LOS ANGELES — Actor Gary Oldman says the politics at the center of his latest film, "The Contender," spilled over into the editing room.
Oldman and Douglas Urbanski, his manager and producing partner, said in November's Premiere magazine that writer-director Rod Lurie bowed to pressure from Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks studio to recut the movie into left-leaning propaganda.
"The Contender" stars Joan Allen as a Democratic senator nominated by the president (Jeff Bridges) to become vice president. Oldman plays a conservative congressman trying to derail her nomination.
Oldman and Urbanski said they felt the actor's character was the hero of Lurie's original script. But they say Lurie agreed to cuts suggested by DreamWorks, which is headed by Al Gore supporters Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen.
The tone of the new edit vilifies Oldman's character, Urbanski said.
"If your names are Spielberg, Katzenberg and Geffen, you can't have a film with a Republican character who is at all sympathetic being released Oct. 13," Urbanski told the magazine.
Oldman said of Lurie, "To have a friend and director not go in and fight for you is just deeply, deeply disappointing. . . . I am very hurt by it."
Lurie said he shortened the independently financed movie by about 15 minutes after DreamWorks bought it, and at Spielberg's suggestion added "ennobling music" to an impassioned speech by Allen's character. But Lurie said the movie's political stripes did not change because of the DreamWorks deal.
Lurie said Oldman seems too caught up in his character. "Gary is emblematic of what many actors go through: A kind of Stockholm syndrome in which they begin to sympathize with their captors, and in this case, the captors are the characters they play," Lurie said.