From: Nicky Hamlyn (email suppressed)
Date: Mon Aug 03 2009 - 00:12:05 PDT
What's remarkable from the (far from perfect) UK perspective is that
both the BBC and national Independent channels would have invited a
representative from the NEA and/or the San Francisco Cinematheque to
respond. This is a requirement that's written into the BBC's
constitution, and if they have been unable to find someone to respond
they always announce the fact.
Nicky Hamlyn.
On 3 Aug 2009, at 02:19, Chuck Kleinhans wrote:
> I've written on Thundercrack, so I was delighted to find all this
> attention directed to it. I've hunted around on the web for more
> info.
>
> The Fox News team must have taken the clip segments they ran from
> the trailer which appears on a website that promises to sell a fully
> restored DVD of the film (in the near future):
>
> http://www.thundercrackthefilm.com/
> Apparently there is a pirate version which circulates which is
> significantly shorter than the original, and which shows scratches
> and burns out the highlights.
>
> There is a pretty complete summary of the film's narrative on
> Wikipedia
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thundercrack!
>
> If you look at the Fox clip, it's worth it to also click on their
> "automatically generated transcript" which includes such howlers as:
>
>
>> That 25000 dollars of taxpayer money went to the San Francisco
>> cinema attack.
>
>
> Other than the usual demagoguery, what's fascinating (to me) in the
> Fox and other sources is the constant transmutation of the story and
> it's wild inaccuracies. In the "Perverts Put Out" segment that
> Scott Stark originally flagged, the news reader (one Megyn Kelly,
> which somehow in this context makes me think she's her own
> gynecologist) claims that the NEA is "getting a rather big slice of
> the pie" of the 787,000,000,000 stimulus package. But, the House
> member being interviewed says that the NEA got $15,000,000 in the
> stimulus package. That makes the "big slice" 0.0019%. So much for
> accuracy. Part of the problem here may be Fox confusing the entire
> NEA annual budget with the 15 million in the stimulus package, but
> even the whole NEA budget for FY 2009 is only 155 million, which
> brings sit up to 0.0196% of the TARP stimulus package.
>
> One downstream recapitulation of the report made the stimulus
> package 787 trillion, not billion. And lots of the reports
> mistakenly think that Frameline, the distributor which showed the
> film at a festival that took place in several venues, is a movie
> theatre, and they don't seem to know what the SF Cinematheque
> (sorry, Cinema Attack) is. They also seem to not grasp the fact
> that the film was made in 1975 and is not being funded by the NEA.
>
> But also delicious in the whole thing is the alarm that Thundercrack
> sets off because it shows "sex with animals." Of course if they'd
> seen the film (or even the trailer) they would realize that George
> Kuchar plays a circus truck driver guy who is in love with a female
> gorilla he transports, which is very obviously someone in a gorilla
> costume, not a live animal. Fox News marionette Greta Van Sustern
> is particularly clueless on this matter.
>
> Probably the biggest lie the Fox team tells is that they couldn't
> present most of the images or any of the audio on air (actually on
> cable). The trailer, available on the DVD website, is 3:35 minutes
> long. I'd say only about 15 seconds of that couldn't be shown, and
> that's just for bare breast nudity and one brief shot of a bare
> ass. (You actually can show both on regular broadcast with a
> digital blur.) But any extended part of the trailer would make it
> perfectly obvious that it is a campy parody of film genres. And the
> audio (George Kuchar's voice over and comic over-inflated
> sensationalizing of the film) could be presented, but it would
> reveal that the whole thing is a send-up of extreme proportions.
> Given that Me-GYN is a lawyer according to the Fox News website,
> apparently (1) she never saw the trailer even though she discusses
> it, or (2) she missed the law school classes on broadcast and cable
> law, or (3) she thinks lying is OK if you can goose the ratings and
> score points on the Obama administration. She says she can't show
> most of the trailer on TV, but she can show a fair amount of
> cleavage in talking about it. (To be fair, not as much as most
> female detectives on network and cable crime shows such as CSI are
> expected to display, but rather more than her "official" Fox News
> website pix which are coded as lawyer/business/professional/
> corporate.)
>
> And a note to Fred Camper: I don't think Scott Stark needed to add
> editorializing to his posting the link to the Fox News clip. Since
> you don't have cable and don't watch Fox, Fred, you're probably not
> aware of it (no fault there), but lots of folks are aware of Fox
> foolishness because it frequently is quoted for sarcastic purposes
> on The Daily Show (on Comedy Central channel) and Countdown with
> Keith Obermann and The Rachel Maddow Show (both MSNBC). When I'm
> browsing TV, I usually take a look at Fox News to see what the
> latest stupidity is (like Glenn Beck saying Obama is a racist or
> anything by Bill O'Reilly). But hey, Bill O'Reilly once called me a
> "pinhead" on his show because I declined to appear on it to talk
> about teaching a college course on pornography. For anyone with a
> modicum of intellect and/or middle to left leanings, Fox News is an
> endless joke.
>
> Maybe all this attention to the film will accelerate production of
> the new DVD. It's an ill wind....
>
> My article that discusses Thundercrack:
>
>
> “Taking Out the Trash: Camp and the Politics of Irony,” The Politics
> and Poetics of Camp, ed. Moe Meyer (NY and London: Routledge, 1994)
> 182-201.
>
>
> CHUCK KLEINHANS
>
>
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
>
>
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.