As you may or may not heard, there was a big brouhaha earlier on Wednesday at the “Redacted” press conference – Brian DePalma’s new and upcoming controversial Iraq war film – when the director (DePalma) was interrupted by an audience member. DePalma clamied during the conference (moderated by film critic J.Hoberman) that his film had been ironically been redacted (censored) by his financial backers (one outspoken enterpreneur billionaire/Magonlia Pictures owner Mark Cuban).
DePalma blamed the censorship on Cuban by name and told the New York Film Festival audience that Magnolia Pictures forced him to black out the faces in a montage of real photos that runs at the end of the film. A heckler yelled out, “That’s not true!” The audience member turned out to be Magnolia President Eamonn Bowles. “It’s a legal issue,” he said.
One that DePalma asserted that he would fight seemingly tooth and nail. I felt like my cut was violated and I am seeking to have my images un-redacted,” DePalma said seemingly hinted at taking legal recourse.
“The irony of all this is that even though everyone [in Iraq] has a digital camera and access to the Internet, somehow we don’t see any of these images,” De Palma said. “Why are things being redacted? My own film was redacted.”
Here’s a clip of the imbroglio.
Magnolia maintained that since these images were pinched off the Internet from YouTube footage and photos uploaded by soliders DePalma doesn’t have the right to use them and or they have to be cleared first (and he has a point).
And now DePalma appears to realize he doesn’t have a leg to stand on. “I couldn’t get around the legalities. I tried to, I fought a hard case,” he told Vulture last night before a screening of the film. “But it was the difference between letting the film go out or just keeping at this.”
It doesn’t help that U.S. critics are calling the film “clumsy” propaganda and a ham-fisted attempt at creating controversy, despite Though DePalma won the Venice Film Festival prize for Best Director. The IFC blog said, “To take on such a topic and then fumble it so badly reveals in De Palma either profound arrogance or a general contempt for the American people he’s apparently looking to inform.”
Gothamist called the film ” “amateurish and half baked” and right-wing folks like Bill O’Reilly have already been making a loud campaign against the film.
“Redacted” opens on November 16.
“Redacted” Trailer