Hollywood Keeps Making Movies Like This...

Do they wonder why they don't make any money on films that insult the values of most Americans?  My friend Dan Gifford describes a statement by Ed Norton about what the director of the new film Stone told him:

“John told me we have to do this film now while things are bad,” Norton said. “We have to show that traditional establishments like religion and marriage that people have relied on for truth have failed them.” Curran does that by showing those institutions as hypocrisies that are the refuge of hypocrites like Maybrey, a deeply flawed, nasty man who, in his heart, may be little better than the convicts he judges for early release.

Dan points out the many, many flaws in the film--problems that make the film so absurd that it makes you realize how remote Hollywood is from America.  It reminds me of a doll I saw in a toy store once--clearly designed by someone who had been given a specification of what humans looked like, but who had never actually seen a human being.

If you have read Michael Medved's Hollywood v. America, you won't be surprised by this.  Medved argued that the entertainment industry makes films that purposefully denigrate traditional values even though those films are not economically successful, because they want the approval of other "artistic" sorts in Hollywood..