my attempt to help Hollywood

Sometimes it helps to be outside of a problem to find an answer. Case in point is today's USA Today. There was an article in the Life section about certain movies not finding an audience (or, in simpler words, they tanked at the box office). In an attempt to do my part in helping the nation's economy, I will offer some insights that might help the movie studios.

Essentially, what the article talked about was how the nine major recent studio releases that dealt with the War on Terror/Iraq all failed miserably. There is a lot of hand wringing and sweating going on inside the studios with executives trying to find out why. Let's look at this. What did they have in common?

1) all directed by successful and critically acclaimed directors
2) all had major movie stars in main roles
3) all backed by major studios so they all had plenty of publicity to get the word out
4) all were, for the most part, critically praised.

But all of that is standard Hollywood. The failure can't be laid there. So what else did they all have as a common thread? Oh yeah, they all, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, all had an obvious anti-U.S. bias! Every single one of these movies (Stop Loss, Body of Lies, In the Valley of Ellah, Redacted, etc....) had as an underlying theme how horrible, stupid, corrupt, greedy, murderous, and on and on the U.S. and it's actions were. The government is evil, the military is evil, the intelligence agencies are evil, the individual citizens are either evil or stupid or selfish. There is no possibility that any action taken by the United States can be for any moral reasons. The single one of these movies that made some money (though not a profit) was The Kingdom, and it was the most pro-U.S. movie (even though the overall tone was of a negative bent)! And these movie executives actually can't figure out why the movies tanked? OMG.

Look Mr. Executive. Whether the general public is against the Iraq war, or is tired of President Bush, it does not automatically follow that the public thinks we as a nation are inherently evil. The people might want out of Iraq, but they place no blame on the military. It is not Vietnam where returning servicemen are called baby-killers. And the people of this country believe that our collective hearts are in the right place. The next time you green light a movie dealing with terrorism or Iraq, you might want to check to see if the director and/or writer actually likes this country or do they follow the Michael Moore/Oliver Stone school of thought. If it is the latter, you might want to plan your excuses now, because the movie will lose money. Guaranteed.

Just a word of warning.