Disney Forbidding Distribution of Film That Criticizes Bush

Wonder what they're scared of? The truth, perhaps?

 

can't be...it's a michael moore film

 

Let us know when the blinders come off, mmmm-kay!

 

While I take everything Moore does with a grain of salt the size of a deer lick, he does have the right to make any film he wants and it is truly sad that a corporation would quash distribution in America because of the tax breaks that they may lose as a result.

What is even sadder is that there are government officials that WOULD punish Disney by taking away tax breaks.

 

We are our Constitutional right to free speech and political expression in this country.

Clear channel, whose owner is a close friend of Bush's owns 100's or is it 1000's of radio channels and uses them to urge people to turn out for their pro war demonstrations.

Sinclair block's ABC's Nightline on its channels.

Disney tries to suppress a documentary that is critical of Bush.

Clear channel move to get Howard Stern off the air, very suspciously right after he criticizes Bush. Secretary of State Powell's son at the FCC moves to get Stern off, too.

On and on and on.

 

It's ironic that the ones you believe have the blinders are the ones that question the mainstream media.

 

Yeah next thing you know, there will be no glynch, mcmark, or rimrocker.

Friggin conspiracy theorists.

 

Are you saying that the list in question was a series of coincidental actions that all just happened to be directed against people critical of the Bush regime?

 

On this issue, you seem to be defending the mainstream media.

 

The only ones that make logical sense are the two Clear Channel company ones and they are a friggin' conservative station, what the hell do you expect?

Disney's not going to want to fund something that contraversial, from a business stand point it doesn't make sense for them to alienate a large portion of their conservative audience.

Same with ABC, and CBS on the Reagan documentary.

These companies have the freedom of speech to put out what they want representing them. Find another outlet. There are people who will finance them and get their message out. Just look what Mel Gibson did with the Passion movie.

 

No, I am defending the right of a company to control the content that it publishes under its own brand name. Like ABC, CBS, and NBC yesterday passing on the news that all of Kerry's commanding officers say is unfit to lead. Its thier station, they can control the content.

 

This is really scary:

"(Mr. Emanual said) Mr. Eisner expressed particular concern that it would endanger tax breaks Disney receives for its theme park, hotels and other ventures in Florida, where Mr. Bush's brother, Jeb, is governor."

 

That was da#n funny.

 

This is the worst part of all of this. There should be no situation where there is any financial penalty levied against a corporation or a person for exercising their freedom of speech.

Eisner, a well known businessman not exactly known for being a Dem shill, has actually said that he thinks that his company would be retaliated against if Miramax distributes this film. That is absolutely outrageous.

 

So Disney all along says they don't want Miramax to distribute this film, but Miramax buys it anyway thinking they'll get Disney to change its mind. Disney does not change its mind, so Disney is the bad guy.

Perhaps Harvey shouldn't have gone against his bosses and bought the film.

Disney does not like controversy. Michael Eisner has enough trboule keeping the sharks off his back. Another high-profile controversy just gives Roy Disney and his group that trying to force Eisner out more ammunition.

So just like with movies like Dogma, Disney is attempting to avoid the issue altogether.

And just like with Dogma, someone else will step in to distribute the film.... probably someone like Lion's Gate or Newmarket, companies that aren't as risk averse.

Eisner, a well known businessman not exactly known for being a Dem shill, has actually said that he thinks that his company would be retaliated against if Miramax distributes this film. That is absolutely outrageous.

You don't know that he actually said that. You're hearing it second hand from someone who isn't exactly an impassioned observer. He's the rep for Moore and controversy makes the film he's trying to sell worth more. The more it looks like the film is trying to be quashed by the subject of the film, the sexier the story.

 

Movie columnist Dave Poland's take:

The two biggest Hollywood stories of Tuesday came, oddly, not from Hollywood-based journalists, but from a New York Times reporter out of Washington and a two marketing beat guys at the Wall Street Journal.

The first story was the more serious. Everyone has kind of known for the last year or so that Miramax's decision to pick up Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 was going to cause trouble. Well, here we are, people heading out the door to Cannes where the film will premiere, and the whole thing has gone public.

From what I can figure, Miramax started floating the issue within the journalistic community a few weeks ago. Jeff Wells, after chatting with non-Miramax sources, got hot about the apparent title change from "Fahrenheit 9-11" to Fahrenheit 911. But he missed, probably to the irritation of the Moore and Miramax teams, the bigger point… Disney was as unwilling to let a division of their company release the film this summer as they were last summer.

Moore finally started his inevitably endless whine with a reporter on Tuesday, though it is unclear in the article whether that interview was the genesis of the story. In a classic act of Moore-ish onanism, the Oscar-winning documentarian took $6 million from Miramax, making Fahrenheit 911 one of the most expensive documentaries ever made. After feasting on this capital from the "independent" division of a multinational, he brays to the Times, "At some point the question has to be asked, `Should this be happening in a free and open society where the monied interests essentially call the shots regarding the information that the public is allowed to see?"

Well, if ya don't want those "monied interests" to make decisions, Mike… Don't Take Their Friggin' Six Million Dollars!!!!! Adding to the pathetic nature of this scam, please be aware that Moore probably has $6 million himself and could have self-financed or sold select foreign markets to get enough money to get well within range of his production budget. What was his salary on this $6 million doc? And how much of the budget was based on the speed of completion of the film so that Moore could feel he might influence this year's election. Perhaps he feels the federal government should give him matching funds.

The reps of both Disney and Miramax pretty much said what they would be expected to say… "no" and "we're hopeful they'll let us do what we want." The reality for Disney, in my opinion, is that this film is far more dangerous for them than Miramax releasing a quality NC-17 movie. Not only will this film become a source of boisterous debate in the middle of an election cycle - as Moore intends it to be - but Disney would have to contend with Moore shooting off his mouth, as he tends to do when promoting movies. And having experienced it personally I can tell you, his exaggerations have an occasional tendency to become outright manipulative lies.

Cannes is the reason why the parade of verbosity has started up. By the time the film premieres, it will be held up, especially in the foreign press, as some sort of referendum on freedom of the American media. Think about it… one of the greatest self-promoters of his generation teamed up with one of the greatest marketing minds of his generation with Michael Eisner as the mutual enemy, stuck in a no-win situation. If Eisner lets Miramax distribute the film, he will be attacked by the right (a group that just coughed up the majority of The Passion of The Christ's $365 million-plus domestic gross and represents a significant portion of Disney's theme park patronage) and there will be an absurd amount attention paid to the political leanings of Disney-owned ABC News and other subsidiaries. If he sticks to his long-held (pre-production) position that no Disney company will distribute the film, he will be attacked by Moore and others for months and months and months as the worst kind of right wing apologist and censor.

No matter how successful Bowling for Columbine was, no one else in the marketplace is about to take a documentary off Miramax and Disney's hands at a cost of $6 million. Ironically, the "O" solution - distribution through Lions Gate - is now being floated, along with the idea that Eisner will block such an idea. Forgotten, perhaps, is the fact that Miramax had to be sued for breach of their distribution contract with that film's producers in order to get Miramax to move the film to Lions Gate. Additionally, Miramax's "marketing control" was actually Miramax being contractually required to provide P&A money, a responsibility which Lions Gate was not willing to assume when the took on the successful ($16 million) distribution of the film.

Ari Emmanuel, Moore's agent and apparently an intentional combatant in this verbal war, also threw out the first pitch in the "dumping the film is financial irresponsibility on Eisner's part" derby. That was in Variety. In the New York Times, he goes the other way, accusing Eisner of greed and, dare I say it, corporate responsibility: "(Eisner) definitely indicated there were tax incentives he was getting for the Disney corporation and that's why he didn't want me to sell it to Miramax. He didn't want a Disney company involved."

I have to say, it is odd to find myself defending Michael Eisner and Disney for the second time in just a few short weeks. But demagoguery is not attractive, regardless of what your role in the industry or your personal politics. And neither Michael Moore nor Harvey Weinstein, who has remained silent so far, has any position from which to claim status as a victim.

There is a huge difference between Michael Moore's six million polemic and some documentarian having his or her film bought and squashed by the distributor for political reasons. In fact, Oliver Stone has a much more reasonable beef with Time-Warner for forcing him to rethink his HBO-financed point-of-view doc about Castro than Moore has with Disney. I didn't like the shallow perception of Castro in Stone's original doc, but HBO didn't tell him that he had to make a balanced film… until the political heat revved up after people saw it. On the other hand, Disney made it clear to Miramax and Moore that this film would never see the light of day under any Disney banner back before the Miramax financing deal closed.

Could this film become the straw that breaks the backs of both Eisner and Bush? Perhaps. Eisner has no great option here. If I were strategizing with him, I would be trying to figure out a way to force Roy Disney and Stanley Gold into taking a position before things went too much further. I suspect that Roy would not really want Disney distributing Moore's attack on George Bush. According to various sources, he is a right-winger (unlike his sidekick, Stanley Gold). But his behavior in the last year would suggest that he might be willing to back any effort that is bad for Eisner. On the other hand, if Eisner decides to encourage distribution of this point-of-view doc and commits the company to eating the costs of production if the film is not highly profitable, Roy Disney might come out and say he is being fiscally irresponsible that way. (This idea, by the way, is my suggested course. Come out for freedom of speech, acknowledge that - as with The Passion - deeply emotional films are problematic for major corporations to distribute, and encourage Miramax publicly to find an alternate distributor without penalizing Miramax for having made the deal… perhaps set up the deal so that Dinsey gets paid back and gives all profits to a non-partisan not-for-profit.)

 

Well, maybe it will be like the attempts to suppress the publication of the Michael Moores book that was to come out around 9/11. The more they attempt to suppress the better the marketing will be and the better the ticket sales.

However, movies aren't like books. No screens, not as many people see it, so it probably won't work this way.

This could be like some of the Hollywood films that are suppressed in countries that don't like the film.. Like the Passion of the Christ which has been suppressed in Israel (supposedly it was shown for one night at one theater or some such , so they could continue with their claim to free expression) or Midnight Express which was supressed in Turkey.

Maybe I'll just have to see Moore's film on my next trip to Mexico, if it is still running. Sounds like it will get good showings in Europe.

 

This whole thread shows that there is a big misconception about how corperations and the government work. The President does not run the IRS. The same empolyees at the IRS worked there under previous administrations (not accounting for normal turnover of course). The president has no authority to call the IRS and impose special taxes on a particular company. Any conversation between the President and the IRS asking for the enforcement of tax laws or the addition of new tax laws would involve many IRS employees and would surely make it to the presses.

Corperations, small and large, usually outsource at least the auditing portion of their filings - if not the whole filing itself. The companies that do the filings and auditing do so for many companies. If they come across enforcings that are unequal across companies, I am sure it would raise a red flag where action can be taken.

Lets stop the conspiracy theories on what could maybe possibly happen under some bizarre situation and return to reality.