27 March 2006 >> Sean Penn has an Ann Coulter doll that he uses for performing ritual mutilation:

In an interview with The New Yorker magazine, Penn reveals, “We violate her. There are cigarette burns in some funny places. She’s a pure snake-oil salesman. She doesn’t believe a word she says.”

11 March 2006 @ 6:17PM >> Apparently, George Clooney doesn’t think enough issue-oriented films are being made. So, he’s promoting a competition called “Film Your Issue” for budding filmmakers aged 18-26.

If the “VIP judges” of this competition are any indication—they include outspoken liberal Clooney himself, a Democratic senator, the Democratic mayor of Los Angeles, a relic newsman who finally admitted his own liberal bias years after retiring, two current TV newsreaders, and a handful of other journalists and “social activists”—one can assume that the Film Your Issue competition is looking for issue-oriented films from a certain perspective. No surprise there.

But it might be kind of fun if the judges themselves were surprised by receiving films that did something other than reinforce their pre-existing worldviews. So, while I am too over-the-hill to submit any of my own work, I’m hoping there are some aspiring young filmmakers who might be inspired to enter.

Prove that leftists aren’t the only ones who can master the medium!

10 March 2006 >> Peggy Noonan attempts to diagnose the problems with Hollywood:

What happened to the Oscars is what happened to the Olympics. They became common. They made themselves common. When the Olympics were held every four years, they were a real event. It was something to look forward to and be surprised by: The Olympics are on this year. Four years was enough time for a whole new cast of athletes, what felt like a whole new generation, to come up. Enough time for history to have passed, to have yielded up new geopolitical realities, new reasons to applaud and hope for this nation or that one.

Everyone watched. It was a success. So they decided to get even more success by making the Olympics every two years. It’s not an event now, it’s an expected thing, part of the usual tapestry. It’s more common, less special. Viewership is down.

In the same way, the Oscars used to be the big awards show. Then another came by, and another: Golden Globes, People’s Choice, Independent Spirit, Foreign Press.

Movie stars put on their gowns and tuxes all the time now. It must be embarrassing—I mean this seriously—to spend half your year accepting awards on TV, and for what is already highly compensated work.

It’s like what happened a few years ago, when network programmers found that “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” was an overnight sensation. So they put it on four nights a week. And it stopped being a sensation.

[...]

You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that viewership of the Oscars is down because movie attendance itself is down, and that movie attendance is down because Hollywood isn’t making the kind of movies that compel people to leave their homes and go to the multiplex.

[...]

If a lot of the American audience, certainly the red-state audience, assumes Hollywood hates them, they won’t go as often to the movies as they used to. If you thought Wal-Mart hated you, would you shop there?

6 March 2006 >> I don’t watch the Oscars any year, so my missing it this year does not represent any form of boycott. And now that you know I didn’t watch it, please allow me to indulge myself by commenting on something about which I have no first-hand knowledge. (Isn’t that a requirement for blogging?)

From what I’ve read, the Academy Awards ceremony was light on the now-expected political lectures (George Clooney’s self-back-patting seems to be the one mild exception). Even the slate of winners was less political than some people—including me—predicted.

I was way off.

Well, I’ve learned my lesson. (No I haven’t.) I will no longer pull predictions out of thin air and present them as impending fact. (Yes I will; I just can’t help myself.) Next year, I will make no Oscar predictions. (I might.) And if I do, by then, nobody will remember this pledge. (Damn. I forgot this post will be permalinked.)

3 March 2006 @ 12:12PM >> National Review asked a few luminaries for their Oscar predictions. In what might be a clerical error, I was included in this group. The overwhelming consensus is that Brokeback Mountain will win for Best Picture. Here’s my rationale for this prediction:

[A] number of Hollywood insiders see a vote for Brokeback as a vote against red-state America. Hollywood seems to view middle America as populated by homophobic bigots — especially those evil red-state Republicans — and after years of electoral disappointment at the ballot box, the Academy Awards are pretty much the only elections where the votes of the Hollywood elite still have any impact. So, they’ll cast their votes for Brokeback, thinking that it is the cultural equivalent of flipping the bird to middle America. And middle America, which Hollywood doesn’t seem to understand, will respond with a muffled yawn.

Other questions for the panelists included “In an ideal world, what would win for best movie?” and “How annoying is George Clooney?”

Post-Oscar Update: Well, my short-lived career as an Oscar prognosticator seems to be over: Crash wins the Academy Award for Best Picture.

1 March 2006 @ 9:28AM >> The American Film Renaissance festival has announced its list of best films for 2005:

Best Picture: Cinderella Man

Runners up:

The Chronicles of Narnia
Walk the Line
Crash
Downfall
Pride and Prejudice
Batman Begins
The World’s Fastest Indian
Capote
King Kong

Best Documentary: March of the Penguins

Runners up:

Grizzly Man
Mad Hot Ballroom
Enron: Smartest Guys in the Room
Murderball

8 February 2006 >> The recent discussion on the ideology of Hollywood has been generating a ton of e-mail. Here’s a sample. (And thanks to everyone who took the time to write!)

From Brian:

[You say:] “Yep. Increasingly, Hollywood is making films that Hollywood wants to consume, not necessarily what the rest of America does.”

I’m fairly skeptical about these sorts of claims, especially the “increasing” part. In so much as the movies you’re speaking of are lefty polemics rather than, say, The Island, we’ve seen remarkably few of these movies in comparison to the 90’s. Hollywood’s obviously a lefty town, and every year you’ll see the occasional Syriana, or Crash (or Brokeback Mountain which has more lefty street cred than politics), but that number’s gone down quite a bit in recent years, outnumbered a few thousand to one by comic book movies and big franchises.

What’s more is that, despite the doom-and-gloom rhetoric about Hollywood ignoring the masses, these small, left-ish films tend to end up with a tidy profit, and sometimes more - American Beauty, if I recall, took in well over a hundred million. I’m fairly certain that none of the Oscar nominees that have caused such a ruckus will end up losing money. Aside from bad conservative press (which, let’s face it, would happen anyway - it’s a sweet political schtick to milk), there just doesn’t seem to be much of a downside to the concept of a few little lefty films a year for a Hollywood executive.

My perception is that Hollywood is increasing the political content in its films. I don’t have hard data to back this up, but until 2004, I don’t think we ever saw a major movie release whose goal was to change the outcome of a U.S. presidential election (Fahrenheit 9/11). We also never before had a major movie studio dedicated to advancing left-wing politics (Participant Productions, creators of the George Clooney films Syriana and Good Night and Good Luck). It is also a fairly recent phenomenon that people now expect the Academy Awards to be used as political podiums by the Hollywood elite. So, to me, it does seem like Hollywood is becoming politicized to an unprecedented degree.

But even if my perception of this is wrong, the real issue isn’t the fact that Hollywood puts political messages in films or releases overtly-political films, the issue is that of the films with recognizable political content, that content almost invariably represents a left-of-center worldview. This is bad business.

Why? Well, for one, it serves to underscore the leftism of the more outspoken Hollywood pseudo-politicos. And that alienates potential customers who happen to have vastly divergent opinions. I know a lot of people who will never watch the Academy Awards because they don’t want to endure four hours of having their beliefs trashed by Hollywood’s condescending know-it-alls. That same frustration keeps people away from theaters, too.

Can left-wing films still turn a profit? Sure. But the fact that the only political films happen to be left-wing indicates that a huge market is going unserved. On talk radio, cable news and the best-seller lists, conservative perspectives do quite well in the marketplace. But with film, demand for this type of content is not being fulfilled because of—I believe—the political views of the gatekeepers.

From a business standpoint, it seems obvious that there is a downside to Hollywood’s current practices. Unfortunately, it’s hard to calculate the gross receipts of films that haven’t been made, so Hollywood has no way of knowing just how much money it is leaving left on the table. The market has to be proven for Hollywood to wake up. And for that to happen, some insider needs to take a chance, or technology will eventually render the current business model obsolete.

---

At Slate, Mickey Kaus says:

Matt Yglesias points out to me [video link] it’s not simply Hollywood’s films that skew “left.” Hollywood’s audience—largely young people, in cities—skews left also. There’s less of a mismatch there than Hollywood critics like Ben Stein and Evan Coyne Maloney like to claim. But this natural congruence also means a film can succeed at the box office without changing many minds in Bush country.

This factoid could just as easily prove my point as disprove it.

Let’s assume it’s true that Hollywood’s audience does skew to the left. Is that a cause or an effect? Does Hollywood churn out left-wing political films because they see their audience as left-of-center? Or are the audiences more left-leaning because conservatives see Hollywood’s output and decide that there are better uses of their time and money?

I wonder, have moviegoing audiences historically been left-of-center? Was it that way during the 1940s and 50s when Frank Capra and Orson Welles were kings? If not, why has the audience shifted left today?

---

Jeff God writes:

Passion of the Christ and Narnia have mopped up with the rest of America. I think a better explanation is that Hollywood, as any business, will make what people want. But Hollywood, as a political action committee, will reward the kind of movies that appeal to the members of the Hollywood PAC.

Remember that both The Passion and Narnia were created and distributed by people who are seen as fringe players by the rest of the industry. Sure, Mel Gibson was famous before The Passion, as an actor, but when it came time to find industry support for the film, he was locked out of Hollywood’s inner circle. Similarly, Walden Media, responsible for Narnia, is a bit of a renegade outfit. Walden was formed specifically out of a belief that Hollywood wasn’t making certain types of films.

---

Jeanne B. writes:

In reading the self-centered comments from the Hollywood gliteratti, I am flabbergasted at their total cluelessness.

Most striking is their seemingly universal conviction that the rest of us aren’t having a dialogue...aren’t paying attention. They think we’re oblivious to being “set adrift” by our government. If they can just yell loud enough and long enough, suddenly the masses will wake up to “the truth” and embrace Hollywood and its views. More, they think we’ll forever be in their debt for saving us!

Such ego. They don’t think we disagree with them. We’re just ill informed and too stupid to recognize how right they are. They really think they’re doing it for our good! Such gobsmacking elitism.

Well, maybe they do have a point. Perhaps one day I will evolve enough, become wise enough to take my political cues from the likes of Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon. Until then, I guess my ignorance makes me deserve their constant scorn.

5 February 2006 @ 1:53PM >> An e-mailer responds to “Hollywood to Continue Slow-Motion Suicide?“:

What also struck me about the Hollywood Reporter article was the myopic self-centeredness of the filmmakers cited, their inability to look outside their tiny enclave of culture elitism.

The Crash co-writer says, “People want films that have something to say; they’re tired of fluff.”

Crash director Paul Haggis: “It’s great for the films and great for the nation. It says people are embracing these issues, that they don’t want to go to the theater to forget. They want to be involved, to participate.”

Which “people” are they referring to? Who are “they”? Certainly not the American public.

Look at these box office figures. The average box office for the Best Picture nominees this year is less than $38 million. The highest-grossing nominee was Crash, with $53 million. It was the 48th highest-grossing movie of 2005.

Think about that. The highest-grossing Best Picture nominee earned less than 47 other movies released last year.

If Crash wins, it would be the lowest-grossing Best Picture since 1987. (In non-adjusted dollars: If you adjust for inflation, I suspect it would be the lowest-grossing Best Picture of all time.) And Crash is, thus far, the most successful of the nominated movies. (Granted, Brokeback is still in the theatres and is likely soon to surpass Crash, but not by enough to affect my underlying point.)

Then there’s Spielberg, who says: “Some of it is due to our own insecurity about the voices representing us in government right now.”

Uh, Steven, who do you think more accurately represents the American public — you in your Malibu bunker, or politicians who’ve won actual elections?

So when Haggis, Spielberg, et al. say “people,” they really mean “our kind” of people. Just look at the movies they make these days. They are increasingly turning the cameras on each other, on themselves, on issues that matter only to the Hollywood elite. And the more they do this, the fewer Americans will turn out to see their stuff.

Yep. Increasingly, Hollywood is making films that Hollywood wants to consume, not necessarily what the rest of America does. Hollywood needs to decide whether it wants to be a political party or whether it wants to entertain. They can continue to entertain themselves, but then they will continue to lose audience. There are simply too many other options vying for the attention of the people that Hollywood shuns.

Ultimately, I’m optimistic. There have to be a few people left in Hollywood who recognize that they’re in business, and that there’s money to be made by satisfying markets that are currently being ignored. The folks behind the Liberty Film Festival and the American Film Renaissance recognize this. There is a huge audience of people who are not being served by Hollywood, and eventually, enough breakthrough films will somehow slip through filter of the Hollywood left that this market will be proven. Either that, or technology will route around the current gatekeepers who are preventing alternative content from being distributed, and those gatekeepers will lose relevance.

Nature and capitalism abhor a vacuum. It won’t last forever...

2 February 2006 @ 10:10AM >> The film business is hurting. As more channels, websites and video games compete for a truly limited resource—people’s time—films are finding smaller and smaller audiences.

So it might not seem like the wisest business decision for the industry to become even more stridently left-wing. But, as the Hollywood Reporter notes, that’s exactly what Hollywood is doing:

Hollywood has always worn its liberal politics on its sleeve, from 1976’s “All the President’s Men” and 1979’s “Norma Rae” to 2002’s “Bowling for Columbine.” With Tuesday’s crop of Oscar contenders, though, politics have never been more front and center.

“What all these films have in common is they’re about the human condition,” said Oscar-nominated “Crash” co-writer Bobby Moresco. “The pendulum has swung back to movies about politics. People want films that have something to say; they’re tired of fluff.”

Maybe people want films that have something to say, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they want films that all say the same thing.

Steven Spielberg reminisces about the glory days of the left:

It’s been an amazing year, very much like 1968, ‘69 and ‘70, when you suddenly see all of these political movies coming out at the same time, out of the watershed of politics. Some of it is due to our own insecurity about the voices representing us in government right now. We feel like our government has set us adrift, and we’re trying to make our voices heard. We’re telling them to be worried about these things.

Maybe that’s part of what ails the film business. Are films supposed to be entertainment? Or are they platforms for expressing political opinions? Perhaps they can be both, but if so, then Hollywood should remember that most of the country does not share its politics. Where are the films for the rest of America?

George Clooney pats himself on the back for his bravery in repeating what everyone else in his industry is saying:

I haven’t shied away from political and social conversations in my life, so I don’t shy away from them in the films I make either. [...] We as a society since 9/11 have, for the first time since Watergate, sat around and had outrage, discussion, polarization and arguments from both sides of the aisle. Questions are being asked. And that is good.

But the films coming out of Hollywood aren’t part of a discussion. They aren’t representing “both sides of the aisle.” Discussions tend to have multiple perspectives presented. What Hollywood is engaged in is a monologue. It’s a lecture.

Delighted that the Academy chose to “reward people who took risks this year,” [Crash director Paul] Haggis cited “risks Steven Spielberg took, and the heat he’s getting. All the films are passion pieces that ask troubling questions. It’s the ’70s all over again. It’s great for the films and great for the nation. It says people are embracing these issues, that they don’t want to go to the theater to forget. They want to be involved, to participate.”

I repeat: it is not a risk to say what everyone around you is saying. It is not a risk to put out a film with a perspective shared by all your friends. That’s easy. What would be risky is if someone in Hollywood got behind a film that they didn’t agree with, one that they knew most of Hollywood would disagree with. That would take balls.

10 January 2006 >> At Slate, Edward Jay Epstein discusses the future of movie distribution and what won’t likely be in it: the Blockbuster rental chain. Interesting timing, because this weekend, I noticed that the Blockbuster store closest to me is now empty and dismantled. That’s the second nearby Blockbuster to close since I moved into this neighborhood, and for all I know, none are left in Manhattan. Four other area video stores closed within the past year as well. And come to think of it, I haven’t seen a new video store open up within the last decade.

When I first moved into my apartment, I joined a local video store and rented some Woody Allen film. On the way to work one day, I went to return the tape. Surprisingly, the video store that I joined just two days earlier was completely gutted. But the drop-slot remained operational, so I put it to use. Down slid the tape case, and falling on the no-longer-carpeted floor, it popped open and the tape tumbled out.

The following day, I walked by the store again and noticed that the building’s roof was missing, as were the internal walls. The floor was covered in debris, but I could still see that Woody Allen tape sitting there on the floor, covered in sunlight and a fresh coat of dust. By the end of the week, the entire building was gone. Who knows where that tape is now...

It looks like the entire brick-and-mortar video rental business will be following the same fate, and maybe soon. We’re witnessing the death of an entire category of retailers. When was the last time that happened?

31 October 2005 >> South Park Conservatives author Brian C. Anderson, also of City Journal and the Manhattan Institute, notices that the left’s monopoly on Hollywood is beginning to crack.

Speaking of which, Ryan Zempel of TownHall.com has a three-part series [1, 2, 3] covering the recent Liberty Film Festival.

1 October 2005 @ 1:30PM >> Once again, the American media have kept their focus away from a devastating human tragedy of incomprehensible proportions simply because there’s no clean way to affix political blame. This underreported story is over a week old, and only now are people starting to notice. We as a nation should be outraged, and we must demand answers. More >>

24 August 2005 @ 3:08PM >> The American Film Renaissance festival, which I attended last year, is now holding a screenwriting contest. The theme is “The Art of Freedom,” and the winner will walk away with a cool $2,000. Not bad!

18 August 2005 @ 11:18AM >> Hollywood vs. the old guard of the newspaper industry:

Hollywood is about to deliver bad news to the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times and, to a lesser extent, other big-city dailies around the country. Every major movie studio is rethinking its reliably humongous display ad buys in those papers because those newsosaur readers are, to quote one mogul, “older and elitist” compared to younger, low-brow filmgoers — so it makes no sense to waste the dough.

Wait, it gets worse: I’ve learned that at least two Hollywood movie studios have decided to drastically cut their newspaper display ads as soon as possible.

[...]

“We’re rethinking our newspaper ads and I mean, literally, on every movie. Everybody is,” one movie mogul tells me. “The only people who read newspapers are older and elitist. Movies like Sky High don’t need ads in The New York Times. But the studios did it because newspapers were seen as a necessary evil.

“But I don’t think it’s as important anymore.”

26 July 2005 @ 5:37PM >> If al Qaeda pulled off this kind of attack, the American political landscape would be dramatically different. Celebrities would suddenly become the War on Terror’s biggest supporters.

13 July 2005 >> In the Los Angeles Times, Govindini Murty—a co-founder of the Liberty Film Festival—makes a good point:

Hollywood’s box office has hit the skids, and the entertainment media are in overdrive trying to explain why. The most obvious explanation for box office malaise is consistently overlooked: Hollywood’s ruling liberal elites keep going out of their way to offend half their audience.

Meanwhile, Bridget Johnson notes in The Wall Street Journal:

Last year, in an OpinionJournal column about the murder of Theo van Gogh at the hands of an Islamic extremist, I mentioned how the 2002 film version of Tom Clancy’s “The Sum of All Fears” transformed the Palestinian terrorist characters into Euro neo-Nazis. The day my piece appeared, I received an anonymous e-mail from someone who claimed to be “close to the decision” to alter the adaptation, defending the pre-9/11 changes as trying “to avoid a tired cliché.”

Hollywood actually avoided a tired cliché? Well, I guess there’s a first time for everything...

26 June 2005 @ 12:55PM >> The Arts section of today’s New York Times discusses the emerging conservative film movement. Although it’s quite nice that the article contains a mention of Brainwashing 101, the casual reader would probably leave with the impression that conservative = religious right. That’s too bad; conservatism as an intellectual strain is far more diverse than that, which was very apparent at last year’s two conservative film festivals.

8 June 2005 @ 9:40AM >> For some reason, my comments on the TV show 24 yielded more e-mail than any recent post. A friend of mine even left me a voicemail defending the show!

Of the e-mailers who’ve seen the show, the unanimous verdict is that 24 is quite excellent. People were split, however, on whether the show was becoming weak-kneed and politically correct in its portrayal of terrorists.

Lydia Brodeur wrote:

Augh! Your last post at BT almost had me writhing on the floor.

Admittedly, I haven’t seen the fourth season of 24 yet. My fiance Ben and I
always wait for the DVDs to come out, and they haven’t yet. 24, being
a show mostly about stopping various threats to the country, can’t
avoid tidbits of political commentary. But that article you
apparently drew your opinion from is NOT representative of the show.
It makes the show seem so shallow, when it’s not! The show is really
thrilling and the story is always fantastic. Edge-of-your-seat,
literally. Ben and I would stay up until 4 am sometimes watching the
DVDs because we always had that “Oh, just one more episode” attitude.
Just
couldn’t put the remote down. Any of our friends that weren’t
watching WITH us just assumed we were unavailable on Friday and
Saturday nights for a few weeks every time we got a new season on DVD.

[...]

Look, my point is, please don’t swear off 24 because of that article.
It’s just not representative. If you get the chance to watch 24,
please do. Just make sure to watch from the beginning. It’s not a
show you can jump into the middle of.

Jon Koolpe said:

Regarding your comments on “24,” I felt compelled to write you a quick note. While I do agree that the producers/writers very much whitewashed Islam by the end of the season by removing almost all references to this religion, I do feel that the show was well done and did expose some of the liberal hypocrisy and naivete that is so prevalent in this country.

For instance, when the heroes had a suspect in custody that was not cooperative, the first thing that the Marwan character did was to contact a liberal lawyer in what was an obvious swipe at such “humanitarian” groups as Amnesty International and the ACLU in order to get a lawyer to delay the proper interrogation of the prisoner. AI has certainly managed to up the ante in their foolishness this past week with their absurd “Gulag” claim....

[...]

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I truly enjoyed “24” and found it worthwhile even though I was also pretty upset at the obvious changes that the producers undertook due to Islamic pressure groups. There was still enough there to enjoy and at least this one TV show had some cajones in this case, even if they weren’t as steadfast as I would have preferred...

8 June 2005 @ 8:44AM >> The Hollywood Reporter is carrying an article on conservative filmmakers, which contains a brief blurb on me:

Then there’s Evan Coyne Maloney, who gained attention in 2003 by pointing a camera at protesters before the U.S. attacked Iraq and asking them to explain their concerns. The humorous result is one of a series of short films he has posted on the Internet.

Maloney and a couple of partners then founded On the Fence Films, which has begun to earn acclaim for “Brainwashing 101,” a documentary that spotlights political correctness on college campuses and plays primarily — where else? — on college campuses.

“People making documentaries today are primarily on the left, so stories that don’t interest them would go untold,” Maloney says.

1 June 2005 @ 10:52AM >> I admit, I’ve never watched the show 24. Everybody tells me I should, all my friends rave about it, even one of the executive producers of my upcoming film recommended it for editing ideas. But, like The Sopranos or Desperate Housewives, it seems to be one of those shows you have to watch from the very beginning in order to truly understand its greatness.

Although the last thing I need in my life is another time commitment, I would’ve been willing to check out 24 if it’s really as good as everyone says. But now, after reading this, I’m much less inclined to do so:

The creators of “24,” Fox Television’s thriller-diller starring Keifer Sutherland as counterterror super-agent Jack Bauer, almost put together a compelling TV series rooted in the onerous reality of the war on jihad terrorism. But thanks, apparently, to a few helpful suggestions from the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR), they managed to steer clear of all political and historical relevance.

This couldn’t have been easy. After all, CAIR didn’t even come to their rescue until after the show’s season had begun with a couple of episodes that featured a typical Islamic sleeper cell embedded in a typical American sleepy suburb. After these and other obvious blunders — a terse exchange of “Allahu Akbar” between terrorists, for instance — the creative types behind the hit series managed to get their act together and save the world for political correctness. How? Two things: They laid down a suitably distracting Chinese subplot, and cast a bunch of mid-Westerners, instead of Middle Easterners, to wear the key black hats. There was the ex-Air Force pilot — obviously blond, obviously disgruntled — who shot down Air Force One; a nefarious ex-Marine; and a Patty-Hearst-like commando who just shot whatever.

Whatever is right. By this week’s season finale, Marwan, the head jihadist, had been comic-stripped of all religious identity and motivation, and cloaked in a heavy disguise of moral equivalence. As in: You think we’re evil and we think you’re evil. This is pretty much what hero-Jack actually said to Marwan, the terror kingpin, who had just that day blown up a train, kidnapped the Secretary of Defense, sent multiple nuclear plants into meltdown, and lobbed a nuclear warhead at Los Angeles. Oh well. Marwan was ultimately overshadowed by Someone Worse — the President of the United States.

1 April 2005 @ 10:52AM >> Over at OpinionJournal.com, Bridget Johnson surveys Hollywood’s contributions to the idolization of Communist murderer Che Guevara in The Motorcycle Diaries and beyond:

Now that “Motorcycle” has ridden into the awards sunset—ironically, considering the nature of communism, also picking up two Independent Spirit Awards—the sequel to Che canonization is on the horizon. Filming is scheduled to start later this year on “Che,” a Steven Soderbergh (”Traffic”) vehicle starring Benicio del Toro as the famed Marxist. The plot line as listed on the Internet Movie Database: “An epic about Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara, who fought for the people.”

Wait, there’s more. IMDb lists another movie titled “Che” currently filming, written and directed by Josh Evans, son of Ali McGraw. If one can assume that Sonia Braga’s “Celia” character is Guevara’s mother, are we in store for another innocent, youthful portrayal of the guerrilla in “The Tricycle Diaries”?

Annoying as the Che adulation is, a recent comment by a 14-year-old on an online movie message board was truly disturbing: “I just saw The Motorcycle Diaries, which further made me question: Why is communism bad? ... Young people are told how bad communism is, but we are not told why. ... The Motorcycle Diaries showed me how Ernesto Guevara wanted to help people. ... But this did not explain why he was such a ‘bad’ person and apparently deserved to be murdered by the U.S.”

Is this a legacy of dangerous ignorance that the makers of “Che” wish to continue? Might this teen be taught that the product of Guevara and Castro’s “revolution” is a nation whose inhabitants still risk their lives to escape—and an estimated one-third die trying? A nation where neighbor spies on neighbor, where dissent lands one in the clink—or worse—and persecution is punishment for everything from religion to homosexuality?

What feature films have showed the true nature of communism? There was “The Killing Fields,” showing families torn apart, cities emptied, forced labor, bones littering the Cambodian landscape. Adding to the authenticity was its star, Oscar-winner and real-life survivor Haing S. Ngor, who would have been summarily executed had his intellectual background been discovered by the Khmer Rouge. As a cinematic achievement, it ranks as one of the best films of all time. As a historical testament, it shows that communism had nothing to do with betterment of the masses but stripped away everything that comprised the individual. Though this film should be required high-school viewing, not much else springs to mind that could counter the effects of pro-Marxist cinema.

Usually Hollywood’s antipathy towards capitalism comes through more subtly. Businesspeople are almost invariably portrayed as corrupt people bent on destroying the environment or ruining the lives of workers. The heroes are usually those who fight against the evil corporations. That’s the typical script on the micro view capitalism, so it isn’t much of a surprise that on the macro level, Hollywood also glorifies enemies of capitalism.

Hollywood apparently doesn’t understand the irony of making money by selling such films...unfortunately, neither do audiences.

22 February 2005 @ 5:58PM >> Maybe you’ve heard about these billboards that will taunt Hollywood’s glitterati as they shuffle into the Oscars for their annual festival of self-congratulation.

Well, Anna of Liberty Belles decided to go out and ask some Hollywood residents what they thought of the signs. The resulting video, called Boomerang, shows that most people were a little confused. But one thing’s clear: Anna’s great on camera. I’m betting this won’t be her last video.

24 January 2005 >> The New York Sun profiles Evan Coyne Maloney. More >>

4 January 2005 @ 2:54PM >> The Liberty Film Festival announced their top 20 conservative films of 2004.

I’m happy to say that three of my films made the list: Brainwashing 101 in the “10 Best Documentary Films” category, and both Peace, Love and Anti-Semitism? and Gettin’ a MoveOn in the “5 Best Shorts” category.

While it is very flattering to be selected three times, I know there are other films that should have been on the list as well.

8 December 2004 @ 5:01PM >> Pat Sajak takes Hollywood to task for its continued silence over the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh:

Somewhere in the world, a filmmaker creates a short documentary that chronicles what he perceives as the excesses of anti-abortion activists. An anti-abortion zealot reacts to the film by killing the filmmaker in broad daylight and stabbing anti-abortion tracts onto his body. How does the Hollywood community react to this atrocity? Would there be angry protests? Candlelight vigils? Outraged letters and columns and articles? Awards named in honor of their fallen comrade? Demands for justice? Calls for protection of artistic freedom? It’s a pretty safe bet that there would be all of the above and much more. And all of the anger would be absolutely justified.

So I’m trying to understand the nearly universal lack of outrage coming from Hollywood over the brutal murder of Dutch director, Theo van Gogh, who was shot on the morning of November 2, while bicycling through the streets of Amsterdam. The killer then stabbed his chest with one knife and slit his throat with another.

The problem for Hollywood is, the van Gogh murder doesn’t fit the template that the threat from radical Islam is phony. In their world, the root of all evil is George W. Bush. Admitting that the threat from radical Islam is real would require the Hollywood left to admit that the War on Terror isn’t just some neoconservative conspiracy.

For them, it’s easier to pretend that the daylight slaughter of Theo van Gogh never happened. Makes sense. After all, the function of Hollywood is to construct fantasy worlds. Let’s not forget, that’s how these guys earn their livings.

25 November 2004 >> On OpinionJournal.com, the editorial website of The Wall Street Journal, Bridget Johnson has a piece entitled “Look Who Isn’t Talking: A filmmaker is murdered, and Hollywood loudmouths say nothing” that discusses the film industry’s silence in the wake of the murder of documentarian Theo van Gogh:

One would think that in the name of artistic freedom, the creative community would take a stand against filmmakers being sent into hiding à la Salman Rushdie, or left bleeding in the street. Yet we’ve heard nary a peep from Hollywood about the van Gogh slaying. Indeed Hollywood has long walked on eggshells regarding the topic of Islamic fundamentalism. The film version of Tom Clancy’s “The Sum of All Fears” changed Palestinian terrorists to neo-Nazis out of a desire to avoid offending Arabs or Muslims. The war on terror is a Tinsel Town taboo, even though a Hollywood Reporter poll showed that roughly two-thirds of filmgoers surveyed would pay to see a film on the topic.

I found myself nodding in agreement, and that was before I saw that the article contained a brief mention of Brainwashing 101.

20 October 2004 @ 5:20PM >> The Club for Growth released a hilarious new ad directed by David Zucker, the director of comedies like Airplane! and the Police Squad / Naked Gun series.

Zucker is a former Democrat who considers himself a “September 12th Republican.” (That’s how he characterized himself in a discussion panel at the Liberty Film Festival earlier this month.)

After watching his ad, I’m damn glad he’s on my side.

(Note: The ad is currently posted on the front page of the site, but for posterity the ad—entitled Indecision—can also be found here. The title of the ad is not yet listed on that page, however.)

12 August 2004 @ 6:24PM >> When celebrities like Tim Robbins, Barbra Streisand or the Dixie Chicks—and even former celebrities like Linda Ronstadt—impose their views on their audiences, they often find that sizable portions of their audiences turn on them. After all, if you pay money to hear someone sing music, you hope that the singer will have the common courtesy to not denigrate your political views in the midst of the performance you’ve paid for.

Unfortunately, celebrities these days don’t see it that way. Not only do they feel the need to engage in political lectures during entertainment performances, but they then complain about “censorship” and “chill winds” after audiences react negatively to their ungracious behavior.

Of course, if you or I were in a (non-Hollywood) service business, and if you or I started haranguing our customers about their political views, we probably wouldn’t be in that business very long. Just ask Leslie Farr, an Amtrak train conductor who was suspended from work after making critical remarks about John Kerry:

Farr [...] used the train’s public address system to tell passengers they would be delayed because of Kerry’s train and then quipped that they should vote accordingly in November.

Now, I think Farr’s statement was just as ill-advised as any on-stage diatribe from a leftist Hollywood performer. However, according to the logic of folks like Tim Robbins, Farr’s suspension is evidence of sinister plot to stifle dissent. (Was John Ashcroft on that train? Has he suddenly become a Kerry supporter?)

So, the question is, when will the Dixie Chicks come to Farr’s defense? If they don’t then it’s obvious: Hollywood’s twisted notion of free speech—that is, speech that captive, paying audiences aren’t allowed to find objectionable—is a “right” that only they enjoy. Petty commoners like us have to live by different rules

26 June 2004 >> Could it be that conservatives are finally trying to assert themselves in the film business? The Hollywood Reporter thinks so:

Just as his “Fahrenheit 9/11” opens nationwide, several filmmakers are readying documentaries aimed at debunking Michael Moore, and a new film festival is being planned that will feature such works as well as other movies well to the right of Moore’s films.

Scheduled Sept. 9-11 in Dallas, the American Film Renaissance, as the festival will be known, has just been announced by co-founder Jim Hubbard, who said it is bankrolled primarily by some “big-time conservative donors.”

In the article, Hubbard says that boycott movements—such as those that would try to prevent people from seeing Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11—”are for the weak.”

I agree. The way to win an argument isn’t to stop your opponent from being heard, it’s by formulating a better argument and articulating it. Filmmakers such as Michael Wilson have been trying to do just that. Although I think the title of his film (Michael Moore Hates America) is a poor choice, the trailer for the film looks interesting and makes me want to see more.

Jim Hubbard adds:

“We want everyone to see Michael Moore’s film,” he said. “We also want everyone to see ‘Michael Moore Hates America.’ Conservatives complain about institutional bias in Hollywood. They need to stop whining and get out there and produce.”

Absolutely. I’ve been saying that for a while, and have been doing my small part to contribute. It’s heartening to see that folks like Hubbard are out there doing the same thing. I wish him the best of luck.

17 June 2004 @ 11:43PM >> Michael Moore is getting positive feedback on his film Fahrenheit 9/11 from some unfortunate allies: friends of the Islamic terrorist group Hizbollah.

According to London’s The Guardian, one of the film’s distributors in the Middle East “has been contacted by organisations related to the Hezbollah in Lebanon with offers of help.”

I wonder what it says about Michael Moore’s agenda that a terrorist organization and self-proclaimed enemy of the United States wants his film Fahrenheit 9/11 reach a bigger audience.

If everybody who saw the film discovered this little fact after they left the theaters, the film would have virtually no political impact...which is why you’ll probably never hear anything about this from the network news reporters who—like Hizbollah—have been trying to help Moore promote his film.