“GCC Film Edited Before Screened” (1/23) To the Editor, I write this letter as an alumnus (class of 1978) in the entertainment business who has been in a dozen or so films and who has produced even more. I’ve had to deal with issues of nudity, with violence, even with language, over and over again, from various sides of each at different times. I had to pull my pants down and “moon” once in Revenge of the Nerds, I mowed down hundreds of Vietnamese soldiers with an M60 from a helicopter while screaming “Git some!” in an unwatchable movie that doesn’t deserve to be named, and in later years I’ve had to negotiate a nudity rider with Angelina Jolie’s manager, with what she would and would not have shown and how said parts would be filmed. I also write as a theater producer and active supporter of a group of local high school theater students whose play was cancelled in my Connecticut town last year (I helped get the issue to the New York Times, and in front of various other New York producers who gave the show a home and an even wider audience). I have now both watched Michael Kontaxis’ film and read Timothy Ghosh’s article about the “editing” it received at various partys’ urging, and I must say that I am alarmed for the Andover community on a number of levels. I don’t want to weigh in the merits of the film one way or another beyond the very clever title, “Live Green or Die Hard,” as that’s between the director and his teacher, as well as the audience he intends (or intended) to see it. What alarms me is that, from what I gather (and I am hundreds of miles away, and not in contact with anyone there on any regular basis), the decision to edit the film and take out the shooting scenes seems to have been complacently accepted without any stir. I am a parent of two boys in high school, both of whom have several friends now at Andover, my niece is a recent graduate (and one time news editor of The Phillipian), and there’s nothing that I understand and empathize with more than valuing the safety of kids this age who are under assault from so many sides; so I fully understand the desire to avoid anything that promotes the idea of student on student violence. But so too do I see the need for an open airing of such concerns, and an EQUAL valuing of freedom of expression. Some of the quotations used in the Ghosh article and attributed to Cynthia Efinger smacked less of “editing” than “censorship,” and I was so taken aback not only by the fact that they were being acted upon, but that the director himself seemed to have been cowed into submission on the subject. Just because the specter of Columbine is so loaded (forgive the two allusions to the film), and so painful, it should not allow a hysterical and overzealous response to be camouflaged as assiduously guarding the safety and welfare of the students —at least without questioning to what degree it simultaneously endangers those same student’s intellects through an act of censorship. What alarms me most is that it seems to be an enormous missed opportunity that the school and its staff, teachers, and students—collectively —were given to debate the matter. If this debate has been happening that’s terrific, ignore this letter entirely, but if it has not I would like to encourage it from afar to take place now. I would imagine many would rally to the support of Kontaxis’ right to show his film as it was originally intended. Others might say that the violence was employed in a too-sensationalist, perhaps even exploitative a manner. Still others would then defend it, saying it was done in the style of a “spoof” of many of the teen horror films that we parents so abhor —and done as well or better than many of them! But this kind of spirited debate should happen. Is there not some liberal—minded writer on The Phillipian staff who saw the similarities (in kind if not scale) to the questions debated over the last election about some of the policies brought to the fore during the Bush years, and how he and his administration defended them all by saying that while they may have effectively stripped various personal freedoms from us that they were only doing so for our own greater good, and safety? And isn’t there a more conservative thinker there who would take up that argument and say that in some cases the ends do indeed justify the means, and that a quick and relatively painless act of cutting a few million pixels from a film could possibly help save a life? THIS is the kind of public debate I would hope to see and hear coming from a school like Andover and a paper like The Phillipian! Why isn’t the debate team scheduling such an event, open to the public? My own belief is that the Andover community should have been able to see the entire film as intended, and then debate its merits. But that’s just one person’s thoughts. My overarching question is “where IS the debate? Have our children been so lulled into acceptance of rules and regulations and giving up their power that they listlessly stand by without acting, or at least actively questioning authority?” I certainly hope not. Before writing this letter I spoke with Ms. Efinger, and she said that she’d been misquoted, that she only referred to someone else who called the film “Columbine like,” and that she never called the bare shoulders of the girl in the shower “inappropriate,” and I must say that it calmed me down quite a bit. It’s one thing for a film festival with specific criteria to object to a film, but quite another for a school to take it upon themselves to demand such edits. And while I can easily understand questioning the way violence is used in this particular film — it’s something everyone with a brain in my business frets over every time a script has violent sequences!—I’m only calling for the matter to be more fully debated. However, calling a scene of a pretty girl (full disclosure here: I know both her and her family, and think the world of all of them!) in a shower whose… oh my god… SHOULDERS were bare “inappropriate” to me clearly crosses the line from genuine concern to prudishness or just plain silliness. Questioning whether seeing a girl’s bare shoulders in a shower is “appropriate” or not is especially galling when the scene in question was so obviously the work of a young filmmaker just paying earnest homage to a classic scene he’d no doubt studied in film class. Thus, I was very relieved and glad to learn that Ms. Efinger said that she never so questioned it, as it truly would have been indefensible in my opinion. The decision to press for edits to the violence, on the other hand, while certainly defensible, is a wonderful teaching opportunity that I hope some terrific PA thinkers take on with gusto. Let the debate begin, and have some fun with it!! Respectfully, Matt Salinger ’78 President, New Moon Productions, Inc Managing Director, Film Finances Connecticut, LLC Editor’s Note: Upon receiving this letter, The Phillipian carefully reviewed its interview notes. We stand by the quotes attributed to Cynthia Efinger referring to the film as “Columbine-like” and her assertion in the article that she found the shower scene inappropriate. The Phillipian has not been asked to run a correction or clarification.
