Artist John McNaughton should have beefed up his bandwidth this month.

News of the Nevada-based artist’s new painting, “The Forgotten Man,” went viral over the past few days sparking massive sales and a bit of outrage as well. The painting depicts President Barack Obama standing on the Constitution while previous presidents look on with outrage.

John McNaughton’s “The Forgotten Man” sold in one day “what we would sell in three months.”

The amount of traffic the story generated even crashed his website.

“I hate to think of the sales I lost with the site being down, but I’m pleased that the message got out,” he told CBS Las Vegas.

His webmaster needed to increase the amount of bandwidth for the site four times before it went back up Saturday night.

Naturally, some Obama supporters instantly dubbed the painting racist, charges McNaughton refutes on his web site:

There is no racial meaning or undertone that the FM [Forgotten Man] isn’t black. This is not a racial painting; it is about the vanishing of the American dream.

A few weeks ago Big Hollywood posted “‘Watchmen’ Creator Joins Occupy Comics,” noting how Deadline.com reported on Alan Moore joined other comic creators in planning a series of comic books in support of the Occupy Wall Street insurgency. In response to that story, I propose that conservatives launch a story and art project with our own perspective on #OWS.

Here is what I mean.

Alan Moore and other comic artists joining together to support #OWS is no surprise, since the comic industry is as left as the rest of the entertainment world. The comic industry previously slammed the Tea Party (although the company and writer of this particular incident later apologized; you be the judge of whether they were sincere), attacked George. W. Bush, presented the U.S. and U.S. military as evil, made an entire celebrated series out of blaspheming God and Christianity (this review of said series is actually quite good even if I don’t entirely agree with it), and has generally churned out leftist propaganda.

I no longer am scandalized at what the comic industry is doing. I expect the behavior, and I don’t envision creators apologizing for it—just as I wouldn’t have expected either Alan Colmes or Eugene Robinson to apologize to Rick Santorum for what they said about the politician’s dead child.

Leftists have made no secret about who they are, and I see no reason why we shouldn’t simply wipe the dust of their town from our feet and stop throwing pearls to them in worthless attempts to change them.

Instead, I propose we fight back.

(more…)

Thank you to everyone who participated in the informal have you been ostracized? poll. The results were interesting. More “in the closets” than I expected, and as I read the words, “just keep my mouth shut,” I became rather angry that my fellow Big Hollywood readers feel bullied in the workplace. Because that is what it is: bullying. When a human being fears that he may lose his job if he has the wrong thoughts, he is being bullied. Period. It doesn’t matter if the taunts are in your face or hovering unannounced in the air, only a bully uses his size and power to intimidate others into toeing the line.

Several of you indicated that you have lost your job, left your career or been blacklisted, which is even more disheartening.

Graphic designers and people in advertising, according to the comments, feel compelled to keep a very low profile. It makes sense, because this is an industry where the work must be commissioned. In order to stay employed, the artist needs to stay in the good graces of the powers that be. (more…)

Every time I speak about my experiences with the publishing industry, someone taps me on the shoulder, eager to share a story of their own. It should not surprise me – Big Hollywood is a site dedicated to the biases of the entertainment industry – but I am moved by the instant camaraderie I feel for the individual standing before me. It is as if we carry wounds that only fellow political outcasts could possibly understand, and when one of us emerges from beneath the cone of silence, there is hope that another may do so at any moment.

I thought that perhaps it would be an interesting project to take an informal poll of Big Hollywood readers – conservatives, libertarians, and individuals who subscribe to other improper schools of thought – who work in the entertainment industry and feel out of sorts. We should keep it simple, so let’s start with something like this:

——

Industry: Publishing

Position: Author

Status: Just keep my mouth shut

——

Industry: Music

Position: Mixer

Status: Out of the closet and out of work (more…)

Rick Moody at The Guardian:

A sturdy corollary emerges in the wake of the graphic artist Frank Miller’s recent diatribe against the Occupy Wall Street movement (“A pack of louts, thieves, and rapists … Wake up, pond scum, America is at war against a ruthless enemy”), available for perusal at frankmillerink.com). That corollary, of which we should be reminded from time to time, is this: popular entertainment from Hollywood is – to greater or lesser extent – propaganda. And Miller has his part in that, thanks to films such as 300 and Sin City.

Perhaps you have had this thought before. Perhaps you have had it often. I can remember politics dawning on me while watching a Steven Seagal vehicle, Under Siege, in 1992. I was in my early 30s. The film was without redeeming merit – there’s no other way to put it – and it was about a “ruthless enemy” and the reimposition of the American social order through violence and rugged individualism. Why had I paid hard-earned money for it? Good question. Before Under Siege, I had a tendency to think action films were funny. I had a sort of Brechtian relationship to their awfulness. And I was amused when films themselves recognised the level to which they stooped, as Under Siege assuredly did.

The moment of revelation could have come at any time. It could have come earlier, and it did among my more astute friends. Had I watched any of the later Rocky pictures, for example, or had I watched Rambo, I might have registered that there was little depicted in these frames but feel-good, reactionary message-deployment. But there were, apparently, films too embarrassing for me to see, Rocky IV and Rambo among them. I remember thinking True Lies, the abominable 1994 James Cameron film (featuring Republican governor-to-be Arnold Schwarzenegger), with its big, concluding nuclear blast – the nuclear blast we were meant to want to see – was, well, more than suspect. (I could never again watch a Cameron film without disgust. And that includes the racist, New Age blather of Avatar.) Or what about the expensive and aesthetically pretentious Gladiator (2000), which I still contend is an allegory about George W Bush’s candidacy for president, despite the fact that director and principal actor were not US citizens. Is it possible to think of a film such as Gladiator outside of its political subtext? Are Ridley Scott’s falling petals, which he seems to like so much that he puts them in his films over and over again, anything more than a way to gussy up the triumph of oligarchy, corporate capital and globalisation?

(more…)

Norman Rockwell’s clearly privileged and very New York “Connoisseur” is staring at what I would call A Portrait of the Progressive New World Order.

Few citizens anywhere would have a living room large enough to hang this very bloody-looking billboard in. Secondly, few of us are “Connoisseurs.” Thirdly, is it really worth “The Connoisseur’s” time to try and understand this painting? A true art connoisseur instantly said the object of discernment is Rockwell’s impressive version of a Jackson Pollock. “No. 00,” perhaps.

I, for now, can only come up with “A Satellite Photo of Some Third Millennium, Urban Nightmare,” or, “The Fundamental Transformation of the United States of America.”

This painting within a painting, given the Progressive Obsessions of art critics, might eventually be worth more at a Sotheby Auction than the painting itself. “The painting within the painting?! Wrap it up and throw the rest in the wastebasket! I’m a rich man who hates Norman Rockwell but loves Jackson Pollock!!” In other words, such a destructive buyer would be some mega-rich Progressive. He’s possibly George Soros or the now exponentially enriched Jeffrey Immelt.

With both Sarah Palin and Herman Cain being, for me at any rate, the political equivalent of Norman Rockwell, I believe this visual version of the Progressive New World Order, hanging so impressively on the museum wall, looks out, beyond The Connoisseur, at the conservative writers and readers of Big Hollywood, and reminds us of how prophetic Norman Rockwell can be. (more…)

I love art fairs and street markets, spending the day wandering from booth to booth, catching photographers, painters, glassblowers, and sculptors arranging their pieces in aesthetic displays, hoping to catch the eye of a spontaneous shopper. I admire artists who choose this venue. It is raw and vulnerable. Anything can happen. Petty words might be tossed around carelessly as if the artist was not within earshot, making the compliments of true admirers all the more valuable.

In addition to street markets, artists have other options. Small galleries, coffee shops, restaurants and even hair salons display art for sale. For the rare few, a weekend exhibit in a prestigious gallery can turn a passion into a career. The Internet explodes with opportunity for artists who build clever websites and take advantage of social networking. Even animals are staking a claim in the world of art – elephants, horses, and dogs.

The doors are open to artists of all species who use a variety of mediums – paint, clay, bronze, glass, charcoal pencil and animation – to create, display and sell their art. We don’t even question the legitimacy of the concept. I would be appalled if a small enclave of people appointed themselves to review and reject or accept each piece submitted by an artist.

Yet that is what we have come to expect of the literary community (I ought to be ashamed of starting that sentence with yet, but I relish the freedom of breaking the rules).

(more…)

It all started here, and now actor Orlando Jones would like to see it end here:

—–

Jones would like to elevate the discussion … now. I’m not sure what happened between now and Tuesday when he refused to apologize and defended the Tweet by stating it was his “job as an artist to up a mirror to society.”

Big Hollywood didn’t make a big deal out of the original tweet. We were simply one of the first outlets to report it as yet another example of the glaring double standard at work among our entertainment class.

(more…)

A website called Kickstarter.com is making an extraordinary contribution to the arts — broadly defined here as art, comics, dance, design, fashion, food, film, music, games, photography, theatre, and writing.  It isn’t only artistic projects, either.  Kickstarter accepts “creative projects,” which include everything from an iPod Nano wristwatch to heat-absorbing metallic beans to cool your coffee. Kickstarter is, as far as I can tell, the most successful grassroots funding platform on the Internet.

Crowd-sourced funding is a brilliant concept.  People who seek funding for a project post it at Kickstarter, and regular folks can donate whatever they wish to the project — from $1 on up to thousands.  In exchange, they receive a reward for their contribution.  It may be a mention of the donor’s name in the project’s credits, copies of a movie on DVD, a limited edition of a given book or product, or a gourmet dinner at the artist’s house.  In short, it’s like pitching an idea from a soapbox in the town square.

And it is genius. (more…)

HuffPo:

Obama Poster Contest Angers Design Community: It’s ‘The Opposite Of Jobs’

President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign recently launched a poster contest, inviting artists from across the country to submit designs in support of the president’s $447 billion jobs plan and re-election. Although three winners will be given framed copies of their artworks signed by the president, artists who apply will not be paid for their labor, and they must relinquish the rights to their own work upon submission, according to the contest website.

Ed. Note: This photo was not in the original HuffPo piece and was added by Big Hollywood.

Many professional designers and illustrators — a group not exactly known for bashing liberals and casting Republican votes — say they find the contest detrimental to their industry. They argue that such competitions, entered by artists “on speculation” in hopes of gaining exposure, are helping to depress wages in an already tough job market, even when the artists know upfront what they’re getting into. …

Of course, this president surely understands, perhaps better than most, the power of an arresting political poster. The “HOPE” design created by artist Shepard Fairey — and emblazoned on countless posters and other objects during the 2008 campaign — already ranks among the most iconic images in American political history, having played an obvious yet incalculable role in Obama winning the White House. Obama’s 2012 campaign is clearly hoping to harness a bit of that poster magic again.

(more…)

The artistic community is always ready to stand against censorship – and we know that because it constantly tells us so.  If you want to drape an American flag across a walkway to make a statement by letting goateed hipster art aficionados traipse across it, you’re a bold visionary.  If you want to write a novel about shooting a Republican president, you’re courageously speaking truth to power.  If you want to smear pachyderm dung on a painting of the Virgin Mary, you’re bravely facing down the forces of religious bigotry.

Hell, you not only have a right to do it, but you have a right to have it federally funded through the NEA by the very taxpayers whose collective mind you intend to blow by getting so darn real.   It’s right there in the Constitution, amid the emanations and adjacent to the penumbras.  Oh, but if you accurately depict the acts leading up to the murder of nearly 3000 Americans, you’ve got to be stopped.  After all, the artistic elite can’t let you upset the Krugman-esque party line that 9/11 was really about Bu$Hitler and Company’s wars for oil or something.

The artistic community is anti-censorship right up until the second it decides it wants something censored.  Then it piles on.

A little background.

Steve Reich is a Pulitzer-winning composer who lived a few blocks away from the World Trade Center when the planes hit on September 11, 2001.  He was out of town at the time, but his family was home.  They barely escaped, but the experience was so emotionally traumatic that it was only as the 10th anniversary of this monstrous crime approached that he was able to finally express his feelings through his art.  You would think the artistic community would praise him – well, you would think that if you had not been paying attention and still believe that it possessed the capacity for shame at its own rank hypocrisy.

(more…)

In this time of crippling deficits, what could be more obscene than the government funding art unable to sustain itself in the free market? What am I saying; even in times of a budget surplus this is obscene.

The National Endowment for the Humanities has announced $40 million in grants, including $3.2 million for scholars, museums and documentary filmmakers in California.

Like its sister agency, the National Endowment for the Arts, the NEH saw its current-year budget slashed 7.5% in April, down to $155 million, and its future prospects are iffy given the deficit-cutting mood in Washington. For now, there’s still money to go around.

L.A.’s Grammy Museum will get $550,000 to help produce “Rockin’ the Kremlin,” a film by director Jim Brown about the role American rock music played in weakening the Soviet empire.  A UPI.com report last year on plans for the film said it includes an account of a 1977 Soviet tour by the Southern California-based Nitty Gritty Dirt Band that was said to play a part in capturing young Slavic imaginations, presumably helping to awaken them to the drawbacks of totalitarian rule. Brown’s past films include documentaries about Woody Guthrie, the Weavers, Peter Paul and Mary and a PBS series, “American Roots Music.”

(more…)

So Ricky Gervais did a photo shoot and asked a bunch of questions over at HuffPo.  Here’s my take on one particular image and then, since he asks a few questions that are somewhat provocative, I’ll take a stab at answering them.

The photo of him posing as a Christ-figure is worth addressing because it is most likely to generate controversy for obvious reasons.  My first reaction was, frankly, disappointment.  That’s the best he can do?  I happen to think Mr. Gervais is hilarious, and his funniest material is usually the most provocative, but this one just fell flat.

After all, how many times are we going to be subjected to some knock-off of the Christ pose, which is obviously intended to inflame Christians?  In short, it’s been done to death.  Christians are an easy target and it doesn’t take much imagination, or cajones, to take pot shots at them.  In America, it’s perfectly fine to hate on the Christians.

If Mr. Gervais had real cajones, he would have created an image that is offensive to Jews.  Even though anti-Semitism runs deep and wide in this country, and often goes unrecognized and unreported, it’s still not so easy to openly hate on the Jews.   There are enough organizations and individuals that will defend us against anything remotely offensive, but the social price is high enough that Mr. Gervais is too smart to risk his career.

Nor is he likely to provide an image offensive to militant Muslims.  As John Nolte pointed out, they will literally take your head off if they don’t get the joke.  Not only is Mr. Gervais likely fond of his head, Muslims are presently in the company of the P.C. Police.  He’d likely to go P.C. jail for taking a swipe in that territory.

(more…)

I had never heard of the French filmmaker Eric Rohmer until his death at the age of 90 last year. I was surprised to find him mentioned in a positive light in the conservative journals I regularly peruse. 

The best known works in his canon were his “Six Moral Tales” cycle, six films all related in theme made between 1963 and 1972. The first film, only 23 minutes long, was simply shot in grainy black and white and looked like it was shot on a student film budget. Each successive film contains a better script, better acting, and better production value. Rohmer, at the time, was considered a part of the French “New Wave” cinema crowd, although from what I have since read, his “Moral Tales” cycle made him an outcast to some, while others say he stayed truer to the ideals of the movement than his counterparts. 

Each of these films explores the same theme: an attached man, married or otherwise, struggles with the moral dilemma created by desire. There’s hardly any sex shown in these films, but it permeates the minds of the characters, and therefore the viewer, at the deepest levels.

All of these films are sparse, with no music or score, with incessant philosophical and subtitled dialogue. (There’s a famous line in the 1975 movie “Night Moves”, where Gene Hackman’s character says: “I saw a Rohmer movie once. It was like watching paint dry.” Maybe if you’re not paying attention to the thoughts of the characters in his movies

Most scenes are shot from only one camera position with no cuts, giving a feeling of voyeurism into the most intimate thoughts and desires of the (mostly) male characters. It’s rare to see a filmmaker so perfectly capture the male mind and ego, and in a way that’s timeless, despite the setting of Paris in the go-go mid-60s to early 70s. His are moral characters, but ones who are deeply conflicted and torn between desire, jealousy, curiosity, and ego. In the last of the films, the lead male character imagines he wears a special pendant giving him the power to immediately seduce any woman he meets, including scaring off any potential male rivals.

(more…)

Why Christian symbols? We’re awfully easy pickings. If you’re a rich Hollywood star, offending us takes about as much courage as bringing a case of beer to a frat party.

Why not Islamic images? Where’s that comedic edge and ballsy envelope pushing we’re always being told about when it comes to our Artistic Class? Christians are tired of this self-important posing. Islamists will take your head off. I would think that Islamist intolerance (and racism and sexism and homophobia and fundamentalism) would be a bigger target than than Christian eye rolls.

Well, if nohing else, at least Gervais was good enough to bring the pretension:

 I thought the caption … could be “Stand up for what you believe”.

Doesn’t he mean for “what you don’t believe”?

Actually, he doesn’t. That’s why I call him Gervais an “evangelical atheist.” He’s one of those obnoxious non-believers always pushing his non-belief on you. He’s like a Mooonie without the charm, flowers or airport.

Back to the pretension:

(more…)

You know the problem with the arts these days? In case you didn’t know, Philip Kennicott will be happy to tell you. The problem with the arts, he says, is that they’re homophobic.

Quit laughing.

In a recent Washington Post column, Kennicott takes issue with “a litany of shameful events and grievances” committed against homosexuals in the arts, from “the ‘super-macho’ ethos of the American abstract expressionists” to the recent removal of an explicit exhibit from the Smithsonian Museum. Basically, he believes that despite the disproportionate contributions of homosexuals to the arts world, the arts world has failed to honor them appropriately. And he believes that the only way to do this is to make sure that museums are upfront about (1) the sexual proclivities of artists and their subjects, and (2) the subjects’ role, if any, “the iconography of same-sex eroticism.”

For instance, since Saint Sebastian has been appropriated as a homosexual icon, museums are supposed to mention this wherever they display paintings of him. Never mind that he was not himself homosexual.

And if all this openness makes museums seem a little less “family friendly” to some, well, they just need to get with the times. “‘Family’ is now understood to include gay parents, married gay couples and people with gay children, and the absence of basic information about the role of same-sex desire in art history has become an overt sin of omission,” Kennicott explains. Because society is now more accepting of various forms of sexuality, clearly, kids need more sexual information shoved in their faces! (Since, you know, they’re not getting enough of it already from the culture around them.) (more…)

There’s a theory that in order to ensure you never get hassled again, you walk up to the biggest guy in the room and knock him on his butt.  If you win, no one will ever mess with you because you knocked the biggest guy in the room on his butt.  And even if he gets up and pounds you into the ground, people will still avoid messing with you because you were crazy enough to try to knock the biggest guy in the room on his butt.

In the battle for the soul of our country, popular culture is the biggest guy in the room.  And it’s time that conservatives took a swing.  The Powerline Prize contest is a potential haymaker in one of the most important battles of our campaign.

Here’s how it describes itself:

The Power Line Prize of $100,000 will be awarded to whoever can most effectively and creatively dramatize the significance of the federal debt crisis. Prizes will also be awarded to the runner-up and two third-place finishers. Anyone can enter the contest—individuals, companies (e.g., advertising agencies) or any other entity, as long as the contest rules are followed. Any creative product is eligible: videos, songs, paintings, screenplays, Power Point presentations, essays, performance art, or anything else, as long as the product is unique to the contest and has not previously been published or otherwise entered the public domain. Entries may address the federal debt crisis in its entirety, or a specific aspect of the debt crisis, such as: the impact of the debt crisis on the young; the role played by the “stimulus” (Where did the money go? Why didn’t it stimulate?); how entitlements drive the debt crisis; the current federal deficit; how the debt crisis impacts the economy; or any other aspect of the debt crisis. The contest is non-partisan. Its purpose is to inform the public about the federal debt crisis.

Conservatives often dismiss the world of art as a milieu of posing half-wits seeking government subsidies for the unsellable, ridiculous and boring crap they churn out for the benefit of goateed posers and other suckers.  This is because an enormous amount of what is today labeled as “art” is manufactured by   posing half-wits seeking government subsidies for the unsellable, ridiculous and boring crap they churn out for the benefit of goateed posers and other suckers.

(more…)

In its May 3, 2011 edition, University of New Mexico’s student newspaper, The Daily Lobo, published a political cartoon depicting a triumphal Barack Obama, as “Rafiki” from “The Lion King,” hoisting the decapitated head of the recently killed terrorist kingpin Osama bin Laden, in the role of baby “Simba”:

Never mind the cartoon’s irony, that bin Laden had for years mocked America as a “paper lion” and himself been aggrandized as a “Lion of Islam.”

Never mind Leftists screeching against President George W. Bush’s “triumphalism.”

Never mind the First Amendment, or that President Obama had publicly exploited “The Lion King” narrative to ridicule the “Birther” movement in general, and Donald Trump in particular only four days prior at the annual gala dinner event for White House Correspondents, April 30:

—–

(more…)

This is a speech Andrew Klavan gave on Conservatism in American Fiction at the Horowitz Freedom Center Retreat. It’s forty-minutes and well worth your time, especially to anyone thinking of diving into the world of fictional storytelling. The lessons here apply to filmmakers as much as novelists and while many topics are covered, the overall theme looks at the Big Picture ideas every storyteller can learn from:

—–

Klavan speaks at length about the importance of American ideas in great storytelling, the history of Western ideas and values in literature, the new blacklist, the brilliance of David Mamet as both a writer and thinker, the leftist marginalizing of Saul Bellow for political reasons, and the recent censoring of “Huckleberry Finn.”

Brilliant, fascinating, insightful  stuff — especially the segments on “Finn,”  how post-modern theory threatens intelligent storytelling, and how conservative voices are now being heard in the “great conversation” between Right and Left in the uniquely American search for truth.

(more…)

In the past, artists fought against big government and heretics, now they lobby for government growth accompanied by a Springsteen soundtrack while sneering at decent people of faith. There is nothing heroic about artists being part of the state.

Artist Scott LoBaido in front of the proposed Mosque near Ground Zero

But the warrior artist is not dead and gone thanks to Staten Island’s Scott LoBaido, who is fighting against one of the most evil groups to come into the light of our culture in recent years: the Westboro Baptist Church headed up by the insane Fred W. Phelps Sr.

Phelps: The face of evil and intolerance.

Phelps travels with his inbred family circus of hate to the funerals of dead soldiers to inflict emotional pain on grieving family members because the God he has created hates homosexuals. (more…)