About Gods and Generals.

Interview of Ron Maxwell by William F. Jasper

Film maker Ron Maxwell is a distinguished screenplay writer, director, and producer. His credits include Antony and Cleopatra, The Guest, The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia, Parent Trap II, in the Land of the Poets, and the first two parts of an epic Civil War trilogy, Gettysburg and the recently released Gods and Generals. He hopes to make the final segment of that trilogy, Last Full Measure, and is currently pursuing a film project on Joan of Arc.

THE NEW AMERICAN: First off, allow me to compliment you on your extraordinary achievement with Gods and Generals. In spite of the savage reviews that it received from a hostile, liberal-left press, I think that time will show it to be one of the great epic films of all time.

Ron Maxwell: Thank you, I appreciate that, especially alter all of the very negative media comment.

TNA: What are the actual box office figures? Do you think that you may recover enough financially to film the third part of the trilogy? Maxwell: It's been very disappointing. It cost $60 million to make the movie, not including distribution costs, and we've grossed in the neighborhood of $14 million. We're trying to understand what happened. Part of it is that I thought that the movie needed long-range. marketing to an audience that, by and large, doesn't go to the movies. And that wasn't done with as much lead time and comprehensiveness as was needed. Because, I think, most of the people who will respond to this movie -- much of the Christian community and conservative community -- normally do not go to the movies.

But it was marketed the way any old movie is marketed, and that just relies on regular moviegoers. And, of course, for many of those moviegoers, this is not necessarily their cup of tea. At least not in the numbers we needed to turn out to the theaters.

Also there is the fact that unless you're over 40 years old you've probably never been to a movie with an intermission. I'm in my 50s, so I remember routinely seeing movies that long. The last movie with an intermission was Gettysburg, 10 years ago. The last one before that was Gandhi, another 10 years before that. You really have to go back to the 1960s to get where we routinely had intermissions.

The third, and biggest, problem we faced is that 80 percent of the liberal, mainline media critics really attacked the film. It wasn't film reviewing, it was political reviewing with a vengeance.

TNA: That was obvious from the get-go. They sharpened up the hatchets and sabers and attacked viciously.

Maxwell: Then they piled on. It was vicious, and they continued to pile on. I've been in the business 30 years, and I've never seen anything like it. I've seen piling on movies because they were bad and they want to ridicule them, movies like Ishtar and Showgirls, where big stars are involved and they just want to bring them down. But we didn't have any big stars. Most of it was just a deep hostility to the leading characters, Generals Lee and Jackson, to the fact that a Christian world was portrayed, and to the fact that they were Southerners. There's no other explanation for the way this movie was attacked hammer and tongs.

The Chicago Sun's Roger Ebert wrote one of the worst, one of the most vicious, reviews. He said it was a movie only Trent Lott could love. Translation: If you even think about seeing this movie, you're a racist. That's not even a film review; it's a low-down, mean remark. I've talked to people who are conservative and Christian, who probably would have liked the film, but they read or heard Roger Ebert's attack on it and, so, they didn't go.

Your magazine's review was one of the best. He [William Norman Grigg] nailed it. There were two or three articles around the country where the people not only understood the movie, but they articulated it completely. And the way he understood that this was about telluric patriotism -- I thought, this guy completely nailed it.

TNA: What about overseas distribution and video/DVD sales?

Maxwell: We open the July 4th weekend in England, Scotland, and Ireland. There should be a lot less of the PC reaction by the reviewers there, so I think it will be reviewed more as a movie, rather than a political icon.

The gratifying thing is that we did accomplish three things that our attackers can't negate. First and foremost, we made the movie. It exists, despite all the gatekeepers and obstacles. And not only did we make the movie, but we made it with total artistic freedom, including the length of it. People who know how difficult it is to make pictures in Hollywood just can't believe what they're seeing. Number two, it was released theatrically. And three, when it comes out on DVD, on July 22nd in North America, many people who didn't get a chance to see it in the theaters, or who didn't know about it, or couldn't devote four hours to it, will have a chance to buy it on DVD. And hopefully that will vindicate the investment. Gettysburg did $25 million in video sales, so we're hoping to do at least that well. Then we'll see about the final segment, The Last Full Measure.