This quote from the ‘More racist TV from Australia’ thread has me wondering how true it is for any movie. I’ve heard/read this sentiment expressed before but is there anything that supports it?
Tropical Thunder got some pre-release flack but still did well at the box office. The raunch comedies of today are a bit tamer than the Animal House/Porky’s era but they’re still making them. With the advent of torture porn I’d say movies are more violent than ever.
Do you think there are any movies that could not get made today due to political correctness, sex or violence? Why or why not?
Well modern films dont get greenlighted unless they are remakes, sequels, or movie versions of successful works in other media, especially comic books. So … most of them, if presented as new works.
Sure why not? Race related jokes are alive and well on Tosh.0 and pedophilia jokes are alive and well on Family Guy. Pretty much nothing is off limits on South Park.
I think a more likely issue than controversy is that the type of humor that used to be popular would seem kind of lame or too slow and subtle these days. It just wouldn’t translate well across the decades.
There are plenty of gross-out movies still being made.
The way to get the financiers to write a check is to tell them your movie is just like <insert name of box office bonanza>, only the <location, period, or character> is a <different location, period, or character>.
They never want to hear about a new, untested idea.
If you mean “not greenlighted because of potential protests,” nearly all older films could be made today – just with changes to their script. You could do Charlie Chan, for instance, if Chan was portrayed by a Chinese American actor and it stayed away from stereotypes. Gone With The Wind would have to have some changes in how slavery was portrayed, but the story would still be OK.
Similarly, The Birth of a Nation would have to be rewritten, given that it glorifies the Ku Klux Klan. (I found an article from the New York Times that some people were trying to prevent it from being shown in New York State in 1922 for that reason.)
Actually, I’ve always been amazed that Animal House has held up so well for one reason.
The Mayor’s daughter.
Not only do we have a STRONG suggestion that Pinto bangs her…she reveals she’s 13! AND she has a topless scene in the movie where she’s passed out drunk.
I’m always astonished that it hasn’t been retroactively censored or shot or something.
Amazed me, too. But the Charlie Chan was a year later.
I don’t think Chan or Fu Manchu or Mr. Moto were ever played by actors of Oriental ancestry. Nor Judge Dee (in one US TV movie and a British mini-series), although it was years before I realized that Kheigh Deigh wasn’t Chinese.
Apparently Fu Manchu was not portayed by any Asian actors either. In the ‘ground breaking’ TV show, All American Girl, starring Margaret Cho, her Korean family was portrayed by people of Asian descent, but none of them were Korean.
The winner at this game may be Linda Hunt who won an Oscar for her portrayal of an Asian man in The Year of Living Dangerously.
When Ben Kingsley portrayed Ghandi there were complaints that an Indian actor should have been chosen. People didn’t realize Kingsley’s father was of Indian descent.
If I remember right, Pinto listens to the angel perched on his shoulder, covers her up after she passes out, and doesn’t force himself on her. He’s then insulted by the devil on his other shoulder, but drops her off back at her house in a shopping cart, ringing the doorbell and running like hell.
They have sex on the football field before the big parade. That’s when she reveals that she’s only 13 (the actress Sarah Holcomb was 18 at the time). Movie studios would probably shy away of such a protrayal today because of the Child Pornography Prevention Act. But other than making the explicit reference to age, the movie would go through without change today.
BTW: Sarah Holcomb played parts in two of the iconic comedies of the time, Animal House and Caddyshack before drug and alchohol addiction, and mental illness, forced her to give up her acting career. In the 2004 movie Stateside, the female lead, a schizophrenic actress, is believed to based on Sarah, and her real life brother David Holcomb had a part in the movie.
That’s just silly talk. I’ve seen a LOT* of movies in the theater this year. Many were older films at retrospectives, but I see plenty of modern-made films too. Only a handful of them are remakes, sequels, movie versions of successful works in other media. They’re not all foreign films either.
I don’t know about you two, but many times people who say such things unfortunately live in places where many of the really good modern movies aren’t shown, not that many of them would go out and see and support the really good modern movies that are shown anyway, but then, that’s true in big cities where the really good modern movies ARE shown too.
207 movies in the theater so far this year, 33 in September alone, and I’ll see one or two more in the next couple of days. I’ll probably break 300 by December 31.