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| Song Kang-ho, in a poster for Bong Joon-ho's Snowpiercer. |
So, I don�t want to unduly alarm anyone, but noted arch-philistine Harvey Weinstein has declared his intention to cut twenty minutes from Bong Joon-ho�s English language debut, Snowpiercer. When we last heard from Weinstein, he had cut ten minutes from Chen Kaige�s Farewell, My Concubine and thirty minutes from Wisit Sasanatieng�s Tears of the Black Tiger. He did these things because he thinks Americans are idiots. He is apparently bringing a similar logic to bear on Bong�s latest film. According to MUBI�s blog, The Notebook, �[t]he Weinstein Company people have told Bong that their aim is to make sure the film �will be understood by audiences in Iowa [�] and Oklahoma.� So, to recap, if you live in Iowa or Oklahoma, Harvey Weinstein thinks you�re an idiot. How do you feel about that? Isn�t that offensive? Don�t you want to see the unabridged version of Snowpiercer, if only to spite Weinstein?
God, why do people let the Weinstein Company do this? It�s not like this is coming out of left field, after all. Weinstein is a notorious butcher of other people�s films. Or, as I�ve asked in previous posts, why does Weinstein produce or buy the rights to movies that he doesn�t think are marketable? If you don�t want the �product,� leave it to a distributor who does. I�m sure IFC or Fortissimo or Strand or any number of non-philistine distributors would be happy to have Bong�s film. Sigh, but could they afford it? It all comes down to money and the Weinstein Company, for all its mishandling of Asian titles, has a lot of it.
This all raises the question: do I plan to see Snowpiercer, given what Weinstein is going to do to it? I have been eagerly following the English-language releases of several Korean directors this year (as I�ve discussed in several previous posts) and it was certainly my intention to see Snowpiercerin theaters, as I did with Park Chan-wook�s Stoker(and admittedly, I did not see Kim Ji-woon�s The Last Stand in theaters, because I was too embarrassed to go out and publicly watch a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Johnnie Knoxville on the poster, but that�s another matter). I could wait to see Snowpiercer on DVD, where it would hopefully be presented in unabridged form, but there�s no guarantee that that will happen. If I want to see any of the movie at all, I may have to see it in the Weinstein version, just as I had to bite the bullet and watch the abridged version of Na Hong-jin�s The Yellow Sea, as the people at Fox Lorber had done everything in their power to keep the unabridged version out of the United States.
What�s especially sad is that if Weinstein fucks up Snowpierceregregiously enough, it could tank at the box office or with the critics, which could lead some people to see Weinstein as having been justified in his skepticism of Bong�s film. Maybe I should see it out of support for Bong (this will, after all, be his first feature film release since 2009�s excellent Mother)? Or then does Weinstein win? Meh, we�ll see what happens when the film comes out. I�ll probably cave like I did with The Yellow Sea and watch it despite my misgivings.
