6 Responses to “You Ain't Spartacus”

1. 1 Anonymous Mar 1st, 2005 at 2:08 pm

   Actually, there is a longstanding Hollywood rumor that one reason Hearst was so angry with Citizen Kane was that Rosebud was Hearst’s private name for a portion of Marion Davies’ anatomy that it would cost CBS roughly $8,000,000 to say on terrestrial television.

2. 2 Bertzen Mar 5th, 2005 at 6:33 am

   I couldn’t agree with you more on this issue…….and I use that word specifically because to me, someone who works professionally as an actor in this country, the use of those images unavoidably involves not only the film maker, but the actors in the shots used, as well as, by implication at least, all the artists who worked on the project. And nothing, literally nothing makes me angrier as an artist than that apology for these commercial outrages than the “maybe it will introduce younger viewers to the art” nonsense (Sorry Marc, but that’s exactly what it is). Come on!!! Do you really think the films of Fred Astaire, Charlie Chaplin, John Wayne, Jimmy Cagney, and now Kirk Douglas and Kubrick, all artists who have had their work abused in this fashion, are being reinvestigated by 14 to 32 year olds because of ads for vacuum cleaners, Coors beer and Pepsi???? What actually happens is that the commercial becomes, instantly, part of our pop culture and is remembered by those same young people for THAT, not for the original works at all. That is the power of the medium. It’s a shame, literally.

3. 3 MichaelFountain Aug 16th, 2005 at 3:55 pm

   Thank you for complaining about this ad; as a movie fan, ancient history buff and left leaning American, I was and am ENRAGED by this ad. The point to this scene was not that the captured slaves refused to sell out their Hollywood hero, but that the had become so identified with the cause that they all identified themselves as “Spartacus”. For Pepsi to include the tear on Kirk Douglas’s was a stick in the eye of whatever soul America has left. There is nothing so sacred to Madison Avenue that they won’t sell it or find a way to sell it. I plan on blogging about it myself but all I can do is scream and keep typing WHORES WHORES WHORES WHORES…

1. 1 CasdraBlog Trackback on Mar 1st, 2005 at 12:16 am
2. 2 Marc's Musings (marc-bourassa.com) Trackback on Mar 2nd, 2005 at 12:10 pm
3. 3 Marc's Musings Trackback on May 16th, 2005 at 10:18 am

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