I hereby take back most of the awful things I’ve said about Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, both publicly and in private.
Why? I’ll give you a hint: it involves Bill O’Reilly and “Redacted,” the new film by Brian De Palma.
You’ll have to watch this video from Countdown with Keith Olbermann to see for yourself.
I don’t understand why that story should change your feelings on Mark Cuban at all. It’s bad logic to suggest that just because an idiot like Bill O’Reilly is attacking Cuban then Cuban himself can’t be an idiot as well. There’s plenty of room in the world for lots of idiots. Or jerks, or assholes, or whatever negative adjective you prefer.
Cuban cares about only three things:
1) Attention
2) Money
3) See 1 and 2.
For him to finance a movie like “Redacted” it doesn’t make him a great guy, it just makes him an attention whore. He’s the owner of a fledgling movie company and obviously for his movies to steal attention away from the big companies like Paramount, Fox, or Warner Bros. or whatever, they’re going to have to be riskier, controversial films.
Obviously a movie that points out the severe problems our military has in its recruitment policies (due largely to the fact that the army is so shorthanded, they’ll take practically anyone, even recruiting out of prisons) will draw more attention than another cookie cutter propaganda filled “America is awesome, we’re the greatest, everyone else sucks” war film.
Frankly, I’m sorry if this sounds cold, but the instant I read that story about Green and the other soldiers involved with raping that girl and murdering her family, I knew it would be turned into a film by some indie company. The script practically writes itself. Michael J. Foxx and Sean Penn were in a Vietnam movie with similar themes in the 80s.
To me, while the story isn’t cheap, and it should be told, but it still reeks of “easy attention grabber” the way Michael Moore’s films do. It’s the liberal equivalent of Passion of the Christ, no more, no less. And I say that as a full fledged liberal. I haven’t seen the movie, but I don’t have to. I’ve already read the story and I’m already critical of the war and how we’ve gone about fighting it. If Cuban is involved with it, I’m guessing the story will be distorted and made even more sensationalist than it already was. I don’t trust him to do anything straight, nor do I trust De Palma.
Redford or Penn could probably handle the material better but I’m guessing they see it as too “easy.”
Christ, it’s November 2007. Do people really need to see this movie to understand basic things like our government is filled with evil pricks and that when you have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to recruit soldiers (after all if you had the balls to conduct a draft and get QUALIFIED troops then ALL the people in this country would be panicked enough to ask real questions and demand real answers from the government about this war, not just the blue states) then you’re going to have some real creeps and thugs wearing our uniform?
Didn’t anyone read that story in Slate where our female soldiers are scared shitless of being raped by our own troops because the men have no sexual release in Iraq (unlike other places we’ve engaged war in like Vietnam where brothels were common)? Lots of our female soldiers are coming home with post traumatic stress syndrome dealing with sexual assault. You don’t think this topic will be turned into a movie eventually?
This movie won’t be any different than Fahrenheit 9/11 or any other documentary/satire of this administration. The only people who’ll watch it are the ones already converted. The critics of the film won’t watch because of their blind faith and allegiance to contradictory ideals and morals. What’s the point in that?
The bottom line for me is that Cuban voted for Bush, twice, and he knew perfectly well what he was voting for. Money, big business, imperialism, greed. For him to support Bush at one end and then finance this film is akin to talking out of both sides of your mouth, like all our popular politicians do.
All Bill O’Reilly did was call him out on it. I despise Bill, but unlike Cuban at least he’s consistent about what side he’s on.
Michael, I read your comment thinking that I would disagree with your analysis, but I don’t.
Like you, I think Mark Cuban is a greedy narcissist. But I’m happy to see that De Palma’s film got made. Cuban also fronted the money for “Good Night, And Good Luck,” and gave Dan Rather a job after he was unfairly driven out by CBS, which are points in his favor.
I’m also happy to see O’Reilly’s panties in a wad over “Redacted,” so I thank Cuban and De Palma for that.
But yeah, Cuban is still a hypocritical prick who voted for Bush twice. So I guess I only take back some of the awful things I’ve said about him.