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How 9/11 changed Hollywood: Film After Film excerpt in L Magazine

Jennifer Pan23 August 2012

Is it possible to speak of a distinctly twenty-first century cinema, only a decade into the new millennium? J. Hoberman's Film After Film, published this week, traces the revolutionary turn of cinema after 9/11 and the advent of digital technology. Today, in an excerpt from the book in the L Magazine, Hoberman examines how Hollywood was changed by 9/11:

In the days following the cataclysm, the Los Angeles Times reported entertainment industry concern that “the public appetite for plots involving disasters and terrorism has vanished.” Thus, Warner Bros. postponed Collateral Damage, and the screenwriters, David and Peter Griffiths, suffered another setback when Fox suspended their top-secret project, Deadline, a hijack drama written for James Cameron. Jerry Bruckheimer decided that the time might not be right for World War III, which called for nuclear attacks on Seattle and San Diego.

Yet, mere days after the terror attacks, the Pentagon-funded Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California convened several meetings with filmmakers. "Hollywood expected to be punished," writes Hoberman. "Instead, they were drafted..."
 
Visit the L Magazine to read the excerpt in full.