Check Out What The Mighty David Zucker Is Up To…
— Dirty Harry @ 3:02 pm
Reader Brian sent this email the other day:
This past weekend Trace Adkins was on the national country music countdown that is broadcast here in LA and mentioned that he was in this movie, and that it was a retelling of A Christmas Carol, and the makers of the movie didn't really want people talking about it because it is "politically charged."
The host of the program expressed surprise at that, and so Adkins said that the movie moves the Christmas Carol story to the 4th of July, and deals with a main character who doesn't believe that the holiday contains any redeeming value and shouldn't be celebrated, and he gets shown the error of his ways.
None of the press releases about this movie mention anything like this (they all call it a comedic retelling of A Christmas Carol set in America), but he didn't sound like he was joking around. And the director (David Zucker) and some of the other stars (Kelsey Grammer & Jon Voight) are people who could conceivably be working on a theme like this.
The film's called An American Carol and according to IMDB much of what Adkins said is true: Kevin Farley plays a character named Michael Malone and the rest of the cast is made up of Kelsey Grammer, Jon Voight, and Dennis Hopper — all right-of-center actors. Best of all, here's a comment from an unhappy extra:
Based on the little I saw as an extra, this may be a heavy handed and not very funny attempt to deliver a pro-war, pro-Bush, conservative propaganda message. There is a scene where Michael Moore (played by Kevin Farley), accidentally rips, burns and then stomps on an American flag, surrounded by angry military soldiers. This is followed by a concert by Trace Adkins where he sings about how great America is. The scenes didn't feel like an attack on the war or American policies. It felt like a very simple attack on anti-war sentiment and a very clear message of how great this country is and how terrible the liberal elites are. I could be way off here, but that's the impressions I got. I heard that this was being released first to the troops before a showing in the US.
Oh, boo-hoo. This is wonderful news and looks very real. At the LIBERTY FILM FESTIVAL Zucker spoke at length about a project he wanted to do skewering Michael Moore. And Zucker's a righteous guy (and a fellow Milwaukaneean). 9/11 woke him up and he's been one of the few to completely come out of the Hollywood closet in favor of liberating 25 million Iraqis as opposed to, you know, feeding them into the meat-grinder of al-Qaeda like most everyone else in Hollywood is lobbying for.
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The critics and Hollywoodists are gonna eat Zucker alive for this. Remember how unremittingly ugly and personal things got for Mel Gibson during The Passion furor? It will be like that. Godspeed.
The film's scheduled for release in December 2008, which is a smart move. A pre-election release date is baggage it doesn't need. If it even looked like this was an attempt to affect the outcome of the election the net effect would turn-off even sympathetic ticket-buyers because no one's interested in anyone telling them how to vote. But a funny comedy made by talented people with a pro-American theme released during the holiday season…? Who could compla– oh, wait…
Let's see if we can look into the future… On one side, a dozen outright anti-American propaganda films released in the last six-months alone — on the the other side, this. Think liberals will still bitch? Oh. Yes. They. Will.
This was a great tip, Brian. Thanks. And keep em' coming:
libertyfilmfestival.com |
