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It’s Libertas, from the Co-Directors of the Liberty Film Festival, Govindini Murty & Jason Apuzzo. From their site-launching post:
We shopped the project around to several prestige indie/art-house companies. Although we were unknowns at the time (we still are!) we were received warmly, and several companies actually read the screenplay – getting back to us with unusual rapidity. Theyd loved what wed done! They loved the basic concept of the story, felt it had a great mood and atmosphere. And they might be willing to take our project on, under certain … conditions.
What were the conditions? First of all, the terrorists in the story were not quite sympathetic enough. We would need to brighten them up a bit, make their motivations more understandable. After all, maybe these people have a point! We were also told that we were courting trouble by featuring so many non-white characters, including the female lead. Hard to market non-white people to indie filmgoers, we were told. You know, indie filmgoers are very upscale type people. So wed need to lighten-up the cast, too.
...the male lead in our story – the one who funds the terrorists – is actually depicted as sexy, urbane and charismatic, before he meets his inevitabl e end. Yeah, but thats the point, said the exec. Why kill him off?
Before reading the script, an exec at a different company asked me whether the story had anything to do with 9/11. Not specifically, I replied. Good, he said. We dont DO 9/11, right now.
And on it went.
I was learning something at this point, something Id already seen in film school but was now seeing up-close in the professional film industry – where snap decisions determine what sort of entertainment all of us will enjoy (or despise) for years to come. Hollywood was going to ignore 9/11 away, spin-it around, massage it, do plastic surgery on it, make it seem not so bad. Hollywood was going to do PR work on the central event of our time.
It would be one thing if mainstream films were just reminding us of the costs of war and urging us to be cautious. But the film industry is currently taking a lemming-like approach of pretending that terrorists are lovely reasonable people, ignoring that they like to blow up school-busses and cut off heads, and would like very much to nuke us. That needs our full attention.
