Film: "Out of Shadows"

[Kirk Gallaway]

Yeah, that's sounds intriguing! It hits a number of historically appealing points to me, and I would think a number of people on this forum.

 

Edited April 18, 2020 by Kirk Gallaway

[Kishan Dandiker]

On 4/15/2020 at 5:45 AM, Kirk Gallaway said:

Paul, you pretty much covered the bases.

But right from the beginning: In the first 2 minutes "Prepare to disbelieve everything you believe", then villainizing "science guy"  Bill Nye?? Then they go current and run "resist the virus hoax" and "Fire Fauci" captions on both sides throughout the film???

Of course it's pizza gate  from a discarded, bimbo, super hero, action flick Hollywood stuntman,  who now no longer believes Hollywood should exploit violence???, And has an axe to grind.

 I love the spinning that "pizza" is the code word of all  pedophiles, like they couldn't have used a code word of "coffee" or other words to not look obvious?. 

We know years ago, the CIA did influence Hollywood. I'm not saying they couldn't now, but give me some examples of it now. 

 

 

The late Michael Hastings talked about this in newer movies. Zero Dark Thirty is a prime example.

[Kirk Gallaway]

Kishan, that's a good example and a good interview.  This of course,  is one of those movies   that fall in the category of being  supposedly based on "first hand accounts." In such a case the process is, I'd imagine,  how they portrayed it , any one of a bunch of production groups can come up to the CIA and peddle their idea, and CIA can choose one that they can most likely spin.

Hurt Locker was ok to me. I think the only reason it won best picture was that it was a bad movie year, and Hollywood was waving the flag, trying to overcompensate for a right wing perception  that they were anti American, (and maybe thought it would be too cheap to give it to James Cameron.)  Sort of a move to the center. It is interesting what's happened to Katherine Bigelow after winning her academy award. (She actually went to my high school!) and then  her following up with Zero Dark Thirty. I never saw it. She seems to have gone into obscurity. But then I  I haven't followed her career much. I see more recently there's this "Detroit". I wonder if anyone here has seen that?

Edited April 18, 2020 by Kirk Gallaway

[David Andrews]

Legendarily, Kathryn Bigelow is now the highest-paid woman director in the industry.  Her 2017 movie Detroit, about the 1967 Algiers Motel killings of race riot bystanders, is well worth seeing, and is probably little seen because Americans shun feel-bad stories about how black lives haven't mattered.

There seems to have been a period, beginning around the time of Enemy of the State (1998) and continuing through the Jason Bourne movies, when Hollywood was allowed to show intelligence agencies as technologically omnipotent and non-evadable.  Even if the villains were, of course, those ever-dependable "rogue elements," the portraiture seemed designed to entice agency wannabes into joining up, and to put the fear of God into the rest of the audience.  I would never recommend a movie like Swordfish (2001) on artistic merit, but in it John Travolta plays a cross-agency, multiple-identity fake terrorist who commits cybercrime and bank robbery in order to amass the funds Congress won't afford for killing real terrorists.  The places where this jokey film touches on real life, or on what the intel community wants you to believe is "real life," make this worth seeing, especially as a release in the year of 9/11. 

In the same decade were small budget films like Shooter (2007), with Mark Wahlberg, taking swipes at the history of intel assassinations, and non-specific spy games films like George Clooney's The American (2010), which addressed the amorality of the business.  Clooney also starred in the very good Michael Clayton (2003) and Syriana (2005), films that show the descent of intelligence agency bad practices into the business world.

We seem to be consigned to a period where the intelligence community declines to be either propagandized or contradicted by Hollywood, though diversionary criticism of knee-jerk response policy issues like waterboarding of foreign nationals gets coverage in films like The Report.  The obvious path for film would be to address the plethora of non-CIA intelligence and surveillance agencies out there, the mass of which can't function without outsourcing their work to a host of barely regulated, privatized contractors.  (So much money is spent on outsourcing, you wonder how this is cheaper than simply expanding in-house staff paid GS-level salaries.)

 

 

Edited April 18, 2020 by David Andrews

[Kirk Gallaway]

Dave says:   The obvious path for film would be to address the plethora of non-CIA intelligence and surveillance agencies out there, the mass of which can't function without outsourcing their work to a host of barely regulated, privatized contractors.  So much money is spent on outsourcing, you wonder how this is cheaper than simply expanding in-house staff paid at GS-levels.

Very good Dave! I've thought of that.  Some thing about the reckless abandon of a firm like Blackwater, highlighting their opulent budgets, and contrasting their lives from the government military, and their living by their own rules, and being legally protected by our government.

[Joe Bauer]

48 minutes ago, David Andrews said:

Legendarily, Kathryn Bigelow is now the highest-paid woman director in the industry.  Her 2017 movie Detroit, about the 1967 Algiers Motel killings of race riot bystanders, is well worth seeing, and is probably little seen because Americans shun feel-bad stories about how black lives haven't mattered.

There seems to have been a period, beginning around the time of Enemy of the State (1998) and continuing through the Jason Bourne movies, when Hollywood was allowed to show intelligence agencies as technologically omnipotent and non-evadable.  Even if the villains were, of course, those ever-dependable "rogue elements," the portraiture seemed designed to entice agency wannabes into joining up, and to put the fear of God into the rest of the audience.  I would never recommend a movie like Swordfish (2001) on artistic merit, but in it John Travolta plays a cross-agency, multiple-identity fake terrorist who commits cybercrime and bank robbery in order to amass the funds Congress won't afford for killing real terrorists.  The places where this jokey film touches on real life, or on what the intel community wants you to believe is "real life," make this worth seeing, especially as a release in the year of 9/11. 

In the same decade were small budget films like Shooter (2007), with Mark Wahlberg, taking swipes at the history of intel assassinations, and non-specific spy games films like George Clooney's The American (2010), which addressed the amorality of the business.  Clooney also starred in the very good Michael Clayton (2003) and Syriana (2005), films that show the descent of intelligence agency bad practices into the business world.

We seem to be consigned to a period where the intelligence community declines to be either propagandized or contradicted by Hollywood, though diversionary criticism of knee-jerk response policy issues like waterboarding of foreign nationals gets coverage in films like The Report.  The obvious path for film would be to address the plethora of non-CIA intelligence and surveillance agencies out there, the mass of which can't function without outsourcing their work to a host of barely regulated, privatized contractors.  (So much money is spent on outsourcing, you wonder how this is cheaper than simply expanding in-house staff paid at GS-level salaries.)

 

 

Good summary Dave.

[Kishan Dandiker]

1 hour ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Kishan, that's a good example and a good interview.  This of course,  is one of those movies   that fall in the category of being  supposedly based on "first hand accounts." In such a case the process is, I'd imagine,  how they portrayed it , any one of a bunch of production groups can come up to the CIA and peddle their idea, and CIA can choose one that they can most likely spin.

Hurt Locker was ok to me. I think the only reason it won best picture was that it was a bad movie year, and Hollywood was waving the flag, trying to overcompensate for a right wing perception  that they were anti American, (and maybe thought it would be too cheap to give it to James Cameron.)  Sort of a move to the center. It is interesting what's happened to Katherine Bigelow after winning her academy award. (She actually went to my high school!) and then  her following up with Zero Dark Thirty. I never saw it. She seems to have gone into obscurity. But then I  I haven't followed her career much. I see more recently there's this "Detroit". I wonder if anyone here has seen that?

Detroit was largely forgettable, although there were some decent performances. 

Enemy of the State is a favorite of mine, as it seemed to predict the future. It covered a myriad of topics, ranging from state murders to warantless surveillance. Tony Scott ended up killing himself, which was a tragedy. 

[David Andrews]

I think Kathryn Bigelow got to make Detroit not only because of her past achievement in films, but her past record in making films in the style that the military and intelligence wanted, at their particular time.  I imagine she will be back in the apologist-director trade when they next decide what they want advertised.  Meanwhile, Detroit stands as a kind of guilt offering at the altar:

 

[David Andrews]

28 minutes ago, Kishan Dandiker said:

Detroit was largely forgettable, although there were some decent performances.

I haven't forgotten Detroit.  It was the thinking man's Bobby.  More people should remember the Algiers Motel incident, and this helps.

I wish Bigelow had directed Bobby.  We wouldn't have gotten any researcher revelations, but we'd have gotten a better script and a better film.

Edited April 18, 2020 by David Andrews

[David Andrews]

59 minutes ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Dave says:   The obvious path for film would be to address the plethora of non-CIA intelligence and surveillance agencies out there, the mass of which can't function without outsourcing their work to a host of barely regulated, privatized contractors.  So much money is spent on outsourcing, you wonder how this is cheaper than simply expanding in-house staff paid at GS-levels.

Very good Dave! I've thought of that.  Some thing about the reckless abandon of a firm like Blackwater, highlighting their opulent budgets, and contrasting their lives from the government military, and their living by their own rules, and being legally protected by our government.

And I'm supposing that privatization is cheaper because the contractors can sell their data and additional services to the corporate world, plus privatization is encouraged because it provides revolving-door private sector employment and influence peddling for former government employees, as does defense contracting for the military, and science consulting for people at CDC and FDA.  In a less enlightened time there'd be journalists to call these rackets incestuous, but today there are no journalists, and this is more like plain old fancy f***ing.

Try books like Spies for Hire by Tim Shorrock, or Top Secret America by Priest and Arkin to get a picture of the revolving door between government and privatized surveiilance and influence peddling.  In Fletcher Prouty's day. intelligence and military used to have to embed serving officers in industry to look after their interests.  Thanks to Congress, they now move of their own accord.

https://www.amazon.com/Spies-Hire-Secret-Intelligence-Outsourcing-ebook/dp/B001949VEW/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Spies+for+hire&link_code=qs&qid=1587231530&sourceid=Mozilla-search&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/Top-Secret-America-American-Security/dp/0316182214/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1587231568&sr=8-1

Edited April 18, 2020 by David Andrews

[Kirk Gallaway]

Yeah, add influence peddling. It could be a movie like Traffic.  But I don't think it would fare well as an episodal TV series.

Detroit-maybe I'll get around to it. When I heard about it, I figured she might be overcompensating for shamelessly piggybacking on the policy blunders of the George Bush Presidency.