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Today’s edition is by Sonny Bunch, culture editor at The Bulwark, host of podcasts Across the Movie Aisle and The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood, and a Washington Post contributing columnist
If there’s a key quote to understanding the recent history of China-Hollywood relations, it’s this: “The bad news is that the film was made; the good news is that nobody watched it. Here I want to apologize, and in the future we should prevent this sort of thing, which insults our friends, from happening.”
This is what former Disney CEO Michael Eisner said to Chinese premier Zhu Rongji in 1998 for his studio having perpetrated the crime of releasing Martin Scorsese’s masterful film, Kundun. The quote is a Rosetta Stone for unlocking much of the angst in the world of filmmaking — Eisner wasn’t wrong about the total viewership of Kundun and the movie business would shift in the coming years toward prizing the sort of billion-dollar-blockbusters that, as Scorsese memorably put it, better resemble theme park rides than works of art—but for our purposes here, it is pretty precise shorthand for the state of affairs between Hollywood and China.
As PEN America noted in their comprehensive study of the impact both Chinese censorship and Hollywood self-censorship have had on the film business, the year of Kundun’s release, 1997, was a highwater mark of sorts for films criticizing the Middle Kingdom. In addition to Scorsese’s film, we saw the release of Brad Pitt’s Seven Years in Tibet and Richard Gere starred in Red Corner. All three films irked the Chinese Communist Party, and the response was swift: studios, producers, and stars all found themselves blacklisted as a result. When a producer joked with Variety at the end of last year that “they might finally cast Richard Gere” if relationships between Hollywood and China permanently frayed, it was only funny because it is true.
Gere, for his part, has a decent sense of humor about all this: “I’m not interested in playing the wizened Jedi in your tentpole,” he told Tatiana Siegel back in 2017. But in an industry where people love to pat themselves on the back for, say, bravely standing together with all their colleagues while denouncing Donald Trump and fearing no meaningful repercussions for it, Gere’s decision to put principle before profit is rare. One of the few other examples I can think of off the top of my head is Quentin Tarantino’s refusal to re-edit Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood at the behest of China, a refusal supported by Sony chief Tom Rothman despite the millions it would cost the studio.
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Also on The Ankler:
Janice Min introduces the newest Ankler spin-off: The Optionist , a new newsletter about available intellectual property for the entertainment community that will debut on Friday, January 21. For a limited time, you can sample the newsletter for free here
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ESG Report: Uh-oh, Streaming Musicals Keep Bombing Netflix’s Tick, Tick…Boom! from Lin-Manuel Miranda was NOT another Hamilton — and the problems kept mounting from there for the category
Richard Rushfield on Paramount’s ‘Yellowstone’ debacle, pique Pixar under Bob II, and…a 100 percent unverified rumor too good not to share
The Ankler Hot Seat Podcast: Every Sensitive Topic James Franco, the Globes, #MeToo and representation in Hollywood. Please follow us on Apple Podcasts. Coming up this week: four days of Sundance 2022 episodes!
Jeff Sneider on James Franco’s Would-Be Comeback Execs react!
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