Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein says he’s done making violent movies.
The head of The Weinstein Company said on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Live” Friday that coinciding with his plan to make a movie condemning gun violence, he will scale down his company’s production and distribution of films depicting grossly violence just for the sake of being violent.
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“I have to just choose movies, I mean, that aren’t violent — or as violent as they used to be,” Weinstein said.
Weinstein made the comments in response to conservative groups in particular, that are accusing the producer of hypocrisy over Thursday’s announcement that he would make a movie with Meryl Streep that would take down the National Rifle Association.
“I think the NRA is a disaster area. I shouldn’t say this, but I’ll tell it to you, Howard,” Weinstein said during Howard Stern’s radio show. “I’m going to make a movie with Meryl Streep, and we’re going to take this head-on,” Weinstein told Stern on Wednesday. “And they’re going to wish they weren’t alive after I’m done with them.”
Weinstein can count among his credits such bloody films as the “Kill Bill” and “Scream” franchises and the Quentin Tarantino blood-fest, “Pulp Fiction.”
“I think they have a point,” Weinstein said of his critics. “I have — you have to look in the mirror too.”
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Morgan pointed out that there is a lot of money at stake. Audiences are still drawn to these sorts of violent films, as evidenced by their success.
“I know,” Weinstein said. “But for me, I can’t do it [anymore]. I can’t make one movie, and say this is what I want for my kids, and then just go out and be a hypocrite.”
“The change starts here.”
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But Weinstein said that he’s not giving up wholesale on movies with gun violence in them. He cited Peter Berg‘s “Lone Survivor,” which portrays the real-life story of American soldier Marcus Luttrell, as one he’d “make in a heartbeat,” even though there are plenty of action scenes and people get killed.
“I’m not gonna make some crazy, you know, action movie … just to blow up people and exploit people.”
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