During the filming of The Great Dictator, Chaplin's 1940 satire of Adolph Hitler, he received death threats and crank letters: "Some threatened to throw stink bombs in the theatre and shoot up the screen where ever it would be shown. Others threatened to create riots."1 But Chaplin never once considered canceling the film. He believed his film had a message and that his voice should be heard. As a comedian, Chaplin believed his only weapon against evil was humor. "I'm the clown," Chaplin told the New York Times in 1940, "and what can I do that is more effective than to laugh at these fellows who are putting humanity to the goose-step; who, as I say in one of my first captions, are kicking humanity around?....If there is one thing I know it is that power can always be made ridiculous. The bigger that fellow gets the harder my laughter will hit him." 2
Author & theater owner George R.R. Martin summed up the canceling of The Interview nicely in a recent blog post:
"The level of corporate cowardice here astonishes me. It's a good thing these guys weren't around when Charlie Chaplin made The Great Dictator. If Kim Jong-Un scares them, Adolf Hitler would have had them shitting in their smallclothes."
Touché
1Chaplin, My Autobiography, 1964
2Robert Van Gelder, "Chaplin Draws A Keen Weapon," New York Times, September 8, 1940
I just had a conversation with my friend yesterday when she posted something very similar on her FB page and the gist of it is this: "The Interview" was made, just as "The Great Dictator" was made. There is no cowardice on the part of the filmMAKER here. The cowardice is on the part of the film COMPANY and Theaters who are not going to show the film.
ReplyDeleteThe comparison to Chaplin being braver and not backing down and still making his film is not a fair comparison. The makers of "The Interview" still made their film about a dictator. They did not back down, just as Chaplin did not back down.
I haven't seen Seth Rogen, who is co-writer and co-director, coming out much in defense of his film. Before it was scrapped he was already canceling interviews and media appearances because of the threats. I read somewhere that he was angry that it was pulled but it doesn't seem like he's all that angry.
DeleteI saw him on Jon Stewart's show last week talking about the film, but I think they may have been right before the decision was made to pull the film from theaters.
ReplyDeleteI posted something very similar on FB the other day:
ReplyDeleteIf Chaplin had been like Sony, we'd have no THE GREAT DICTATOR.
Phil