Roger Simon, on the lackluster response to the recent batch of anti-American foreign policy films that have been oozing out of Hollywood like chicken-fried steak grease out of Michael Moore’s backfat:
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.
[my emphasis]
There is an irony, I think, to anti-war, ultraliberal millionaires relying on the export of their films — which, let’s face it, are made for a few coastal elites and an overseas market awash in conspicuous anti-American sentiment (itself a luxury, given that these very countries rely entirely on the US for protection, and so use our military and our historically muscular foreign policy as a way to subsidize their own social experimentation, which has been a disaster of another sort) — to find both a sympathetic audience, and a financial break even point.
Because in a different context — one in which they weren’t particularly interested in self-preservation and ego exportation — these are the very kinds of people who would loudly decry the “outsourcing” of US culture as hegemonic or culturally imperialistic, even as they have begun to increasingly rely on just such a business plan to finance their dogmatic political manifestos, which they graft to some conspiratorial narrative and shill to those suckers overseas who, in a kind of perverse circle, define their own hipness by the kind of affected cynicism that permeates these anti-US foreign policy cartoons.
And that’s what they are. Because for all their pretense of revealing shades of gray — nuance — or the moral and ethical dilemmas at the heart of US foreign policy, what these films truly do is pander to an audience type who has confused conspiracy theorizing and a failure to make any firm commitment to the fight against an obvious enemy with a perspicaciousness and depth of insight that exists only in their imaginations, and is intended solely to grease their own egos.
Jawa has a nice overview of Nonie Darwish’s extraordinary speech delivered at the YAF conference, in which Ms Darwish’s exasperation with the left elitist in this country was uncomfortably palpable. The real liberals — the moderate Muslims speaking out, at great personal risk, for the necessity of Islamic reform — are being demonized as inauthentic troublemakers by a left so enamored with multiculturalist dogma and a self-serving and self-aggrandizing consideration of their own capacity for “tolerance,” that the greatest enemy, in Darwish’s view, in the global war on terror, are those who, through their blindness (and as a tribute to their own egos), are allowing Islamism to further entrench itself inside the United States.
Islamofascism, as Darwish pointed out, was a phrase coined not by Andrew Sullivan, but rather by Muslim reformers, who in turn were simply describing, with a clear fidelity, the description of the movement introduced by its adherents, who considered the fascist component a feature.
Hardly surprising for a 7th-century worldview trying to assimilate itself into the political realities of the 20th (and now 21st) century.
****
related: Gateway Pundit snagged an interview with a Muslim moderate who is receiving death threats, and whose parents are insisting she leave the country.
The girl is 17.
I’ve thought about Europe’s complaints regarding the export of American culture. And issues of choice aside (did we really fight WWII so we could force Europe to open McDonald’s and watch Disney films? Is that what they’re saying?), why does Hollywood seem to try so hard to appeal to people who openly despise them and their product?
In other words, is it really ironic that Hollywood seems to be more Europhilic (is that even a word?) while Europe derides American culture, or is it just a logical extension of the group’s (Hollywood’s, I mean) neurotic desire to be loved by everyone? Is Hollywood pandering to European/global audiences simply because they KNOW everyone hates American culture? (Note – they claim to hate it, but they keep right on buying it. And while American culture may indeed be crass, British culture is responsible for Benny Hill, and Japan (a random example) is responsible for game shows where the penalty for wrong answers is a whack in the nuts. And don’t get me started on Mexican soap operas. People who complain about the quality of American pop culture can kiss my ass, then stop buying it.
And I want to add – just another excellent post, Jeff, on all points. When the Left’s multicultural embrace of radical Islam allows it to reach its logical conclusion, they’ll be some of the first to pay.
Great to have you back!
Welcome back Jeff. I had to look up perspicaciousness but I’m a richer man for it. Unlike other bloggers/posters who throw around such words to impress, intimidate or allierate, your use of that word accurately describes the shrewd nature of these characters.
I meant “alliterate” damn it. PIMF
That, in light of this from Roger…
…leaves me thinking, “Chicken…? Egg…?”
One thing Robert Redford et al. forgot followed by a not-so-rhetorical question on the pickle the Left has created for themselves vis-a-vis multiculturalism:
1. The two most successful “war” movies during the Vietnam era (that the Left so pangs for) were “Patton” and “The Green Berets.” If Hollywood was spinning the disastrous box office results any faster, we’d have to hook them up to an Iranian uranium gas lead. Let us all remember Steven Bochco was the creative genius behind “Cop Rock.”
2. At what point do “why do they hate us” ravings, coupled with the black hole density irony of the “hey, I’m not the us” Jeff points out above just after the quote, and “well, Larry Summer’s math quote and genital mutilation are the same” musings result in spontaneous decapitations?
have been oozing out of Hollywood like chicken-fried steak grease out of Michael Moore’s backfat:
Jeff,
I’ll be billing you for the therapy sessions. You can pay either cash or in trade; say, The McCallum 18 yr or some Colorado Kind. Your choice, Im easy that way.
How rough is Hollywood? Ask Jeffree Star, the Racist Drag Queen.
BTW, if The View’s still looking for someone, I think we’ve found your girl.
Exactly, McGehee.
Good to have you back, Jeff.
Michael Moore’s backfat – truly disgusting image. Thanks.
Great to have you back!
Shorter version of Simon’s analysis: “Actors are assholes.”
Why are they assholes? The same reason that nuclear physicists tend to be smart… it’s a job requirement.
Smart people tend to make good physicists, engineers, etc. and assholes tend to make good actors.
There was a discussion of this point not too far back at HotAir. I think Roger mildly overstates the problem for several reasons.
First, the repackaging of movies for TV is increasingly global. If WB finances a stinker, selling the TV rights to HBO is largely an accounting measure that ultimately affects the bottom line of the parent corporation.
In this regard, the failure of Lions for Lambs is a case in point. This was the Cruise/Wagner team’s first product for the reboot of United Artists; the flop could have a negative impact on parent Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s attempts to raise funds for film productions. If not, it will because of MGM’s franchises, e.g., the James Bond series, which really doesn’t lend itself to virulent anti-Americanism. Ultimately, the people charged with greenlighting projects bow to these economic realities.
Second, it’s far from clear that movies like In the Season of Elah have broader appeal in foreign markets. Overseas receipts account for only about 25% of its take. Thus, the loss described may well be a true loss, not made up in other markets. To the extent that the corporations are not self-dealing for TV rights, distributors are going to pay less over time for a package with flops than one packed with hits. And the production side knows it.
Third, while the system will subsidize minor losses on small-budget pics like these, and some will make to boost their self-esteem, others will avoid them for the same reason. Reese Witherspoon is very bankable right now, and is surely aware that doing too many flops — even PC flops — would ultimately hit her in the pocketbook. Indeed, if Roger’s characterization is largely true, there have to be many in Tinseltown who will measure their self-esteem more by the profile and profitability of their projects than by their political trendiness.
Fourth, Brian DePalma can make Redacted, but it’s opening Friday on 14 screens. A tiny fraction of the audience will ever see it in the cinema. If it gets packaged and sold to a Starz or HBO, it will air once or twice at 3:00 a.m., where no one will see it. And this is really the most salient point. Hollywood cannot force people to watch. And until they make an antiwar picture that’s actually got artistic merit, people won’t watch.
And, let’s be clear here. It’s not just “anti-war” that’s the problem. Every military person I’ve met loves All Quiet On The Western Front and Full Metal Jacket, two of the biggest “anti-war” movies I can think of.
It’s that Hollywood is full of partisan hacks.
It is increasingly clear that it’s not the barbaric masses who ruin a society, it’s the elite. The excesses of the French aristocracy brought the guillotine onto their own necks, and Tsarist Russia was no different.
Our current elites deny that they’re elites because they don’t see themselves as The Richest or the Most Powerful because they think that Bill Gates and George Soros are in that category. But the politics of the wealthy are now, inexplicably, leaning left.
Not because they want to pay higher taxes and have their wealth forcibly distributed (they can always hide their money in loopholes) but because leftism puts them in power and cuts out the votes of the hated NASCAR rabble.
And someone recently looked at the most wealthy congressional districts in the U.S. and found that all of them had elected Dems to represent them. Huh. Whaddaya know.
When are conservatives going to really just break away from this system and start making their own movies. As shown by Mel G. with his movie the market is there. Give the Theater owners a bigger cut if that is what it takes to break the left’s hold on the movie industry. There is money to be made and it will weaken the left’s hold on pop culture.
I dunno. The movies bombed. I’m not sure we can say for sure why. They were poorly timed, and not well reviewed, and not given much budget or marketing resources, and Tom Cruise is generally understood to be a very strange and weird person and also he’s very short and he eats his children’s afterbirth. Bet me and I’d tell you that if you can get me a fresh anti-war script and Julia Roberts and a 150 million dollars we could make us some impactful anti-warness. The studios didn’t pull out all the stops here, and people could tell. It’s a marketing failure, but mostly it’s just that they tried to sell it without selling it, which doesn’t work on adults very well. It’s way too subtle.
Stanley Kurtz makes the point that these duds are far less corrosive than Dances with Wolves and Happy Feet.
Full Metal Jacket may be antiwar, but it is a somewhat realistic (in a PG sort of fashion) portrayal of Marine Corps boot camp at that time.
It lacked some of the more amusing moments of the real thing, like seeing a recruit lying on his back screaming “I am a dying cockroach” (not me) or a recruit inside the garbage can while the DIs beat on it with their swagger sticks (also not me) or hearing some of the more imaginative profanity (some of which was directed my way.)
Some of the stuff that went on was simply unbelievable, like watching the MPs come in and take one guy away in handcuffs. He had actually deserted from the Army and joined the Marine Corps. We had another guy they had to drop because he couldn’t read at all, not to mention the usual washouts for medical reasons or aptitude. Yes, it is possible to be too dumb to make it through boot camp.
John Kerry maligned the people with whom he served. Most of them were regular people, in a difficult situation, doing their best. I’ve no doubt the all volunteer forces today are even better. When Hollywood makes a movie that does not slander our military, I’ll pay to see it. Until then, I’ll boycott the bad ones.
I’ll boycott the bad ones.
That’s not … it’s not exactly being part of the solution. They misjudged their market, but it was never you.
Karl, I agree with you that Roger overstated the ability of these movies to make money overseas. A flop is a flop is a flop and no matter how much hollywierd pimps their selected dogmatic films at Oscar time (Crash, Syrianna, Munich) their investors still want a return on the bottom line. Once again, Vin Deisal’s hideous nanny movie made more money that any of those three. I suspect that Saw IV will make more than Redacted, Elah and Lions combined.
dicentra, you’ve brought to the forefront the construct for the new elite. Whereas France and most of the rest of Europe pimped it’s nobless from bloodlines and accumulated wealth, today’s leftist elites sit upon the twin thrones of education and doctrine. (Or educated doctrine if you will.) How many times have we heard liberals/progressives/leftists talk about the genesis of their poltical views as being the “smart” way to go? Nothing warms my cockles more than one of the barely literate Baldwin brothers talkiing about how “smart” it is to be liberal.
Review Prof Caricature, timmah, actus, semiconcious, dave, markg8 or any number of other regular trolls. Wander around Kos or Huffpo or any number of other lefty sites. More than anything else one is left with the overwhelming understanding that those people (for the most part) think that they’re smarter than you, more insightful, better versed in the solid truths of compassion, redistribution and the touchy-feely values that a society should stand for.
Trust them, for they know the revealed truths, being smarter than you.
The arrogant sanctimony is such that you could cut it with a curling iron.
We notice it more in celebrities because they are more visible, broadcast beyond their knowledge or understanding on the certain kewl issues of the day. The simple minded starry eyed swoon when Leo plaintively cries for the boiling planet or Babes Streisand wails about something or other. All the while these very same people have personal reputations that run the gamut from indifferent and self indulgent (Leo) to downright mean and viscious (Babes,) all the while taveling about in Hummer limos and private jets while living in houses that have the carbon footprint of a medium sized moon. For the unstarry eyed this combination of lack of education, influence beyond knowledge and personal peccadilli makes them elite wanna be’s, tolerated by the real elitists for their PR value and as an opportunity for the elitist policy nerds to rub elbows with Sheryl Crow and Martin Sheen. They are the propaganda arm, along with their willing syncophants in the MSM, plying the same message that the pusher coos to the addict, “Don’t worry, it will be so good for you, trust me.”
Well, can’t throw Michael Moore very far.
I wanna be a troll. Hollywood was as right as they ever are with these movies… and if you look at the # of engagements they have been booking these films into, there’s not much suggestion that they had deluded themselves about their potential. Sure, in many cases they surely hope to recoup overseas, or through awards season exposure, but mostly this is just normal. What part of Denzel Washington holding an entire hospital and a visibly shaken Anne Heche hostage so his son could get a heart transplant did you people not understand?
If I wanted to see Robert Redford, I’d put a little “Billy the Kid” hat on my johnson and paint big white teeth on my scrotum.
“300” was a great movie about a small group of people who never wavered. That’s why I remain in the perceived 30% who support our president and our effort in Iraq. I’ll be part of the 1% if I have to. I’ll get more of the glory. I’m no Spartan mind you. I’m about 32K sit ups short.
happyfeet: Another political pimping over the top movie, decrying the evils of free market health care and vile insurance companies.
Yet an other cartoon movie with political asperations like “The Good Shepherd” and “Rendition.”
Fucking H.M.O. bastard pieces of shit!
That’s the line that pretty much sums up the whole gratuitous movie leftism thing for me.
If you did not laugh out loud at al’s last comment there is something seriously wrong with you.
“300” was the latest “Test Case” to see if another voice could make it in the Movie Market. It did.
Kind of quiet on that front, however. Here’s hoping Bruce Willis does “Duece Four” like he said he wanted to…
I don’t think (I used to think) the “movie revolution” would be the foundation of a “new studio” to compete on ideological terms – I think it will be a gradual process.
The Left As We Know It is dying – I know it doesn’t look like it – and the result won’t be their disappearance but rather a moderation, a reform of sorts.
We were all surprised not just at the exuberance of the left’s reaction to 2000 and 2004 (which was, please note, greater than the reaction to 2001), but at how widespread it was.
Think of 2000-2004 as Denial, 2004-2008 as Anger.
If they don’t gain the Presidency in 2008, look forward to Bargaining for the next four years.
It’s a thing. Yeah, I made it up, but it can be a thing if I made it up.
Never mind the irony that HMO’s are a government creation.
BJTexs has spawned a corrolary to Roger’s original point:
Update: HotAir is running a headline about Redacted airing on HDNet Wednesday — another case of self-dealing re TV rights.
I spent a couple of months in northern Europe in 96 and while the political elite and the Sprockets crowd were anti-American posers we were expecting, most of the folks we met were surprisingly fond of Yanks. The general reaction was an odd mixture of awe, intimidation and amusement, but quite respectful and friendly. Maybe it has changed now, but it makes me wonder.
Andy, if DiPalma had done a movie about a tortured Canadian it would have been called Redundant.
I was trying to imagine how someone’s willie could be that wrinkly.
The Left As We Know It is dying – I know it doesn’t look like it – and the result won’t be their disappearance but rather a moderation, a reform of sorts.
I agree, the old left is history, its just thrashing around a lot and screaming like Daryl Hannah in Blade Runner. The problem is they can do a lot of damage in the process.
and if you look at the # of engagements they have been booking these films into, there’s not much suggestion that they had deluded themselves about their potential.
But they would do that after they’d screened the movie and gotten the tracking numbers. It doesn’t mean they started production hoping to only make $6.7 million on the first weekend, or thinking it’d be a smaller release.
FWIW, it opened poorly in Europe and raked in USD$1.4 million in London.
Shrinkage.
An interesting detail in Nelson DeMille’s “Wildfire” which involved
detonating nuclear devices in order
to provoke a Gotterdamerung counter strike; is when they talk about the
targets they mention L.A. and Las VEgas; whe asked why, the villain references the speeches of Suleiman
al Ghaith; Taliban spokesman who is
absolutely scathing on the topic. It
always amuses me how the Illustrated
Kos “Vanity Fair” thinks their anti-Bush strategy will safeguard them from
the mullah’s rage. Yes, AQ will look favorably on half dressed extravagantly
self indulgent secular humanists. The scene in “Independence Day” at the L.A. hotel directly under the alien ship is
instructive.
“It
always amuses me how the Illustrated
Kos “Vanity Fair†thinks their anti-Bush strategy will safeguard them from
the mullah’s rage. Yes, AQ will look favorably on half dressed extravagantly
self indulgent secular humanists.”
Do they really think this? Wow.
The scene in “Independence Day†at the L.A. hotel directly under the alien ship is instructive.
All the little lefties who are suddenly passionate about democracy now! in Pakistan is what this brings to mind for me. NPR is in quite a tizzy about it. I think mostly they want it to happen while Bush is in office cause it would be funny.
“The scene in “Independence Day†at the L.A. hotel directly under the alien ship is instructive.”
When I lived in philadelphia, people cheered as the white house got it. Not LA.
andy – I speak only for myself when I say I liked you better when all you said was “I dunno”.
I think that was cause Clinton was in office, the cheering. Doesn’t make it right, but there you go.
andy,
have you ever seen a kicker run down on kick coverage looking all frisky, but really just jogging it off until the play is over, but then the return man breaks free and then cuts back and now the kicker has to pursue, so he takes an angle and starts running like a woman trying to catch a bus after she just had a drunken one-night-stand with a really fat guy, but then from his blind side a special teams player hits him so hard that he flips through the air like a sneezed-out glob of phlegm?
That’s called an “earhole”. That’s what happyfeet just did to you. It was awesome.
“I think that was cause Clinton was in office, the cheering.”
Because Philly is such an anti-clinton town.
“Because Philly is such an anti-clinton town.”
…..those are bubbles coming out of your nose.
“Because Philly is such an anti-clinton town.”
No, because the movie came out in 1996. You really have a hard time with this whole cause and effect thing, huh, andy?
Fifteen yard penalty on B Moe. Late hit.
/flag
Fifteen yard penatly and loss of down on andy.
Flagrant asshattery.
Asshattery is such a good word. It is so descriptive.
Unfortunately, my boss does not agree. Every time I send her the draft of one of my presentations, she takes out asshattery and ambulance-chasers.
“Fifteen yard penatly and loss of down on andy.
Flagrant asshattery.”
that’s a spot foul wishbone
Referee Hoculi – “Unsportsmanlike Conduct” on wishbone, alpuccino, and B Moe. Hitting the punter while he is defenseless”. 15 yards on the end of the play, and an automatic first down. Well done”
“No, because the movie came out in 1996.”
When his popularity was in the 50’s nationally, and probably even more in philly. I think it was more cheering on givin it to “the man” than to clinton.
RE: Comment by sherlock on 11/13 @ 11:37 am
“Shorter version of Simon’s analysis: “Actors are assholes.â€Â
Why are they assholes? The same reason that nuclear physicists tend to be smart… it’s a job requirement.
Smart people tend to make good physicists, engineers, etc. and assholes tend to make good actors.”
Don’t forget, who killed Lincoln.
Asshole.