Jodie Foster: Cheering in Her Payback Movie 'Shameful' and No One Should Own Guns

In an Entertainment Weekly interview, Jodie Foster explained her views on guns, “I don't believe that any gun should be in the hand of a thinking, feeling, breathing human being.”

She also said it is “shameful” that the “unsophisticated people who see a sophisticated movie” will cheer when she goes after the bad guys who kill her fiance in her new vigilante movie “The Brave One”

(emphasis mine throughout):

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: There's a rallying moment in The Brave One when you stick a gun in a bad guy's face and say, ''I want my dog back.'' How are you going to feel about the audience cheering on your character as she starts hunting people down?
JODIE FOSTER: It's shameful, but that's human and that's who we are as human beings. There will be unsophisticated people who see a sophisticated movie. Just like there were in The Accused. And thank God I only went to one screening of that movie with an audience.

She really equated the idiots cheering the rape in “The Accused” to the people who cheer a heroine getting revenge in a payback movie? Poor Jodie; all of those “unsophisticated people” sullying her movies. Maybe they should stay home until they learn to ignore those adrenaline-pumping, feel-good parts where the writer and director deliberately try to get the audience to react.  

Foster, who was protected by bodyguards while would-be Ronald Reagan assassin John Hinckley harassed her and said in 2002 that she does not have security now, addressed the issue of guns:

EW: What do you think is the larger social commentary of The Brave One, which in some ways plays as a straight-up Dirty Harry revenge movie?
FOSTER: Here's my commentary: I don't believe that any gun should be in the hand of a thinking, feeling, breathing human being. Americans are by nature filled with rage-slash-fear. And guns are a huge part of our culture. I know I'm crazy because I'm only supposed to say that in Europe. But violence corrupts absolutely.* 

One would think those tense years dealing with Hinckley would have opened her to the issue of personal protection, but instead she just voiced the unrealistic view that no one should ever have guns, which is easy to have when living in exclusive or gated communities with the option of hiring others for protection. 

Do the "thinking, feeling, breathing" human beings exclude law enforcement, military, park rangers and the people who guard her and her children on red carpets and movie sets or are they too busy being corrupted by “rage-slash-fear” to think and feel?

Then she alienated even more potential moviegoers: 

EW:Your performance in Taxi Driver kept coming up during the mini media frenzy over news that Dakota Fanning had a rape scene in the [yet-to-be released] movie Hounddog.
FOSTER: ...she is spectacular in [Hounddog]. The movie, ehh, but that's a brave, brave performance that she should be very, very proud of...I think it was a wonderful move for her and it's setting her up to not be a Disney bimbo. I think the [uproar] was just a bunch of Christians who didn't see the movie.

Industry media media like Premiere and Cinematical, gossips like Dlisted along with blogs and message boards weren't “just a bunch of Christians.” That's a disingenuous way to dismiss legitimate criticism.

It wasn't just the rape. The screenplay called for Fanning's character to appear “naked or clad only in 'underpants.' ” After the uproar over the original script, writer-producer-director Deborah Kampmeier edited and released a revised version (here), but even that was still “creepy,” wrote Cinematical.

Premiere described the final cut, which had Fanning's character “making a boy drop his jockeys by promising him kisses, sleeping beside (her) naked, brain-addled father...and forcing two children to strip at gunpoint and embrace as she wraps a snake around them.”

Kampmeier bragged her movie was about “the power of female sexuality.” For a 12-year-old.

Well, I guess I know what Foster's definition of “sophisticated” is now.

*EW's formatting altered

Contact Lynn at tvisgoodforyou2 at yahoo dot com