Mega-producer Harvey Weinstein’s film resume is chockablock with films attacking the Catholic Church, yet he fails to critique a strain of Islam responsible for thousands of deaths across the globe.
So says Kyle Smith, feisty film critic for The New York Post in a new editorial responding to Weinstein’s full-page ad denouncing one of Smith’s reviews.
The movie in question is Philomena, a film which slams the Church while taking a swipe or two at the GOP for its treatment of gay party members. None of this is particularly new for Hollywood, an industry which feeds on bashing both Catholicism and conservatism.
The new wrinkle here is Weinstein’s ad denouncing a single critic for daring to dislike his product–and calling out its biases in print. It’s hard to recall a similar assault on a movie critic for disagreeing with his or her peers.
Smith fired back from the pages of The New York Post today, blasting Weinstein for hitting safe targets with his films.
Harvey Weinstein’s resume of anti-Catholic movies includes “The Magdalene Sisters” (2002), “The Butcher Boy” (1998) and “Priest” (1995). If only for the sake of a change of pace, why not be really “transgressive” and “edgy” and “groundbreaking” and all the other things Hollywood people tell themselves they are and poke a sharp stick at Islam? Where’s Harvey’s satirical comedy about Mohammed or the one about a child-molesting imam? Where’s his nine-part HBO series based on “The Satanic Verses?
The only question left, perhaps, is if other film critics will rally to Smith’s side or let the bullying tactics of a powerful Hollywood producer stand unchallenged.
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