Sunday, June 20, 2004

This week's Entertainment Weekly describes a documentary Disney plans to release after refusing to release Fahrenheit 9/11:

...Louis Schwartzberg's 86-minute greeting card, America's Heart & Soul. The ode to American values -- picture purple mountains majesty -- hits theaters July 2 (Fahrenheit, released by the Fellowship Adventure Group, opens June 25). "Unlike [Moore], Schwartzberg doesn't cram his message down your throat. He just shows the world as we know it," says [Dennis] Rice [of Disney], who's hoping Disney's outreach to Rotary Clubs will help draw crowds to witness America's 24 patriotic vignettes, including profiles of a blind mountaineer and a reformed felon. "The film is like a patchwork quilt of all the different voices that make up this country."...

You know what? I'd be perfectly happy if this movie made a hundred million dollars. Needless to say, I hope Fahrenheit 9/11 makes three hundred mil, but I have no problem if this one's a huge hit -- I want the movies I want, but if traditionalists aren't getting the movies they want, I don't want to stand in the way of anyone who'd like to fill that need.

Then again, maybe Fahrenheit 9/11 is going to be a big hit and America's Heart & Soul isn't because people don't go to the movies to see traditional values affirmed -- people go to the movies to see authority defied, battles waged, the order of things upset.

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