Creatively Paranoid
There is a film that premiered at Cannes this year called Shortbus. I don’t expect you to have heard about it or John Cameron Mitchell, the director of the film, but I read about this stuff, hence my knowledge of its existence. The film is pretty much political porn, at least that’s what Mitchell says it is.
“It’s a little bit of a cri de coeur to us, a little bit of a call to arms” against the prevailing conservatism, he told a media conference, adding that his country was living in “the era of Bush, which is about clamping down, being scared.” The 43-year-old, whose previous work was Hedwig and the Angry Inch, about a transsexual rock singer, said the film was his own small act of defiance against Bush. “If you can’t do elections you might as well do erections,” he said.
More…
One scene likely to create controversy in the United States and some other countries shows a gay threesome in which one participant joyfully bellows “The Star Spangled Banner.” The actor with the singing voice, PJ Deboy, said he did the scene to show that he was as American as anyone, despite resistance to gays in parts of the country, including Washington.
“I thought to myself: “Can I do it…?’ And I decided I could, because it is a patriotic act.… There’s nothing un-American about gay sex and there’s nothing unpatriotic about it,” he said.
Tim Robbins, an actor I’ve liked for a long time, is currently starring in a stage production of George Orwell’s “1984?. His thoughts on the play -
“We have right now a media that is willfully ignoring the high crimes and misdemeanors of the president of the United States…””(Bush) got us into (the Iraq) war based on lies that he knew were lies. … His war has recruited more al-Qaeda members than Osama bin Laden could ever have dreamed for … yet no one in the media is calling for impeachment,” he said.
“Unfortunately, the book and the play is more relevant now than it ever has been,” he said. “(It) talks about continuous warfare as a means to control the Western economy, and as a way to control rebel elements within society through the use of fear, constant fear.”
“In my country we seem to be sanctioning renditioning of innocent people without trial… put them in jail without telling anyone… and torture them out of suspicion of what we think they might do,” Robbins said.
“This is exactly what Orwell was talking about when he spoke of thought crimes,” he added.
You may not know this, but as soon as the 3 people above said what they said, they were whisked away to a secret CIA prison camp where they were tortured and humiliated for saying and doing what they did.
Yeah, right.
Why do film makers feel that they’re under constant persecution, when they live in the freest country in the world? Many places, they wouldn’t be able to even make these films or say what they are saying. It’s just foolish.