BREITBART: A different kind of surge

Hollywood today is activist. They keep producing movies that relatively few watch and handing out Academy Awards for them. If the conservatives are going to make movies, it won't be in Hollywood. Character does not sell well to James Dean crowd, but there is still of lot of the Steve McQueen crowd out there. John Wayne will be around for a long time even though Hollywood scorns it. They will have to pull a Sylvester Stallone to get past the Michael Moore's and Al Gore's. Eastwood did it in the 70's, so it can happen again, just a matter of finding the right market. Good and Evil are still the big sellers - Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. It can be done, but you have to live your values not change them for every roll.

I think Mr. Breibart is pretty clueless as to the extent of liberal bias in Hollywood, academia, and the media. I think Andrew missed that whole Venona Papers incident all together. Mr Breibart has, like most who court the media, an exaggerated opinion of the power of Hollywood. They're a bunch of self-involved losers who couldn't get and/or keep a real job. They're entertainers, popular culture fixated maroons. Popular culture is the paint on the house, it certainly is NOT the roof, walls, or power source. No one takes Hollywood seriously except themselves and their like-minded leftist media friends. So why does Mr. Briebart?

I think Mr. Breibart's essay is difficult for some people to hear, but I believe he is absolutely right. Ann Coulter also talks about this. When she does the college circuit, Ann always tell her audience to go into the entertainment industry, because conservatives are so badly needed in that field. I am a Reagan/W conservative and am doing my part to infiltrate the entertainment industry. I just finished my Bachelor's at UT Austin, the most liberal city in Texas, and I'm about to move to Los Angeles to attend UCLA for my Master's. I do Cinema Studies, and I got a full scholarship to study in one of the most liberal cities in the world. I didn't indicate that I was conservative on my applications, I just showed them my best work. I don't know ANYONE else like me. I never met another conservative film student at UT, and I'm sure it will be more difficult at UCLA. But I don't see it as an obstacle. I see it as a challenge. And because I know that everyone, including the professor, will disagree with the comments I make in class, wthat what I say has to be clear, concise, and supported my the facts. This might seem obvious, but you'd be surprised how many arguments I won at UT with this strategy, because no one else knew their facts. The liberal kids weren't used to being challenged. They took their "facts" from their profs, and from late night tv. They weren't learning how to defend their positions, because no one ever disagreed with them. I know how smart the young conservatives are, and I would challenge them to go into the entertainment field as well. You don't have to be a filmmaker to make an impact in Hollywood.

Yes Hollywood is completely activist, but what would a more conservative dialogue portray? These people are actors. Ever hang out with thesbians in college? They are pretty bleak. Remember: Hollywood provides a service, entertainment, just like the evening news, newspapers, fastfood, hotels, etc. Their marketing arm is the media and gossip routes. Funny thing about service is if you do not like it, you do not pay for it. And, as is all well known and true in Capitalism, if you do not make money, you go broke. If you reinvent yourself and market correctly, you survive. Just think about all the loons whose careers have died out from poorly marketing their skills and providing the right service people expect. Take for example the recently past series of movies geared to make the military and this Great Nation look like the Nazi's of Germany during this Iraq situation. They lost a lot of money, and now those stars are "branded". Most of them will recover, some will not and spiral downward. They will be lucky to do voice overs, game shows, and...dare I say, infommercials. This country goes through a lot changes. Some forced upon us only to be rejected flatly. Some, because of National perception or a desire to slowly accept a postion. And, some only because contemperary society no longer can utilize a position. These are only a few examples; however, each one of these changes has led to our current situation. When the global hype on climate change is proven to be soley from the sun, fools like Dennis DeCaprio (I purposely call him Dennis) will be seen as a complete idiot for not being educated. When our mission in Iraq leads to a more stabilized Middle East, Spiccoli will go back to Ridgemont High. And when we reflect back on Bush and all his faults and realize he did stand for something that was just, we will see that the pussbag, Moore, was what he always was: a big fat blabbering bufoon. Hopefully, many of these thesbians will realize that their acting is what pays their bills and that sounding off on flawed, inconsistant and improperly though out stands is only depleting their resources, they will learn lesson one: Think Before You Speak. I do not watch much TV. I buy dvd's on the classics. I do watch some of the new releases. We will see. Steve McQueen was and is still the Man!

If Hollywood ( and most TV media) is owned and run by the left, what are the chances to be hired if you are a conservative script writer? Infiltration would be one way, I guess. One would have to never have revealed themselves publicly as leaning toward the right. One other thing puzzles me. How is it that so many Jews are so far to the left? The Venona Papers reveal a staggering percentage in relation to the jewish representation in the population as a whole, not to mention in the ownership of most large media. How could any Jews possibly aid and abet a regime such as Stalin's? He was a far bigger murderer of Jews than Hitler. The Soviets expelled Jews as dissidents whenever the had a chance. They were the biggest anti-semites on the planet, and yet there is a sizable contingent of Jews here who continue to defend the ideology of the dead empire. I don't get it.

I believe what Andrew is specifically referring to in this article is more specifically aimed at patriotic films (American Exceptionalism) than conservative actors, per se. Now that over two-thirds of Hollywood's revenue comes from overseas, Hollywood no longer can produce an obvious patriotic film and expect to maximize their returns (Independence Day being a quasi-exception). With Hollywood, it's all about money. Andrew should not look to in that direction but instead, more reasonably, look at the sprouting Indie film productions to get that message out.

Although I'm a liberal Democrat, I agree that Hollywood does not offer much for conservatives. What puzzles me is why some of the wealthy conservatives--and there are some very wealthy conservatives--have not created a movie studio. That course of action makes much more sense to me than trying to bang your collective heads against the doors of the Hollwood establishments. There are conservatives in the entertainment media, but there are few avenues for them to develop movie or tv projects. So, when can we expect to see a conservative film studio or production company operating on the same scale as Geffen or Spielberg or Lucas?

The affirmative action plan would be for conservatives to start their own studios or become producers or directors. Just like those capatalist liberals=socialists=communists did and made a ton of money. Reactionaries managed to do it with talk radio. They pretend that form of entertainment is news. Why can't the right make movies that entertain us and they can then slip whatever propaganda in they want. Or maybe it's just entertainment after all and studios are really only trying to make money. The so called "culture war" is nonexistant. The rightwing media gives too much credence to Hollywood. They live in their own world and it has very little to do with the rest of us. It's just a straw man for the rightwing media to punch around. They'd be lost without it to blame for the country's problems.

A film starts with an idea followed by a script. The script is then shown to people whose expertise is in determining if a film made from the script is likely to attract a large audience. Have there ever been any scripts written based on the themes you mention, such as romanticizing "freedom over servitude", "mocking baby boomer excesses" that (a) were acknowledged to be great scripts, but (b) were turned down because they were "too conservative"? Unless you can cite actual examples of this, you don't really have a case. Hollywood may be full of liberals, but it's also full of professionals, who are on the lookout for good scripts, and whose eyes are on profits, not politics.

Forget abut Hollywood, why not build an alternative industry?

Anyone interested in this topic should back the liberty film festival and its offshoots. see www.libertyfilmfestival.com there are conservative and libertarian voices in hollywood and that's a good introduction to them. that line about "hollywood ignores bias and goes for the money" is nonsense. there is a big market for pro-american films that is going almost completely ignored. (But there is a big-name comedy coming down the tracks that mocks the jihadis and the leftist simpletons who side with them--you'll probably hear about it in a couple months.)