Roger L. Simon notes the two big winners tonight, and writes that “The 2010 Academy Awards may not have marked the end of “liberal Hollywood” as we know it, but they certainly put a solid dent in it:”
With the pro-military “The Hurt Locker” winning over the enviro-pabulum of “Avatar” and Sandra Bullock garnering the Best Actress Oscar for a Christian movie, the times are a-changin’ at least somewhat, maybe even a lot.
But one thing is now certain. It is time for conservative, center-right and libertarian filmmakers to stop feeling sorry for themselves and go out and just do it. Their “victocrat” days are over. No more excuses. “The Hurt Locker” and “The Blind Side” have proven that it can be done. Get out of the closet, guys and gals. If you want to make a film with themes you believe in, quit whining about Industry prejudice and start writing that script and trying to get it made. That’s not an easy thing, no matter what your politics.
AdvertisementRight siders can take inspiration too from Sunday’s Oscar ceremonies themselves. They weren’t defamed for a moment. Missing in action was the usual libo-babble, no extended hymns to the cause du jour or ritual Bush-bashing. And Barack Obama wasn’t even mentioned. Not once. But the troops were – several times by Kathryn Bigelow.
And, yes, we can all take pleasure in her being the first woman to win Best Director, again no matter which side of the political spectrum we come from. She did a Helluva job.
And, oh yes, I thought Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin did a reasonable job of hosting too – a lot better than the likes of Letterman, etc. They kept things moving along (except for the unbelievably tedious “salute to horror” and the traditionally soporific dance numbers). And didn’t you like the look on Sean Penn’s face when Bullock won for “The Blind Side”?
More tomorrow on Poliwood with Lionel Chetwynd.
While you’re waiting for Roger and Lionel’s next Poliwood, don’t miss this edition from February 16th, in which they compared the Hurt Locker to Avatar, and explained why a film with an $11 million budget is infinitely better moviemaking than one with a $237 million(!) budget. (and also last week’s edition, which reviewed the regressive mindset that produced the primitivistic Last Tango In Paris in 1972, versus The Blind Side.)
Update: In Chinatown, John Huston’s Noah Cross character told Jack Nicholson, “‘Course I’m respectable. I’m old. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.” But as Tim Blair notes, a building can obtain “legendary” status remarkably quickly in today’s Hollywood; on the other hand it’s also the sort of town where actresses risk being “burnt at the steak” — nobody tell PETA!
Financial self-preservation probably has a lot to do with this turn to the right. California’s economic crisis is damaging the bank accounts of many film investors. They no longer can afford to involve themselves in movies likely to lose money. These individuals aren’t currently being advised by their accountants to seek tax loss projects!
And don’t forget Oscar nominated director Jason Reitman is a Libertarian!
Actually, I think last night’s show was more akin to the William Shatner pilot episode of “Star Trek”, where Lt. Commander Gary Mitchell hits the force field and his eyes briefly turn back to normal. With George W. Bush out of office, and no Republican in power to attack in Washington, Hollywood seems to have decided it’s time, at least for now, to go back to actually promoting movies that make money and that don’t overtly attack the beliefs of 50 percent of the domestic audience.
Their eyes are clear right now only because they perceive no immediate threat out there to their core beliefs, and would be seen by the majority of the public as hopelessly against their beliefs if they want out there and did lame jokes against GOP pols, talk radio hosts or Fox News personalities with all the material out there Obama, Reid, Pelosi and the rest have provided over the past year (though my guess is the show’s producers still had to issue a “No Palin Jokes” edict to the hosts and presenters). But if the Republicans win back part or all of Congress in November and they begin to see Obama’s re-election hopes threatened, you can be sure the clear eyes will disappear again and Hollywood will go back to opting to peddle ideology over higher box office returns when the 2011 and 2012 Oscar shows roll around.
“Hollywood seems to have decided it’s time, at least for now, to go back to actually promoting movies that make money”
You underestimate the extent of Hollywood’s financial troubles. The money to throw around is simply no longer available. Left-wing investors don’t need to find tax loss projects. They need to make some money! Indulging in leftist ideology does not pay the bills. The filmmaking elite living in California is also experiencing higher taxes and lowered property values. Their situation is unlikely to change for the better anytime in the near future.
For years the tax system enabled film makers to load their costs onto the occasional money-maker
and take their revenue from the stinkers, many of them self-indulgent politically correct diatribes.
As others have pointed out, this current depression has so disrupted cash flow that the
miscreants have been forced to clean up their act.
Well and good. However, the tax system still needs to be changed.
David:
While it may be true that most of Hollywood now can’t afford to indulge in their base political beliefs with sure-to-lose-money vanity projects, they haven’t completely gone away, and we’re going to get another one from Matt Damon this Friday (Damon’s persistence in continuing to feed his Bush Derangement Syndrome over a year after the president left office is starting to take on similarities to the Japanese World War II soldiers who hid out in Pacific Island caves for 20-30 years after the war rather than surrendering. But unlike those soldiers, Damon’s BDS still requires a stable of financial enablers to allow his vision to reach the big screen).
Don’t worry about Hollywood, they are digging in and doubling down:
“‘Bourne’ Team Takes a Chance With Iraq War” by Robert Mackey in the NYTimes on February 28, 2010 at page AR10:
Green Zone” … opens across the country on March 12, stars Matt Damon and reunites him with Paul Greengrass, the director who brought a propulsive visual style to “The Bourne Supremacy” and “The Bourne Ultimatum.”
But while “Green Zone” looks and moves much like a Bourne sequel, it also comes with a significant strike against it as a commercial proposition: It’s a movie about the Iraq war, a subject that has proven to be a recipe for box-office disappointment. Set in Baghdad in the chaotic early days of the American occupation, “Green Zone” dramatizes the fruitless hunt for weapons of mass destruction and climaxes on the first night of full-blown insurgency in Iraq. And the film isn’t shy about its politics. “Green Zone” is not an apolitical view of soldiers struggling to survive a grinding war, but a conspiracy thriller that directly addresses the possibility that the war might have been a huge scam, and a botched one at that.
* * *
Of course, despite how gifted the star, the director and the writer of “Green Zone” are at entertaining audiences, Hollywood studios are not known for persuading audiences to digest difficult truths along with their popcorn. Iraq-theme films like Paul Haggis’s “In the Valley of Elah” and Brian De Palma’s “Redacted” flopped at the box office. Even “The Hurt Locker,” despite tremendous reviews and a best picture Oscar nomination, has taken in less than $13 million in the United States.
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My take is that Hollywood just doesn’t get it, and doesn’t want to get it.