Anschutz Has Family-Friendly Winners in ‘Ray,’ ‘Winn-Dixie’
publiuspundit.com
From Newsmax:
Govindini Murty
Friday, Feb 25, 2005
It’s been a good 2005 so far for family-friendly film company Walden Media and its backer, billionaire Philip Anschutz.
Walden Media’s most recent film, “Because of Winn-Dixie,” opened this past Presidents’ Day Weekend to a healthy $13.2 million - almost completely earning back its $14 million production cost. And “Ray,” the $30 million Ray Charles biopic that Anschutz completely funded himself, has earned $75 million so far and is up for six Oscars at this year’s Academy Awards.
The success of “Winn-Dixie” is remarkable given its competition this past weekend - it had to fend off the $84 million special-effects-laden “Son of the Mask,” the $70 million Will Smith comedy “Hitch,” and the $100 million horror thriller “Constantine.” Boxofficemojo.com characterized “Winn-Dixie” as being “on the higher end of family pictures that don’t rely on special effects or animation.”
The movie’s success is a validation of Walden Media’s strategy of making positive, life-affirming films for a public that feels increasingly ignored and abused by Hollywood. I personally found it an almost surreal experience to sit in a movie theater and watch a film in which small-town America is treated with respect, women of all ages are given good roles, and a Baptist preacher is treated as a real human being, not an immediate object of derision.
It was refreshing to see a movie built around a young girl for a change, and not a young boy. Hollywood has been exclusively oriented to the tastes of adolescent boys (or adolescent men who refuse to grow up) for the past 25 years. The result has been a popcorn-flavored popular culture of comic-book violence and nihilism that is only exceeded in its stupidity by its mindless adherence to left-wing politics. Predictably, young women and adults of both sexes have been fleeing movie theatres in droves, preferring to find solace at home in the form of classic movie reruns or Lifetime Channel potboilers.
It’s nice to see things begin to change in “Because of Winn-Dixie.” Annasophia Robb is charming in the lead role of the young girl, and the cast has some real standouts, including Eva Marie Saint as Miss Franny, the kindly town librarian, and Cicely Tyson as Gloria - a mysterious, half-blind recluse. It’s wonderful to see the always lovely Saint in a good role again. Her performances in “On The Waterfront” and “North By Northwest” were highlights of those classics, and she brings a lively warmth, intelligence and dignity to her role as Miss Franny. And Cicely Tyson is terrific as Gloria. She holds the audience’s attention every moment on the screen, and radiates the wisdom and compassion that comes only from hard-won experience. The number and variety of women’s roles in “Because of Winn-Dixie” prove that when it comes to diversity, conservative filmmakers do what liberals only talk about.
This point is further hammered home in Philip Anschutz’s other success this year, the multi-award-winning movie “Ray.” The Ray Charles biopic would never had been made had Anschutz not funded the entire $30 million production cost on his own - every major studio had already passed on the project. How ironic that liberal Hollywood would have turned down the chance to fund a film about a gifted black singer and musician who was also a pioneering civil rights activist. And how much more ironic that a conservative businessman should give Jamie Foxx a chance at the Best Actor Oscar, which if Foxx should win it (as seems likely), would make him only the third African-American male in 78 years to win that coveted award.
Furthermore, Anschutz played a role in keeping the film accessible to a wider audience. The director of “Ray,” Taylor Hackford, wanted to focus on Ray Charles’ drug addiction and womanizing, but Anschutz insisted that the film be kept family friendly by including other important aspects of Charles’ life as well. Hackford reportedly walked off the set over these creative differences, but finally came around to Anschutz’s viewpoint - and the movie is the better for it. As it is, there’s already a great deal of time spent on Charles’ various addictions - if there were any more, it would detract from the achievements of his musical career.
In any case, “Ray” strikes the right note, and Philip Anschutz’s belief in the film has been more than repaid. “Ray” has won two British Academy Awards, a Golden Globe and awards from the Screen Actors Guild, the National Board of Review, the National Society of Film Critics and numerous other crafts guilds and critics associations. “Ray” has also been nominated for six Academy Awards.
My only complaint about “Ray” is that, like “The Aviator,” no mention is made of the fact that the lead character is a conservative. Ray Charles was a strong Republican and performed at numerous Republican National Conventions over the years. It would have been nice if the movie had mentioned that - as all too often the only image that exists of Republican figures in the arts is the ugly stereotype of the racist, middle-aged white male. If a famous figure is left-wing, we always somehow find out about it - but never if the figure is a conservative. These sorts of omissions seem to be part of Hollywood’s ongoing efforts to rewrite the history of the right and erase its artistic and political achievements.
But for now, Philip Anschutz is to be congratulated for making “Ray” a reality. Ray Charles was a truly inspiring figure and, like Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, a role model to artists everywhere. The success of “Ray” and “Because of Winn-Dixie” bodes well for Walden Media and Philip Anschutz’s efforts to make a change for the better in our popular culture. The true test of their strategy, though, will be later this year, when Walden Media’s big-budget adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” makes its debut. The film is the first in the “Chronicles of Narnia” series, and early speculation is that this new franchise could equal “The Lord of the Rings” and the “Harry Potter” films in popularity. Here’s wishing these brave conservative film producers every success as they work to counter modern Hollywood nihilism with films of life-affirming humanism, warmth and grace. |
