By Sarah Weller
“Phone Booth” shot down
When two students at Columbine High School shot their classmates and a teacher before turning the gun on themselves, the much anticipated movie O, a modern remake of Shakespeare’s Othello, was put on the shelf in 1999 and stayed there for nearly two years. With last year’s events, several movies were pushed back, including Big Trouble and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s terrorist flick Collateral Damage. Now, it’s happening again with 20th Century Fox’s film Phone Booth, a film about a man who is at the mercy of a shooter after he decides to pick up a ringing phone in a moment of fate and is told not to hang up or he will die. News broke out three weeks ago that the production company was postponing the movie, and then, a few days later, that it’s indefinite, with the soonest possible release date set for next spring. This time, the reasoning is what I wouldn’t even consider a strong similarity to the sniper who is shooting people in the Washington, D.C., area. Okay, so I will admit that I had this column finished before the most recent developments in the sniper investigation, but that doesn’t mean that they are going to be in any hurry to put this movie out just because they might have caught the guy. The D.C. area sniper has become the most publicized incident since the September 11 terrorist attacks. Suddenly, our war in Iraq has gone on the backburner. I’ll admit this scares me, but what does this have to do with the movie? Why are perfectly good movies always punished when something goes wrong in the world?
Earlier in the year, when Phone Booth was first being publicized, the supposed “sniper” in this potential movie was more or less being referred to as a madman who just happens to have a rifle. However, after the D.C. sniper claimed his ninth victim on October 14, entertainment gossip websites such as Katrillion began referring to the villain character in Phone Booth as a “terrorizing sniper” in their reports of the movie being held back. Not until the movie was pulled did they begin referring to the character, played by Kiefer Sutherland, as the “sniper.” Funny how suddenly a character’s depiction was altered in order to make the production company look honorable and to support their decision. If you ask me, this makes the people at Fox look like cowards. Are they too afraid of offending the people of Washington, D.C., and the rest of the world that they pull the plug on what was potentially the best production of its type this year? Why do people in this world try so hard to be politically correct? Isn’t the point of making movies: to get a rise out of people? Honestly, if people think they are going to be offended by a movie, they won’t go see it, and even if they did, it then becomes their problem, not the movie’s problem. So you lose a few people: big deal. There are still many movie freaks like me who were highly anticipating the release of this motion picture because of its highly acclaimed cast and unique plot. There are few other movies out there similar to this one, and I was in the mood for something besides another teen thriller like Abandon.
This also upsets me, as a movie critic, for the simple fact that a movie is a piece of art- someone else’s work. It is only meant to represent or inspire what could or could not happen in real life, not what is happening or is going to happen. It’s ENTERTAINMENT, for the lack of a better word. It serves as an escape from this crazy world in which we are living. I believe it is unfair to the people who worked hard to make this movie, as well as loyal moviegoers like myself, for it to be shut down for one minuscule similarity; yeah, the gun. Wow, so now is every movie with a sniper rifle going to be put on hold? What if the South Park movie, depicting a very annoying and Satan-loving Saddam Hussein, was set to come out this year in the midst of an impending war with Iraq? Food for thought.
