Lewis Fein is an independent public relations and marketing consultant in Los Angeles. A former aide for the House Republican Conference and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, he's written speeches and columns about various domestic and international issues. Lewis is also a frequent guest on talk radio, including KABC and Talk Radio One. A graduate of Brandeis University and Emory Law School, he lives in West Los Angeles.
Lewis Fein
Hollywood Ignores Terror to Ask Why They Hate Us
by Lewis Fein
Will we ever see a worthwhile film about the fight against Islamic terror? Forget stories about emotionally tortured soldiers who return home to abandon their combat fatigues for civilian armor and take to the streets to protest American war crimes while government agents illegally wiretap these men (and women) of conscience. Films of this nature – pictures that gloss over totalitarianism but reflexively attack any pretense for American military involvement – are a political cliché. But we will never see a film that depicts the complexity of this struggle – opponents may suggest that the contrasts are too stark – because, despite the many nuances a director could provide (including the tenacious way Islamic extremism can overrun a people, alongside the reluctance of Western civilization to acknowledge the gravity of this threat), there is still an obsession with that most absurd of all questions — Why do they hate us? (more…)
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Spock in the White House
by Lewis Fein
A week into Barack Obama’s presidency comparisons abound concerning his personal and political gifts. Is he a rock star, or too cerebral for the sort of crowd-diving, one-with-the-audience intimacy that riles fans to amplified hysteria? Or is he a musician, yes, but more of a cool jazz artist who maintains an appropriate distance from his listeners while at the same providing a (false) sense of comfort for his admirers to absorb? Or is he a messianic figure who elevates our better instincts and unites the races, forever banishing the tragedy of human nature – its affairs with cowardice, its comfort with indifference, its passivity before evil – allowing us to march forward to paradise on earth? Or, finally, is he all of these things, a post-partisan president – a man who refuses to let eloquence devolve into mere rhetoric – and brings so many Clintons and conservatives into his ever expanding arms so we can make the world sing in perfect harmony? (more…)
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What Will Hollywood Do If Obama Fails?
by Lewis FeinWhat will Hollywood do if President Obama fails? Forget simply preserving the status quo or making marginal improvements for this agency or that constituency, but fails to even remotely square the difference between the promise of his administration and its actual performance. This is not to wish failure upon our – yes, our – new president, since I actually like Barack Obama the person (not Obama, The Messiah™) and have no desire to see the economy worsen or Islamic terror gain additional traction, but should this presidency be a stillborn effort to suspend politics-as-we-know-it and have us wave our ploughshares in an impromptu chorus of “Yes We Can” — don’t expect a single film to even criticize President Obama, or use him as a metaphor for military defeat or political impotence. The future decade will simply vanish, a missing gap far wider than anything Rose Mary Woods could accidentally erase. How do I know? Because there isn’t a single film of any repute, during or after the presidencies of Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton, that addresses the (many) failures of these men.
In the case of Carter, the films of the Seventies – and let it be known that I venerate this fabled period, like any good cinephile – are a smorgasbord of dramas about Vietnam and Watergate, with customary attention paid to the machinations of evil corporations (Pakula, Alan; see films of) or faux populists (Altman, Robert; see ”Nashville”). Content with attacking Richard Nixon, or using him as an all purpose villain who might as well have been Lee Harvey Oswald’s accomplice, Jimmy Carter simply . . . fades away, Hollywood’s forgotten man who nonetheless managed to reap a whirlwind of economic ruin and humiliation in the Middle East. But it is Carter’s facade of honesty – “I will never lie to you” – that insulates him from nothing more biting than a few sketch comedy acts on ”Saturday Night Live,” with Dan Aykroyd as the pious Southern governor who kept George Washington’s honesty and traded the cherry tree for a bag of Georgia peanuts. (more…)
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The Next Great Political Movie
by Lewis FeinHere’s a working title for a script about the proper role of the federal government and the inspiring president who fights for personal liberty: Less. The script would be all blank pages, evoking a return to political restraint and maximum freedom. In action scene after action scene, the President — and he need not be the square-jawed hero of yore — will simply unleash his veto pen, cut entitlements, revive federalism and . . . walk away, to return to his life as a private citizen.
Villains For Your Consideration
Sadly, Hollywood’s version of an energetic president involves attacking evil corporations or Republicans (the two are often interchangeable), while clamoring for some special bill that – surprise! – the nasty CEOs or “other side” (those pesky conservatives, again) want to derail. For only liberals value human rights and the environment, and only they can unearth freedom by enacting a momentous wave of legislation that summons a paranormal return to all those fabled Washington deals: Square, New and Fair. Which is to say, filmmakers combine arrogance, naivete, paranoia and political groupthink to make the same tired movies about government.
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