Oh, spiffing. Another political movie. Per the Huffington Post:
Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein stopped by Howard Stern’s radio show this week and revealed plans for his next big movie.
Weinstein got into a discussion with Stern about the issue of gun control, telling the controversial radio host, “I don’t think we need guns in this country, and I hate it. I think the NRA is a disaster area.”
“I shouldn’t say this, but I’ll tell it to you, Howard. I’m going to make a movie with Meryl Streep, and we’re going to take this head-on,” Weinstein continued. “And they’re going to wish they weren’t alive after I’m done with them.”
As far as I am concerned, this is great. I mean it. Good for Weinstein and Meryl Streep. That’s what America is all about. If Weinstein thinks that we don’t “need guns in this country” and that the “NRA is a disaster area” then he should definitely make his movie. I disagree with him pretty vehemently, of course. But so what?
I’d only ask that he does it properly: That is, that he sinks as much money and time and effort into the project as possible. Really stick it to the Second Amendment and to the majority of Americans who support it. Don’t bother with prosaic and quotidian nonsense like politics, contributions, or fundraisers, just put the eggs into this basket and kill Americans’ taste for the right to bear arms in one fell, expensive, dramatic swoop. Bang!
Don’t bother with a weak-tea message of “gun safety” or “common sense,” either. Just put it out there. No guns. Guns bad. Take the guns away. I’m no director, but I think I can see the scene now in which a sheriff goes door-to-door, taking away people’s firearms, explaining the evils of the National Rifle Association, and using the Socratic method to explain to them why it’s all for their own good. It could be set in, say, rural Tennessee. They love Hollywood there.
It is reasonably funny, of course, to see Weinstein move so smoothly between condemning a civil rights group for supposedly fostering death and promising that his opponents are “going to wish they weren’t alive.” It’s also amusing to watch a celebrity buy into the line that the NRA is secretly running the country against the wishes of the people. (Perhaps Weinstein should look up the outfit’s favorability ratings and compare them to the president’s?) And it’s downright hilarious that a man who has filled his movies with so much gratuitous gun-violence is now intending to go after others for their involvement in the industry. But, hey. Attaboy! This could be the moment that we all give up our rights.
As Emily Miller reports:
The movie mogul said his vision was to scare people away from firearms. He foresees moviegoers to leave thinking, “Gun stocks — I don’t want to be involved in that stuff. It’s going to be like crash and burn.”
Exactly. I’ve seen a few wreckers suggesting that the people who already agree with Weinstein will walk out saying they’ve just seen the next Citizen Kane, while everyone else will shrug their shoulders, get on with their lives, and buy another AR-15. I’ve also seen it noted that the last time that Meryl Streep was in a propaganda movie like this — 2007’s Lions for Lambs — the film did precisely nothing, bombing at the box office and receiving scathing reviews. But who says history is bound to repeat itself? Not I. I’ll be with Harvey until the last weapon has been confiscated. Crash and burn!