Harvey Weinstein takes aim at journalists critical of American Sniper
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Version 0 of 1. Harvey Weinstein has mounted a strident defence of controversial Clint Eastwood war biopic American Sniper, and called out critics who fail to do their research.The film’s subject, US navy seal Chris Kyle, has been called a “hate-filled killer” by those who view the idea of lionising the most successful sniper in US military history with distaste. But speaking to Indiewire, Weinstein said the biopic, which stars Bradley Cooper as Kyle and has captured the imagination of patriotic cinemagoers on an unprecedented scale, deserved praise because it “introduces America to PTSD”. Related: Is American Sniper historically accurate? He said: “How about all these pieces of junk our kids are seeing? Let’s go after them instead.” Meanwhile, Weinstein suggested that journalists were uninterested in true American heroes. “No one was ever saying, ‘There’s a really good story about a human being who hands out money to children, builds houses, works hard. The Jimmy Carter story. You sit in an editorial meeting and [pitch] the Jimmy Carter story and they go, ‘Fucking boring. I don’t give a shit.’ Our priorities are so screwed,” continued the producer. “When you say, ‘Hey, American Sniper’s got a hole in it,’ they salivate over that stuff. It’s sexy.” Continued Weinstein: “If you’re going to write an article, just do one thing that used to happen all the time: do the research.” American Sniper, which has taken in $316m (£278m) globally in just three weeks on wide release, also won praise this week from Michelle Obama. The US first lady praised Eastwood’s Oscar-nominated film for its “complex, emotional depiction of a veteran and his family”, adding: “[It] reflects those wrenching stories that I’ve heard – the complex journeys that our men and women in uniform endure. The complicated moral decisions they are tasked with every day. The stresses of balancing love of family with a love of country. And the challenges of transitioning back home to their next mission in life.” Meanwhile, plans were announced for a Chris Kyle Day in Texas, celebrating the life of a sniper with an alleged 160 confirmed kills over four tours in Iraq. And Weinstein’s production unit, the Weinstein Company, said it intended to capitalise on US audiences’ newfound passion for militaristic fare by adapting Nicholas Irving’s memoir The Reaper: Autobiography of One of the Deadliest Special Ops Snipers for television. The five-part series, about an African American who chalked up 33 kills during a four-month tour of Afghanistan, is due to begin filming in the summer. Related: American Sniper: an old-fashioned western in military uniform Finally Cooper himself, who has stayed relatively tight-lipped during the controversy over American Sniper, told journalists he was pleased at the film’s ability to highlight veterans’ struggles. Speaking at a lunch for 2015 Oscar nominees in Los Angeles on 2 February, Cooper said: “You never know when you make a movie that anyone is going to see it, so the audacity to think that it would cause any sort of effect would be pretty presumptuous.” He added that “any discussion that sheds light to the plight of the soldiers and the men and women of the armed services — for that discussion to occur is fantastic”. |