Hollywood’s Turnabout

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Remember all that talk after Sept. 11 about Hollywood reassessing its emphasis on violent fare? Remember all those indecisive studio executives not knowing whether the movie-going public would stand for psychopaths and mayhem? Remember how those of us repelled by gratuitous, market-driven violence held out hope that the entertainment industry was finally turning a corner?

Well, forget about all of it it’s back to show business as usual. In the last week or so, studio executives have poked their toes in the water and found the cultural temperature pretty much the same as before last month’s terrorist attacks.

It’s still early, of course, and the industry’s self-imposed sobriety has a while to play out. Joan Rivers, for one, elected not to ask her silly questions about some starlet’s borrowed designer gown on the E Channel’s Emmy Awards telecast. It was deemed too frivolous and besides, the New York-based Rivers says she lost two friends in the attack.

But such restraint is becoming harder to find. In the end, there will be no collective consciousness raising, no return to family fare, and no recognition that maybe, just maybe, the make-believe atrocities routinely played out on the big screen might not be all that healthy.

“People need to be excused for anything we said in the first flush of reaction,” David Kissinger, president of USA Television Production Group, unabashedly told The New York Times. “Each of us were blithering, terror-stricken and shocked people, and we shouldn’t be held accountable for much of what we said that (first) week.”

Kissinger insinuates that the decision to hold back was based on Hollywood’s own sensibilities. But Hollywood has few, if any, sensibilities. It simply follows everyone else’s lead. And the fundamental shift in values that was anticipated among the movie-going and television-watching public just isn’t happening.

The first realization of this came with the opening weekend success of the Michael Douglas thriller “Don’t Say a Word” and the Ben Stiller comedy “Zoolander.” Both features, while not laced with terrorist plots and tasteless jokes, have sharp edges to them that are not suitable for kids (even though small children were running up and down the aisles during a local showing of the PG-rated “Zoolander”).

Other signs: Peter Bart noted in his Daily Variety column that successful test screenings had been recently held for violent movies now deemed too hot to release. Younger audiences away from New York seem especially hungry for violent fare, even involving terrorism themes. And a poll conducted for the Hollywood Reporter found that seven out of 10 surveyed do not expect to change their viewing habits.

Uncertainty, of course, remains the national leitmotif and so it’s hard to look too far ahead. But as of now, Hollywood appears to be taking a two-pronged response to the events of Sept. 11.

The first response is being played out on several televised specials, where earnest-appearing actors, festooned with their American flags or ribbons (or both) offer soothing but politically neutral words about the New York rescue workers or how America must move forward. Everyone cheers, somebody sings and the show goes on.

The other, more important response is taking place away from the public eye and involves movie producers and studio executives figuring out what they plan to market in the coming months. It is a coldly calculating process and will almost certainly bring to your local cineplex more killings and terrorists and mass destruction in a matter of months maybe weeks.

It appears we still have a lot to learn.

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