MICHAEL MEDVED IS A BIG FAT PUTZ

OK, so he’s not actually fat, or at least he wasn’t last time I saw his bushy mustache attacking my TV, but I took inspiration from Mr. Franken. And he most definitely is a putz.

If you don’t know who Medved is, you’ve probably seen him on TV once or twice. He’s a film critic who used to host a Siskel & Ebert style movie-review show with Jeffrey Lyons (currently the film critic for WNBC-TV here in New York). In fact, if I remember correctly, they started calling their show which aired on PBS At the Movies after Gene and Roger went into broad syndication, and then there was some big legal brouhaha about the titles which is why the duelling Chicagoans eventually became Siskel and Ebert AND the Movies. But I digress …

Medved has in recent years become more of a conservative Christian journalist. Maybe he always was, but it’s more noticeable to me in recent years because a) he’s introduced that way and b) he writes for Christian publications. Does that earn him my “putz” designation? Of course not. But I’m still reading the current issue of The Week, and on page 17 as one of their weekly “Talking Points” is a little column-dialogue called “The Passion: Hollywood counts Mel’s blessings.” They reference a Medved column from USA Today, although I think they just reprinted it because I found the actual column here. In it, Medved claims that the box office success of The Passion is simply an underserved audience — “the churchgoing mainstream” — finally going to the movies. He claims the phenomenal success is simply due to there finally being a movie that attracts this audience, which he likes to call “the mainstream.” My favorite line is this one: “Actually, it’s the entertainment industry that has placed itself outside the American mainstream by stubbornly ignoring repeated public demands for films that both respect and reflect the more traditional attitudes cherished by tens of millions of Americans.”

The point of Medved’s article is that Mel’s film will now spawn a whole slew of imitators — religious (specifically New Testament) themed motion pictures given wide-release to the American public. Well DUH! Thank goodness someone is paying Medved for this brilliant insight. Of course, it has nothing to do with being religious-themed. And Medved’s point that The Passion is easier to imitate than, say, Titanic due to its relatively small budget is completely groundless. The fact is, Hollywood will always imitate a phenomenal box-office success (until they’ve killed it) regardless of how much it costs. Before the first Spider-Man film came-out, there was still a big question about how major comic book adaptations would do. Plenty of crappy, quick and relatively cheap adaptations had followed in the wake of the first Batman movie. Those movies — Captain America and The Punisher, for example — were pretty bad and went straight-to-video. But development on comic book adaptations ramped up for a while. Post-Spider-Man, same thing, even more so with The Hulk, Daredevil and X-Men as well as a new adaptation of The Punisher (coming this summer), the long-in-the-works Fantastic Four and Iron Man (both scheduled for possible release next year), and this time studios area sparing no expense.

Medved’s big argument is the recent announcement of a deal between to Disney and Walden Media for an adaptation of the C.S. Lewis series of novels The Chronicles of Narnia. While I can’t discount that Disney’s deal with Walden was announced when it was in part to ride the Passion bandwagon, Medved makes it sound like this project was just green-lighted because of the success of Mel’s film. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, if Narnia owes its coming in to being to anything, it’s the success of The Lord of the Rings series. Walden Media gained the rights and put the project into development after the first Rings movie stunned the box office, trying to get a jump on another big-budget adaptation of a series of beloved fantasy-novels. The project has been in development for nearly two years with a director and screenwriter attached. Even the Disney involvement isn’t completely new. Walden as a company is only a few years old but it’s major releases have to date all been through Disney. Both Holes and the IMAX-James Cameron docu Ghosts of the Abyss were distributed by Disney. The huge-budget remake of Around the World in 80 Days, scheduled for release this year, will be released by Disney. Walden and Disney have a relationship and I’m sure they had been talking about Narnia for a while.

But most importantly, Medved’s whole premise is faulty. There are companies that have been producing Bible-stories all along. Major Hollywood studios? No. But the films are out there, and if this untapped audience — Medved’s “mainstream” — wanted these films and was so enormous to create blockbuster status for everything religious-themed, they’d find them even in limited release. And if there was such major demand for it, the releases would be expanded. Case-in-point, Left Behind: The Movie. Here’s a film based on a a huge best-selling novel. It even had a known (albeit not A-list) actor in the lead: Kirk Cameron. According to IMDB, it had a budget over $17-Million. It was released on over 800 screens: nowhere near the numbers of The Passion, but far more than the majority of smaller indie films get. Yet it grossed just over $4-Million.

Left Behind isn’t the only film to target this audience either. In 1999, there was a movie released called The Omega Code. It had a much smaller release than Left Behind, half the budget, yet it was considered a better film and managed to gross about $12-Million. Still, those numbers are quite far behind The Passion.

There are two very specific reasons why The Passion has done so well. The first is Gibson himself. He has the celebrity, the power and the clout to be noticed. If some multi-millionaire financed some no-name filmmaker to make this exact same movie, nothing would have happened with it. But Mel Gibson is one of the top stars in Hollywood, and people pay attention to what he does. When he gets embroiled in controversy, it makes everyone’s ears perk up, and curiosity seekers of all types go to the movie.

Medved is not completely wrong. This movie did attract a segment of the population that most likely doesn’t go to movies. But they don’t go to anything. They went to this film because there was a battle happening; a battle between those calling the movie evil for its anti-Semitic views and those calling it a true representation of the Gospels. This movie was like going to Church for them. In fact, many people have gone with their Church groups. That won’t necessarily be the same for other religious-themed films, and unless Gibson makes a “sequel” of sorts or some other major Hollywood name decides to follow-suit, there will not be the kind of publicity push The Passion has had. Additionally, there very well may be a slew of religious or Bible movies coming down the pike. As soon as half-of-them suck and none of them do nearly the business as the Mel Gibson Bible, development on future ones will slow back down.

Let’s also not forget the TV networks who in recent years have produced many Bible-based movies and miniseries. For a time, TNT had its own little cottage industry adapting Bible stories. The stories are out there, the films are being made … the audience is what the audience is. Just a couple weeks ago, as noted in The Week from an article by Beth Gillin in The Philadelphia Inquirer, there was a TV movie called Judas which aired on ABC, and basically nobody tuned in. This “American mainstream” of Medved’s didn’t even look at the first quarter-hour to see whether the movie stands up to their religious scrutiny. It simply bombed. And this was broadcast into the comfort of their own homes, on the free television. You know the ones. The same ones which they can’t control or change channels or turn-off when Janet pops a boob!

Medved’s column states, “The already visible eagerness to create additional projects that appeal to the nation’s deep commitment to its Judeo-Christian heritage suggest that The Passion will be remembered as an historic turning point, rather than a freakish anomaly or an isolated experiment.” The visible eagerness he describes is basically the Narnia films. Beyond that, he doesn’t support that claim at all. And the truth is, it may not be a “freakish anomaly” or an “isolated experiment,” but it definitely is an isolated anomaly. Will the studios try to tap into this audience more? Sure. Will they be any more successful than in making a slew of gross-out comedies post-Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary? Probably not.