The Five Stupidest Movie Controversies
By James Howell
Sometimes bad things happen to good movies.
Hollywood’s history is full of films that were engulfed by controversy — sometimes, before they’d even hit the theatres. Yes, Hollywood is an easy target, and yes, there are movies that push the boundaries of society, challenging conventional wisdom and provoking a backlash that’s inevitable and deserved.
But some movie controversies are just stupid.
1. The Orphanage
After “Pan’s Labyrinth,” Oscar-nominated director Guillermo del Toro became one of the producers of a horror movie called “The Orphanage.” One year afer its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, a viral marketing site appeared called “Talk to the Dead.” One paranormal skeptic immediately recognized its technique — “the Grey Walter-Berger Construct” — as an elaborate hoax, but argued gratefully that if the site were real, it would be a “despicable exploitation of those missing their deceased beloved ones, via self-hypnosis and pseudo scientific mumbo-jumbo.
“But it would be something slightly new and with a cooler name”
2. The Golden Compass
Is it an innocuous children’s fantasy about armored polar bears and warring goblins? Or is it a thinly-veiled attack on the Catholic church? The film’s director insisted his producers stripped every mention of religion from the movie’s screenplay — leaving an entirely different message than Philip Pullman’s original story. Ironically, this also provoked a controversy from fans of the original book, according to Wikipedia, including charges by the National Secular Society that the producers were guilty of “castrating” the film.
Last October the movie still faced inevitable calls for a boycott from the powerful Catholic League (whose past targets had included the TV show South Park and even talkshow host Rosie O’Donnell). Their president acknowledged that he didn’t object to the movie per se — but it might encourage children to read books which “denigrate Christianity” and promote “atheism for kids.” This futile scapegoating will be remembered as the single most pointless boycott in Hollywood history, since the only thing controversial about this innocuous movie was a vaguely-related book that was written 12 years earlier.”
3. Elvira - Mistress of the Dark
Shortly after the release of Elvira’s full-length movie — “Mistress of the Dark” — a national controversy erupted that actually ended her contract with Coor’s beer. Ironically, it wasn’t even Elvira’s controversy. “Rumors began circulating that Procter & Gamble’s revered ‘moon and stars’ logo was related to devil worship,” remembers one ad industry magazine. Coor’s figured that if squeaky-clean Proctor & Gamble could get swamped by hysteria, “it could spill over to a spokesperson who bills herself as the Mistress of the Dark.”
Ironically, Elvira’s movie scenario about being burned at the stake led to a real-life “witch hunt” for non-existent Satanists. But eventually Coor’s realized their mistake — they weren’t selling enough beer — and reinstated her contract at the risk of eternal damnation.
4. Falling Down
Michael Douglas’s 1993 movie “triggered a media avalanche of stories,” remembers one critic, most of them about the world outside the movie theatre.Douglas plays a “ticking time bomb” — a laid-off defense worker who finally snaps, leading to an increasingly violent rampage across urban Los Angeles. In this scene he argues with a Korean grocery speaking in broken English, and the already-controversial movie now faced charges of racial stereotyping. But the Internet Movie Database supplies a late piece of trivia which puts that reaction in perspective. The movie had actually used a Korean actor to play a police detective, while the actor playing the shopkeeper was actually…Chinese.
5. Tess
Over 100 years ago Thomas Hardy wrote Tess, a novel about an English peasant seduced by her wealthy cousin. In 1979 it was made into a film by a director who faced criminal charges of seducing a Los Angeles minor.
If found guilty Roman Polanski would face a 50-year prison sentence in 1977, and he eventually filmed the British novel in France to avoid being extradited for prosecution. It became one of Hollywood’s most famous controversies, darkly overshadowing the movie to this day. (Wikipedia claims Polanski had previously had an affair with the movie’s star, Nastassja Kinski, when she was 15, and IMDB quotes her as saying that “As a director, he was 10 times more wonderful than as a lover.”)
It’s not clear whether the new rumors helped or hurt the movie — but it’s the ultimate case of a controversy centered on everything but the movie. Miraculously, when Polanski finally released Tess, the personal scandal proved nothing but helpful at the box office — and he ended up with a personal triumph in Hollywood.
The movie was nominated for six Oscars, and won three, including best cinematography.
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