June 16th, 2008
9. The Siege (1998)
In the middle of filming his cautionary tale about martial law in New York City, Edward Zwick met with concerned Arab-Americans from the Council On American-Islamic Relations. They wanted him to change the premise—that Islamist terrorists were targeting New York because of the U.S. abduction of an Islamic cleric, leading to a domestic military crackdown involving concentration camps and armed checkpoints. Although Zwick says he made a few alterations in the way Islam was portrayed, he refused to alter the plot, and when the movie opened, many theatergoers were confronted by protesters asking them to reconsider their ticket purchase. "The Siege is extremely offensive. It's beyond offensive. We're used to offensive, that's become a daily thing. This is actually dangerous," said Hussein Ibish of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, reflecting concerns that the portrayal of Arabs and Muslims as cold-blooded mass killers could spark hate crimes and cement negative images of the groups in impressionable American minds. What the protesters missed was Tony Shalhoub as an Arab FBI agent who speaks out against Bruce Willis' military solution to the terrorist problem. It's clear Zwick is more interested in the well-meaning American villains than the hate-motivated Arab ones.
10. Saved! (2004)
There's a brief shot at the beginning of Saved!—a biting yet ultimately tender send-up of turmoil in a Christian high school—showing stars Jena Malone and Mandy Moore picketing an abortion clinic. It's almost as if writer-director Brian Dannelly was anticipating and even banking on protests from the religious right to propel his film. And the religious right obliged: Among the many howls of outrage Saved! elicited were reviews from sites like christiananswers.com, which blasted Dannelly for his portrayal of Christian leaders as "liars, adulterers, and hypocrites." Such reviews also pointed out that Saved!'s credits give thanks to George H. Smith's book Atheism: The Case Against God—and the fact that the film was co-produced by Michael "Losing My Religion" Stipe probably didn't help any.
11. Dogma (1999)
Writer-director Kevin Smith is a practicing Catholic who, like a lot of religious filmmakers, tends to work out issues of faith on film. But some of the faithful, spurred on by the Catholic League, weren't amused by Kevin Smith's 1999 film Dogma, a profanity-rich satire of contemporary religion that went through two release dates and two distributors before debuting in a hailstorm of protests, including one group of New Jersey picketers joined by an incognito Smith himself. The film was released to considerable success, and the Catholic Church somehow survived.
12. Priest (1994)
Dogma wasn't the first time producers Harvey and Bob Weinstein clashed with the Catholic Church. When Miramax distributed the British film Priest in 1995, its depiction of a gay Liverpool priest who comes to question his faith met similar resistance. The Catholic League called it "a cruel caricature of Roman Catholic priests," and though the objections caused some embarrassment for Miramax's parent company, Disney, the Weinsteins blinked only by moving its scheduled nationwide release date from Good Friday.
13. Million Dollar Baby (2004)
The funny thing about the protests over Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby is that they occurred with a measure of trepidation, because for activists to decry the issues raised in the film, they had to give away its ending. So what do you do? Listen to your conscience, or abide by society's tacit anti-spoiler laws? The handful of conservative Christians and disability-rights protesters who came out against the film's euthanasia twist obviously chose the former, but how many of them were tempted to stick spoiler alerts on their placards? And would their cause have gotten more play had more neutral parties in the mainstream media not been disinclined to give too much away? Had Eastwood opened the film with an assisted suicide, he might have had a firestorm on his hands; instead, he has an Oscar.
14. Deep Throat (1972)
In the early '70s, with the culture still reeling from the sexual revolution, theaters experienced what was called "porno chic," a sudden, short-lasting trend in which it was socially acceptable for open-minded middle-class couples to take in hardcore pornography. On the special talents of Linda Lovelace, Deep Throat won major dividends for breaking the mold—some estimate that it's grossed $600 million on its $22,000 budget, though most put the figure closer to $100 million—but the costs were devastating, too. The creative principals received next to nothing for their efforts and were hit with ugly lawsuits in the years that followed; Harry Reems, the male lead, became a cause célèbre after he was jailed on obscenity charges. All the attention made the film a lightning rod for obscenity cases across the country, and whatever profits it collected were filtered through the organized-crime outfits that oversaw its financing and distribution. Now that's justice!
15. Superhero Movie (2008)
Harvey Weinstein has been at the center of controversy many times in his career (and on this list), but he's never stared down anything quite like the tempest in a teapot stirred up by his handling of a little indie comedy called Fanboys. Fanboys tells the bittersweet story of a group of Star Wars fans who travel to Skywalker Ranch in 1998 so their friend with terminal cancer can get a glimpse at Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace before he dies. Weinstein's objection to the film was fundamental: Test audiences didn't like the whole cancer thing, so he decided to drop it and redo parts of the film with a different director. Driven to take action against "Darth Weinstein," diehard Star Wars fans vowed to send protesters to whatever films the Weinstein Company deigned to distribute. First up: The gag-a-second blockbuster spoof Superhero Movie, which could be called an unfortunate victim of timing had the public protests against it not been so laughably ineffectual. A group called "The 501st" organized protests in New York and Los Angeles, but when approached by a security guard, the 14 members who turned up in New York reportedly decamped and paid to see 21 instead.
16. The Color Purple (1985)
Though eventually the recipient of the NAACP's Image award, Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple had the word "controversial" attached to it long before its release. Some of it stemmed from fears that Spielberg would include the lesbian encounter between two of the principals; when he tamed the scene down to a couple of chaste images, that was protested as well, as cowardly and disrespectful to the source material. And then there was journalist Tony Brown, who singled out its depictions of rape and spousal abuse as "the most racist depiction of Black men since The Birth Of A Nation." In retrospect, that might have been something of an overstatement.
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