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Broadcast: 30/7/2002 Hollywood snubs Australian film A new film by Australian director Phil Noyce is being snubbed by Hollywood for being "anti-American". Five years in the making, The Quiet American has yet to be given a distribution date by the powerful Miramax studios.
--------- Compere: Tony Jones Reporter: Susie Smith
A new film by Australian director Phil Noyce is being snubbed by Hollywood for being "anti-American". Five years in the making, The Quiet American has yet to be given a distribution date by the powerful Miramax studios.
Executives are nervous about releasing the film in the post-September 11 environment. So in the best tradition of Hollywood acquiescence in times of war a movie that's deemed too hot to handle is put on ice.
Susie Smith reports on what some have described as Hollywood's cosy relationship with the US Military.
SUZANNE SMITH, REPORTER: The latest casualty in the propaganda war is an Australian-made blockbuster, The Quiet American.
Phil Noyce on location in the steamy back alleys of Hanoi sums up the book's politically charged content.
PHIL NOYCE, DIRECTOR, THE QUIET AMERICAN: A novel that looked into the future and explained that why America would prosecute this war against Vietnam for so long and so vehemently - what in the American psyche, in the personality of the post-war Americans, that drove them to prosecute that war in that way.
SUZANNE SMITH: The novel predicted the American strategy in Vietnam of creating and propping up a puppet regime against the forces of communism. The Americans are not the heroes.
A US operative causes needless deaths and carnage. The American war effort is savagely depicted.
PHIL NOYCE: Graham Greene was able to describe the fundamental principles of American foreign policy that have existed since 1950 right up to the present day - the question of whether the means are justified by the ends.
SUZANNE SMITH: Such thoughts resonate in the post-September 11 world, with the Americans already entrenched in Afghanistan and now setting their sights on Iraq.
The Quiet American's executive producer Sidney Pollack previewed the finished film the night before the September 11 attacks.
On the day of the tragedy, Pollack went to New York to show it to Miramax. He ended up being trapped for several hours in the tragic melee that followed.
But after that fateful day, Pollack looked at the film in a different light. He says now might not be the best time to examine the culpability of Vietnam.
SIDNEY POLLACK, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: I think it's going to have a difficult time probably because the climate isn't right, right now, in the United States for a film that questions the moral stance of America.
As always happens - it has happened in every country - when your country is threatened, you rally around it.
MARTY KAPLAN, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA: Unfortunately, sometimes public events intercede and the appetite of the audience might be for patriotism or some might say jingoism, but not for the kind of critical examination or self-critical examination which this product seems to be.
SUZANNE SMITH: Marty Kaplan was a studio executive for 12 years with the Disney Corporation, which now owns part of Miramax.
He doesn't believe the decision to delay The Quiet American has been made on ideological grounds, rather on its ability to make money.
MARTY KAPLAN: I don't think the White House is telling Hollywood what to do. Hollywood listens to American audiences, and what American audiences are telling them is that they feel that America is under assault and wrongly so and that they want to see entertainment that reflects their point of view.
SUZANNE SMITH: But the Pentagon and Hollywood do understand the power of film. Indeed, a special office within the State Department is now looking at how Hollywood films shown in the Middle East might improve America's image in the region.
MARTY KAPLAN: All around the world people have watched movies and television in order to get a sense of what the American dream is. No matter who you are, you have a chance to succeed.
So in many ways Hollywood has been an unofficial propagandistic arm of American democracy, but why not?
FILM: They developed a new code based on the Navaho language.
SUZANNE SMITH: Another film, The Wind Talkers, released this week, has been edited by the Pentagon censors.
The film stars Nicholas Cage as a soldier assigned to protect a Navaho Indian whose language was used as a special code in World War II.
But in return for the use of the Pentagon's high-tech military equipment, the producers agreed to cut out scenes of a marine gouging out the gold fillings from the mouths of dead Japanese soldiers.
Phil Strubb is the head of Pentagon's entertainment office. He says the films have a two-fold value for the military.
PHIL STRUBB, PENTAGON SPOKESMAN: We see this as an important opportunity to tell the American public something about the US military and then maybe help recruiting and retention as a by-product.
SUZANNE SMITH: Graham Greene would not be surprised at this turn of events. After all, his book The Quiet American was also snubbed in the US when it came out in 1955. Back then it was also described as anti-American.