Sony dumps Brooks' Comedy

Here's another one for the Irrational Caution in the Name of Political Correctness file: earlier this summer, Sony Pictures chairman Michael Lynton told filmmaker Albert Brooks (the man responsible for Lost in America, one of my favorite films ever, as well as Real Life and Defending Your Life) that they would not release his latest film, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, unless he changed the title. The picture, about a comedian (Brooks) hired by the U.S. government to travel to India and Pakistan to figure out  what kind of comedy appeals to Muslims, is a self-referential satire about the U.S. and comedians, and is unlikely to cause discord amongst Muslims themselves. Lynton's verdict came on the heels the heavily disputed Newsweek story about U.S. investigators supposedly flushing a copy of the Koran down a toilet at Gitmo; he maintains that his studio's (over)caution is an effort to avoid sparking the kind of violent reaction amongst Muslims that that article caused. "I do believe that recent incidents have dramatically changed the landscape that we live in," he wrote in a letter to Brooks, "And that this, among other things, warrants changing the title of the film." The film has since been picked up by Warner Independent Pictures, who plan to release it in early 2006.
 


Patrick Goldstein interviewed Brooks about the film and the studio battle in a great piece in yesterday's Los Angeles Times, and it's full of excellent quips from the rightfully frustrated filmmaker. Brooks says he was so angry when he heard the Sony verdict, that he "was throwing up at 3 a.m. ... It felt wrong — it defeated the whole idea of why I went to India in the first place." It's not hard to see the economic issue here: it's not worth it to Sony to spend money supporting a film that asks real-world questions, when the film in question does not have the buil-in box office potential to pay for that support. "Sony makes televisions — and everything comes after that," Brooks says. "Time Warner is an entertainment company. They don't make TVs. My impression was that if I got in the way of Sony selling one more TV set somewhere, I was out of there."

Goldstein sums it up, "The real problem with Hollywood isn't simply its glorification of sex, money and lame old TV shows. It's that our Ivy League-educated studio elite often don't know the difference between crass and class."