Art.. Storytelling.. Fascism

[Jan Klimkowski]

Empire examines the symbiotic relationship between the movie industry and the military-industrial complex.



Guests:
Oliver Stone: eight times Academy Award-winning filmmaker
Michael Moore: Academy Award-winning filmmaker
Christopher Hedges: author and the former Middle East bureau chief of the New York Times

Magda - thanks for posting that documentary.

It's well worth an hour of one's life.

The denial of access to military hardware (eg Full Metal Jacket, Platoon) is well known, but there are lots of very good examples of how the military-industrial-intelligence-complex has even ensured that scripts are changed, post shoot, in the cutting room.

Charlie Wilson's War (suppression of link between anti-Soviet mujahadeen and Al Qaeda), De Palma's Redaction (destroyed and reviled by O'Reilly/Fox etc), Rendition (message totally blurred into Benthamite hypothetical garbage), Windtalkers (the military order to execute Navajos if "the Code" was compromised was removed from the final version).

Moore, Stone and Hedges give some famous films a good and deserved kicking: eg Top Gun (a Pentagon wet dream), Black Hawk Down (disgusting) and Hurt Locker (war porn).

Operation Hollywood is Operation Mockingbird on steroids.

However, having acknowledged all that, this is not the central point I'm making in this thread.

My point is that the loyalties of a Leni Riefensthal or one of the Scott brothers are not to historical truth. Their loyalty is to cinematic storytelling.

Ridley Scott can choose to film the banal racist gorefest script of Black Hawk Down and the profoundly insightful tale of Bladerunner, with a master's filmic eye. And see no contradiction.

Which is why he is the perfect director for O'Reilly's anti-truth.