It’s been announced that Stan is making a film on Australia’s worst mass shooting, which was in Tasmania in 1996.The shooter was an intellectually challenged young man who is currently in prison, without the possibility of parole.
There has been a furious reaction from at least one survivor. A lot of people are very offended and do not want the film to be made, for that reason.
My position is that it shows the level of tact and sensitivity I’ve come to expect from the film industry overall. I will not be seeing because I find the subject matter abhorrent.
Should the film industry be censored? We already have the hypocrisy of political correctness.
True enough. The worst fate which can be fall a film is to be ignored and the makers lose their shirts. One can only hope.
One wonderful example is the 1963 version of ‘Cleopatra’, with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. The pair had a very tacky public affair while the film was being made. Plus it was a dreadful film. People stayed away in droves. It almost bankrupted the studio.
I finally watched it on TV. A great spectacle, with some of sets actually bigger than the historic places.
I thought the raunchy Cleopatra in ‘Rome’ was terrific.
I share Boomer’s disgust here, but for reasons of my own.
The Port Arthur Massacre was a straight forward horrendous event about a young man with multiple mental issues who killed 35 unarmed people including children with a Colt AR-15 SP1 Carbine, a military semi automatic riffle, in cold blood. He was witnessed chasing two little girls, whose mother he had just murdered, around a stand of trees, in a horrid game of hide and seek before killing both. Bryant had displayed overt aggressive destructive behaviour from childhood. The very first tragedy is, that he fell through the social mental health network. His behaviour being noted at several points throughout his life as unusual, but none of that pardons the cruel murders he committed.
Who needs to watch a fucking film at the local movie complex with popcorn, choc-tops, compfy padded seating, air-conditioning, technicolour, cinemascope, first class movie score, an inevitable hollywood love story, and a whole lot of professional hopeful actors acting out the screenwriter’s version of another bloody massacre lifted from the headlines?
Paul Moder (writer producer director wow!) has tantalisingly suggested he has uncovered a conspiracy that satisfies his suspicions, that “the truth was hidden, justice denied and the full story never told.” The only conspiracy I think he could possibly be referring to might involve the decision of the then PM Howard to pass a federal law outlawing unlicensed possession of firearms in Australia, which was the only sensible thing that little rat ever did.
Bryant is serving out 35 life sentences in isolation in a stainless steel maximum security prison in Tasmania. His incarceration is a total waste of money and it is my opinion he should have been terminated twenty years ago, he is wasting oxygen.
There are already plenty of well-researched hard-hitting books and one detailed documentary detailing Bryant’s life and mental health and the individual murders he committed.
This is not a subject that needs the Brechtian theatre experience. It is not a fiction, it is brutal history. Anyone who needs a “Hollywood” treatment of events is not really interested in the truth, probably could not handle it and should definitely, for their own sake, avoid it. The story needs no dressing up.
And despite Moder having the support of the husband of just one victim, most of the others are condemning him and his project as, I would think the majority of Australians who remember this bloody awful event.
AAAAWWW fuck I have just further found that Moder has a history of making and appearing in violent gore movies…the conspiracy theory is that the massacre was staged by the Australian government, ie they had their own shooters out there killing tourists, because Bryant was too stupid and childlike to do it himself, to prompt the introduction of the gun laws…ie the equivalent to Sandy Creek massacre conspiracy bullshit…our sad Aussie rednecks have been jealous of their American cousins…and are still aggrieved they have no 2nd Amendment rights.
In isolation? Awesome . Imagine isolation for the rest of your life. This piece of shit is getting everything while he breathes, that he deserves. Mental illness is not an excuse for his horrendous acts. View it as money well spent to keep the fucker alive, alone and isolated. A living hell before he is gone. His most valuable thing, his time - is taken from him - just as he has taken the life “time” from others.
Never. If a film offends you, don’t see it. By all means protest about it and encourage other people not to see it. But nobody has the right to dictate what other people should make or see.
I’m sure “Life of Brian” offended a lot more people than this film will.
My unreliable memory seems to recall that several years into Bryant’s confinement he complained he was bored and requested a Nintendo. He was denied. I did smile at that, but I still think he should have been executed. He was always detached from reality and lacked any empathy for others. Its not likely even now he is suffering any grievous remorse over his victims. I don’t think he is capable of it.
I am not interested making him suffer. He should just be put to sleep.
I once had a mate who had served a year in Yatala (maximum security) for breaking . He had been a professional burglar. IE " Your honour, my client would you take into account 200 similar offences----"
He said he was his sorriest the first night in that cell alone. “I was sooo fucking sorry I got caught”
He said his feet didn’t touch the ground for the first 6 weeks. That after 3 months “it was just where I lived” He tried to refuse parole because he had no intention of obeying conditions and said so.
My mate was a brilliant man, so that probably made a huge difference to his mental states. Bryant may be too stupid to be resigned to his fate or too stupid to realise how miserable is his life…
For his acts, no it is not imo because he was able to tell right from wrong. A person having a psychotic episode may not be responsible. Here in Australia, the verdict would be “guilty but insane” .In Oz. the insanity plea is rarely used and even more rarely accepted.
I have no problem with the view that there are people who should be quietly put down for the sake of the community and yes, as satisfaction for the families. My only caveat is that the conviction must be guaranteed to be safe. Imo Bryant meets that condition.
Sandy Hook, right. Keep me honest Spank me I’ve been bad.
Another thing, I see rehabilitation as a an important component of incarceration for crimes. But it is highly unlikely that Bryant is ever going to be rehabilitated. How would anyone really know if he had. He can never be released into public again.
Difficult one, depicting crimes and criminals bound to cause pain to victims, even of other but similar crimes. However, like political correctness we run the risk of of an endless and increasing assault on freedom of speech and expression.
Think of films like life of Brian, or Films that openly depict gay men and women, and we can see how in the past these would have been censored. I guess the bottom line is how the film depicts the crimes, and the horrifying impact they have on victims and their loved ones.
They made a film about that white supremacist who perpetrated a mass shooting on an island camp political retreat for children and youths.
Tbh I’m not sure what one can glean from watching it, other than be horrified and sickened, but then one could say the same from graphic war depiction like Saving Private Ryan. Perhaps these types of crimes should not be depicted within living memory, out of respect for victims and their families? This wasn’t all that long ago, so one would question the timing.
There was a film about the terrorist attacks on the Boston marathon, and some of those scenes were horrific, with some of the victims being children, it’s hard to imagine what such a film does to the trauma of relatives. Though I doubt they’d ever be able to watch.
You know I want to both object, and defend freedom of expression. I don’t think laws censoring film makers is a good idea. The industry should have the good sense to police itself here. I mean films about the Holocaust are made, and are unremittingly horrific, one might argue they should be or run the risk of sanitizing those events and lessening the impact. However had they been made within living memory of the victims survivors and their families I’m not sure they could be justified.
What is the goal of the film here, beyond making money?
And a spanking back! Because I do genuinely agree and have argued this point. I highly dislike that I indulged myself in imagining “a living hell” (something I do find repugnant- which is solidarity confinement).
The death penalty - well, I’d like to agree, but once that door opens…
“The death penalty - well, I’d like to agree, but once that door opens…”
Slippery slope argument?
I’m not convinced that 's true, at least in theory. I have already explained my caveat. In practice that means I am unable to support the death penalty.
As far as 'being in a living hell". I should have said something earlier. That’s torture and one of the reasons we don’t allow families of victims to determine sentences.
Ideally a person is sent to prison as punishment, not to be punished. This concept is one which
seems to be almost universally ignored…
Yes it is. Because that would not be a problem if my simple Caveat was a precondition.IE 100% guarantee of safe convictions
You’re also right in a practical sense. Our entire legal system is based on the concept of beyond reasonable doubt. Not good enough when that can (and does) mean that innocent people are convicted and executed.
I love the precondition of certainty of guilt. Yes, then I would most likely “be on board” (after all society could use the money in a more beneficial way)
LOL… Negative publicity is still publicity. People will watch the movie just to see what all the fuss is about. The outraged are shooting themselves in the feet.
Well, it’s law in France. Not sure of their conviction rate.
Also the law in the PRC. Their conviction rate is around 98%.
However, such figures ignore the fact that those two countries do not have trail by jury.
Even in countries which have the presumption of innocence and trial by jury, most cases are decided by plea bargaining or trial by judge alone as far as I’m aware…
It’s my understanding that if every defendant demanded a jury trial, our legal system would simply collapse. Same in the US,I think.
I maintain my position: That there are probably quite a few people with whom our society would be better off without. Consequently, I have no issue with the death penalty in principle. I have only one caveat: That the state must be able to guarantee that every conviction in a capital case is safe. --it’s bad enough that [it seems to me] that far too many [innocent] people end up in prison due to plea bargaining.
Two statistics which haunt me as an Aussie: Indigenous people make up 3.3% of our entire population. They make up 29% of our prison population. On average indigenous people live 15 years less than other Austalians.
I have no answer. I’m only fairly sure that the traditional Government approaches of alternatively chucking large sums of money at the problems and passing oppressive legislation don’t seem to be working.
And that’s exactly why I oppose death punishment – the legal process of convicting someone for a crime is not an exact science, it’s not mathematics, it’s not logics. It’s applied everyday statistics, where they set an arbitrary threshold for where the subjective certainty of someone actually having committed a crime is considered high enough for conviction.
Then you have the aspect of facts unknown to the case at the time of sentencing. In more than one case in the U.S. people on death row have been proven innocent after new technology have enabled new kinds of evidence (the most well known is of course DNA analysis). This is bound to happen time and again, as new and more sophisticated analysis methods enter the stage.
I can only conclude that your demand of a guarantee for every conviction being “safe” is impossible to meet.
. Imagine isolation for the rest of your life. This piece of shit is getting everything while he breathes, that he deserves. Mental illness is not an excuse for his horrendous acts. View it as money well spent to keep the fucker alive, alone and isolated. A living hell before he is gone. His most valuable thing, his time - is taken from him - just as he has taken the life “time” from others.
Spank me I’ve been bad.
- well, I’d like to agree, but once that door opens…
in a more beneficial way)