Society of Violence & Violent Movies – Hollywood Sits Disillusioned

By Elizabeth Nelson

Hollywood loves to trumpet the Obama cry, “it’s not my fault,” when

the media and parents ask them, “don’t you take any responsibility for the violence in America, by the violent movies you write, produce and put before us on TV and on the silver screen?”

 

Director James DeMonaco and star Frank Grillo are the perfect examples of how disillusioned and disconnected the unaccountable liberal Hollywood really is, especially as they discuss the making of The Purge: Anarchy (this is a sequel to The Purge), and the reason for the archaic, over the top, violence in it.


A little Background for those who have yet to experience the “joys” of The Purge, you have 12 hours of no laws, no cops and no retribution. All crime is legal, so you can do whatever your evil heart desires, murder, rape and steal anyone and anything you wish with no threat of legal recourse, and we wonder why our Country is in the mess we’re in?


When The Purge opened last summer, it stunned pundits and audiences alike when it grossed a staggering $34 million on its opening weekend. Even more stunning is that the film was made on a $3 million budget. It went on to take in nearly $90 million worldwide and promised more purging to come. Then again, that might have been par for the course in a movie that looked to drive right to the center of a culture obsessed with (gun) violence and with economic differences ever growing.

Given what’s going on in America right now, do you have any worries that this movie might be considered hard to watch? Do you feel a sense of responsibility at all about the [violence] in this movie?

James DeMonaco: I think it’s a valid question about what’s going on. I mean, the movie was born for me out of my fear of violence of what I saw in the news in America. So, it’s all my fears that went into the film. I think that’s where horror and thrillers come from. That actual fear. I have a fear of guns and violence, so it was born from that, completely.

I don’t think, personally, movies lead to people killing anyone. I think what leads to someone killing someone is so complex—and the rest of the world sees exactly the same movies we see, and we don’t see what’s happening in the rest of the world as what’s happening here. So, I don’t feel that responsibility. I remember hearing Quentin [Tarantino] last year about Django after the [Sandy Hook] shootings. I thought he had a very [good answer]. It’s almost giving movies too much credit. There’s so much that goes into whatever that moment is with someone picking up a gun.
 
If movies don’t “lead people to kill,” by programing the brain for violence, then porn doesn’t lead people to have sex thoughts or sexual addictions, and constantly consuming that vodka or preferred drink, won’t lead one to get drunk and become an alcoholic, if left unchecked.  Liberals don’t understand, a dangerous mind will take a movie, a magazine and a drink and turn it into a weapon.

After saying all that, and there are political ramifications on the film, I think that the film hopefully exists on just an intense thriller level, first and foremost. And if people then leave the theater saying, “We need to talk about violence in America.” If that’s a byproduct, and class relations, class warfare—I think it’s great for a movie to exist on two levels.

Frank Grillo: And at the end of the day, it’s a movie. It’s entertainment, and we as freethinking people decide what we want to see and don’t see. I’m a father of three; I’m not a violent person, and I don’t condone violence. It’s our responsibility as people, as parents, to control what’s going to affect us. And it’s a tough call where you’re going to draw a line.


I agree, the parents must share in the responsibility of what their children see, however this violent crap is also making its way onto our television sets, and when Hollyweird makes millions on their shoot-em-up movies, and then hypocritically stand on their thrones, behind their armed guards, shouting “Disarm America, Guns are Evil,” this idiotic drivel has to stop, or let them express their First Amendment Rights with Armed Guards, loaded with guns that only have rubber bullets in them, then see if they feel as safe as we would fee without the right to freely protect ourselves.

Are there things you won’t let your children see?

FG: Oh yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of things I won’t let them see. Xbox in my house is a good friend, and they play a lot of games, and I have three sons. One is seventeen, and one is six. So, there are games in the house for him—sometimes the six-year-old is, all of a sudden I hear, “bang-bang-bang.” And I’m like, “NO!” Does that mean he wants to go out and kill people? He understands it’s a game.


Mental health is the issue, not necessarily the violent aspect. We have to consider what mental health is in the country. And my kids aren’t mentally stable, so I have to take those games away from them! [Laughs] But it opens up a can of worms, as far as violence and the political questions, and there is no getting around it.

JM: And listen, unlike other movies that are very violent, if this movie makes people raise the questions, then I think that is a good thing.


Yet, Liberals think that “taking guns away” from the law abiding citizens, will make the problem go away, and our children will be safer, but I’ve already show you that Target became a target for armed robbers, when they went “respectfully” disarmed their shoppers, murder still happens in prison and we had 20 school shootings, including Columbine, during our last “assault weapons ban,” so obviously criminals don’t care, and the police can’t “protect us” from criminals, when we have no means of protecting ourselves from the evil and the mentally ill. 

Getting away from the responsibility, [The Purge: Anarchy] deals with violence as it satirizes American culture’s obsession with violence. How as a storyteller do you thread that needle between being a satirist and glorifying it?


We don’t have a gun problem; we have a mentally ill problem, that we see even Hollyweird refuses to address, so why can’t we make Violent Movies less attainable than guns, and stop feeding the mentally ill their quotient of visually violent stimulus, until they can get their pills and doctor visits? Violent movies aren’t a Constitutional Right.

JM: It is a very fine line, and it was very hard to find a balance on the first one. It took me two years to write that script. I was pushing it into almost like a Verhoeven satire, like a RoboCop or Total Recall. And here, we said, “Let’s play it more realistic” in Purge 1 and Purge 2. So, I always try to maintain a realistic line.

Because “realistic violence” is so much better? NO, it just sells more tickets …. The sycophants love to pay to watch people bleed.

I also think this movie has a revolutionary stance with [Michael K. Williams’] character saying change happens “when they bleed.”

JM: When their blood spills.

I rest my case

 

FG: And it’s in this country.

JM: It’s in this country. The rest of the world sees the exact same movies we see, and it’s not happening as much as it’s happening here. So, to me, there’s a source somewhere here. And it’s not movies, it’s not books, and I don’t think it’s video games. I don’t know—if I knew what it was, I’d be sitting somewhere else. [Laughs]

 

Wow, is Hollywood really out of touch with the world, or do they just not want to be held accountable? In Israel, three boys kidnapped and killed, in the UK, a man is gruesomely beheaded while the world watched, Nigeria: 300 girls are kidnapped and slaughter three villages, and Sexual Assaults and Homicides are on the Increase in Australia, where a gun ban is in effect; but whatever helps them sleep at night, right?

This movie appears more focused on ethnic [class warfare].

JM: The ideology is based on money, as everything in the world, I think, is based on money. The propaganda of it is that “we get to cleanse our souls.” That we’re inherently violent people, so we get this one night a year where we get to purge ourselves. It’s almost a communal, societal baptism. But what really is going on is, from the political standpoint, is that it allows for the systematic elimination of a class, which then in turn would help the economy, because there’d be less government spending on welfare, on government housing, on public housing. In a not very subtle way it’s about class warfare.

He said it, “money ideology,” Hollywood only continue to push this Occupying president’s agenda and never truly admits that this Country is built on the Middle Class, not the Evil 1%ers, and Obama’s “class warfare” is really hurting the middle class, not the 1%, because the 1%'s money isn’t even here. 

 

There is very little difference between the Middle Class and the extremely wealthy, and the only difference between the middle and the poor is the only difference is the drive and desire to not take “no” for an answer, to accept defeat as final, and to blame or accept our past as a premonition or a vision of who we are or who we will become.

What’s your motivation for doing another one? You made the first one and it did well, and you made this one—

JM: Yeah, it’s happening now. I was with the head of Universal the other day, and she said, “Okay, get ready for [Purge 3]!”

FG: She mention me at all? [Laughs]

JM: Of course. [Laughs] She actually did, yes. But I said to her, or my agents or whoever asked, “If I come up with a good story that I feel I can tell well, I’ll do it. If I can’t, I won’t. I won’t just do it to do it.” I think with this one, I had the actual stories before the first movie even opened. I wanted to tell [Frank’s] story, and I wanted to tell [Carmen Ejogo and Zoe Soul’s] story; I had those already.

Wow, that’s all we need, more senseless violence, but as long as we have an America that feeds on this crap, we’ll have a money-hungry Hollyweird that will continue to feed our mentally ill, violent society.  So, don’t blame us “Bitter Bible Clingers, that Cling to our Guns and our Bibles” if you continue to feed your blood lust, and leave the movie theaters all adrenaline pumped, after you’ve watched “blood spill” from 22 ft tall by 52 ft wide screen.

So, Hollywood will continue to make Millions off of willing sheeple, who will continue to poison our children with violent games and movies, sick minded adults and children will complete the cycle by shooting each other in our malls, movie theaters and schools and then society will blame the gun, bullies, their past, environment and society for their actions; anyone but the shooter.

 

 
Then Hollywood will cry out to “ban guns” but not, God forbid, their movies, because why would we take Alcohol away from the Alcoholic, Porn away from the Sex addict and Drugs away from the drug addict, let’s just make victims of the law abiding citizens by disarming them but leave the actors pushing violence to the sick, and leave them sanctimoniously well-armed behind their guards.

To read entire uncut (lengthy) interview Click here