Applying bumper stickers, wearing “Factor gear,” attending “rallies,” and dropping conversational non sequiturs about listening to Glenn Beck do not demonstrate that one is a conservative. They demonstrate that one is a dink. Like John Nolte.
The category error of John Nolte
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The fact that he took time to write out that little recruiting scriptlette is… astounding.
I briefly worked at a law office that sublet an office space to Andrew Klavan. I he could afford that, he’s doing a fair bit better than any of the working writers I know.
Ya know- that bit on Klavan is cheap. I worked in that office years ago and I don’t know the guy or his situation. Kindly consider it retracted.
That’ll learn me to post before my morning coffee.
There are several ways to go about treating the Hollywood blacklist era if you’re a dogmatic conservative who either hasn’t actually read much about the era, or is busy ignoring the stuff you have read. There’s the “they had it coming” school, like the guy at the old Libertas who told me in all seriousness that John Garfield was a threat to national security. There’s the “it wasn’t that bad” school that declares those blacklisted were basically a bunch of whiners who could go to Europe and work with all the Commies they wanted, so what’s the problem? And then there’s the increasingly popular “me too, Ma” school that attempts to equate frosty stares at cocktail parties with unemployment, surveillance, political exile, being forced to work under a pseudonym and of course, having to testify under threat of fine or imprisonment.
I’ll believe in this “conservative blacklist” when John gets his passport revoked.
I’ll believe in this “conservative blacklist” when John gets his passport revoked.
I’ll go further than that. I want to hear about conservatives being the victims of mistaken identity, having to have other writers front for them and ultimately jumping out of hotel windows.
Lionel Chetwynd probably WOULD jump out of a hotel window, but he’d probably die of a stroke before he could actually get the thing open.
Sorry. That was really below me. And yet I enjoyed it. What can I say.
What’s really scary/depressing about that piece is that Nolte considers being “a global warming skeptic” to be a NORMAL, non-crazy feature of the “conservative side.” That is, if he’s on the level, which I assume he is.
Participating in discussions like this one is always a no-win proposition for me, and I’ll probably wish I’d kept my mouth shut, but here goes.…
I don’t defend or minimize the blacklist (although I’ll admit to being at least partially simpatico with what the Siren categorizes as “the ‘it wasn’t that bad’ school”), but to intimate that Hollywood doesn’t discriminate against conservative filmmakers because they aren’t jumping out of hotel windows is wildly disingenuous, if not downright fatuous. And I wouldn’t blithely discount “frosty stares at cocktail parties” in a town and an industry so keenly fixated on networking. If Hollywood righties aren’t being blacklisted, why are so many of them still afraid to be identified as having conservative views? Why is it that any writer in town can get a pitch meeting if he has a script critical of the Iraq or Afghan war – even though not one such movie has turned a profit – when writers with scripts that take an opposing view can’t get the time of day?
I know a few Hollywood conservatives who are active in the business. Only one of them is “out of the closet,” principally because he’s been a writer and producer of two consecutive hit series. He’s admitted to me that, were he not a marketable commodity on that account, he would not be so sanguine about his future prospects.
As for the cheap shots by Glenn and otherbill…no worries. We’re used to them.
Re “cheap shots:” Ed, as you actually know, I’m hardly a reflexive conservative-basher. I maintain unreserved admiration for the likes of Koestler, Chambers, Conquest, Caldwell and others—men of the right who can actually think and write. But Chetwynd and his buddy Roger Simon are smug, fatuous, pandering hacks. And as long as Nolte continues formulating his arguments in the mode of a not-particularly-bright 12-year-old (“Wear your Factor gear”?? Seriously? That’s what you want to wave a flag for?), cheap shots are pretty much all he’s likely to solicit, or deserve for that matter. Don’t even get me started on the guy’s ostensible “Christianity.”
Conservatives say that they can’t make the movies they want to make? To that I respond – Welcome to Hollywood. Bitch. Who the hell ever does get to make their dream project? I’m inclined to dismiss this ahistorical talk about ‘blacklisting’ as another variation of ‘whose-dick-is-he-sucking’ gripes aimed at the writer who actually had his screenplay greenlighted.
And, yes, sometimes that writer has sucked the right dick. Or they are poltically sympatico with someone. Or their daddy has a friend who has a friend. Name one industry where that sort of advantage can’t occur. And name one workplace where people haven’t, for one reason or another, kept their mouth shut for the sake of a job.
It’s one thing to ask for a workplace without fear of Controversial Topics creating disharmony. It’s another thing to speak from a soul deep in resentment and personal entitlement; to claim exemption from the usual personal navigation everybody has to do at some stage in their life.
And that is the reason why I have no sympathy for some Republican who probably got paid fifty-grand to do a rewrite on the Marmaduke movie while I’m working for twelve dollars a hour.
The problem with the current state of the conservative viewpoint/Republican party leadership is that they’ve allowed their image to be co-opted by clowns whose harangues and diatribes bear no resemblance to traditional Repub/con arguments – arguments that, taken in conjunction with the *actual* (rather than advertised) lib-Dem platform, would *actually* form a constructive back-and-forth in our government, on Main St/Wall St, etc.
At the moment, however, what we think of when we talk about the Repubs/cons is the unfortunate Glenn Beck, Rand Paul, and so on. If I was a Repub/con I think I’d be downright embarrassed.
Find myself sympathetic to “hisnewreasons“ ‘s bucket of cold water. Claiming, “I’m not getting ahead, must be me politics” is a bit of a lazy line.
I’ll believe there’s a blacklisting of conservatives when Kelsey Grammer and Jon Voight are reported begging for work.
I’ve believed for a long time that feeling put upon is 75 percent of being a late 20th or early 21st century conservative. I’ve also noticed that in the rare instances where a conservative rises to the challenge of producing a concrete example of harmful bigotry the example is either ancient, insignificant or both. A case in point is another Big Hollywood post that ran just three days before Nolte’s written by Dan Gifford. Gifford starts by saying “It (the Hollywood blacklist) exists as certainly as political correctness and passive-aggressiveness exist in Hollywood … it abounds and destroys the talented.” He goes on to back this up with two case studies. The first involves a dead film and TV who I’ve never heard of director named Alex Grasshoff. According to Gifford, Grasshoff lost his “best friends and Hollywood standing” when he produced a short for the RNC backing the re-election of Richard Nixon. Yes, I said, Richard Nixon. That would be in 1972. Thirty-eight years ago. Doesn’t matter to Big Hollywood, it’s incontrovertible proof that Hollywood is trying to destroy them now, in 2010. And Grasshoff’s dire fate? Reduced to directing episodes of CHiPS and Night Stalker.
Gifford’s second example is just as risible. He heard from a writer on L.A. Law (a very popular show in the late 1980s, also known as 20 years ago) about another writer who wasn’t permitted to work on the show because of his right wing politics. Years later, in 1991, a writer named Neil Shulman told Gifford that he was denied work on L.A. Law because of his right-wing politics. Gifford has decided that the two writers are the same and let’s Shulman go on for a number of paragraphs about his travails at the time. In a nutshell, Shulman had a great meeting with a supervising producer at L.A. Law and submitted a dozen story ideas. The producer gushed and gushed and between that meeting and the next one Shulman wrote an Op-Ed in the L.A. times. After that, all his story ideas were rejected and he never went to cocktail party with anyone from L.A. Law ever again. In other words, they rejected me after telling me how fabulous I was, therefore I’m being discriminated against. This was, I can only conclude, Shulman’s first day in Hollywood.
The gap between the magnitude of claims alleged and the feeble scraps of evidence advanced to support them is so huge that it make liars and crybabies out of Nolte, Breitbart, Gifford (and Beck and O’Reilly and et al) and a political movement that prides itself on its Spartan virtues.
There’s another thing I’ve noticed about artistically-inclined righties. They complain about not being respected by other conservatives. Sample from Andrew Klavan – “Many conservatives often seem to have given up on culture or not to care. There’s a strong strain of philistinism on the right.” I hope Klavan was wearing a black turtleneck and smoking a clove cigarette when he wrote that.
This particular well of self-pity doesn’t strike me so much as being stereotypically Republican as stereotypically Hollywood.
Let’s not forget that, even supposing a prejudice against conservative talent, there’s a difference between feeling you’d better keep quiet on political subjects for fear of losing work, and having detectives follow you around and interview your friends and neighbours in order to dig up “dirt” on you. It often simply wasn’t an option for Hollywood lefties in the blacklist era to keep their politics to themselves.
Blacklisting means you don’t get to work, period, not that you “only” get to work on CHiPs and THE NIGHT STALKER.
I looked up that Dan Gifford article, and his comparisons between the ’50s blacklist and his alleged “conservative blacklist” are specious and offensive.
Complaining that Hollywood is too full of liberals is like complaining that the NBA is too full of African-Americans.
So, let me sum up: being a Conservative in Hollywood does restrict your employment options, but because it’s not as bad as the Blacklist, it’s fine.
I think we’re placing too much emphasis on the conservative aspect here, and not enough on the dink. It’s true that liberal dinks in Hollywood tend to get a fairer shake than conservative dinks, but that doesn’t make them not dinks. My whole point is that bumper stickers are for dinks, period. (OK, except for the one that Negativeland was marketing around the time of “Escape From Noise,” the one that read “Car Bomb.” Now THAT was a funny bumper sticker…) And that John “Factor gear” Nolte is the King of Dinkdom, and he would be even if he was the world’s most tireless rescuer of baby seals.
@ bill: I believe the summary is more like, “Given that being a conservative in Hollywood is nothing at all like being on the McCarthy-era blacklist, comparing the occasional frosty stare to being subpoenaed before Congress is ridiculous.”
“Factor gear” had me laughing. Mostly because I first read it as “Factory gear,” and had some image of overpaid screenwriters slouching around West Hollywood in “Love Will Tear Us Apart” T‑shirts or something.
“Factor gear”? That’s actually a thing?
@ Frank McDevitt: Indeed. I sometimes forget this blog has an international audience, or at least one that doesn’t have the same compulsion to expose itself to Fox News as I do. “Factor gear” is that which Bill O’Reilly, the host of the Fox News program “The O’Reilly Factor,” hawks from his show and his website. You know, baseball caps, tote bags, t‑shirts, that kinda stuff. You can shop for it here:
http://www.billoreilly.com/store
As you can see it’s all top quality stuff that in no way screams “dink” at the top of its lungs, no way, no how.
Oh I’m an American, fully aware of Bill O’Reilly and whatnot…but I had no idea that he had his own merchandise, let alone the fact that it went by the embarrassed-goosebumps inducing nickname “Factor gear”.
The point is that most of us have jobs in the real world in which it is best to keep your politics to yourself in order to get along, network, and be successful. Surely, if I can keep my strong political opinions to myself in my workplace, those in Hollywood can do the same.
As has been pointed out, liberals in the McCarthy era were not given the option of keeping their politics to themselves. If they were remotely suspected of having leftist sympathies, people would go through their trash and harass their families to find out what political organizations they were a member of, and force them to testify before congress about it. There are plenty of smart conservatives in Hollywoodland who have strong political convictions, but don’t feel the need to make those convictions the focus of their professional lives. Read the thoughtful interview with smart conservative Robert Duvall in the current Film Comment. He comments on this issue directly.
Exactly. The issue here isn’t ‘people with conservative opinions have trouble keeping jobs’. It’s ‘jackasses who turn every conversation into politics are difficult to get along with’.
I worked for a year in a place where a radio played Rush Limbaugh and Bob Grant on a daily basis. So I’m actually sympathetic with conservatives actors, writers, etc. when they end up in a place where liberal actors, writer, etc. loudly talk trash about their political party.
My sympathies end when they start asserting that liberals would obviously recognize their genius if they weren’t ideologically blinded. Or believe that any sense of decorum should be abandoned. ‘Cause this sort of thing cuts both ways. If you want to joke, as Andrew Klavan did, that liberals are just like rapists, then why should you be surprised when liberals don’t want to work with you?
And while we’re at it, why would a conservative want to work in Hollywood? If you believe that Hollywood is equivalent to the Vichy government – thank you again, John Nolte! – why degrade yourself? As Roy Edroso has asked, why doesn’t some conservative sugar daddy put together a Republican alternative? (Well, there’s an obvious answer which probably doesn’t need saying.)
That’s so funny, because I was just about to post this: “Why doesn’t a Conservative simply build a whole new Hollywood from scratch? Should be easy.”
Also, I wonder if Righties couldn’t simply leave America and start their own country? Worth thinking about? What do you guys think?
Let me get this straight: If you’re a conservative in Hollywood and want to get work, keep your “strong political opinions” to yourself. If you’re a liberal, however, feel free to trumpet your political views as often as possible during concert tours, awards presentations, press-junket interviews, and talk-show appearances. And whatever you do, never, ever pass up an opportunity to take a shot at George W. Bush or Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck. Okay, got it.
Jeez. Well, Ed, some people may be saying what you’re saying they’re saying, but I ain’t one of them. Just for the record, I thought George Clooney’s “Liberals have always been on the right side” pontifications a few years back to be both, yes, staggeringly historically inaccurate and personally embarrassing, and I say that as a guy who’s both a fan of Clooney and something of a liberal. I rely on movie stars to inform my political views about as much as I trust Jonathan Safran Foer for barbecuing tips. But nothing Clooney has ever said even holds a candle for sheer loony offensiveness to, for instance, Jon Voight’s fulminations about “socialism” (kind of like the Monty Python bit where the guy finds a Communist peeping out of his wive’s blouse), Beck’s teary-eyed, eschatological snake-oil salesmanship, or even Andrew Klavan’s smirky, smug rape analogies. I understand that some non-lunatic conservatives might look at these guys and see some kind of payback in the form of resolute in-your-face conviction, but by the same token…well, it’s not exactly winning stuff to anyone who’s on the fence, or who’s read their Hofsteader. I’m not even gonna get into the sheer ridiculousness of the implicit attempt to claim victim status for Bush, Palin or Beck. My heart absolutely bleeds, particularly for W.
My point being, not that I’m drawing any kind of moral equivalency here, but merely a stylistic one: You should remember what John Lennon said about carrying pictures of Chairman Mao.
UPDATE: In the Jonah-Goldberg-Commemorative “Which Only Strengthens My Point” Department, see Jeffrey Jena’s 700-plus-word rant on being defriended on Facebook by Elaine Boosler:
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjena/2010/05/24/elayne-boosler-unfriended-me-on-facebook-for-being-conservative/#more-347670
…right below John Nolte calling a Two-Minute Hate on Stu VanAirsdale. As I said. Dinks.
To Ed Hulse –
Seems like the goalposts are being moved quite a bit. At first, this was about whether Republicans can find work in the entertainment industry and if this was the equivalent of the fifties blacklist. Now it’s about whether they can shoot their mouths off like Sean Penn.
Well, they can shoot their mouths off, just like I could have shot my mouth off years ago in that Limbaugh-friendly workplace. But they shouldn’t be surprised when that creates tension on the set – an area already at risk for conflict due to money, sexual affairs and egos.
That’s not a conspiracy. That’s just life.
I should also add that you’re assuming that Sean Penn’s political activities are tolerated because he’s a leftie. Maybe it’s because he’s Sean Penn and highly esteemed as an actor.
For bill –
The Republican’s alternative film industry doesn’t have to be as big as 20th Century Fox. When John Cassavettes, John Sayles, Chester Burnett and the rest went out to make their movies, they didn’t let size worry them much. I’m a bit surprised to hear anybody on this blog disparage the idea of other venues for filmmaking as improbable as creating your own nation.
And there is an alternate film industry for conservative film-makers. Take the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival, for example. But Nolte, Klavan and the rest aren’t truly interested in such small venues. They are obsessed with power. They are drawn toward elephantine movies that get wide releases; toward the likes of “300” and “The Dark Knight.”
They want a lot of things at once – political influence, artistic respectability, money. It never occurs to them that they might not be so entitled.
re: Conservative alternative in ‘Hollywood’
It seems to me that Rupert Murdoch would be able to bankroll a few projects if he thought they would make any money. I don’t mean this as a knock, but following someone like Tyler Perry who makes films for a specific audience seems like a win-win for investor and audience who feel poorly represented. If that doesn’t work out, there’s always the Indie-world.
“Talent will out!” Freddy Mercury said that.
“Make yer damn movie,” I said that.
@hisnewreasons -
I love how you go from saying “If they hate it so much, why don’t they start their own Hollywood (because they’re dumb, but I won’t say that)” to “John Cassavates did not let anything stop him from making films. I’m shocked you would suggest etc.” It shows you can think fast.
To Bill –
Dumb? Well, incoherent perhaps. This particular bunch conflates a lot of different issues – workplace navigation, success as a filmmaker, success as a propandagist, hierarchies, artistic expression – as if they were all the same.
And my basic question stands. Why should conservative filmmakers view the mainstream entertainment industry as the only place they can work? If they view it as too corrupt, why not go elsewhere? No, creating your own Hollywood is not easy. Filmmaking is no more beanbag than politics.
Of course, John Nolte is constantly insisting that he knows what the public truly wants, just as Big Hollywood constantly declares that the major studies are in death throes. Well, okay then. With your hardy faith in capitalism, go forth and make your dreams happen.
But according to you, apparently, they shouldn’t even try. It’s just too hard, you’ll never be as big as Warner Brothers, stay home and mutter darkly about George Clooney.
Listen, you can probably deduce, to some degree, what my politics, but I’m no fan of Big Hollywood. My point, hidden though it’s been, is that you and others on this thread have openly acknowledged that it’s tough to be a Conservative in Hollywood, that such a person might lose work if that fact about them were known, but that this is perfectly fine, and they should shut up about it and build their own industrial/artistic city, because hard work is important.
Seriously? And if the tables were turned, you would say what? That any other group who is being discriminated against – however mildly! – in the workplace due to political beliefs should quit whining and just start their own business?
If you answer “Yes, that’s what I would say”, I should tell you that I already have plans to not believe you.
Sorry if I was talking around you and toward John Nolte. Unfortunately, he is the one who inspired this whole thread, so inevitably my diatribes will be addressed to him.
As for your question, let’s try to make it more specific. Two guys are up for a job on rewriting “Garfield 3: Hairball of Doom.” One is the liberal, the other is a conservative. A liberal producer slides the job over to the former writer, simply because he thinks conservatives are dookie-heads. Is this fair?
Uh, well, I don’t know. Does the conservative really have more insight into the psychology of Garfield than the liberal? Where are the non-arbitrary standards that can qualify this as discrimination?
This whole thread got started because it’s foolish to compare the very real persecution created by the HUAC to the ‘cold-stares-at-the-cocktail-party’ which apparently chill so many Republican souls. And I jumped in to say that, yes, other people may not necessarily think you are as talented as you think you are; that they may turn down your brilliant idea simply because they don’t like your face; that most of us put up with more for less.
And now I will shut up. Because I may have been conflating different issues myself in this thread. I guess my basic thought is – they’re in Hollywood. Fuck ’em.
At a time when Adam Baldwin, Jon Voight et al. are blogging/talking up a storm and working just fine, I’m not real sure where this “conservatives lose work for their politics” meme came from. All the examples raised are of people no one’s ever heard of before. I feel bad for saying that, because I know bill and Ed Hulse will take offense, and no disrespect guys. I understand that the internet can seem like competing liberal and conservative echo chambers, with each side striving to produce bigger jackasses and ever more hyperbolic statements.
@hisnewreasons -
Your civility is sort of taking the wind out of my sails, but, I mean:
“Two guys are up for a job on rewriting “Garfield 3: Hairball of Doom.” One is the liberal, the other is a conservative. A liberal producer slides the job over to the former writer, simply because he thinks conservatives are dookie-heads. Is this fair?”
NO! I realize you just made up that example, but no, that’s not fair.
@vadim -
You have me pegged as someone who takes offense more easily than I actually do. And I think you mean Stephen, not Adam, and I don’t think Stephen is working just fine, but he’s a lunatic douchebag anyway, so nobody can claim for sure that his lack of work is based on one particular thing.
As for the rest of it, the “meme” in question, well, I didn’t bring it up. I don’t know the specific problems, or lack thereof, of anyone in Hollywood. But a number of people here have said that they acknowledge that Conservatives have a harder time of it in the movie business based on their politics, and then went on to say, or at least imply, that there was nothing wrong with that. That’s what I took objection to.
Also:
“All the examples raised are of people no one’s ever heard of before.”
I don’t see how this exactly bolsters your point.
Since when is life, especially life in Hollywood, fair?
A few years ago I was working on a reality TV series being made by an extremely right-wing producer and he fired me in part because we didn’t see eye to eye on his political stances. It sucked to get fired, but I didn’t complain because the reason I got fired wasn’t because of the politics, it was because the guy was an asshole, and I was fine with not putting up with him anymore. Like I said before: most people don’t have a problem dealing with co-workers of different ideological stripes who are reasonable and respectful, just as nobody wants to deal with a raging dick of any ideological stripe. I would hate to work for Michael Moore just as much as I would hate to work with O’Reilly.
And I want to agree with ‘Hisnewreasons’ that the Big Hollywood crew and Nolte are primarily interested in media power alongside self-victimization. I can’t think of any discussions I’ve seen over on that site about the actual art of cinema or analyzing conservative principles in film in a thoughtful and engaging way. I see a lot of trumpeting about Iron Man 2’s box office numbers, cheering the financial failure of Speed Racer, and hysteria over a Robert Rodriguez movie. They are not serious when it comes to film as an art form, they’re only interested in film as a vehicle for propaganda.
@ Bill – I’m not sure anybody said there was nothing wrong with people being discriminated against for having conservative politics. Just that the casual equivalence with McCarthyism is specious to the point of being offensive, and making such an equivalence is what renders people like John Nolte “dinks” (as Glenn would say.)
Somehow, the irony is still consistently overlooked that Hollywood, at least in an economic sense, is one of the purest expressions of capitalism in American society. This is why I can’t take Nolte seriously, and why I have no sympathy for whoever those folks are who would correspond to his idea of a “normal conservative.” Denying anthropogenic global warming isn’t conservative skepticism, it’s suicidal stupidity and willful ignorance. Obsessing over the sex lives of other people – and attempting to prevent consenting adults from making their relationship legally official – is weird and bigoted.
Kind of along the same lines as what Jeff Said: there’s no more real “politics” ‑if by politics we mean the open exchange of ideas – at Big Hollywood than on The O’Reilly Factor. It’s noise intended to distract people from addressing the issues that matter in meaningful ways, and in this sense it is unvarnished propaganda.
I find this latest round of arguing about american politics really, really fascinating, as opposed to the following post on that dull writer guy, David Foster Wallace, but I just wanted to offer the following factcheck: there’s indeed an Adam Baldwin working in Hollywood, who is unrelated to Alec or Stephen, and yes, this Adam Baldwin is a conservative. Go watch Joss Whedon’s “Firefly” to see one of his finest performances.
“I find this latest round of arguing about american politics really, really fascinating…”
Then why’d you frickin’ read it?
But yes, Adam Baldwin. Now I know to whom vadim was referring.
“Animal Mother” in “Full Metal Jacket!” Wonder if he talked politics with Kubrick!
Okay, one more thing and then I’ll shut up. And it’s really self-criticism.
What I’ve been saying on this thread has been cold-hearted. Yes, success in the entertainment industry can be very random and arbitrary, but I honestly don’t want the next Keith Mano be denied his shot simply because of politics.
My viewpoint on this subject has been colored by my regular visits to Big Hollywood – a habit which I have dropped of late. Hopefully my temperment will improve.
I don’t know if they talked politics, but Baldwin had a few choice words on the meaning of FMJ on the Blu-ray/DVD making-of. He also has a bone to pick with Kubrick, who chose not to include his big scene at the end, which would have entailed him severing the head of the young girl sniper and shoving it in the faces of all the other guys standing there acting so solemn and confused about death and stuff. Guess I’m a big wimpoid myself, because (like the extended version of Johnnie Farragut’s murder in “Wild at Heart”) I’m actually glad that scene seems to have been lost to the mists of time, so that I’ll never even be slightly tempted to put that shit in my head.
@hisnewreasons – No worries. I never go to BH myself, because I don’t like seeing my views perverted.
@Grant – It’s funny you say that about Baldwin and FMJ, because – and I think Glenn was winking in this direction when he brought up Baldwin talking politics on the set – because Kubrick wasn’t easily pegged down, politically, and said that he wanted FULL METAL JACKET to be seen as his “war film”, as opposed to another “anti-war film”, which is how he viewed PATHS OF GLORY. I must say that JACKET does not play as merely a “this is what it is” kind of war movie, so I’ve never fully understood his intentions in that regard.
So Glenn, are you and Nolte officially on the outs now?
I gave up on Big Hollywood a while ago, mostly because ongoing debates in its comment-threads were often infuriating and exhausting, and because the whole site is depressing for so many of the reasons listed above. Sorry to repeat, but it bears full quoting:
“And I want to agree with ‘Hisnewreasons’ that the Big Hollywood crew and Nolte are primarily interested in media power alongside self-victimization. I can’t think of any discussions I’ve seen over on that site about the actual art of cinema or analyzing conservative principles in film in a thoughtful and engaging way. I see a lot of trumpeting about Iron Man 2’s box office numbers, cheering the financial failure of Speed Racer, and hysteria over a Robert Rodriguez movie. They are not serious when it comes to film as an art form, they’re only interested in film as a vehicle for propaganda.”
That about sums it up – and the hypocrisy (conservatives as the whiniest, most petulant, identity-group crybabies out there) only makes it all the more vile. Dirty Harry’s Place had a kind of rough-hewn charm to it, but BH is basically a sewer.
Finally, the dumbest thing about this whole argument is the notion that if Hollywood liberals were less sniffy, everything would finally be ok in Tinseltown. The entire industry is based on glib conformism (disguised as trendiness), back-stabbing, and personal favoritism. It’s ridiculous to act as if giving a break to grown men wearing Sarah Palin shirts would fundamentally change any of this.
Yeah bill, I’d say that Kubrick is one of the grandmasters of Not-thisiswhatitis cinema.