Salon.com > John Gorenfeld

The director Kim Jong Il kidnapped

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 22:07:00 +0000

"The task set before the cinema today is one of contributing to people's development into true communists ... This historic task requires, above all, a revolutionary transformation of the practice of directing." -- Kim Jong Il's "On the Art of the Cinema" (1973)

"What a wretched fate," Shin Sang-Ok, now 77, remembers thinking after the meeting with the pudgy man in the gray Mao jacket. "I hated communism, but I had to pretend to be devoted to it to escape from this barren republic. It was lunacy."

Shin is a film director of legendary stature in his native country -- the Orson Welles of South Korea. He modernized movies at a time when people hungered for art, for escape, following the Korean War. He and his wife, the well-known actress Choi Eun Hee, were among Seoul's celebrity set. But in 1978, he ran afoul of the frequently repressive government of Gen. Park Chung Hee, who closed his studio. After making at least 60 movies in 20 years, Shin's career appeared to be over.

What soon followed, according to Shin's memoir, "Kingdom of Kim," was an experience that revived his career in a most unbelievable way. Shin and his wife were both kidnapped by North Korea's despot-in-training, Kim Jong Il, who sought to create a film industry that would allow him to sway a world audience to the righteousness of the Korea Workers' Party. Shin would be his propagandist, Choi his star.

The Jackson trial — the best of the worst

Mon, 13 Jun 2005 20:14:00 +0000

If the Michael Jackson trial were one of his albums, it would be more "HIStory" than "Thriller"; sure, it sold well, with magazines, cable news (and other) shows, and gossiping gaggles at office water coolers lapping it all up. But we've grown so accustomed to the Jackson freak show through the years that, like a bearded lady who lives across the hall, his ability to shock, or even hold our interest -- even when he was acquitted on Monday on all 10 charges brought against him -- has dimmed. And the sordid accusations in this case -- and the questionable motives displayed by all sides -- made it much easier to look away from this hyped Trial of the Century than we could ever have guessed.

The real spectacle, instead, came from the media charged with covering the case -- especially the pundits who were eager to exploit it for whatever contorted political opinion could be wrenched from it. It's been a real doozy, and trying to capture all of the Jackson trial lowlights would require a research team larger (and a lot more competent) than prosecutor Tom Sneddon's. Still, we'll give you just a few of the moments that caused our jaws to drop -- and made us pull the blinds, lock the door and turn off the lights.

Roger Ebert and Mohammed Atta, partners in crime

Tue, 12 Apr 2005 19:26:00 +0000

David Horowitz has lived a rich, and contradictory, life. He once contributed to seminal leftist magazine Ramparts and hired for the Black Panthers, but then bitterly split with his leftist friends and reinvented himself as a conservative who may be the leading scourge of left-leaning professors nationwide. His crusade to make liberal "indoctrination" a statutory offense has seized the backing of Republican lawmakers and the imaginations of campus followers. Recently, Horowitz launched a new Web site, DiscoverTheNetwork.org, to catalog and expose his enemies on the left.

When I called to interview him for Salon, listed on his site as an "apparatchik far-left" publication practically in league with Islamists, the former Salon columnist was strangely eager to appease me. Famous for breathing fire in public before admiring college Republicans, he scampered when I confronted him about his site's claims, even promising to rewrite some of them.

“Bleep” of faith

Thu, 16 Sep 2004 20:06:00 +0000

Last week, the national release of the independent film "What the Bleep Do We Know!?" seemed to be just the latest success story in the Year of the Documentary -- a little movie that could, launched into 60 theaters across the country by Samuel Goldwyn Films after selling out small theaters for months. The film's co-director, William Arntz, has called it "a film for the religious left," an answer to "The Passion of the Christ." It presents itself as the thinking rebel's alternative to Hollywood pabulum: a heady stew of drama and documentary, starring Oscar-winning actress Marlee Matlin as a Xanax-addled photographer who discovers joy when she learns that quantum mechanics makes spiritual wonders possible.

But the film -- buoyed by a slew of stories in regional and national outlets (including Salon) about its supposed grassroots success -- has largely avoided much skepticism. And as the distributors launched a national advertising campaign, on NPR's "All Things Considered" among other outlets, and earned respectable reviews from a number of critics (the San Francisco Examiner calls it a "smart film," and Roger Ebert, while not thrilled, gave it a thoughtful two and a half stars), their movie has managed to avoid much scrutiny of what, exactly, it's really about -- and who is behind it.

Michael Moore terrorizes the Bushies!

Thu, 24 Jun 2004 00:38:00 +0000

They're back! OK, the "vast right-wing conspiracy" Hillary Clinton warned about never really went away. But they've found new purpose in the campaign to stop the distribution of "Fahrenheit 9/11," Michael Moore's latest documentary. And just as the energetic conservative elves succeeded in making Bill Clinton ever more popular with the American public, so do they seem to be driving up public interest in Moore's film, which is expected to have the biggest opening for a documentary film ever, in a scheduled 888 theaters.

The convergence between the anti-Clinton and anti-Moore movements is personified by the tireless David Bossie, whose Citizens United made headlines savaging the president in the late 1990s. It's been a big week for Bossie and Citizens United. First they were busy producing anti-Clinton ads to run during the former president's star turn Sunday night on "60 Minutes," while Bossie was scurrying to cable studios to denounce the memoir "My Life" and promote his new book, "Intelligence Failure: How Clinton's National Security Policy Set the Stage for 9/11." Then Bossie scheduled a Wednesday press event in front of the Federal Election Commission, where he will demand that the commission take some sort of unspecified action to regulate the screening of "Fahrenheit 9/11" -- presumably because of the anti-Bush documentary's power to influence the coming presidential election. "Documents will be hand delivered to several government agencies immediately following the media briefing," the group's press release soberly states.

Hail to the Moon king

Mon, 21 Jun 2004 22:23:00 +0000

You probably imagine your congressman hard at work in the Capitol debating legislation, making laws -- you know, governing. But your newspaper probably didn't tell you that one night in March, members of Congress hosted a crowning ritual for an ex-convict and multibillionaire who dressed up in maroon robes and declared himself the Second Coming.

On March 23, the Dirksen Senate Office Building was the scene of a coronation ceremony for Rev. Sun Myung Moon, owner of the conservative Washington Times newspaper and UPI wire service, who was given a bejeweled crown by Rep. Danny K. Davis, D-Ill. Afterward, Moon told his bipartisan audience of Washington power players he would save everyone on Earth as he had saved the souls of Hitler and Stalin -- the murderous dictators had been born again through him, he said. In a vision, Moon said the reformed Hitler and Stalin vouched for him, calling him "none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent."

Blood-thirsty Arabs, vigilante Jews

Tue, 23 Mar 2004 23:19:00 +0000

A Jewish settler named Avi Shapiro vows to eliminate the "sons of Arab whores." He dons his yarmulke and, along with 12 vigilantes, riddles a Palestinian taxi with bullets. A Pakistani youth unfurls a photo of the Sears Tower and sneers, like a villain in a Chuck Norris movie, "This one is mine."

Those are scenes that Jack Kelley, formerly a star reporter for USA Today (he quit in January), claimed to bear witness to in the Mideast. A devout Christian, he declared, "God has called me to proclaim truth." Last week his paper revealed him to be a fraud. That boy with dibs on the Sears Tower? Turns out he was a figment of Kelley's imagination. So was Avi Shapiro. Seven weeks into an ongoing investigation, it's clear that Kelley fabricated those characters and others in some of the world's least stable places, even writing scripts on his laptop computer so that his co-conspirators could help him fool fact-checkers.

“A stand against pompous gasbags”

Wed, 17 Mar 2004 01:04:00 +0000

Janet Jackson, Bubba the Love Sponge, Howard Stern and ... Sandra Tsing Loh? The latest victim of the FCC's new game of fear factor is a humorist whose recent "Loh Life" commentary for NPR affiliate KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif., was a series devoted to knitting. But when she used the F-word in a pre-recorded commentary last week that an engineer forgot to bleep, her NPR bosses pulled the plug.

Loh had been riffing on domestic life and her husband's stint playing guitar for Bette Midler, when this thought aired, uncensored: "He does play guitar for Bette Midler on her massive new stage show, so I guess I have to fuck him."

The piece aired twice before the management noticed. And when it did, the station went into overdrive. Station manager Ruth Seymour told the Los Angeles Times: "We really are serious with her, that with such a trivial, self-serving piece, she put us all in danger." A page devoted to Loh's commentary was deleted from the KCRW Web site and with it links to such potentially inflammatory "Loh Life" features as "I'm Knit-Crazy, Pt. 1" and "Season of Good Will." Loh faxed a letter of apology to Seymour taking blame for the "disaster," but of course, she was fired, her weekly commentary canceled.

Dean: Ninja power?

Thu, 08 Jan 2004 21:16:00 +0000

It's 1984. Dr. Howard Dean has an internal medicine practice in Vermont, and fifth-graders everywhere love ninjas. Meanwhile, "Ninja III: The Domination" is in theaters. In one scene, a hooded warrior is wreaking his trademark havoc on a golf course, plying the ancient mystical art of making patrol cars fly into lakes in slow motion.

And that's when, in a gruff tone some might associate with a guy taking the Democratic Leadership Council to task, a cop in a descending helicopter barks into his walkie-talkie. He warns all units to be on the alert. Too late: The ninja jumps onboard from a palm tree and hurls stunt doubles out the hatch.

Recently, reports that that the cop was portrayed by Howard Dean, Democratic forerunner, bubbled up onto the liberal blogs Daily Kos, Eschaton and Pandagon, where Dems were urged to run out to the video store. Murmurs had persisted since late 2003, when someone noticed that the Internet Movie Database listing for "Howard Dean," which mentions the former Vermont governor's turn on last fall's "K Street," also credits "Howard Dean" with playing a policeman on "Ninja III."

Bad Moon on the rise

Wed, 24 Sep 2003 16:02:00 +0000

Last December, at his three-day God and World Peace event, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon drew a notable slate of political figures, from Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., to Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., and, perhaps most notably, James Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, who offered some respectful opening remarks to Moon's Unification Church faithful. Moon followed, and called for all religions to come together in support of the Bush plan for faith-based initiatives.

Coming from Moon that made perfect sense, because he already believes all religions will come together -- under him. "The separation between religion and politics," he has observed on many occasions, "is what Satan likes most." His gospel: Jesus failed because he never attained worldly power. Moon will succeed, he says, by purifying our sex-corrupted culture, and that includes cleaning up gays ("dung-eating dogs," as he calls them) and American women ("a line of prostitutes"). Jews had better repent, too. (Moon claims that the Holocaust was payback for the crucifixion of Christ: "Through the principle of indemnity, Hitler killed 6 million Jews.") His solution is a world theocracy that will enforce proper sexual habits in order to bring about heaven on earth.

Get behind the M.U.L.E.

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 20:30:00 +0000

Will Wright dedicated the Sims, the bestselling computer game of all time, to a Little Rock, Ark., programmer named Dani Bunten.

Bunten was a computer-game maker of the old school: Her games were designed to fit onto 5.25-inch floppy disks, where a puny 170,000 bytes or less hung suspended on brown magnetic film. She was also prescient: Even as the gaming industry increasingly focused on games designed for one player only, and her own career faltered, she insisted, again and again, that the future of games would be based on social relationships.

She was a pioneer several times over. Her most famous game, M.U.L.E., has been cited as an inspiration for generations of game developers. As the frontman of Ozark Softscape, a quartet of game designers from Little Rock, she and her co-workers were the stars of the first publicity campaign to promote programmers as if they were rock stars. The former Dan Bunten also pushed gender boundaries, changing her name, and her sex, in the early '90s. But in 1998 Dani Bunten died of cancer at age 49, shut out from the mass market she envisioned when computer games were only an oddball hobby.

The dictator who snagged me

Wed, 12 Mar 2003 23:57:00 +0000

Lights! Camera! Apocalypse!

Tue, 03 Sep 2002 20:00:00 +0000

In the "Apocalypse" movies, the rapture has come and gone, calling home the Christian right and leaving everyone else to suffer under the rule of the antichrist. While the gold-encrusted studios of the Trinity Broadcasting Network can be assumed to be silent as tombs, all is not lost. TBN footage has survived, offering words of advice for those "left behind," presented by neighborly doomsday advisors Jack Van Impe and his wife Rexella.

The Van Impes have, of course, personally ascended to heaven, but a ragtag band of fugitive evangelists, who include Mr. T, use a stolen news van to hack into Satan's satellite network and broadcast this pirate signal. It's enough to make the antichrist, Nick Macalusso (Nick Mancuso) lose his cool: "Why can't you idiots stop these treasonous transmissions?" he roars at his henchmen.

Scientologist John Travolta gave us "Battlefield Earth," which begins with a note to the effect that "humans are an endangered species." And a host of B-list Hollywood stars have given us "Apocalypse" and its three sequels -- "Revelation," "Tribulation" and "Judgment" -- in which fundamentalist Christians are the endangered species.

Spaghetti space wars of 1979

Tue, 21 May 2002 20:00:00 +0000

"Well, it's done. It's happened. The stars are clear. The planets shine. We've won. Oh, some dark force, no doubt, will show its face once more. The wheel will always turn. But for now, it's calm. And for a little time, at least, we can rest."
-- Christopher Plummer, as the galactic emperor in "Starcrash"

We've given George Lucas his chance to recapture the magic of "Star Wars." For "Episode III," why not give Luigi Cozzi a shot?

Cozzi, 54, now works the cash register at Profondo Rosso, a horror movie shop and museum in downtown Rome, and he loves "Star Wars." He should. He's also the director of "Starcrash," an Italian take on galactic civil war that was released in 1979, about midway between Lucas' original "Star Wars" and the first sequel, "The Empire Strikes Back."

"Starcrash" features a then-unknown David Hasselhoff as a galactic prince wielding a light saber against stop-motion droids, along with a one-time Bond girl (Caroline Munro) as a pilot who makes the kind of remarks you've come to expect from space smugglers ("I hope this star buggy holds together!"), only in a bikini.