Free Speech Muzzled by Media Conglomerates

Grrrrrrrrr.

HOLLYWOOD -- Dissent is not being stomached very well in America these days, and you didn't have to be watching the Republican National Convention last week to pick up the vibe of intolerance.

Not only were hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in New York dismissed or downplayed last week by the media (despite the fact that more than a few were billy-clubbed and 1,800 were arrested), but the parent companies of the media are becoming increasingly reluctant to go out on a limb about anything controversial.

The corporate agendas of these mini nation states have become so complex and politically sensitized that anything perceived as out of the mainstream is automatically viewed by top brass with suspicion.

Just imagine: Lawyers and lobbyists perennially on the qui vive to determine if any marketing gimmick, any news item, any movie, any loudmouth talkshow host could cause trouble in D.C., jeopardize a deal in China or hurt cooperation between moguls. Such a scenario of congloms second-guessing themselves at every turn is not so far-fetched.

Latest example is Warner Bros.' decision not to release an anti-war doc by David O. Russell.

The piece, financed by the studio, was supposed to consist of human-interest interviews with former Iraqi extras and crew members who had appeared in "Three Kings," the director's 1999 pic about the Persian Gulf War (news - web sites). (That film is being re-released by WB on homevideo/DVD and in a limited theatrical run in October.)

But when the New York Times quoted Russell on Aug. 16 as saying the 35-min. "Soldiers Pay" was essentially an anti-war statement and that he hoped to get it out before the presidential election, the studio had second thoughts.

WB toppers were concerned the pic might run afoul of Federal Elections Commission rules or even be construed as a soft money contribution to the Democratic cause. It is expected that Russell will retain the rights and seek to get the partisan piece seen through other outlets. (It won't be on the DVD of "Three Kings.")

I'm guessing HBO, another Time Warner outlet, and its rival Showtime, a Viacom outlet, will both pass, even though as pay cablers they aren't specifically held to the same rules about fair play as their over-the-air broadcast brethen.

This latest move comes in the wake of Disney's decision not to distribute Michael Moore's anti-Bush doc "Fahrenheit 9/11" and the inability of Robert Greenwald to get much traction for his admittedly much less ambitious anti-Fox News expose "OutFoxed."

The Mouse House has tax issues at its theme park in Orlando, Fla., and may not have wanted to rile the Bush clan in power there; anyone promoting "OutFoxed" would have, at the least, to endure a tongue-lashing from Fox News' Bill O'Reilly.

There is a long tradition of political docs in the U.S. -- from Robert Drew to Frederick Wiseman to Errol Morris -- and in many cases it was the Hollywood studios that funded or distributed the works.

But today's congloms would probably be much happier to just churn out their franchises, sequels and remakes and to mount increasingly entertainment-led newscasts. They likely wish that this resurgence of polemical docs -- whose financial return is hard to calculate and whose impact hard to predict -- would just dry up.

As Louis Menand pointed out recently in the New Yorker, however, the documentary impulse is to catch what's "off-camera," to show you what you were not intended to see, to film what was not planned to happen.

Since there seems to be a lot these days that we're not supposed to see or know about -- more than just Amber Frey's love life -- the field for documentary exploration is only going to get more fertile.