| Nosferatu@Cult Labs | 12th December 2019 01:47 PM |
This sounds problematic:
"Clint Eastwood’s indignant, Oscar-buzzed new drama Richard Jewell tasks itself with a noble and initially justifiable aim: to tell the truth about a man whose name has been unfairly slandered. It’s written, quite literally, on the poster with the words “true” and “truth” promising, at long last, facts behind the headlines that followed the tragic bombing at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. But there’s a catch.
In an attempt to clear the name of Jewell, the security guard wrongfully accused of creating and planting the pipe bomb that directly killed one person and injured 111 others, the film throws another name under the bus, that of Kathy Scruggs, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution journalist who broke the story that he was under investigation. Its recent premiere at the AFI festival was accompanied by unease over a scene where Scruggs trades sex for a tip from an FBI agent, a damaging allegation that’s yet to be supported by any tangible evidence. To complicate matters further, Scruggs isn’t able to give her side of the story. She died in 2001 from an overdose of prescription drugs at the age of 42.
“I was stunned,” AJC’s current editor-in-chief, Kevin Riley, who attended last month’s premiere, said to the Guardian. “No one has ever said Kathy did anything like that.”
Initial outrage over the scene recently gave way to the threat of legal action, with the AJC choosing to hire the high-powered Hollywood lawyer Marty Singer, a man the New York Times once referred to as the “guard dog of the stars”. He drafted a letter aimed at Warner Bros and screenwriter Billy Ray, calling out the film’s depiction of Scruggs and her colleagues as “extraordinarily reckless” and imploring the studio to add a disclaimer to the film along with a public statement. He warned that if they choose to disregard this, a lawsuit will follow."
More here: https://www.theguardian.com/film/201...built-on-a-lie | 