Controversy
The film has also been the subject of controversy, which revolves around the fact that the President and Senator Hanson, the primary protagonists, are both Democrats, and the primary antagonist is the Republican Runyon. In an October 2000 issue of Premiere magazine, Oldman supposedly alleged that editing cuts were made due to the studio's Democratic leanings. Oldman and the film's producer, Urbanski, reportedly accused the DreamWorks studio and director Rod Lurie of editing the original film to make it more Democrat-biased, mainly by making the Runyon character less sympathetic than was originally intended. However, Oldman has stated in other interviews that his criticisms were only directed at Lurie and that the quote was "bastardized, kinda" when reprinted on Internet sources. He went on to complain that his issue with the film was how it became progressively less "ambiguous" as the editing went on, specifically citing the music as a problem in turning it into a film about "good guys and bad guys." Roger Ebert reported that Oldman's denunciation of the film never happened, and quoted Urbanski as saying Oldman is "the least political person I know" (against outlets calling him a "conservative" for his comments) and taking credit for producing the film independently from DreamWorks, which eventually adopted it.
President Barack Obama cited President Evans as his favorite fictional president in an interview during the 2008 presidential campaign.
Read more about this topic: The Contender (2000 film)
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)