MADELEINE HOLT:
Even without Washington's initiative, they must be delighted at the sort of films playing at the moment. A spate of war movies, all conceived long before September 11th, now appears to chime happily with the national mood. Behind Enemy Lines is a tale of bravery in Bosnia. Collateral Damage, Arnie's battle with terrorists, is on course for an American release in ten days. Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down has made $60 million dollars in the US in a fortnight.

LARRY GELBART:
While the picture's called Black Hawk Down, it could just as well have been called Black Hawk Up, because it's so positive, even about how we lose. It is the kind of picture I think that Karl Rove and Washington will be very proud of. If we're going to get a series of movies which are extensions of news reports, which are controlled by the Government, and the military if there's a difference, it is a very sad case indeed.

MADELEINE HOLT:
But Bush has also talked about the importance of cultural tolerance, particularly towards Muslims. So how do you square that with Black Hawk...er, Up?

LARRY GELBART:
I don't reconcile it. It is easy to talk out of the other side of your mouth when you are two-faced. You have got this extra mouth. They want it all ways.

MADELEINE HOLT:
Ridley Scott was briefed by the White House on international perceptions of America before giving British TV interviews. It shows.

RIDLEY SCOTT:
(Director, Black Hawk Down)
I wanted to take the segment as it happened and report it. Part of my job was to remind us just what these guys are doing for you in those holes in the ground in Afghanistan.

MADELEINE HOLT:
Leaving out the shades of grey gets justified time and again on the grounds the mass market can't take anything more complicated. That means domestic movie-goers, Hollywood staple, mainly teenagers in middle America, wherever that is. We set off for a high school in Salt Lake City to find out if they are happy with what they're getting.

HEBER CANNON:
(Highland High)
Hollywood makes movies to entertain people, not make them think, because it's not an intelligent society, you might say.

McCALL KNOWLTON:
Regardless of the number of people who want to see a traditional movie that displays what America really is, I don't think that will happen because a lot of people in America don't want to see what their real life is.

MADELEINE HOLT:
Do you think Hollywood should change? Do you think it will?

CAITLIN SWANER:
If you are representing a group, whether it's a movie or a book you're writing, you should try to stay as true to the facts as you can, and not manipulate them or cater them to a certain audience.

MADELEINE HOLT:
Does anyone share that vision in Hollywood? After 11th September, is there an urgency to paint a more sophisticated and truthful picture? We spoke to the writer of Three Kings, which explored the Gulf War's cultural context.

JOHN RIDLEY:
(Writer/Co-Producer, Three Kings)
In our films you saw more Arab- Americans, just as doctors or lawyers, even if they're not in lead roles. You don't see them at all. I think if people in Arab countries saw that in America, as an Arab you can aspire do things, I think that would make them less inclined to have animosity towards America. Everything we do in films is not going to be reality, but we do a poor job of saying that, at its best, the American dream is anybody can come here and achieve.

MADELEINE HOLT:
So will anything change? Even a little less sex and violence?

JACK VALENTI:
We cannot tailor our films to 150 different sects. We aren't going to change the kind of movies that we make, because we are going to continue being the best, most skilful storytellers that we can think of.

MARK McKINNON:
The reason that in some of the countries we're dealing with don't want American entertainment is because so much American entertainment promotes values that they are opposed to. Freedom, democracy, the ability to choose. In this country you can choose your religion. If you want to be a Taliban in the US, you can be. Entertainment is America's greatest export. What we want to do is increase that export, make sure more people see it. Because when people see freedom, if they don't have it, I guarantee they want it.

MADELEINE HOLT:
David Lynch has another idea of freedom, and it doesn't involve the White House.

DAVID LYNCH:
Politics is really foreign to me. I like human behaviour, and politics maybe as part of that, but there's things I think are higher than politics. I think fiddling with things is not so good. It's got to be pure freedom for every filmmaker.

MADELEINE HOLT:
That they may never get. But nor may politicians manage to pump up the patriotism that much for that long. The studios know that if the mood in America is jingoistic now, by the time films being made at the moment get released, movie-goers, along perhaps with voters, may have moved on.