Miles Teller ("Footloose"), Justin Chon ("The Twilight Saga"), Skylar Astin ("Taking Woodstock") and Sarah Wright ("The House Bunny") star in the pic, which follows two childhood friends who drag their straight-arrow buddy out to celebrate his 21st birthday the night before an important medical school interview, in an evening of debauchery that spirals out of control. But when one beer leads to another, the evening spirals into a wild misadventure of debauchery that none of them will ever forget.
Yawn... sound terribly boring. Anyway, the interesting (to me anyway) part of this story is that they're filming part of the movie in Linyi, China. Looking at the brief blurb above, I don't see how a scene in China fits into the story, but who says crappy movies need a logical plot. More importantly, Linyi has been in the news lately due to Chen Guangchen. From Wikipedia:
Chen Guangcheng (born November 12, 1971) is a blind civil rights activist in the People's Republic of China who drew international attention to human rights issues in rural areas. He was placed under house arrest from September 2005 to March 2006 after talking to Time magazine about the forced abortion cases he investigated in Linyi Prefecture, Shandong Province. Authorities formally arrested him in June 2006 for destruction of property and assembling a crowd to disrupt traffic. During his trial, Chen's lawyers were forbidden access to the court, leaving him without a proper defender. On August 24, 2006, Chen was sentenced to four years and three months for "damaging property and organizing a mob to disturb traffic."
Chen was released from prison on September 8, 2010 after serving his full sentence, but remains under "ruanjin" or soft detention at his home in Dongshigu. Chen and his wife were reportedly beaten shortly after a human rights group released a video of their home under intense police surveillance on February 9, 2011.
I'm not sure what the movie producers were thinking. Chen Guangcheng's story is not small local news; it has been featured on TIME, BBC, New York Times (often), NPR, and lots of other "Western" media. Relativity Media for its part, seems to be quite happy with the Chinese arrangement:
Joining Mandeville Films’ David Hoberman (The Fighter) and Todd Lieberman (The Fighter), are producers on the film, Andy Yan of SAIF and Hugo Shong of IDG. The Relativity and Sky Land production is being made in association with Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Produced (Limitless). In addition to previous footage shot in Seattle, Washington, filming locations include Linyi, a city in the south of Shandong province. Principal photography on scenes in China began shooting in Linyi on October 26, 2011.
Party Secretary of Linyi Municipal Committee of the Chinese Party of Communism (CPC), Zhang Shajun, whose position is directly above the Mayor, said “Linyi is a beautiful city and we welcome international filmmakers to come to Linyi to make beautiful worldwide films, and particularly welcome my good friend Ryan Kavanaugh and his great company Relativity to be shooting in our historic city. We promise to provide the best service possible in order to help make the movie successful worldwide.”
This will mark the first of many projects that Relativity plans to shoot and do post-production work on in China.
Keeping lots of thugs around to intimidate and beat up visitors to an entire village is costly. I read that there are up to 300 "guards" and they get paid ~RMB 100 per day. With other expenses, that's probably RMB 1M per month. I don't know whether a small city like Linyi has that kind of discretionary budget but some cash from a "Hollywood" movie production company will sure come in handy. Just wondering how well the movie will do once it's linked to illegal detention and torture of a blind human rights lawyer. Probably not good.
From Charlie Custer at ChinaGeeks:
So, what should you do? I’m no expert, but let me help you weigh the options here. You can either piss off the American media and whatever percentage of your audience chooses to pay attention, or you can piss off some government leaders who are giving you a great deal on shooting your hilarious movie so long as you keep quiet about how they’re using your money to hold a blind man hostage.
Personally, I’d say leave Linyi. Like, tomorrow. Or hey, even today! It certainly seems like the moral choice, and I don’t understand why you’d want to shoot an American buddy comedy in China anyway (well, except for because of this).
We know you’re aware of the issue (see image). And while I understand the “no comment” response — you probably need some time to get your ducks in a row — please be aware that people are not just going to forget about this if you choose to do nothing. People haven’t forgotten about Chen and his family, and even though they’re beaten and robbed, people keep trying to visit him. Relativity Media needs to seriously consider which side of that equation it wants to be on.
Because maybe it’s just my sense of humor, but holding an innocent blind man and his family in their house, beating and robbing well-intentioned net users trying to visit him, and then lying about it to the world does not sound like a great premise for a hilarious buddy comedy. And every day you’re in Linyi shooting 21 and Over, you’re funding that, too, whether you want to be or not.
Do the right thing here.
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