Hicks Nix Peacenik Pix: Movies That No One Wants To See
Okay, that’s nowhere near as good a ‘hed’ as the Variety classic – Sticks Nix Hicks Pix – made famous by Jimmy Cagney in “Yankee Doodle Dandy”. Perhaps readers can come up with a better one, but you get the point. The public isn’t going to Hollywood’s antiwar movies – and it’s not just the hicks if you look at the amazingly-consistent comments on Breitbart.com beneath the article: “Hollywood is casualty of war as movie-goers shun Iraq films.” It’s everybody and his brother from Tacoma to Tallahassee, not to mention a large number from abroad. As of last Saturday night, the Agence France Presse report had over 500 comments and counting.
The article itself, not surprisingly anonymously written, is filled with the usual shopworn explanations for the audience’s disinterest. For Lew Harris of Movies.com, it’s the canard that movies are escapism only. Serious films are just too heavy for the great unwashed. For Gitesh Pandya of boxofficeguru.com, it’s that audiences don’t want to pay for what they already see for free on television (Iraq). Veteran television producer Steve Bocho says it’s hard to gain audience interest in a “hugely unpopular war.”
The audience members themselves – that is the Breitbart commenters – are having none of this nonsense. The third one down, “Extremely Bored,” puts it this way: “Let me correct this point – I am not weary of war news at all. I am shunning these movies – and many others- because I am tired of Hollywood’s anti-American stance on absolutely everything. However we got into the war, and whatever mistakes were made up to this point, we are one country. We need to win and we need to remain tough against terrorism. It doesn’t benefit anyone to do otherwise. I will go see a movie that reflects that point.”
He is echoed almost immediately by commenter “Lee”: “The real answer – the obvious one that liberals can’t bring themselves to accept – is that most Americans are tired of liberal spinmeisters trashing their country, our soldiers, and our way of life. The Redfords of the world sit in their ivory towers and try to tell us how to think and react based on their own prejudices …”
And so it goes down the page… hundreds, soon thousands.
Now, admittedly, this is Breitbart.com and many readers come via Drudge – hence some bias – but the box office figures do not lie. These people represent a fair percentage of the (absent) audience. For years Hollywood insiders would joke about the cluelessness of the “flyover people” between the two coasts. But reading these comments, the flyover people, whether foreign or domestic, seem so much more intelligent than the Hollywood wags quoted in the article, it borders on the pathetic.
In fact, the box office debacle should be no surprise to anyone who had been paying the slightest attention, so the question is: Why was and is Hollywood so clueless? (Speaking of “is,” how about Writers Guild President Patrick Verrone being photographed arm-in-arm in front of Paramount Studios with Jesse Jackson, of all people, in order to generate support for the current writers’ strike? The African-American community long has seen through Jackson as the self-promoting jerk he is, but not the WGA.)
Since there’s a strike on and I can’t get work anyway, I will let ‘er rip:
The truth is Hollywood people are massively uninformed. They live in a bubble and, outside what they read in the New York Times and hear on NPR, they know almost nothing about what is really going on in the Middle East. And very few of them are curious to find out, because they assume what they already know is true and they have no impetus to investigate further.
But there is deeper reason for this than mere convenience and received conventional wisdom. These are not curious people because they are highly self-protective. They live a hugely privileged lifestyle, often based to a great degree on luck (and they know it), and this existence could only be threatened by contradictory information. Who wants that – particularly when it would alienate your colleagues, hurt your reputation and cause work problems?
Better to produce movies that validate the orthodoxy, even if they are economic disasters. Your colleagues will be impressed and you might win a prize (De Palma did – at Venice). Most of them are low budget anyway – a piffle. And the distribution system is rigged anyway. The antiwar swill won’t lose that much money because, boring as the films may be, they will be force-fed into the global entertainment machine, grouped in packages with other movies and sold to foreign television distributors to re-emerge as late-night reruns in Albania or wherever on into 2027 and beyond. A minor loss, if any.
And there is another benefit. (Here is where I am really going to make enemies.) Making movies like these or making extreme liberal public pronouncements make you seem like a good guy to yourself, when in your private life you are a miserable, self-serving bastard.
In order to understand how important that is you must never forget that Hollywood is a brutal place. It is just as vicious and competitive as dramatized in TV shows like Entourage, only nowhere near as entertaining. Only the most ambitious and determined survive and, to do that, the chances are you will not come out of the process a nice person. You will step on the backs of your colleagues, mistreat your staff and have generally erratic personal relationships based much more on status and connections than love or genuine affection.
Of course I am overstating to make a point, but I have noticed, in the years I have worked in Hollywood, that, with rare exceptions, the more successful people are, the more wretched they are to others. And those with the most obvious public liberal credentials are often the ones who are the most despicable in their private behavior. You could almost graph it.
Much of this public liberalism of the excessive knee-jerk variety stems from a form of self-loathing. These same people do not want to be bastards – life just put them in that position. But, at the same time, they do not want anyone to take away what they have – the vast acclaim and fortune – even if deep down they wonder if they are worthy. What to do? What to do?
The solution is to create another self, a kind of mini-me, who goes out and loudly proclaims what a fine liberal humanistic person he or she is- a public projection to obfuscate the private self. Sometimes this results in actual good works, but usually it is basically blather (see Streisand’s website) or dopey showing off like Sean Penn putting in an appearance with Hugo Chavez.
Other times, distorted work emerges like the current group of films no one wants to see.
Roger L. Simon is an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, novelist and blogger, and the CEO of Pajamas Media.
Absolutely brilliant. I’m wondering, too, whether part of the mix — another facet of feelings of inadequacy — would be an attempt to gain intellectual heft by associating themselves with ideas popular in academia and the press?
For what may be obvious or curious reasons, that industry and that craft is incredibly attractive to folks who hate where they’re from and hate who they are. Now, damn, combine those two factors together and that’s a hell of a mixed-up brew!
Unfortunately, much of academia is the same.
“These same people do not want to be bastards – life just put them in that position. But, at the same time, they do not want anyone to take away what they have…”
Oh, yes, I see that every day with people who are only moderately affluent and not famous. they want to have it both ways. They mouth the platitudes, but always look out for number one.
I’ve frequently wondered at the popularity (within Hollywood) of movies about a “whore with a heart of gold”. Is it because the participants in the movies want to think of themselves as having hearts of gold?
Ameryx, don’t we all?
Perhaps the reason people aren’t watching these films is they’re just not particularly good movies.
Films that want to be taken seriously need to be authentic and accurate — otherwise they’re just propaganda posing as art.
And people — even hicks — can smell that from a mile away.
“They live a hugely privileged lifestyle, often based to a great degree on luck…” I wonder if their attitudes and therefore behaviors might change if they began to believe not in luck but Providence, and/or the Grace of God? The difference between mere random chance and directed purpose is foundational of character. The former frees one of any moral restraint. Envy, backbiting, calumny, all are acceptable. The first reply to Providential grace must be gratitude, and its corollary, humility. I realize I’m making a case for Hollywood to repent of its sins…hmm.
Hollywood and it’s ilk aren’t going to tell the stories or make the movies about the war Americans want to see. That much is clear. Why doesn’t PJM with its’ vast talent pool create scripts and stories and find financing for them? Get the PJM community to invest since according to this article some of these films get made with a low budget. Heck, I’d hit the tip jars of any of the individuals involved in this undertaking multiple times. Please consider it, PJM. The dearth of patriotic, heroic, meaningful films is confounding and pathetic.
Bill
Most of us struggle with feelings of inadequacy and the sense that we probably don’t deserve our success (modest as it may be)… but we compensate with the real love we share with our spouses, the true affection that binds us to our family and friends, the rewards of parenting and faith life, and ultimately, the recognition that “hey, I really am working pretty hard here!” Seems to me that many of the folks in Hollywood are denied the reconciliations we enjoy while the disconnect between merit and reward is orders of magnitude greater than we’ll ever experience. No wonder these vanity projects, interviews with authentic dictators and those freebie goody bags are all so highly prized… the hunger for some tangible jolt of self-worth must be overwhelming… “You love me, you really love me – lookit my movie… who I’m standing with… the cool stuff I got for just being wonderful me!” Annoying, pathetic, and when faced with an implacable enemy, dangerous.
Wow, I’m not touching all the hatred with a stick, but I will touch on the main point.
I mostly agree with the idea, save from a minor distinction. I don’t think that a blatant pro-American movie would do much better at the box office (perhaps some, just because it’s different).
Whether a persons view are pro or anti war, most of us understand that it is a very serious issue, and prefer to make our opinion on facts instead of naked propaganda. It would be different if the movie was shot/written by the people who have some personal knowledge of the subject, but currently these movies carry as much weight in the public eye as members of boy bands testifying on the effects of global warming.
Even while supporting the war, I’ll go watch an anti war movie if i felt it was intelligent, thought provoking and original. Instead I see the same message blatantly repeated over and over again. I’ve heard it the first time, I don’t want to hear it again, and I’m certainly not going to pay for the privilege.
Imagine a North Korean demonstration where attendance was not mandatory, and there was a cover charge. Who would show up to that?
Bill has a great idea. Beat them at their own game and give the public a choice.
Roger, wonderful analysis. I’m particularly taken by your theory on their self-hatred and their extremely public anti-American pronouncements. I’ve noticed these often or usually come out of the blue, until you notice they’re starting to promote a new movie, CD or tour. After the pronouncement and their re-validation, they often disappear for months or years. I’ve had a theory that there is a little Hollywood machine that sends various artists/actors out at certain times to say certain things — things that get them in good with Hollywood while horrifying the rest of us. I know this cements their “us vs. them” mentality as it’s crucial they view themselves separate and superior to the rest of us.
Having grown up in L.A. and seen these miserable and dysfunctional people up close, I know all you say is true. But now, my only fascination with these people is how truly awful and unadmirable they are. They’re different, all right. They are beneath contempt…and I think they know it and it makes them even crazier.
Back in the 90s, Bill Clinton (whom I voted for twice) validated the amoral and narcissistic Hollywood way of life. He made them all feel great about themselves. Now, Bush and co. (including his supporters, of which I am one) invalidate them, they are on the outside, and I think that’s a big driver of BDS and all that has followed.
God, I want to shout this piece (and the great comments too!) from the rooftops from mine and my neighbors’ hick shacks. It touches a nerve (and a very sore one at that) of what is at root of what is wrong with America, ie..us.
Perhaps in addition to the above comment about the need for patriotic movies, there is a need, and a great market I believe, for a dramatic script that would adequately portray this tortured, pathetic creature – a kind of Willy Loman/Citizen Kane of the bizarre Hollywood enclave – desperately hiding behind a severely pathological Messianic complex, painfully wanting to be loved and feel significant, while experiencing a degree of self-loathing so unfathomable and awful that he becomes totally oblivious to how obvious he is to the rest of the world.
Can anybody else smell a blockbuster?
Great essay and comments. Pretty easy to frame the fraudulence just by imagining an actual relationship between the real Butch Cassidy & Sundance Kid and their myth-makers, Redford & Newman.
I know–hard to imagine a terrorist gang–even a 19th century model–even getting past the stars’ security people. But a telling mental exercise nonetheless.
Wot a laff–imagine Bonnie and Clyde blowing a few heads off with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway standing there in the bank lobby agape in the blood-spatter.
Should’nt it be “FLIX” not “PIX” -??
Isn’t PIX used for photographs and
FLIX for motion pictures?
You can tell by the caricatured, stereotyped characters and story lines in these movies that all of these Hollywood liberals live in the proverbial echo chamber. They fly from one liberal haven to another wondering who in this country voted for George Bush and who really believes we are fighting evil people. They don’t have the courage to go and meet with people who think any other way but their way. And then they applaud and reward each other for having the courage to speak Truth to Power!
I’ve often heard that it’s hard for hollywood to stretch a successful short skit from some tv show like “Saturday Night” into a 90 minute movie.
Imagine then, how hard it is for hollywood to stretch two successful four-word phrases, “No Blood For Oil” and “Bush Lied, People Died” into, what is now, five 90+ minute films?
If it’s happening in Tallahassee the far left movie industry is really in trouble. I live here and it is about as liberal as it gets.
Roger:
A good comment, but it still begs an important point: what about being a liberal serves to redeem a bastard? In other words, I’ll grant your argument, but I’m still not clear WHY saving whales, opposing ANWAR drilling and the war in Iraq, or driving a Prius makes a self-serving Hollywood type feel good about himself. Put another way, why couldn’t s/he feel good about him/herself for supporting the people of Cuba rather than their dictator, or a rational market-based approach to health insurance instead of socialized medicine, or the experienced Giuliani instead of the inexperienced Obama? F
‘I’m wondering, too, whether part of the mix — another facet of feelings of inadequacy — would be an attempt to gain intellectual heft by associating themselves with ideas popular in academia and the press?”
Speaking as someone in academia, I often wonder whether intellectuals association with bankrupt and discredited ideologies would an attempt to gain social status by associating themselves with ideas glamorized by Hollywood and the press. The ‘smart’ kids – or at least the adequately smart – get to associate themselves with the pretty and popular ones, and they both get an emotional thrill of validation out of it at a very low cost. Walk around you average liberal arts department and you’ll find scores of adults and young adults desparately looking for some sort of radical style to make up for thier social insecurity. They’ve got a schtique every bit as much as the entertainers, from the white kid with the massive dreadlocks, to the pasty girl all in black, to the guy that dresses like some sort of french clown, and so forth. If to Hollywood, ‘socialism’ is about cheaply not feeling like a bastard, to academia its about cheaply getting laid.
Let’s hope Breitbart preserves the article and the comment thread in its entirety. What we are witnessing is a real web phenom!
To: F
Re: What the Hollywood Leftist Likes
Though I can’t claim to be 1/100th the writer Mr. Simon is I think I understand his point. So please allow me to answer your query. To be acknowledged by the Great Unwashed as worthy and wise is more valuable to the likes of Barbara Streisand or Robert Redford than any villa on the C√¥te d’Azur. Any tangible evidence that their lives have more meaning than mere material success is better than sex with Jessica Alba. They know their lives are miserable and rotten, but if they can achieve the Good, then all the crap will be balanced out of the equation.
With Doing Good as their prime directive the question goes a-begging – what is Good? Well, Peace is Good, answers the inner child. Ah, therefore I shall be a Peacemaker, concludes the guilt-burdened Hollywood star. Then all shall know me as worthy and wise. The problem of course is that the only side in this conflict that is biddable by this formulation is the side of civilization and reason. The opposition believes something entirely different. To them the only peace is that between Man and God, or more specifically, Allah. And that peace can only be achieved through abject surrender of Man to Allah. Anyone who isn’t at peace with Allah is an infidel who must be destroyed, and the highest Good is death in battle with them. Like it or not jihadist Islam, unfortunately the most dynamic and compelling form of that religion operating today, is at war with us — us being the cultural descendants of Pericles, Aristotle, Buddha, Marcus Aurelius, Confucius, Loazi, Memonides – in short everybody not to Osama bin Ladin’s liking. So choose your side, Hollywood, you can’t demote one side without promoting the other. Sadly, it seems you already have chosen.
“I don’t think that a blatant pro-American movie would do much better at the box office (perhaps some, just because it’s different).”
A so-called blatantly “pro-American movie” which is deemed as mere propaganda would likely not do well at the box office. But we are normally the good guys! A fairly objective movie showing Americans bravely doing the best they can in Iraq should be quite successful. After all, we have truly liberated the citizens of that country. Their overall lives are vastly improving because of our efforts.
F: Because they’re self-absorbed idiots who reflect whatever’s around them because they have nothing inside of themselves?
Glenn: Nobody likes a pedant. I should know – I are one. ;-p
F, you ask why the liberal canon of bien pensant causes serves to soothe the consciences of the Hollywood lefties, when they could be espousing ideas that actually work. It’s what economist Arnold Kling describes as the difference between C-type and M-type arguments, namely consequences versus motives. All of the wishy-wshy liberal ideas have motive at their heart: the desire to be seen to care. Pragmatic, hard-headed ideas, which are generally seen to be right-wing/libertarian, are based on outcome. It is fatal to the sensibilities of the un-examined self to be seen to act in a hard-headed way. So all the posturing is essentially a form of vanity. The question the Hollywood Left asks itself is: does this make me feel better? The question a free-market pragmatist asks himself is: will this work?
Just once, I’d like to see a movie where a businessman or high CIA official is NOT taking part in some evil conspiracy. It was banal nonsense twenty years ago. Now it’s positively repellent.
If our intelligence services were as wicked and omnipotent as Hollywood portrays, Hugo Ch√°vez would have been dead for five years.
Yeia sou Roger!
The exposition of extreme liberals stomping on one another for position and glory fits with the description of LA I heard from a colleague who went there to turn out works of art, to wit:
First seven years: you are shit on by everyone.
Second seven: you shit on everyone else.
Third seven: pick up the pieces and retire to make your soul like the Godfather.
BMoon,
It’s already been done, the female version-Gloria Swanson in SUNSET BOULEVARD, the male version-Kirk Douglas in THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, -neither- of which will be remade by the likes of Deadford.
Roger: It seems to me that the WGA strike has presented you and others who are tired of Holywood’s anti-American tripe with a perfect opportunity.
Go outside the rigged system and write that movie you and the fly-overs want to see.
Show the unions and the studios that success doesn’t mean marching in the left-wing parade.
The major studios may not want to touch it (and the WGA may be pissed) but surely there is someone out there who is willing to buck the system to make the kind of money a pro-American movies is certain to bring in.
Terrific piece, thank you for writing it down. I’ve long thought there must also be a “go along to get along” aspect to Hollywood and its sad state of affairs. When reaching out to create “another self”, almost invariably they will all lean in only one direction. Why? Our best entertainers wouldn’t even go entertain our troops, for crying out loud. Who sets those rules? Who determines what behavior is acceptable in order to get along in Hollywood?
Roger,
In just a few years, I was employed at some fifteen or so production companies/agencies in Los Angeles – bouncing around from job to job as most writers do while chasing a career. A couple observations to strengthen your overall thesis, from my not-yet-paid-for-it vantage point:
“You could almost graph it” – Yes, I believe you can, much as you can graph the 90% plus of journalists from major publications who vote Democrat. That political messages from Hollywood border on socialist, however, can also be attributed to a simple element of the job description besides the necessity of great ambition. The most successful executives I saw in Hollywood were not necessarily vicious, but were so uniformly strapped for time that not a moment could be dedicated to exploring one’s political leanings.
They sprung from universities as wide-eyed liberals, and then never had a moment to allow their beliefs to mature. The successful executive clocks in from 9 to 7, typically followed by a business dinner, and then by an evening reading script coverage and preparing for the following day. A social night out can not be simply refreshing, but must be a networking opportunity. The job simply has no downtime, and taking a moment to develop as a citizen is never on the agenda.
Read the underdeveloped posts by Ari Emanuel at Huffington Post. It is liberalism, yes, but it is the liberalism of a 20-year-old regurgitating a professor’s doctrine. It is simply immature politics, and I venture it is more due to Emanuel’s not having developed his views beyond his secondary education rather than sheer self-loathing. Similarly, the dreadful political films of this season seem the unnuanced, idealist work of a student eager to seize the political zeitgeist for his generation.
Second, as there may be twenty qualified people for each open job, and those seeming most powerful are hardly secure in their position, one’s personal political principles must be secondary to one’s career. I promise you that several conservatives worked diligently to help Redford pump out LfL, and that each was quite willing to do it. They justify it with the thought that one day they will have the opportunity to showcase a right-leaning voice, but that time almost never comes, even for the studio heads – and even if they have had a moment to mature their beliefs along the way.
maybe in the credits, redofrd could list his foreign polciy resume, completely with last college attended.
Bill wrote, “Hollywood and it’s ilk aren’t going to tell the stories or make the movies about the war Americans want to see. That much is clear. Why doesn’t PJM with its’ vast talent pool create scripts and stories and find financing for them? Get the PJM community to invest since according to this article some of these films get made with a low budget. Heck, I’d hit the tip jars of any of the individuals involved in this undertaking multiple times. Please consider it, PJM. The dearth of patriotic, heroic, meaningful films is confounding and pathetic.”
I think that’s already been tried. “The Kingdom” was one of the results. It was only modestly successful. Partly because Americans have been conditioned against Hollywood war movies.
I don’t see any way to fix that.
That means that even an immediate return of Hollywood to the pro-Americanism of 1942 would take years to bring back audiences. If indeed they’d ever return.
The other reason “The Kingdom” wasn’t a big success was that it got neutered as part of the development process. Liberal groupthink is tremendously powerful. The director was appalled when the audience cheered when the FBI killed the terrorists.
There are some accounts that every Hollywood gathering, business or social, begins with an obligatory Bush-bash. Almost like a religious homily, reminding everyone of what they Truly Believe.
For an interesting thread I participated in on Ace of Spades, see the URL for this comment.
A wonderful piece and is something that can be generalized to most of Hollywood for the last couple of decades: the number of re-treads, picking up on tv shows that have little audience and making them into movies, giving the same basic concepts re-done to a fare-thee-well and then sticking to the shopworn villains (ex. government, CIA, big business, european men in Nazi groups, etc.) plus sticking the number 2 or 3 or 4 on it has killed filmography and the creation of interesting stories.
On the SF side I am tired, and very much so, of the one or two ‘blockbusters’ and then ignoring the rest of the field. Off the top of my head I can name 5 writers who have put out better work than the popular Herbert and Heinlein who will not see the light of day. That is because they feature compelling characters, thought provoking stories and often more than a bit of action. How about putting Iraq into context and giving us David Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers stories like ‘Counting the Cost’ or ‘At Any Price’ or ‘Rolling Hot’? Gritty material, gut wrenching and yet gives us a view of warfare that easily translates to our modern era. But you won’t see those because of the entirely insular community of Hollywood unable to deal with the morals and ethics of warfare. What ever did happen to staging the morality play in the future and giving us a compelling story? Good and hard commentary can be given on warfare, as was done in times past with ‘All quiet on the Western Front’ in which we see a lot of WWI is not about fighting but surviving it. Not a great film by modern standards, but still quite moving for the portrayal given without getting ideology slathered on it.
With the low cost of CGI (getting lower every year thanks to the computer industry) the cost to make a good video is dropping precipitously. We already have dedicated Star Trek fans making new original series episodes revolving around other people and happenings… not done for glory and money, but because they love the material and the process of bringing their dreams to fruition. As that sunk cost for equipment goes down, and software encroaches on high end skill, Hollywood will be faced with either making compelling stories at lower budgets… or being swamped by those who will do so. And if you think the art critics and film critics were harsh on things, just wait to see what happens with *fan based criticism* driving things… those folks don’t spend much time as prima donnas… where ‘if you don’t like it, then do it better yourself’ is not a condescending slur from a multimillion dollar producer, but a challenge to actually present good and compelling visions for the community to have.
Hollywood can survive if it ends ‘blockbusteritis’, ‘repeatomania’ and just dishwater dull stories and heads back to low budget, decently produced flicks that capture the heart of those presenting stories. I don’t see that happening. In the long run we will be better off without the egos and with the stories.
“With Doing Good as their prime directive the question goes a-begging – what is Good? Well, Peace is Good, answers the inner child.”
“I’d like to find your inner child and kick its little ass.” (Don Henley — “Get Over It”, 1994)
Look, ladies and gentlemen: the entertainers spout all this horrible bullshit because that’s what they’ve osmotically absorbed through the prevailing culture of the entire 20th century and they are fucking morons who cannot think.
It’s that simple.
Lunacharsky is alive and well in Hollywood.
For me, it is gratifying that there are people that do “get” it. They are not the NYT, LAT, Hollywood, producers, etc. It is, we the people, who finally get it and are starting to seriously get involved. Long live this country, America!!!!!!
GREATEST.
POST.
EVER.
10/10
RattlerGator
Sissy Willis
good points
There’s also the other side of the “mini me” public image that Hollywood celebs create, in that they do it not just to feel good about themselves, but they do it because they know that in dealing with the big media outlets, those are the things they want to hear from the stars. So it’s good PR to have a world outlook that’s simpatico with the key reporters, editors and other news execs who cover you, or else you’re going to have a lot harder time getting good press when you’re involved with a bad project — no benefit of the doubt for an openly conservative actor/actress who stars or produces 2-3 turkeys in a row as there are for so many on the left these days.
(The next question should be why so many at the big media outlets have political views that are mirror images of Hollywood. Part of it is the same reason — especially in TV, it’s cutthroat getting to the top. But part of it is also a mindset that goes back at least to pre-Great Society and even back to the pre-New Deal era, in that in a time where government was only responsible for roads, the military and delivering the mail, it was the press’ main duty to report on wrongdoing that affected the public, which mostly came from the private sector. The fact that big government programs can be just as injurious to the public as anything from the private sector has never entered their collective mindset, even if big government has been around for the past 40-75 years.)
“…the more successful people are, the more wretched they are to others.”
So true…I had occasion to work with/for Barbra Streisand and you have never met a nastier, angrier, meaner person in your life. All the $, all the fame, all the accolades and this broad is just straight hateful.
I did some creative/design work for her on a film and she would not even allow myself and my design team to enter the gates of her ostentacious estate…No, she was totally fine with leaving us “little people” standing in her driveway. Ridiculous. These hogs lack even the most basic humanity. Lord knows any “rube” in Virginia, Iowa or Oregon would invite us in, at least, let alone be courteous.
Scum of the Earth, the lot of ‘em.
Dr. Strangelove was virulently anti-war, and satirically portrayed Americans as war mongering inbreds.
It was also darkly hilarious, as well as brilliantly acted, scripted and directed.
The current crop of anti-war films, besides their Koskids mentality, ARE BADLY MADE MOVIES. I’m right of center but can enjoy a good flick that doesn’t religiously hew to my belief system.
David,
I think you are absolutely correct! Thanks for sharing your experience.
Indeed, it sometimes feels like I’m the only one who is not lured by films anymore because of the hollywood disgust factor. Many of the posters on this board illustrate a highly intelligent sentiment vis-a-vis hollywood that I have been heretofar been unable to articulate. What is this bastion of thoughtful, intelligent conservatives I’ve stumbled upon? Some of the conservative blog sites I go to seem to be populated with knuckle-draggers. Most of the posts here could have been written by PhDs from a bygone era, you know, back when conservatives were allowed to hold professorships. Granted, I’m no super wordsmith but I know good, intelligent analysis when I see it. I’ll be back here frequently, if you’ll have me back!
Thanks Debbie!
Thought this might be an appropriate thread to post a story about an experience I had in Hollywood a few years ago. Also forwarded this to Roger recently. Hope you all enjoy:
Late 2004, debate night, working on the Paramount lot, I stuck around after hours to catch Bush and Kerry on an exec’s office television. Three of us in the room, and I don’t recall us mentioning anything political despite the evening’s entertainment. There may have been some Laker chat.
…Until the most senior among us eventually took a shot – “Bush or Kerry, guys?”
…
…
“…I’m a Bush guy.”
“…Not a Republican, but Bush.”
…
…
“…Me too.”
I can’t speak for my companions, but I felt rather stunned, proud, and just a bit naughty. Kinda “I know something you don’t know.” I left a few minutes later, empowered.
I walked around the corner to a restaurant (Pinot Hollywood, I believe), where some twenty folks crowded around a tv to catch the closing statements. Newly courageous, I nudged the guy next to me — “watch this,” I said.
Bush finished up, and the room was dead silent, of course. A lot of head shaking.
I clapped. Three or four times.
And all twenty faces turned to look at me in abject horror. Pupils dilated. This being LA, one of the faces was tv host Pat O’Brien.
“It’s okay, he was joking guys!” Said the person I’d nudged.
I grinned, knowing my two coworkers would’ve enjoyed the show.
If you don’t like your characters, it will show.
Interesting. So making a Left-careening film lets the makers continue to be pains in the butt in their private lives?
So that would be Carbuncle Offsets?
“Whether a persons view are pro or anti war, most of us understand that it is a very serious issue, and prefer to make our opinion on facts instead of naked propaganda.”
Good one, Ken. This, for me, is the crux of the biscuit. The American public is already hyper-informed about the WoT and Iraq. We are well on top of the issues and we take them damn seriously. There’s no aspect of these conflicts – from bad body armor to the ethics of rendition and torture – that we haven’t been discussing (which is to say, at each other’s throats about) since the beginning. We KNOW we have complex, intractable problems to deal with, and we’re dealing with them. Hollywood’s trite, pre-packaged lessons don’t help. We simply do not NEED these pampered airheads telling us things we’ve already heard a thousand times from far more credible sources.
Since there’s a strike on and I can’t get work anyway, I will let ‘er rip
It ain’t the strike, son. You’re a hack. Grow up and be a man about it.
Actually, you not working is the first GOOD thing to come out of this strike!
I’ve long felt that the “battle for Larry, Moe & Curly” during the taking of Baghdad could be the subject of a gripping war movie. The battles at the three highway interchanges broke the last significant Iraqi resistance to the U.S. invasion and triggered the collapse of Saddam’s regime two days later. During the battle, there was a live video feed from the action. I saw one US soldier who was was leaning on his Humvee for cover while a medic bandaged his shrapnel wounded leg, all the while keeping his weapon on target. Later, across the highway, they were picking up a wounded soldier on a litter, he motioned them to pause and he sat up, aimed his weapon and pulled off a couple of rounds, hit whoever he was shooting at, and then lay back down to be carried to an ambulance.
I found the names of those two soldiers:
“With the low cost of CGI (getting lower every year thanks to the computer industry) the cost to make a good video is dropping precipitously.”
You would think, and yet Superman Returns cost $300,000,000 (and, by the way, that was shot digitally, so that budget was really a crime). Just because computers and software make effects cheaper everyday, doesn’t mean that there is any incentive to finish filming on time to do the effects without tons of overtime and having to ship scenes off to every effects house in town to get it done by the release date. And that’s only one reason F/X films cost so much. Hollywood budgets are out of control, which is one of the laundry list of problems Hollywood refuses to face. Studio executives don’t want to hear that you can make a high quality F/X for less than $90m or more.
Hollywood is ill-informed and I think they are having a hard time adjusting to “new media”. For so long Hollywood was allowed to frame and shape the big moral issues of the day without much dissent to be heard of or seen. Now that many people have been liberated in the Information Age, Hollywood is showing its aged, tired, stale, unsophisticated, bratty self. And you can see their desperation in trying to hold on to the monopoly by obstructing dissenting views from being successes e.g. “Path to 9/11″ has still not been released on DVD.
Public projection? Fantasy Ideology. Here’s another essay that reinforces Roger’s point:
http://denbeste.nu/external/Harris01.html
“My friend did not disagree with me as to the likely counterproductive effects of such a demonstration. Instead, he argued that this simply did not matter. His answer was that even if it was counterproductive, even if it turned people against war protesters, indeed even if it made them more likely to support the continuation of the war, he would still participate in the demonstration and he would do so for one simple reason – because it was, in his words, good for his soul.
“What I saw as a political act was not, for my friend, any such thing. It was not aimed at altering the minds of other people or persuading them to act differently. Its whole point was what it did for him.”
One other thing I’ve noted, not just with the Hollywood people, but with smart people from all over. We have a broad swath (whatever a swath is) of people who have advanced degrees from all the wrong places who attained them by writing a thesis or two. Writing this stuff only requires the gumption to sit on your butt in a library for three or four years and plagiarize other people’s work so they can come to some kind of “independent” point of view, one that doesn’t offend the liberal faculty, naturally. But….and this is important, once a person attains the advanced degree (Masters, Ph.D.) they believe they have the tools to “research their way” to the absolute truth about everything. So we are now seeing the fruits of an over educated proletariat deciding that “the war is bad” and doing all the selective research necessary to back up that opinion. Nobody is as arrogant as a woman with a Ph.D. in English who has researched the history of the Middle East and has come to an anti-war inescapable conclusion. You cannot budge these people, they congregate around the usual watering holes boosting each other by reciting new “facts.” I could go on but you get my drift.
Here in Calgary when Brad Pitt and
entire family rented a small, to them, home in the country,
they were wonderful renters, were
friendly with everyone, they were
not bothered with photographers,
and when they left, the house was
spotless, and a wonderful thank you
gift for the women whose home they
rented was on the table.
She really liked them, she found
no “I am a star” behaviour, in fact
quite the opposite.
They really enjoyed the quiet and
scenery in this home.
Hollywood: America’s Bejewelled Bottomfeeders.
Sad thing is, some people need to kiss bums in order to feel valid.
Who really cares where Brad Pitt vacations?
If Hollywood is Going Green why then are they still making their petroleum-based products?
Save the Polar Bears by ending evil C2O producing filmdom!
“What’s The Matter With Kansas?” comes to mind. There may be many things wrong with Kansas, but when one’s analysis doesn’t match the facts–clearly the facts are wrong.
It’s that old “blind spot” making itself known.
Let’s not forget the classic,
Chix Nix Bundle-O-Stix: A Feminist Critique of the Disaggregation of Property
Jeanne L. Schroeder
Michigan Law Review, Vol. 93, No. 2 (Nov., 1994), pp. 239-319
Possibly the worst law review article ever. The editors should hang their pudenda in shame for having let a piece of trash like that appear in print.
This entire exercise would be fascinating if it weren’t so easily and solidly refuted by the fact that, at present, roughly 2/3′s of the people in this county (not Hollywood – the entire country) disagree with this war, the President, and the Republicans who engineered it. In order for Simon’s theory to hold true, it would stand to reason that polling would show enormous support for the war and an aching desire to see that support reflected on screen. There is not a single reputable poll to back up this assertion. And the inability of conservative fare like The Liberty Film Festival and the Half Hour News Hour to overtake the cultural landscape doesn’t forward this theory much, either.
The fact is, Lions For Lambs got middling to terrible reviews and the big names (Redford! Cruise!) just don’t generate the opening weekend box office they used to. This is not to say that Hollywood is innocent of vanity; just that Hollywood vanity had nothing to do with nobody (on the left or the right) wanting to see this uninspiring movie. Perhaps before accusing others of “living in a bubble” and being “massively uninformed”, Mr. Simon would do well to learn what the rest of the country, and not just his Pajamas Media partners, really feel about Iraq.
Polls don’t have anything to do with it even if you do believe them. The “2/3″ of our citizens who don’t approve of the war ALSO don’t need Hollywood to lecture them about it. They know the issues, they’ve thought about them, and they’ve come to a conclusion. Dramatizing that conclusion doesn’t add any value to it. And if, in fact, 2/3 of Americans already agree with the filmmakers, that sort of gives the lie to any claim that these are important films that needed to be made. Unless your definition of an important film is one that reinforces its audience’s opinions, that is.
Rog,
The point you make in the 9th paragraph about the dirsto system as an aside is, in my estimation, the greatest understatement of the otherwise well written article. I think that most of these movies are now, like CNN, trying to play more to to the ‘international’ audience rather than to amercian box office. As such they are much more perfidious than we may think as they are shoved down the throats of the late night tv watching albanians who will then form an opinion of the US based on those movies.
b
OR limojoseph@aol.com
I have been driving high profile movie stars and studio executives and their families for a couple of decades. I have seen and heard a lot of self serving nonesense. Nothing I have ever read or seen captures this reality more than your blog. Thank you….
I have well over 200 titles in my DVD collection but have not bought anything in over a year. I can walk into a Blockbuster video and examine all of their new releases only to walk out without renting anything. The fact is most of today’s movies suck. Why would I pay money for a movie that sucks? Why would I pay money to someone who goes out of their way to offend and insult me? Until Hollywood starts making better movies, they won’t get any of my money. The writers can stay of strike forever as far as I’m concerned.
I will not go to see these anti-war anti-american movies at the box office and support their luxurious decandent life styles. I also have a list of radical “actors” (socialist/marxist/maoist pretenders) that I will never pay to see including “Babs” Alex Baldwin Shawn belongs in the “Penn”. Lets not pay for these fools lifestyles.
@ Bugs: You’re actually making my point for me. Nobody wanted to see this movie because it had nothing new to say and didn’t look all that interesting. It was not “important” or “a film that needed to be made” because the opinions expressed in it are already owned, shared, and felt felt by millions of people who don’t need more preaching to the choir.
Really, it’s no different than any other Hollywood trend. “Napolean Dynamite” made millions, so now all the studios are churning out quirky little awkward comedies. “Lord of the Rings” made a gajillion dollars so now we get other big-budget fantasy things like “Beowulf” and “Narnia” and whatever else. Likewise, Michael Moore broke all kinds of box office a few years ago, so Hollywood started churning out anti-war movies to chase the bucks. But they’re too late, and they’re not saying anything new or important or bold or inspiring enough to generate interest in anybody.
THAT makes sense. But Simon’s theory that these movies are bombing because the country supports a conservative viewpoint is just not supported by the facts. If this country supports the war so much, why does every poll show that a large majority want out? If this country is so pro-Republican, why did the GOP lose both houses of Congress in 2006?
Mission to Moscow was Hollywood’s tribute to Stalin during WWII
@Christastrophe: Maybe it works out like this – 1/3 of the audience avoids current anti-war movies because they’re “anti-American,” 2/3 of the audience avoids them because they’re preaching to the choir, and the entire audience – in a remarkable display of bipartisanship – avoids them because they suck! Ultimately, though, I think it’s because when you and your country are in a real, life-or-death struggle with (choose one) a) Islamist fanatics or b) Republicans, the last person you want advice from is Robert Redford.
ajacksonian: Funny you should mention Hammer’s Slammers, because the complete stories have been republished in a 3-volume series with forwards by David Drake and Gene Wolfe (both war veterans).
Christastrophe –
1. Picking a name that gratuitously insults a certain religion that is held by the majority of Americans is … illustrative.
2. Simon’s point was the social dynamics of Hollywood producing a toxic elitism. It was NOT “liberal vs. conservative” but rather elitist vs. populist.
Food for thought: Bono in Ireland was conducting one of his sermon/concerts and brought the show to a halt. He clapped his hands slowly and intoned “Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies.” Hush. A male voice booms out “Then f—ing stop doing it then!” Laughter and Laughter as red-faced Bono is aghast. They’re not worshipping him. They’re laughing at him.
In a nutshell, that’s Hollywood’s problem. Unlike the old-line Lefties like say, Dalton Trumbo, they HATE the people instead of view themselves as one of them. Not a Gaghan or a Clooney could make a Spartacus. They view themselves as the Emperor. Heck Gaghan can sit and give an interview in his Malibu mansion with Porches and Ferraris in the driveway and intone how “Communism is the answer” in a self-ridiculing moment of zen idiocy.
Roger’s point about how success in Hollywood means deliberate sacrifice of any human relationship based on genuine love and affection stands out. Hollywood’s version of love is a three-picture deal based on status, power, and connections.
It’s why love stories depicted on the small and big screen are horrid. Because fundamentally Hollywood cannot understand love.
Congratulations, Mr. Simon, on a very interesting essay! The flip side is that there’s a major business opportunity here for indies: someone who is willing to make an Iraq war film that people actually want to see. The public would love a film about heroes of the war, American, Iraqi, and coalition partners such as the Poles. The general topic of the Anbar Awakening — with Iraqis and Americans cooperating to skunk al-Queda — would make the hottest movie ever! Would Mel Gibson and Icon be interested? Fox News has made a bundle off the cluelessness of the old-fashioned network news shows, not to mention CNN…indies might want to learn from this example.
HOLLYWOOD is dead to me