Shockwaves from Sept. 11 continue to roil Hollywood waters, with more than a dozen films moved, altered or taken off the release schedule entirely.

        Uncertainty about the long-term effects of the tragedy on movies abounds in the ranks of filmmakers at all levels of the business, from grass-roots neophytes to industry stars. As studios scurried to adjust their release schedules, artists pondered whether and how to adapt the fantasy factory to a new reality.

        Much soul-searching and debate centered on the age-old issue of movies as escapist entertainment versus movies as cultural forces.

        “There's no doubt these events have affected our lives — and when it affects your life, it affects your taste,” Paramount chairman Sherry Lansing told Inside.com. “But I hope we're not going to become a world that only makes comedies. You have to explore the dark side of life as much as the positive side.”

Movies move

        Ironically, escapist films were affected most dramatically. Arnold Schwarzenegger's terrorist action drama Collateral Damage, the CIA-themed dark comedy Bad Company with Anthony Hopkins, and Big Trouble, a slapstick farce with scenes of a nuclear bomb on an airplane, have been postponed indefinitely.

        The latest high-profile film affected is the historical drama The Gangs of New York, with Leonardo DiCaprio, originally set for Christmas weekend release, now delayed to early 2002. Director Martin Scorsese and Miramax chairman Harvey Weinstein said in a joint statement, “We have chosen to err on the side of sensitivity” rather than release a movie about brutal religious and ethnic violence in Manhattan, even though the story is set in the 1860s.

        Some changes, such as the shift of the Will Smith drama Ali from Dec. 7 to Dec. 25, were not based on content but on the general upheaval in the schedule.

"Fears' and rumors

        Many more films have fallen under clouds of gloomy speculation, including The Sum of All Fears, starring Ben Affleck and Morgan Freeman and based on Tom Clancy's novel about a terrorist attack on the Super Bowl. Widespread Internet rumors about shelving the project prompted Paramount Pictures to announce that the film remains on the release calendar for summer 2002

        Meanwhile, the people who face the task of making new movies search for a handle on what the future will bring.

        The Writers Guild of America convened a members' forum Wednesday in New York with a star-studded panel — including John Sayles (Lone Star), Tom Fontana (Homicide: Life on the Street), Richard Price (Shaft) and Janet Roach (Prizzi's Honor) — to ponder questions such as “What plots will the public embrace? Do we pander to base instincts? Should we rally to the flag?”

        A heated discussion took place last weekend at a long-planned New York Film Festival session on “Making Movies That Matter.” Panelists included cultural pundits such as writer Christopher Hitchens, filmmaker Oliver Stone and producer Tom Pollock, who was quoted in Indiewire.com saying the debate is crucial: “The American culture we export in films is at the forefront of the people who despise us.”

Artists speak

        National and local filmmakers also have been thinking about the role of movies in a traumatized nation.

        Actor Jeremy Piven, on screen in Serendipity, a sweet romantic fantasy that takes place in New York, endorsed the view that movies can be both escapist and insightful.

        “I think they can also reflect what's going on and show people how different people deal with it, and that can be a great help,” he said in an interview. “It's such an unbelievably powerful arena. ... Movies can be capable of so much, of telling such beautiful, intricate stories, transporting people to different places. And it can be just a refuge from what's going on out there.”

        Alonzo Wesson is a Cincinnati commercial director and maker of independent short features, both fiction and documentary, including We Are Not Vanishing, a biography of Black Family Reunion founder Dr. Dorothy Height. The terrorist attacks, he said, “steeled my resolve to continue making the kind of movies that matter. ... I think looking at death and mayhem as a form of entertainment is going to have to be rethought.”

        “Maybe there is less cynicism and more vulnerability to the exploration of human emotion,” said actress Christine Lahti, whose feature directorial debut My First Mister opens in major markets Friday. “I am really frankly not unhappy to see that violence in movies will be tempered and toned down. ... If that's one of the fallouts of these horrific events, that's not a bad thing.”

        “As for now, I couldn't be happier that LOTR (Lord of the Rings) is on its way,” actor/filmmaker Jon Favreau (Made) wrote in a discussion on the Ain't It Cool News Web site. “America today is not unlike war-torn England in (Ring author J.R.R.) Tolkien's time, and the cultural context of the myth should ring just as true. This is the entertainment I desire. I want to see Hobbits and Orcs, not spies and terrorists. Show me Good and Evil in a way I can stomach. My subconscious will sort out the rest.”

        Eric Chatterjee, an independent Cincinnati filmmaker shooting a fantasy called Grimm Reality, said “escapism” may be redefined.

        “Terrorism in movies became escapism because it had been so long since a real terrorist event happened in the U.S.,” he said “That particular genre may disappear, but that's what movies are, escapism.”

        Movies, he said, “made life during previous traumatic events like World War II” much more tolerable. “... By no means was war the only problem in this country in the '40s. There were race riots and other problems, but that was a booming time for cinema.”

Not a single hero

        Not everyone agrees that kinder, gentler movies are the only choice for the future.

        Wes Craven, maker of classic horror films such as A Nightmare on Elm Street, told Ain't It Cool News, “I feel my films have dealt in an entertaining way on how ordinary people can deal with evil people,” he wrote. “What will have to change, perhaps, is the idea of simple solutions by single heroes. We'll have to show more of the complexity of issues. ... Cartoon images just won't cut it anymore.”

        John Dahl, director of the current release Joy Ride, said, “In a way I kind of hope things don't go back to normal. People have to be aware that the world is changing around us; we need to change as well.

        “We've just lived through 20 to 30 years of unbelievable prosperity and good times, to the point where in the last presidential election we were talking about pharmaceutical drugs for senior citizens. What a nice problem that is to have. ... Those are the outgrowths of a very affluent society with relatively few problems. I think that's probably changed forever.”

        On the whole, most predict that movie-going is not about to lose its place in the lives of Americans.

        David Lynch director of Mullholland Drive, also due to open Friday, said, “The work is the same. The process of catching ideas and translating ideas will always be the same.”

        Since Sept. 11, he said, “When people go into a film, they are bringing a new bunch of things with them, but as they sink into the world of the film, that will take over, and people will have the same experience. It's the beautiful thing about being able to go into another world.”

        “I think most actors really know deep down their place in society,” Ben Stiller (Zoolander) told the Orange County Register. “Being creative and communicating with people on an emotional level through movies, plays and music soothes the soul. It's important at times like this. We're not doing life-changing things, but we're helping in the only way we can.”

        Molly Donnellon, a veteran of Cincinnati's commercial production industry and a producer of the local independent comedy Three Barbecues, said that lesson was brought home vividly in the days immediately after Sept. 11.

        “After the attack, I checked on my friends in Manhattan via e-mail. They gave me the rundown of where they were when they saw it all happen and how their families and jobs were affected.

        “Then they told me they were going to the movies that night to retreat from the chaos.”

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