David O. Russell's Anti-War Documentary Squelched For Political Reasons ...

Here's a little something courtesy of the folks at GreenCine ...

Just when you thought all the anti-war documentary furor was dying down, here it comes again. Director David O. Russell is having a documentary prepped for a special edition re-release of his acclaimed Three Kings suppressed for political reasons. Warner Brother's asked Russell to put together a follow up documentary to accompany a special edition re-release of his largely overlooked Three Kings - timed to piggyback on the marketing efforts for his new I Heart Huckabees - only to reject it on the grounds that it "came out to be a documentary that condemns, basically, war."

Err, yeah. Warners? Did you actually watch Three Kings before asking him to do this? What did you expect him to turn in, exactly? A happy, feel-good pro-Republican PR piece? When you ask for a documentary to accompany what boils down to be an anti-war film you shouldn't really be surprised when that documentary also turns out to be anti-war. The folks at WB have reportedly offered to give Russell the rights to the film to find alternate distribution, but not until after the presidential election. Whatever happened to the days when the media and the arts commentated on the state of politics rather than being meekly led by the nose? I miss those days.

The New York Times article on this is available here, and the LA Times has another here.