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Exploiting America's Fears:
When suicide hijackers attacked the United States, several movies with terrorist themes were put on hold. Now Hollywood is betting enough time has passed for the public to find those kinds of films entertaining again. But the question that's posed by these films is, are Hollywood producers exploiting America's fears?
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Zavala [host]: Is it right for Hollywood to piggy-back on top of fears that are going through society at any given time?
Mann: I think it is.
Selleck: Some will exploit it. Some will simply address it. Some will do it well. Some will do it badly. You said earlier about ethics. Does it belong in entertainment business? It is in the entertainment business. There's just good ethics and bad ethics.
Zavala: Is there such a thing as bad ethics? It sounds like a contradiction. (laughter)
Selleck: Oh, yeah, yeah, sure there are because everybody thinks they're ethical because we judge ourselves by our good intentions.
Huffington: Often television and movies have such an incredible power to change hearts and minds. I mean, let's think of "Traffic". I mean, I think "Traffic" was an amazing movie because it changed a lot of peoples' views about the insanity of the war on drugs and it did it without being didactic, without being preachy. It's probably harder than making a sleazy movie, but it's so incredibly important. Not enough people in the business take on this challenge. or "Erin Brockovich".
Marlow [host]: And those were very profitable movies.
Huffington: They were very profitable, yes. I find -- for example, I have a 13-year-old and an 11-year-old. I've let both of them watch "Erin Brockovich" even though it's rated "R" for the language because the message is so much more important than the language.
Zavala: What about the duty to be patriotic --
Mann: -- I wasn't enamored of "Erin Brockovich" because I think the problem is that these things are presented, but we don't go deeply enough into them. What they are and why and it's the good guys and the bad guys, but life is a little more complicated than that.
Huffington: But sometimes it is the good guys and the bad guys. (laughter)
Schickel: I don't think that movies actually have the ability to change peoples' minds nor do television shows.
Zavala: Really?
Schickel: No. I think they can discuss an issue. I don't know actually a single soul who's actually changed in their views the war on drugs through "Traffic".
Huffington: I think they do. John McCain said to me that he took his 16-year-old daughter to see "Traffic" and it changed his view of the war on drugs.
Schickel: Okay, but what I'm trying to get at is that I think people make movies, you know, a lot of times with no ethical issues whatsoever involved. They make them for --
Zavala: -- a good story.
Schickel: -- aesthetic bliss, if you will. (laughter)
Marlow: But look at the advantages of society's changes after "To Kill a Mockingbird". That movie changed a lot of minds, did it not?
Schickel: Don't you think that's coincidental? I think that was a movie that came along at just the right moment for when there was actually a mass change of heart and mind going on in the country. I think movies can reflect that, but I'm not sure that they can initiate that at all.
Mann: Richard, I'd like to -- you know, I may seem immodest, but I'd like to cite some of my films. For instance, if we didn't do "McMartin", these people would still be in jail. Now I did a thing when I created "Kojak", I did the Marcus Nelson murders. There was the young black man, George Whitmore, and he was in jail by the time we got through with that. He's out of jail now.
Schickel: Well, that's a different point. Can you actually do something where an injustice has been done and a television show or movie can address that particular injustice? Yes, I think that can be helpful. I thought we were talking about broader social changes than that.
Zavala: We are, actually. We have to go to --
Mann: -- let me mention "Judgment at Nuremberg" for a minute. Up until that time, people thought that the German people individually had not much responsibility. They thought of Hitler as a great magician and the ordinary German on the street didn't know what was happening in the concentration camps. I think we showed them otherwise.
It is possible, I think, Richard. I think that's one of the things we have to try to do. We're not enough in the world. We're not enough taking sides. I took a side, a very unpopular side, in the Atlanta child murders. A lot of people said, well, you're nuts, but what happened was, now there are other movies about it, there are other court things about it. I think that we can do those kinds of things. I think we ought to try and I don't think it's tried enough.
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