What the hell is wrong with this country?

I finally just finished watching the insanely depressing Lost in La Mancha, about genius auteur Terry Gilliam's efforts to make a film called The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Gilliam's production collapses in 6 days, for a variety of reasons. He only had a 32 million dollar budget to start with.

For fuck's sake, someone spent 54 million dollars on Gigli. And that got made without a hitch. What sort of culturally bankrupt assholes are we in this country when we spend that kind of money of "It's turkey time, gobble gobble," and Terry Gilliam can't get what looked like a seriously brilliant film get made?

What the hell is wrong with you, Hollywood executives? Terminator 3 got $170,000,000, Battlefield Earth got $73,000,000, Rollerball got $70,000,000, and the eye-bleedingly awful Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (although it was better than the first one, which is not saying much) got $90,000,000. Worst of all, I think, is that Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle not only set the cause of women's equality back twenty years, but it cost $120,000,000 dollars to make.

I think this is the reason the terrorists hate us.

What could Terry Gilliam do with the budget of some of these films? For 5 million he made Time Bandits. For 15 million he made Brazil. For 29 million he made 12 Monkeys.

Imagine The Man Who Killed Don Quixote with a budget of 170 million dollars instead of the film that gave Arnold Schwarzenegger the chance to stick a woman's head in a toilet.

Hollywood Movie Executives, you should all be ashamed of yourselves.

Okay, rant over.