Director Eli Roth had the guts to get in touch with me the other day even though I've named him as Enemy No. 1 again and again in my campaign against torture porn in horror movies. Of course, I totally get that he's looking for publicity timed to the October 23rd release of the unrated widescreen edition of his loathesome Hostel Part II DVD, especially after the film flopped at the box office during the summer. (In fact, just on October 8th, the pic was dissed during debate in the British House Of Commons for depicting "obscene, misogynistic acts of brutality against women". And a proposed UK Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill could make it illegal to possess stills from Hostel Part II.) Nonetheless Roth told me he's moving on from the horror genre, and I'm thrilled by this news:

"As far as violence goes, I think at this point I've pushed the boundaries of horror as far as I can, and it's someone else's turn to take over spilling blood and guts. I have new challenges and much more ambitious ideas that are not horror related that I'm working on, as well as other artistic endeavors outside of film. I love directors like Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson, who pushed the boundaries of gore and horror in their early career, and then took that same energy and aesthetic and applied it to other genres. I'll always love horror and I'm sure I'll make more horror movies, but once you've spilled that much blood, you kind of have it out of your system and look for other ways to make audiences scream and cheer and vomit."

1. More Eli Roth Whining About Anti-Torture Porn Media
2. Putting Summer 2007 On The Couch...
3. Eli Roth Reacts Badly To Hostel II Failure; Says R-Rated Horror In Serious Jeopardy
4. Moviegoers Hostile Towards 'Hostel II'
5. Pirated: 'Hostel II' Bootlegs & Downloads
6. Lionsgate Is Still Releasing College Coed Killing Pic Despite Virginia Tech Tragedy
7. 'Hostel' Eli Roth, Lover Of Torture Porn

SUNDAY AM: It was an R-rated film festival at the box office this weekend. But did moviegoers respond to the new crop of adult-themed pics, many of which have Oscar buzz? Well, mostly no. The exception was Sony's Halloween-timed 30 Days Of Night which opened with $16 million from 2,855 theaters and logged a modest hit for Sam Raimi's Ghost House productions. The something-evil-lurks-in-Alaska theme didn't have to resort to torture porn to scare (though there's plenty of vampire gore).

But two R-rated newcomers really disappointed at the box office. New Line's heavy-handed political thriller Rendition starring Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal flatlined into only 9th place, opening to $4 million from 2,362 runs. This flop shows again that message movies aren't resonating with audiences this year. Not even making it into the Top 10 was DreamWorks / Paramount's drug addiction drama Things We Lost In The Fire despite starring Oscar-winners Halle Berry and Benicio Del Toro. Good thing it cost only $16 mil and had a very modest ad campaign. In 15th place, the pic made just $1.6 million from a limited run of 1,142 venues with a lousy per screen average.  "I think there were just too many R-rated dramas in the marketplace," a DreamWorks source told me. "I think all suffered because of it." 

Miramax's Gone Baby Gone fared better. Hollywood was especially curious to see how the R-rated crime drama directed by Ben Affleck would fare since he's had a tough time as an actor at the box office in recent years. But the film got great reviews, and audiences made it the #6 movie with $5.6 million this weekend from 1,713 theaters.

Little wonder that, with all these serious and even downer films at the megaplex, audiences wanted lighter fare. Lionsgate's PG-13 holdover Why Did I get Married from the fertile mind of Tyler Perry was the 2nd place movie down only 43%. It earned $12.2 million this weekend in 2,034 venues with a new cume is $38.9 mil. And the 3rd spot went to Disney's family fare The Game Plan which, even starting its 4th weekend in release, took in $8.1 million from 3,301 dates, down only 26.4%. The Rock's new cume is $69.2 mil. Still another holdover, Warner's well reviewed Michael Clayton starring George Clooney hung in (only down -34%) for No. 4, making $6.8 mil from 2,585 plays. But its cume is still an anemic $21.6 mil. Fox Atomic's PG-13 sports spoof The Comebacks was the surprise 5th place movie, showing that audiences are starved for even a medocre comedy even if it'll play better on DVD. This inexpensive pic opened with $6 mil from 2,812 runs.

For the 7th spot, Sony's $11 mil Cannes pickup of Mark Cuban's 2929 Productions' We Own The Night dropped 49% from its opening to eke out $5.5 mil from 2,362 dates for a new cume of $19.7 mil. In 8th place, Disney re-release of Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D squeezed out another $5.1 mil from just 564 venues. In 69% of the theaters it played in it was either the #1 or #2 gtrossing film. But the studio also offered a sneak preview of its offbeat comedy Dan In Real Life with Steve Carell which opens this coming Friday. In 10th place, DreamWorks / Paramount's disappointing The Heartbreak Kid eked out another $3.9 mil from 2,782 runs for a new cume of $32.1 mil starting its 3rd weekend in release.

As for other newcomers, Freestyle's Sarah Landon And The Paranormal Hour made $500K from 1,115 dates. And Rocky Mountain's The Ten Commandments earned $475K from 830 plays. 

What a swell reminder for all those Hollywood players making movies as badly as they can that film is a worldwide medium with worldwide impact -- all the more reason to aim higher than the testosterone level of teenage boys and create a pic that can change the world. Isn't that why you people got into the business in the first place? Or was it really to make Good Luck Chuck? So congratulations to Al Gore (Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth) for sharing the Nobel Peace Prize today with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change," as the Norwegian Nobel Committee said. Which, through these awards, is "seeking to contribute to a sharper focus on the processes and decisions that appear to be necessary to protect the world’s future climate, and thereby to reduce the threat to the security of mankind. Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man’s control."

The Nobel was awarded because "Al Gore has for a long time been one of the world's leading environmentalist politicians. He became aware at an early stage of the climatic challenges the world is facing. His strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change. He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted."

Rob Reiner, a new convert to the Hillary Clinton campaign as of late September, wrote, directed and stars in this volunteer-for-Hillary online film now showing on her campaign website. Unfortunately, it's the same quality as Rob's full-length motion pictures bombing at the box office these days. In other words, unwatchable. But you be the judge.

The Band's Visit has just swept Israel's Ophir Awards (the equivalent to that country's Oscars) so this means it should be Israel's submission for the Academy Award's Best Foreign Language Film. But even with the Kodak Theater ceremony still 5 months away, there's already controversy in this category. Rivals are claiming that the political movie, about an Egyptian police band that mistakenly ends up stranded overnight in a small Israeli town, has more than 50% English dialogue and therefore must be ruled ineligible for the nomination. Israeli film critic Yair Raveh has been following the scandal on his blog (alas, in Hebrew) and reports that The Band's Visit producers, backed by Sony Pictures Classics (who bought the Cannes award winning film's foreign rights) insist the English dialogue is less than 50%. The Israeli motion picture academy says it's the producers' call, not theirs. That has infuriated rivals who are calling on the local academy to check into the matter before the film is officially submitted. Sony Classics may also enter the pic's Israeli writer and director Eran Kolirin in the Best Original Screenplay category. The Band's Visit, of course, just had its North American premiere at Telluride and Toronto. "As someone who's been following Israeli cinema for the past 15 years," Raveh emails me, "I've yet to see a local film getting such glowing international reviews." If it does become one of Oscar's Foreign Language nominees this year, it will be the first Israeli film to do so since 1984's Beyond the Walls. To date, six Israeli films have been Oscar nominees, but an Israeli movie has yet to win. Interestingly, The Band's Visit will participate in the Middle East International Film Festival held in October in Abu Dhabi.

I usually report the worst of the network suits. But I'm not adding my liberal voice to the growing chorus of conspiracy theorists who believe that Fox "censored" Sally Field's Emmy antiwar statements because of its political content. (See video of her full statement here vs what actually ran on TV here.) The network bleeped curse words three times during acceptance speeches last night: when Field used "goddamn" and when Katherine Heigl mouthed, "Oh shit", and when Ray Romano joked about his former Everybody Loves Raymond TV wife Patricia Heaton "screwing" Kelsey Grammar on their new show, Back to You. According to Fox: "Some language during the live broadcast may have been considered inappropriate by some viewers. As a result, Fox's broadcast standards executives determined it appropriate to drop sound during those portions of the show." A network rep insisted to reporters that Fox did not censor Field's comments for their political content, noting she did talk about the war before she was cut off. I actually think he's right. To its credit, Fox stayed on Field during almost all of her anti-war statements -- when she was somewhat calm during the first part of her speech, then even after the applause when she looked out of control. The network tuned her out only after she said "goddamn" when she was a few words from finishing. This wasn't even a close call. 

Hollywood has no institutional memory. One of the reasons that the vast majority of its execs aren’t in therapy, and should be, is because they don’t want to talk about the past even if it’s prologue. They’re purposefully amnesiac. Otherwise, they’d have to confront the lunatic decisions they make over and over again (since repeating the same behavior and expecting different results is one definition of insanity). Which is why I want to revisit Summer 2007 whose $4.18 billion worth of threequels and blockbusters smashed the May 1st through Labor Day domestic box office gross record. (Not adjusted for inflation or ticket prices, however, which is why Hollywood stats have as many asterisks these days as does baseball.) It’s not that Hollywood denizens started doing everything right. It’s more like they just started doing less things wrong. The product is still terrible. The process is still tainted. The system is still broken. Feed it with praise and its players will never engage in the introspection necessary to ask, “What the hell are we doing even playing this rotten game?” So let me review what Hollywood learned during its summer vacation:

Don’t make threequels with cast and director intact: So the first Spider-Man and Pirates Of The Caribbean and Rush Hour were humongous hits. And the sequels made even more moolah than the originals primarily because original stars Tobey Maguire, Johnny Depp and Chris Tucker were on board as well as repeat helmers Sam Raimi, Gore Verbinski and, yes, even Brett Ratner. The consistency certainly helped make the pics into profitable franchises in the first place. But by the time the threequels rolled around, the budgets became as bloated as the talent's salaries. Chris Tucker shook down New Line for a new pay record on Rush Hour 3, while Brett Ratner brought the studio to its knees when he went wildly overbudget. And both Spidey 3 and Pirates 3 broke the $300 mil cost barrier not counting marketing costs. Then again, directors Raimi and Verbinski respectively were allowed to do pretty much anything they wanted, even making absurdly ass-numbingly long pics, because the studios were so desperate to keep the franchises going. No one wants to get off the gravy train, but if the fourquels are ever going to see the light of day, hire hungrier helmers whom the studios can more easily bludgeon into obedience and/or hotter younger stars to freshen the franchises.

Don’t make expensive comedies: The whole point of greenlighting laughers is supposed to be because they’re cheap. They’re the K-Mart of motion pictures, not the Neiman Marcus (aka Needless Mark-Up). Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up cost only $30 mil. His Superbad was only $20 mil. Constrast that to Evan Almighty’s $210 mil. If a comedy has to rely on CGI for humor instead of spittakes and pratfalls, don’t make that script.

Don’t go after the religious market: There’s no surer guarantee of box office disaster than to make a movie aimed at appealing to The Passion Of The Christ audience. Look, that pic evolved from Mel Gibson’s deeply felt religious beliefs – not from a pitch meeting. Universal moguls dragged out every trick in the Christian playbook to Hail Mary make and market Evan Almighty's tired Noah’s Ark retelling. But the Passion crowd wants stories based on the New Testament. Heathen Hollywood didn’t comprehend that.

Don’t forget that the toys are more important than the toons: Granted, summer kiddie matinees are one of Hollywood’s most profitable traditions. But Sony still lost $50 mil on its underperforming Surf’s Up animated pic this summer. Then again, Pixar films have lost their magic and each keeps earning less than the previous one. At least last summer’s Cars was a merchandising bonanza. Not so with this summer’s Ratatouille because even Disney can't market a kitchen rat. I still don’t understand why Remy wasn’t transformed into Lucy Lapin or Gary Grenouille.

Don’t expect niche audience pics to gross over $200 mil: One of the reasons so many tentpoles did so well this summer is that they appealed simultaneously to several generations of moviegoers. Of course, wide demos went to see Spidey 3 and Pirates 3 and Shrek The Third. But also Transformers whose toys and toons were first introduced back in 1984. So not only did today’s tykes, tweens and teens want to see the bots battle, but so did guys in their 20s and 30s and 40s for whom nostalgia was the big draw.

Don’t bank on stale mythologies: Just as 300 breathed new life into tiresome toga tales, so did Pirates of the Caribbean provide a fresh take on what long hair, eye makeup and nice jewelry can do for a guy at sea. This summer’s handful of original pics helped reinvent the anti-hero, whether robots or Seth Rogan or EPA head Russ Cargill. Of course, I keep waiting in vain for comic book films to flop, but then I don’t do geek.

Don’t think the public wants torture porn: Gore icon Eli Roth is blaming piracy and critics for his Hostel Part II’s lousy box office, warning that the R-rated horror film is in serious jeopardy. But he got it all wrong even before the summer started when he wished in interviews that "hopefully we'll get to a point where there are absolutely no restrictions on any kind of violence in movies”. Horror flicks are alive and well as long as they don’t venture into torture porn hell. Problem is, Hollywood filmmakers are such an inbred bunch that they make films more for each other than for the audience so they always want to push the boundaries set by their rivals. In the case of torture porn, don’t. It’s icky.

Don’t believe in summer counterprogramming: The chances were nil that an adult-oriented downer movie like A Mighty Heart could do well, especially when sexy star Angelina Jolie dresses down and dons a horrible wig, if the alternatives at the megaplex are super robots, super heroes and super sperm. Talk about idiocy. Release those small, important, politically-themed Oscar hopeful films in the fall.

Don’t make chick flicks that even chicks won’t go to see: When I saw the ads for Evening and Georgia Rule and No Reservations and Lucky You, I gagged. Hey, I love a good romance,. But don’t stretch credulity and cast a real-life glamour gal like Catherine Zeta-Jones as a working single mother with boyfriend problems.

Don’t make movies starring Lindsay Lohan: This summer provided proof her act has worn thin. Moviegoers gave an "F" to Lindsay Lohan's horror flick I Know Who Killed Me. And 70-year-old Jane Fonda beat the 20-year-old head-to-head at the box office while starring in the same movie when exit polls showed 53% of the audience for Georgia Rule went to see Jane Fonda (even though she was channeling her father Henry), and only 34% went to see Lindsay Lohan (whose price quote sank by half after this summer).

Don’t make commercial movies with Nicole Kidman: When John Cusack can open a horror film (1408), and Nicole can’t (The Invasion), this actress has officially become box office poison. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Nicole should be paying film companies to hire her, not the other way around. I don’t care if she can act: she’s the female equivalent of Sean Penn. Let her finance her own films from now on.

Don’t think you can skate with a lousy trailer: Ads will always be the bedrock of a movie’s marketing campaign, and they’ve never been more important because of all the competition and clutter. Rush Hour 3 and I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry would have been stillborn had it not been for summer trailers funnier than the pics themselves. Stardust and Balls of Fury had terrible trailers and were flops at the box office.

Don’t forget that Judd Apatow is officially now a mogul: More bowing and scraping to him is therefore called for. And a bigger bonus than the $1 mil Universal forked over. I hear Amy Pascal is serious about having Sony buy him his own country.

Don’t expect the international box office to save Hollywood summers forever: Yeah, French and Russian TV sucks worse than NBC. But one of these days, and probably sooner rather than later, entertainment choices in Bolivia and Bahrain will become as myriad as those in the U.S., and foreigners will find better ways to amuse themselves than sitting through American crap like Daddy Day Camp.

The Hollywood candidate is going to announce his candidacy for U.S. President on a Hollywood show. And he's a Republican. Go figure. I'll have a lot more to say about this, but for now know that Law & Order's Fred Thompson will begin his White House bid Wednesday night on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno after skipping a Republican debate in New Hampshire. His campaign manager is telling new outlets that “it makes a lot of sense” for Thompson to appear on Leno instead of at the GOP debate because the candidate will reach “everyday normal Americans who don’t live in the 202 area code”. Nice scoop for Leno. But don't let Fred off the hook, Jay. Among other questions, ask him how he's going to run the country if his campaign is in turmoil (three communications directors already) before it even officially begins.

Meanwhile, David Letterman had on Hillary Clinton last week and Bill Clinton Tuesday night. The Hillary interview was a snooze. But Dave asked Bill if he could be Hill's vice president. Bill, who's hawking a new book on global charity, said: "I just don’t believe it’s consistent with the spirit of the Constitution for someone who’s been President twice to be elected Vice President. I don’t think it’s right and I wouldn’t want to do that. I’d want to do whatever I could do to be of highest and best use for her, but there are lots of wonderful people out there, including all the people that are running this time, [who] would be good Vice Presidents.”

1. Finke/LA Weekly: Does Mr. Middle-Of-The-Road Lean Left?
2. Finke/LA Weekly: Dave The Brave

 

On the second anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina tragedy, film director Spike Lee and CNN special correspondent Soledad O’Brien present "Children Of The Storm" tonight on the all-news channel. The duo gave cameras to 11 New Orleans area students back in January to record their lives in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Spike told the kids to "just go out and shoot, tape is cheap." Lee, of course, did the Katrina documentary When The Levees Broke. Here's part of the column I wrote that Labor Day weekend, They Shoot News Anchors: Part II:

 "For the first 120 hours after Hurricane Katrina, TV journalists were let off their leashes by their mogul owners, the result of a rare conjoining of flawless timing (summer’s biggest vacation week) and foulest tragedy (America’s worst natural disaster). All of a sudden, broadcasters narrated disturbing images of the poor, the minority, the aged, the sick and the dead, and discussed complex issues like poverty, race, class, infirmity and ecology that never make it on the air in this swift-boat / anti-gay-marriage / Michael Jackson media-sideshow era. So began a perfect storm of controversy. Contrary to the scripture so often quoted in these areas of Louisiana and Mississippi, the TV newscasters knew the truth, but the truth did not set them free. Because once the crisis point had passed, most TV journalists went back to business-as-usual, their choke chains yanked by no-longer-inattentive parent-company bosses who, fearful of fallout, decided yet again to sacrifice community need for corporate greed."

I felt that the future held the real test of pathos vs. profit: whether the TV newscasters would spend the fresh reservoir of truth and trust they had earned with the public to start snarling at the proliferation of lies and the lying liars who tell them not just about the glacial pace of rebuilding of New Orleans but on other issues as well. Now we know that the TV journos flunked that exam, as most left the Katrina story to go about Big Media's business as usual, choke chain intact. The only difference is that now, instead of Michael Jackson, they're spending hours upon hours on Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan.

I just heard that Universal won the negotiations and acquired (not just optioned) The New York Times No. 1 non-fiction bestseller Lone Survivor and Navy Seal author Marcus Luttrell's underlying life rights for seven figures. (I hear $2 million upfront, plus 5% against adjusted gross, as well as other payments.) This follows a frenzied Hollywood bidding war that included Sony, Warner and DreamWorks (which really wanted the book for Steven Spielberg and Michael Bay). I'm told that Barry Spikings brought the project to Akiva Goldsman, who in turn took it to Pete Berg. Putting Spikings and Goldsman on as producers, Uni bought the book for Berg who'll be writing and directing this as his next project for his Film 44 production company. He, of course, is the director of the upcoming The Kingdom about a team of U.S. government agents sent to investigate the bombing of an American facility in the Middle East. Uni made that pic as well as United 93; that helmer Paul Greengrass is adapting Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book about the Green Zone in Baghdad, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, for the studio as well. How interesting that liberal Hollywood was so hot for this latest patriotic tell-all by a proud conservative. Book agent Ed Victor and Hollywood lawyer Alan U. Schwartz of Greenberg Traurig brokered the Lone Survivor deal. This seems to be another in what is a growing trend in the movie business to bring events about post-9/11, Iraq/Afghanistan and the troops into the plots of its pics. See my previous: Patriotic War Book Heats Up Hollywood

HBO must be out of its mind okaying Jay Roach to replace ailing Sydney Pollack at the helm of its important political docudrama Recount that revisits one of the most dramatic events in U.S. history. The turmoil in Florida over hanging chads that delayed the 2000 presidential election result is one of those hot button issues that still riles both political parties. You can bet pundits will put the movie under even more of a microscope now, especially since it comes out during the 2008 presidential race. That's because slotting in a lightweight comedy director/producer like Roach (Austin Powers, Meet The Parents, Borat) is just wrong on so many levels. For instance, Roach helped exec-produce the reality series American Candidate, which promised to find a "people's candidate" to run in the November 2004 race for the White House. First it was jettisoned by FX, then it aired on Showtime and received rotten reviews and absolutely no buzz whatsoever. Yeah, that's a big recommendation. Now Roach is paired on Recount with first time screenwriter Danny Strong, an actor who played sidekick roles in Gilmore Girls and Buffy The Vampire Slayer and then decided to pen a script about an American political crisis. No, I'm not kidding: this project isn't even based on one of the many good nonfiction books about Gore vs Bush. It's as if HBO has a death wish and is virtually asking pundits to critically kill Recount before it even airs. Granted, Pollack hasn't made a good movie in some time, but Recount was right up his alley. And, because of Strong's newbie status, HBO was relying on Oscar-winner Pollack's decades of bonafides to give the telepic credibility. News reports said Pollack and Strong this summer were revising the first draft together and visiting Florida to gather more material. Now Pollack will only be exec-producing along with Paula Weinstein. Whether even these two Hollywood vets can keep the film from veering off-course, from a suspenseful drama to a heavyhanded parody, remains doubtful. Already the project is tainted: windbag HBO Films prez Colin Callendar disingenuously announced from the start that the telepic would have no political agenda and take no sides. Who's he kidding? Both Pollack and Weinstein are well-known liberal activists. Besides, what's so wrong with simply admitting Recount's progressive viewpoint? Now, with the addition of Roach, Callendar seems to be guaranteeing the film won't be taken seriously. I've already been critical of recent HBO executive suite moves, but now I'm starting to think the people in charge of the pay channel can't do anything right anymore. Nor am I the only one: last month, the usually docile Television Critics Association gave HBO execs a hard time over other recent lousy programming decisions as well.

Borrowing from Harry Potter, this video parody titled "Rovemort And The Sorcerer's Stonewall" and starring Jason Alexander was released today by the Campaign For America's Future. I wish I could say it was clever or fun, but it's so heavy-handed about Rush Limbaugh, Brit Hume, Trent Lott, Mitch McConnell, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Dubya that even a liberal like me finds it off-putting. (Surely Hollywood can help progressives put together more subtle and arresting footage than this!) The video is part of a national campaign to "expose the right's strategy of obstructing reform while attacking the 'do-nothing [Democrat-controlled] Congress'", timed to the YearlyKos conference in Chicago, and legislators on Capitol Hill preparing to return to their districts for the summer recess.

Last night Michael Moore was again a guest on The Tonight Show and announced that he's been subpoenaed by the Bush administration investigating his filming trip to Cuba for his health care documentary Sicko. (Hey, I said the director was a marketing genius.) "I haven't even told my own family yet." Moore began, "I was just informed when I was back there with Jay that the Bush administration has now issued a subpoena for me." Moore took 9/11 rescue workers with him to "Guantanamo Bay because I heard the Al Qaeda terrorists we have in the camps there, detained, are receiving free dental, medical, eye care, the whole deal, and our own 9/11 Ground Zero rescue workers can't get that in New York City." Moore said that, as a result, the film's producer The Weinstein Company will be donating 11% of its portion of Sicko's box office from August 11 (a Saturday) to "help these workers and the other workers who need help". Frankly, I find it amazing how willing the Bush administration has been to help market Moore's movie when presumably their real objective seems to be to stifle Moore and his movie. But we all know that, without this continuing controversy surrounding the Cuba trip, Moore wouldn't be able to make news like this everytime he goes on national television.

Moore also repeated on national TV something that The Weinstein Co has confirmed to me: that Harvey Weinstein asked him to cut the Sicko segment on Hillary Clinton because he's a big supporter of her presidential campaign. She "did something very courageous 14 years ago, saying all American's should be covered. She got beat up badly for it. Now she's the second-largest recipient of health care industry money in the U.S. Senate," Moore said. "For the months leading up to the release of the film, he kept calling me every day saying, 'I want you to take that scene out of the film, attacking Hillary.' I said, 'I'm not attacking her, I'm just telling the truth.'" The segment stayed in.

Given how protective he is of his public image, it's far from surprising that Steven Spielberg is increasingly public about his behind-the-scenes role to convince the Chinese government to influence its largest oil supplier Sudan to stop the Darfur genocide. "We're making our voice heard," Spielberg's political adviser Andy Spahn told me today. He confirmed that they expect a Chinese statement on the issue in the next weeks.

But Spahn denied an ABC News website article today claiming Spielberg is thinking of quitting his post as an unpaid artistic adviser to the 2008 Beijing Olympics in response to pressure from Darfur actrivists. "I made no reference to the Olympics," Spahn told me. As Spahn explains it, "We are doing what we can to engage the Chinese. We'll made a decision how productive those efforts are in the very near future." As to Spielberg continuing his work with the Beijing Olympics, "we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. We'll look at all our options if that path doesn't prove to be productive."

Spahn tells me that Speilberg has been consulting with Darfur activists "every step of the way" of both the crisis and his ongoing private back-and-forth dialogue with the Chinese. "I would say we've been in touch with every major organization engaged in this issue as well as leading academics and individuals guiding these organizations. And, in Hollywood, we've been in regular touch with George Clooney and Don Cheadle." (But not Mia Farrow, who recently blindsided Spielberg with public criticism of him on the China/Darfur issue.) The result, says Spahn, is that "we are doing what we can to engage the Chinese on this issue. No one can tell us what the best way to use our influence is today, assuming we have some influence. But we're working our way through it and attempting to determine how we can make the greatest contribution to ending the genocide."

Spahn points to "what some say has been some movement there" and cited news reports saying Chinese ministers visited Sudan after Chinese President Hu Jintao received Spielberg's open letter on Darfur. ("I am writing you not as one of the overseas artistic advisors to the Olympic Ceremonies, but as a private citizen who has made a personal commitment to do all I can to oppose genocide. Accordingly, I add my voice to those who ask that China change its policy toward Sudan and pressure the Sudanese government to accept the entrance of United Nations peacekeepers to protect the victims of genocide in Darfur." ) But Spahn draws no direct correlation between the two events.

Spielberg's missive followed Farrow publicly accusing the director of complicity by not using his prominence and position to pressure the Chinese government to change course. "Is Mr. Spielberg, who in 1994 founded the Shoah Foundation to record the testimony of survivors of the holocaust, aware that China is bankrolling Darfur's genocide?" Farrow and her son Ronan wrote in a March Wall Street Journal editorial. "Does Mr. Spielberg really want to go down in history as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games."

Spahn would only characterize Farrow's position as "extreme".

This isn't exactly a surprise because Disney had been moving towards this since 2004 and even earlier when Joe Roth ran the movie division. But Disney CEO Bob Iger today issues a dramatic apology and promise to Congress about depicting smoking in Disney-breanded movies. Here's what's interesting: my pal Julia Boorstin at CNBC's Media Money blog reports that Disney made this news public not in Hollywood, but on the national stage. Iger declared his company's new commitment in a letter to U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass), who last month held a congressional hearing on smoking in the media and asked media companies to join the anti-smoking effort. This became a hot button issue this year when the AMA urged the MPAA to give movies with smoking an "R" rating. Now the MPAA says it considers all smoking (not just underage puffing), and especially pervasive and glamorized smoking, in its rating system. Here's the studio's corporate announcement today nonetheless:

The Walt Disney Company today made a commitment to U.S. Representative Edward J. Markey (D-MA), Chairman of the House Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee, that it will discourage depictions of cigarette smoking in its films and will place an anti-smoking PSA on DVD’s of any future film that does depict smoking.  Further, Disney will work with theater owners to encourage the exhibition of an anti-smoking PSA before the theatrical exhibition of any such film.

In a letter sent to Representative Markey today, Disney President and CEO Robert A. Iger said, “The Walt Disney Company shares your concern regarding deaths due to cigarette smoking. We discourage depictions of cigarette smoking in Disney, Touchstone and Miramax films.  In particular, we expect that depictions of cigarette smoking in future Disney branded films will be non-existent. In response to your suggestion, our Company will place an anti-smoking PSA on DVD's of any future film that does depict cigarette smoking.”

“Disney’s decision to take a stand against smoking is groundbreaking and I commend CEO Bob Iger for this important commitment.  Now it’s time for other media companies to similarly kick the habit and follow Disney’s lead,” said Representative Markey.

According to the American Lung Association, cigarette smoking has been identified as the most important source of preventable morbidity and premature mortality worldwide. Smoking-related diseases claim an estimated 438,000 American lives each year and approximately 90 percent of smokers begin smoking before the age of 21.