[Home]  [Headlines]  [Latest Articles]  [Latest Comments]  [Post]  [Sign-in]  [Mail]  [Setup]  [Help] 

Status: Not Logged In; Sign In

‘We were totally betrayed’ – 500 migrants for tiny German village of 600 will nearly double population

Hezbollah tactics, weapons stall Israeli advance

President Kennedy's Final Address to the United Nations General Assembly

RFK Jr. Explains Plan For Reforming The CIA

Harris Campaign Recruits Foreign Volunteers, Tells Noncitizens How To Skirt Donation Rules

Lame Yuck! With Nothing To Lose, Biden Goes On Baby-Mouthing Spree At White House Halloween Party

The Fastest Way To Reverse A Fatty Liver Naturally | Dr. William Li

CIA Advisor Warns: This is the beginning of the 2025 Civil War

When Evil Is Allowed In, Evil Stays

US layoffs rose 42% in three years, reaching 1.83M in September.

Iran Will Carry Out 'Definitive, Painful' Retaliatory Strike, Likely Before Election: CNN

How 2024 Election Will Lead To Second Civil War

Tulsi Gabbard Drops a Killer Trump Ad

Israel Genocide Tracker Account Sparks 'Panic' Among Israeli Soldiers

Battleground Voting Shift: Hispanic Voters Now Driven by Issues, Not Party Lines

North Carolina Appeals Court Rules to Allow Voters Who have Never Lived in the U.S. To Vote in State Elections

The 5 Tiers of Stolen Elections (Dems already did 1 & 2)

A Palestinian Family Goes to Pick Up Olives. It Ends in an Execution by Israeli Soldiers

Israel Suffers A Multimillion Dollar Economic SUCKER PUNCH!

The Babylon Bee Endorses Communist Harris

Nosy NY Times Journos Uncover Elon Musk's Secret Luxury Compound In Austin

A 20% surge in gov't spending inflates the national debt, inflation, and interest rates, now reaching 10% of GDP

MI EARLY VOTE SHOCKER! An Excess of 125,428 Votes Cast!

DMSO is the ivermectin for strokes and neurological damage

The Curious Case Of Ariane Tabatabai

Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Projects Are Foundering In Five-Eye Nations. What Gives?

Pennsylvania News Station Apologizes For Showing Presidential Election 'Results'

Feminist Author, Former Advisor to Al Gore's Campaign, and Noted Intellectual Naomi Wolf Endorses Donald Trump for President!

US Supreme Court Lets Virginia Purge Noncitizens From Voter Rolls

8 Alarming Signs: US Economy Poised for a Hard Landing


Miscellaneous
See other Miscellaneous Articles

Title: It’s Red Joke vs. Blue Joke in ‘The Hunt’
Source: The Wall Street Journal
URL Source: [None]
Published: Mar 10, 2020
Author: Ellen Gamerman
Post Date: 2020-03-10 15:58:37 by Ada
Keywords: None
Views: 300
Comments: 3

We asked the director to break down the jokes in the controversial new movie out this Friday

In the new movie “The Hunt,” the blood runs red and blue.

The action thriller, a bombastic satire about liberal “elites” making a sport of trying to kill a dozen conservative “deplorables,” attempts to expose how red-state and blue-state Americans have demonized each other. It also calls itself a farce, with violence so extreme it borders on cartoon—like when a character is not only skewered by spikes but blown in half, too.

“What if the craziest conspiracy theories that you would think about another group of people were true?” asks director Craig Zobel. “Right now, it feels like what maybe the healthiest thing we could do would be to start to laugh at this stuff a little bit.”

The film opens in theaters on Friday. Universal Pictures canceled the original September 2019 debut in the wake of last summer’s mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas. The film prompted an anti-Hollywood broadside from President Trump, who accused the movie’s creators of trying to create chaos. WSJ Newsletter What's News

A digest of the day's most important news to watch, delivered to your inbox. Sign up

Nothing about “The Hunt” has changed since then except the marketing. Instead of a straightforward horror movie, the studio now is pushing it as comic social commentary. Scathing quotes about its divisiveness fill the movie poster—the studio’s signal that the film’s premise is not meant to be taken seriously and viewers should judge the result for themselves.

In the film, rich liberals have abducted a group of unsophisticated conservatives who believe in outlandish conspiracy theories and own lots of guns. The hostages are brought to a remote area and given weapons to defend themselves, but most don’t stand a chance.

A hostage named Crystal (Betty Gilpin) is smarter than everybody. She takes on the hunt’s ringleader Athena (Hilary Swank), who opposes cultural appropriation and gendered language but is OK with using a high heel to gouge out a stranger’s eyeball.

With its culture-war stereotypes, the movie attempts to make fun of everyone, left and right. The only neutral party is a pink pig. Mr. Zobel breaks down a few of his choice takedowns in this edited conversation. Warning: We’re about to spoil three jokes. Hilary Swank plays Athena, left, a ruthless “liberal” hunting people like Ms. Gilpin’s Crystal. Photo: UNIVERSAL STUDIOS Butt of the joke: Blue states

A liberal couple pose as proprietors of a mom-and-pop gas station and store in small-town Arkansas. Certain concession items in the shop are poisoned. The husband grabs a soda from a refrigerated case, momentarily forgetting it might be deadly. His wife screams at him to stop, frantic. He spits out the drink, thinking it must be tainted. “There are 43 grams of sugar in that soda,” she says.

Mr. Zobel: “The gas station is where the premise of the movie is in its most sharp relief. In a world where I know what the Hollywood elite would say, I definitely don’t feel worried about the humor that we can aim at ourselves. I wasn’t necessarily holding back in the other direction as much as just not finding that to be really as funny. I have seen enough hillbilly stereotypes. With the elites, there were new jokes there.” Director Craig Zobel with crew members on the set of ‘The Hunt.’ Photo: UNIVERSAL STUDIOS Butt of the joke: Red states

Crystal and another hostage jump on a train, where they meet a group of refugees hiding in the same boxcar. Crystal’s fellow hostage accuses the refugees of being paid crisis actors to further a liberal immigration agenda. He wants them rounded up.

Mr. Zobel: “In the initial conversations about the story we were talking about internet conspiracy theorists and that was where we found the humor. Oftentimes we would escalate the joke, looking at the characters’ assumptions about other characters and pushing those beats further. Whenever it felt judgmental it wasn’t funny, so we would throw that away and go toward the direction that would make sure it was absurd. I was really trying to be inclusive of making fun of everyone instead of critiquing a particular idea.” Butt of the joke: America

Crystal storms the bunker where the captors are holed up. A liberal in a get-up fit for a British fox hunt suffers an arrow to the stomach. Crystal aims her gun to finish the job, but another hostage tells her not to shoot because the target is a woman. Crystal stops, asks the bleeding liberal if she thinks women should be treated differently than men. Trapped in her own belief system, the woman replies that they should not. Crystal pulls the trigger.

Mr. Zobel: “That’s a purple joke because it starts with everyone rolling their eyes at a man saying the liberal should be spared because she’s a woman. That’s a big, chauvinist point of view, right? Then the liberal on the floor, even when faced with a life-or-death choice, she still rolls her eyes and scoffs at the chauvinism. It’s funnier the more stuck in your beliefs you are.”

Write to Ellen Gamerman at ellen.gamerman@wsj.com

Post Comment   Private Reply   Ignore Thread  


TopPage UpFull ThreadPage DownBottom/Latest

Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 2.

#2. To: Ada (#0)

a bombastic satire about liberal “elites” making a sport of trying to kill a dozen conservative “deplorables,”

BTP Holdings  posted on  2020-03-10   20:05:27 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


Replies to Comment # 2.

        There are no replies to Comment # 2.


End Trace Mode for Comment # 2.

TopPage UpFull ThreadPage DownBottom/Latest


[Home]  [Headlines]  [Latest Articles]  [Latest Comments]  [Post]  [Sign-in]  [Mail]  [Setup]  [Help]