RUSH: I want to tell you about a movie I saw recently. I flew out to Las Vegas, I guess, when was it, last Friday — was it last Friday? Boy, I’ll tell you, the time, the days are just running together. I think it was, it was last Friday, flew out, whenever it was, last Friday or two Fridays ago, flew out of Las Vegas, and I got a promotional copy of this movie that’s in a small number of theaters right now, and it’s just doing overwhelmingly well. It’s called Bella. But it’s strange. Well, not strange. We see stories continuously, ladies and gentlemen, about how Hollywood is not making its nut at the box office, that movies are just not selling. Here’s one that is, and nobody’s talking about it because it is about life. It’s about abortion. It is about life and how there are alternatives to abortion with people who have ethics and morality. This is a movie that you don’t see come out of Hollywood much because it reinforces the sanctity and the importance of the life issue. It’s not preachy and it’s built right into the plot, and the dialogue is not controversial in any way.
These kinds of movies used to get made a long time ago, but not anymore. These are the kind of movies that the public would love to see. It’s going to be opening, I think, in 30 more markets over the weekend. The way to contrast this would be Million Dollar Baby. Did you guys ever see that? I did not see Million Dollar Baby. I’ve got it on my Kaleidescape system, but I haven’t watched it, but I do know in that movie, Hilary Swank, the female boxer, becomes paralyzed, and asks her manager, Clint Eastwood, to help her end her life. There was an uproar over that because it seemed to glorify the courage of euthanasia. This is just the opposite. It takes a situation, a woman becoming impregnated, where in most cases in the country the first thought is, ‘Ah, I gotta abort. I didn’t want this to happen.’ Two people deal with this in a rational way. It’s breaking box office records. There hasn’t been a whole lot of screens. It hasn’t been in a lot of markets, but where it has been playing, it’s been breaking records. You probably haven’t heard about it. The Drive-Bys are not writing about the movie — (interruption) Bella, yeah, Bella as in Bella Abzug. It’ll soon be in the rental library at the Bay Haven Elementary school in Sarasota.
It runs just a little under two hours, and it’s not captioned, this was a promotion copy and I was listening to it on the airplane. I got most of the dialogue, but I’m sure I missed some, but I got enough to understand how powerful the movie is. I remember when it started, ‘Oh, boy, this is awfully slow,’ because it was raved about to me, and I said, ‘This is starting off a little slow here,’ but for some reason I stuck with it, not because I knew what was coming, but just because I was compelled to stay with it. So if Bella is in your market and you are upset over fourth graders being taught about conscientious objectors on Veterans Day and that kind of stuff happening in the country, this is a movie that you’ll like and you’ll applaud and it will warm your heart. So keep a sharp eye out for it. I was frankly surprised. I really was.