On Sunday, media and selected delegates to the Republican National Convention attended a screening of a rough cut of MPI Creative Council member David Zucker's new film, An American Carol. In a Q&A afterward, Zucker described the film as a "passion project"--Hollywood slang for movies that are labors of love but that "no one goes to." He urged the audience to make sure that An American Carol does not earn that label, stressing how important it is for people who want to see a new kind of movie to "send a message to Hollywood." While at the RNC, Zucker gave a great interview to Newsbusters. Check it out here.
Send an American Carol ecard, email a clip to a friend, and find out how you can spread the word at the film's companion site, AmericanCarolers.com.
You make the call. As the L.A. Timesnotes, actors and directors are mingling with delegates and politicians at the Republican National Convention. And several films will screen during the course of the week. On Sunday night, An American Carol--which was written with a grant from MPI and directed by MPI Creative Council member David Zucker-- screened. On Monday, it was The Black List, all about "influential African-Americans." Today's showing is I.O.U.S.A., a critically acclaimed doc about fiscal irresponsibility in American government. And tomorrow it will be Trouble the Water, an eerily timely film about Hurricane Katrina, along with docs about 9/11 and Obama.
The key point here is that increasingly film is the best way to convey ideas and to shape sensibilities. It's a lot easier to watch a movie than to read a book--and films can appeal to audiences on so many more levels than written material or talking head-type debate can. Here's to the convention organizers for getting it--and here's to the success of each of these films.
Well, they were right about the thought control. But we really do need education--and desperately. America spends more on education than any other large industrialized country--and yet American students are falling way behind the kids in other countries. Our kids can't read, they can't write, they can't calculate, and they aren't much good at science either. And it's going to come back to bite us--at home and abroad--if we don't do something fast.
This does not have to be a tragedy. We know what to do. All we have to do is emulate the schools, and the teachers, that are the exceptions to the dismal educational rule.
This is the subject of Flunked, a new film aimed at igniting positive, constructive, immediate change in our educational system.
Watch the trailer. And help spread the word about this important new film.
On his blog, Matthew Tabor writes about the perturbing case of Jericho Scott, a nine-year-old from New Haven, Connecticut, who was recently expelled from his city's Youth Baseball League--not for cheating, not for misconduct, but for being too good. Not only that, but Scott's entire team was disbanded, had its 8-0 record annulled, and had its remaining players reallocated to other teams in the league:
The right-hander has a fastball that tops out at about 40 mph. He throws so hard that the Youth Baseball League of New Haven told his coach that the boy could not pitch any more. When Jericho took the mound anyway last week, the opposing team forfeited the game, packed its gear and left, his coach said.
Officials for the three-year-old league, which has eight teams and about 100 players, said they will disband Jericho's team, redistributing its players among other squads, and offered to refund $50 sign-up fees to anyone who asks for it. They say Jericho's coach, Wilfred Vidro, has resigned.
Tabor aptly connects this "equality spectacle" with MPI fellow Chandler Tuttle's forthcoming short film 2081, a stunningly beautiful adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's short story "Harrison Bergeron." In Vonnegut's dystopian future, a "Handicapper General" burdens strong people with leaden weights, makes beautiful people wear disfiguring masks, and constantly distracts intelligent people with jarring, rasping sounds so that they cannot think clearly. The end product is a society in which genius, beauty, and exceptional accomplishment no longer exist; in which the remarkable has been eradicated; in which everyone is "equal" only in their mundane ordinariness.
The correspondence with Scott's real-life ordeal is striking. But the good news for Scott is that those who value freedom, achievement, and accomplishment have stood up to protest the handicapping efforts of his local league. The young player recently had the opportunity to be the special guest of the New Britain Rock Cats and to throw the ceremonial first pitch in their game against the Binghamton Mets. Let's hope this recognition will soon earn him a slot on a team that will be more appreciative of his prodigious talents.
Find out more about 2081 at its official website, FinallyEqual.com.
Reason magazine marks its 40th anniversary this year--and to celebrate, it will host a two-day event at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on November 14th and 15th to explore the convergence of freedom and cinema. Frayda Levy, former president of MPI's board of directors, will speak at the event, as will Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer, directors of the MPI-sponsored documentary film Mine Your Own Business. Other confirmed speakers include author Bjorn Lomborg; screenwriters Dan Gifford, David Steinberg, and Martin Torgoff; Arizona congressman Jeff Flake; and Lionsgate Entertainment vice-chairman Michael Burns. Visit Reason's website to register!
Two years ago, MPI gave one of its very first grants to aspiring screenwriter Myrna Sokoloff. This seed money helped her turn an idea into a script--and that script is now An American Carol, a major motion picture directed, produced, and cowritten by MPI Creative Council member David Zucker (Airplane!, The Naked Gun). Featuring a star-studded cast including Jon Voight, Kelsey Grammer, Dennis Hopper, James Woods, and Leslie Nielsen, An American Carol parodies Charles Dickens' classic Christmas tale by focusing on a pudgy, scruffy filmmaker who is decidedly stingy in his goodwill toward America.
MPI founder Thor Halvorssen and MPI fellow Colin Gray recently talked with the Hollywood Reporter about MPI's role in the film--and, more generally, about its nonpartisan approach to promoting the ideals of American freedom through film:
"Carol" is partially backed by nonprofit group the Moving Picture Institute, which gave a grant to one of the film's writers, Myrna Sokoloff, to help the part-time schoolteacher finish her work on the script.
Partisanship, however, is immaterial to the Moving Picture Institute's decision to partially fund its script, founder Thor Halvorssen said.
MPI's mission is "to nurture promising filmmakers who are committed to protecting a free society," Halvorssen said.
What that has meant until "Carol" came along was producing, funding or supporting in a variety of ways 10 documentaries, and counting, that have been made by Democrats, Republicans and everything in between.
"They didn't care about my politics. They put their money where their mouth is," said Colin Gray, who accepted a grant from MPI to help market "Freedom's Fury."
Gray describes himself as "very left of center." "Freedom's Fury," which he made with his sister, is about "the bloodiest water polo game in Olympic history" and the role that game played in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
What convinced MPI to branch out from strictly documentaries and embrace a Zucker comedy is the film's irreverent approach to political correctness.
"Support for freedom sometimes involves disrespect for authority," Halvorssen said.
An American Carol goes on national release next month.
Kathleen Parker is one of the top syndicated columnists in the country--her circulation numbers are second only to those of George Will. And this morning, she pronouncesAn American Carol "revolutionary." It's funny, she says--and, as a film that methodically punctures Hollywood's sacred cows, "it's brave given the risk of peer ridicule and the potential for career suicide." All in all, she notes, "the film makes a serious and necessary point that can't be missed amid the laughter and the outrage: America is not the enemy."
Freidoune Sahebjam's sobering and astonishing The Stoning of Soraya M., the true story of how an Islamic mob in Khomeini's Iran stoned an innocent woman to death because she was wrongly assumed to have committed adultery, was an international bestseller when it was published in 1994. Now it is a film. And it is not to be missed.
"This is one film that will not appear quietly and disappear without notice," write Hot Air's Ed Morrissey. "I attended a pre-release screening last night, and it reminded me of all the reasons I love film as an art form and as a medium of communication. When it finally makes it to the theaters, people should line up to see this powerful, dramatic, and disturbing representation of a true story."
Produced my MPower Pictures (which also produced An American Carol), and directed by MPI fellow Cyrus Nowrasteh, The Stoning of Soraya M. was recently named second runner up for the People's Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival. The Hollywood Reporter sums the film's power up in one word: "stunning."
