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Leftism and Hollywood's Unprofitable Business Model

For the first time in recent memory, the upcoming holiday season will feature few big-name Hollywood films. Apart from a new James Bond title (which, with unknown actor Daniel Craig debuting as 007, is no certain hit), the Tinseltown slate appears quite low-key, with the young adult fantasy Eragon, Sylvester Stallone's Rocky sequel Rocky Balboa, and the animated penguin comedy Happy Feet emerging as the most prominent of an otherwise unassuming bunch.

Some may call this an anomaly (blockbusters did, after all, reign last year with King Kong, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and The Chronicles of Narnia all grossing upwards of $200 million), but a growing cadre of industry insiders actually believe it is the wave of the future. No less an authority than George Lucas, for example, has announced plans to save large sums of money by producing only smaller films.

So what is the Star Wars head honcho thinking? Larger productions are riskier because most Hollywood films actually lose money. The studios' hit-miss ratio is so poor, in fact, that fully 90% of all theatrical motion pictures fail at the box office. Profit comes only from the other 10%, which perform so stunningly well as to (ideally) both cover the other films' losses and generate profitable additional revenue. Sound like a solid business model? Countless spurned film investors would argue a resounding "no".

But while Hollywood has accepted this financial model for many years, it was not always the name of the game. Before the mid-1960s, a far larger percentage of films made money, primarily because many more Americans regularly attended screenings. In 1960, for example, fully 45% of all Americans went to the movies weekly.

Alas, however, this was not to last, as moviegoing nosedived dramatically in the late '60s to about 10% of Americans each week, a level that has remained consistent to the present time. Resultingly, most films can no longer command the audience numbers required to turn a profit. Even today's blockbusters depend largely on high ticket prices for much of their revenue; adjusted for inflation, the box office grosses of the modern era's most popular films lag far behind those of classics like Gone With The Wind and The Wizard of Oz .

So what happened? Why have audiences deserted theaters in droves? Some blame the rise of alternative entertainment such as video games, DVDs, and the Internet. But really, the box office exodus began long before those media became popular (or were even invented).

The answer I believe, rather, is that starting in the late '60s, Hollywood films began to assume a leftist bent far out of touch with the average American's sensibilities. Industry critics loved it, but most moviegoers simply felt shunned and tuned out. This pattern has continued to the present day, with numerous leftist darlings (to name merely a recent few, the gay cowboy story Brokeback Mountain and the anti-Iraq war polemic Jarhead) regularly winning heaps of critical acclaim but flunking at the ticket counters.

Finally, however, it seems filmmakers and producers are taking note, and perhaps the tide is at last turning the other way. In addition to Mr. Lucas's new direction, family-friendly Disney has achieved tremendous recent popularity, certain production houses (such as billionaire Philip Anschutz's Walden Media) now specialize only in morally upright films, and conservative filmmakers have even launched their own festival. It's far from a complete makeover, but signs of a Hollywood renaissance certainly exist.

If the studios want to continue creating elaborate productions, then they must mitigate risk by catering to mainstream American tastes. Otherwise, the era of smaller films appears here to stay. And Luke Skywalker would not be happy.

Amazing - Hollywood Comes Out Against Terrorism

There are many things in the world I thought would never occur. The Red Sox winning the World Series. Democratic governments in former Soviet states. A live action movie of the Transformers. And yet while these have all, indeed, recently taken place (or, in the Transformers case, soon to take place), nothing - nothing - could have prepared me for the shock of seeing what appeared in the news yesterday.

Ready? A host of Hollywood stars, including some names you'd never expect like Nicole Kidman, Michael Douglas, Don Johnson and Danny DeVito (plus some you would expect - Sly Stallone, Bruce Willis, Dennis Hopper), took out a full-page advertisement in the Los Angeles Times supporting democracy and strongly condemning the terror organizations Hamas and Hezbollah.

Wow. Just wow. I'm still astounded. Even Hollywood is finally starting to get it. There's still a long way to go, of course, but this is quite a refreshing blast of air. If such a bastion of far-leftism can recognize the dangers of Islamic terrorism, then America's future looks a lot sunnier.

Now Tinseltown just needs to convince its comrades in the media, academia, and (especially) the judiciary to do the same thing. If that occurs, perhaps we won't even have to refer to them as comrades anymore.

Responding To Mel Gibson's Anti-Semitism

Looks like Mel Gibson's real personality has come out. And the survey says: Anti-Semite.

Not as if this wasn't suspected before, what with the arguably anti-Jewish scenes in his film The Passion, as well as his refusal to denounce his father's bizarre Jewish conspiracy theories. But now "Mad Max" has drunkenly laid the truth bare - he just doesn't like Jews.

Gibson has since apologized for his remarks, calling them despicable and not representative of his true beliefs. He has also entered a rehab facility. But while I'd certainly like to think his apology was heartfelt, the accumulated evidence suggests he's just trying to save face. Millions of other people get plenty drunk, but they don't start spouting lines about Jews controlling the world. Furthermore, he never even specifically mentioned Jews in his apology.

So what to do about it? Just as Gibson is entitled to his views, we're all entitled to ours. And in my opinion (something I probably share with countless others), he has completely lost my fandom. Until he demonstrates genuine change (and we should certainly forgive him if he does), I'm quite happy to shun his celebrity and ignore his films. (Not that he's starred in anything I've liked recently, but still.)

Of course, the good thing is that perhaps Gibson will overcome his biases. He has completely embarassed himself, and such incidents often act as catalysts for people to learn their lessons. Indeed, even at its very worst, his anti-Semitism is nothing compared to that of hardcore Jew-haters like Ahmadinejad. Mel Gibson is small fry. Iran's leadership is evil and must be stopped.

The terrorist Mullahcracy, then, along with worldwide jihadism, should still be the primary target of efforts to fight anti-Semitism. Not that I'm defending Gibson; his comments were indeed sick and disgusting, and he should be held fully accountable. But if a drunken rant is the extent of his bigotry, I wouldn't write off his chances for repentance and change.

Israel, meanwhile, faces an existential threat from an evil foe determined to destroy it. Everyday prejudice such as Gibson's should always be countered, but let's not lose sight of the more overarching goal - throwing a murderous enemy off of our backs. That's something with which, of all people, the star of Braveheart and The Patriot should truly sympathize. If Gibson wants to stay honest to his greatest films' principles, he should love and admire the Jewish people.

Roger Waters: Comfortably Numb (to Terrorism)

Roger Waters once wrote a song for Pink Floyd called "Brain Damage". Apparently it was autobiographical.

That's about the only way to explain the former Floyd bassist's lunkheaded decision to move a scheduled Israel concert from Tel Aviv to a joint Jewish-Arab village in response to Palestinian protests. Waters' comments regarding the incident are even worse; on the day an evil and horrific suicide bombing occurred in the very city he rejected, Waters was quoted as having recently said: "Being an Israeli does not disbar from being a human being."

Yeah, as if Israel's actions are really to blame for the whole situation. What Waters really should have said is "Being a radical leftist indeed disbars one from thinking logically." Because any way you look at it, Waters is an ultra-leftwinger and probably a socialist as well. Not only has he publicly supported a pro-Palestinian movement to remove Israel's life-saving security barrier, but he has often railed against against President Bush and the war in Iraq, and once even recorded an entire album protesting the British government's wartime policies. The other members of Pink Floyd didn't exactly agree with him either, jettisoning Waters from the band shortly after he released his politicized music.

I probably wouldn't go quite so far, as the Atlas Shrugs Blog has done, to call Waters a Jew-hater, as he sounds like he does indeed want peace in the region and did after all support his Israeli fanbase. But like most naive leftists, he's completely oblivious to the fact that Palestinian terrorism, and not Israel's presence in Judea and Samaria, is the root cause of the unrest. This moral blindness places Waters square in the camp of senile terrorist apologists like Jimmy Carter, and unless he changes, Waters too is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

If I were in Israel, I'd tell Waters and his leftist cohort just one thing: "We don't need no education!"

Oscar Nominations & Hollywood's Anti-American Bent

Tonight is Oscar night and Osama bin Laden would love it. So says Charles Krauthammer, who rightfully hammers Hollywood for the pro-terrorist, anti-Western bent of many of the nominated films. From Steven Spielberg's paean to appeasement Munich, to the terrorist-sympathizing Paradise Now, to the blame-the USA oil conspiracy tale Syriana, this year's Academy Award showcases are textbook examples of leftist anti-Americanism. A large portion of Tinseltown has sunk farther than ever into radical leftwing beliefs, and it's no surprise that mainstream America continues to ignore their work.

The article linked immediately above, meanwhile, provides some perhaps unintended insight into the roots of the doldrums. Written by prominent film critic Richard Schickel, the piece acknowledges Hollywood's downturn, but refuses to admit any liberal culpability. Says Schickel:

I'm convinced that last year's downturn in attendance is almost completely attributable to the fact that it is cheaper and more convenient to wait and see routine films at home, on DVD, than it is to see them theatrically.

Moreover, it has never been proved that the perceived liberality of Hollywood's morals or politics has any large effect on movie going. Decades ago, people went right on seeing racy movies, no matter how much the religious fundamentalists railed at Mae West.

Well, he may think there's no correlation, but reality dictates otherwise. Having been around for almost a decade, DVDs are not just a suddenly popular phenomenon, and over the past year, sales have actually begun to slow. Furthermore, racy films and anti-American films are two very different beasts; filmgoers may have flocked to see Mae West in a bikini, but you can bet they would have been repulsed by a story sympathizing with Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia against America.

Schickel's article is highly symptomatic of the mainstream movie industry's problems; faced with a clear decline largely due to their out-of-touch politics, they merely attempt to deflect the blame.

If Hollywood wants to recapture its former box office gold, it needs to move more in line with its target audience's tastes. Here's to Superman Returns for Best Picture in 2007.

Hollywood and Leftism - Part II

I didn't originally intend to focus this blog so heavily on movies and entertainment, but perhaps it was inevitable given how recent Hollywood events have so characterized the key problems with today's American leftism.

That's also the topic of a hard-hitting editorial in the L.A. Times which sharply criticizes leading filmmakers for their inability (or unwillingness) to recognize the morality of the war on terror.

Says the article:

When you think about it, World War II was far from black and white. Sure, the German and Japanese militarists were evil, but Britain and the United States did terrible things too. They killed hundreds of thousands of German and Japanese civilians, and they allied themselves with the Soviet Union, which was every bit as awful as the Axis. The outcome was ambiguous because, although Germany and Japan were defeated, the Iron Curtain descended from Eastern Europe to North Korea.

Yet for 60 years, Hollywood has had no problem making movies that depict World War II as a struggle of good versus evil. Rightly so. Because for all the Allies' faults, they were the good guys.

For some reason, Hollywood can't take an equally clear-eyed view of the war on terrorism. The current conflict, pitting the forces of freedom against those of Islamo-fascism, is every bit as clear cut as World War II. Yet fashionable filmmakers insist on painting both sides in shades of gray, as if Israeli secret agents or American soldiers were comparable to Al Qaeda killers. Two of the most serious holiday flicks — "Syriana" and "Munich" — are case studies in mindless moral relativism and pathetic pseudo-sophistication.

That's right - Hollywood can't seem to tell the good guys from the bad, which of course is a direct result of its immersion in hard-left values and attitudes.

According to the far left, there is no objective good and bad; only different viewpoints which must be understood. With beliefs like this, it's no surprise that Hollywood can't distinguish responders to terrorism from the terrorists themselves.

The article concludes:

The lesson of World War II still stands: Civilized countries must use violence to defeat barbarians. Why is that so hard for Hollywood to understand?

The solution is for Hollywood to turn away from this ultra-leftist nonsense and return to the senses it had in the past. This probably won't be easy, but with box office sales declining and a vocal minority of Tinseltownites beginning to press for change, a much needed turnaround could finally be in the cards.

The Movie Issue

Reviews of Steven Spielberg's film Munich, which I discussed last week, are filtering in. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach explains from a Jewish persepective how Spielberg both succeeds and fails in the piece.

Meanwhile, holiday weekend results are in for the two other films covered here: Narnia has continued its box office storm while Brokeback Mountain has begun to stall outside it's core fan base.

Don Feder loves King Kong for its courage, idealism, and traditional values. And oh yeah, it's a great action film too.

Terence Malick's upcoming The New World has also garnered some stunning reviews. Good thing he produced this instead of a previously planned Che Guevara biopic; a movie on colonial America sounds so much better than yet another film on Castro's favorite Communist.

Finally, Michael Medved chimes in on perhaps the biggest Hollywood (and mainstream media) story of 2005 - why so many Americans are tuning out.

News Media Ignores Outrageous Actions in Middle East

So where is the mainstream media? The United Nations and certain Arab dictatorships have engaged in the most blatantly biased actions against Israel in recent days, and the news networks are nowhere to be found.

Shortly after Iran's President Ahmadinejad denied the scale of the Holocaust and declared that Israel should be moved to Europe (the one story the media did pick up on), the UN held a Palestine solidarity event in which they displayed a map of the region with "Palestine" in place of Israel. Had, say, the U.S. sponsored a pro-Israel event and done the reverse, the media outcry would be enormous. But here you have the UN acting as if one of its member states doesn't exist, and CNN, MSNBC and the like have completely ignored the story.

Meanwhile, as fellow blogger Madzionist reports, the Palestinian Authority has both declared their sole ownership of the Western Wall and officially approved a plan to financially support the families of suicide bombers who killed innocent Israelis. Once again, the Palestinian leadership is blatantly rewarding terror, denying Jewish history, and refusing to meet any of its peace-process obligations. But as usual, the news media ignores it entirely.

Finally, in yet another disgusting display, the government of Syria has refused to let a Jerusalem-based reporter into the country because he is Jewish. And yet again, the mainstream media reports nothing. Imagine the uproar among them, however, had Israel denied a Syrian entry into the country for the same religious reason. Only WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah seems to have recognized this, and he hammers his fellow journalists for not doing the same.

The only good news from this is that Americans are increasingly tiring of the media's act; mainstream TV viewership and newspaper readership continues to decline. Hopefully the media will soon recognize its failures and begin reporting frequently and unbiasedly on truly newsworthy issues. If so, they just might help spur some genuine beneficial change among the dictatorial nations that need it most.

Battle at the Box Office: Hollywood's Holiday Season

Today I read a news article which argues that the box office results of two upcoming high-profile films, Brokeback Mountain and The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe, will be an excellent barometer of America's current political and cultural direction.

The two movies could not be more different: Brokeback Mountain is a love story involving gay cowboys played by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, while Narnia is a celluloid adaptation of C.S. Lewis's Christian-allegory fantasy novel. Certainly each film has its core audience, but the article posits that if either or both break into the mainstream, it will greatly indicate America's preference regarding public expressions of Christianity and/or homosexuality.

Is this an accurate assessment? And if so, how will these films likely fare?

First of all, I strongly believe that Narnia will top the charts in the $300 million range, while Brokeback will greatly flop. Not only are Americans far more Christian (about 80% of the population) than gay (perhaps 3%), but as I have discussed before, they overwhelmingly prefer family-friendly movies over edgy leftist films. Furthermore, Narnia's PG rating appeals to kids (something Brokeback's R does not), while its swords-and-sorcery setting will draw many Lord Of The Rings fans who savor such content regardless of religious underpinnings.

This same crowd, though, will likely inflate Narnia's box office take to such a degree that the final dollar amount probably won't be a truly exact measure of the acceptance of public-sphere Christianity. But regardless of how much overstatement it contains, many more Americans will almost certainly prefer Narnia over Brokeback, and Hollywood should well take that as a broad indication of the greater moviegoing public's general tastes.

John Lennon - Republican?

The fact that I titled a recent post after a John Lennon album reminds me that the ex-Beatle would have turned 65 over the past weekend. And to commemorate the occasion, Beatles biographer Hunter Davies speculates on what Lennon would be like were he still alive. Of course any such predictions are pure guesses, but Davies concludes that just like in the late '60s and early '70s, John would be at the forefront of liberal/radical activism, protesting against Bush, Blair, and the war in Iraq.

Now certainly Mr. Davies knows plenty about the Beatles, but on this matter I believe he is fully mistaken. Au contraire, I see Lennon becoming a patriotic, pro-America Republican.

Yes, I know this may sound ludicrous to some - this same man, after all, virtually represented all things anti-authority, protested vehemently against Vietnam, and wrote his most famous solo song ("Imagine") as a virtual ode to utopian communism. But perhaps even more strongly, Lennon detested hypocrisy and always remained on the search for the "next big thing." Given this, I doubt he would have stagnated politically like so many of his leftwing brethren; rather, I believe he would have reversed course entirely a la Michael Medved, David Horowitz, and other liberals-turned-conservatives.

Notwithstanding Davies' official group biography, the best Beatle book out there, in my opinion, is the late Ian MacDonald's Revolution In The Head. (For the record, I am a huge Beatles fan who owns all their albums, has read a number of books on the band, and has seen both McCartney and Ringo in concert in recent years.) Not quite a traditional biography, Revolution examines the Beatles and their music in the context of the decade they represented most - the 1960s. (The band formed in 1957, issued their first single in 1962, and broke up in 1970.)

Many of the book's most fascinating sections cover Lennon and his cultural and political views, and far more than being a by-the-numbers liberal, the head Beatle continually explored new avenues of life experiences in an ongoing search for meaning and importance. Never settling on any one phase for long, John led the group through a myriad of '60s hallmarks - tough rock 'n' roll, Bob Dylan-style folk music, psychedelic drugs and the Summer of Love, meditation and Indian mysticism, anti-war protests, and finally a return to their roots (the "Get Back" project which was released as the "Let It Be" album). This same pattern continued after the Beatles' breakup, as John launched a solo career, explored leftist/communist political activism with Yoko Ono, spent an infamous two-year "lost weekend" living the celebrity life in Los Angeles, sought peace and quiet by moving to New York, retired from music in 1975 to become a stay-at-home father, and returned to his career in low-key fashion shortly before his assassination in 1980.

Clearly, Lennon was no career leftwing activist; rather, it was a particular phase in his highly varied and fascinating life, and as he grew older, he certainly appeared to grow more conservative in his cultural and family outlook. At the same time, he always railed against establishment stagnancy, and today, it is the Democrats, particularly those on the far left, who have largely assumed this characteristic. I believe John would have continued these personal trends, and were he alive today, would with sharp moral clarity support America's efforts to achieve freedom around the world. Assuming he would have obtained U.S. citizenship (he was on track, having been granted permanent residency status), I feel he would have become a card-carrying Republican and voted for President Bush in the 2004 election.

Perhaps his latest song would have even been a cover of "G-d Bless The USA."