“Behind All that Phony Tinsel is the Real Tinsel”
by James HudnallSo spake Oscar Levant.
Comedian Fred Allen had another great quote: “You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood and stuff it in a gnat’s navel and still have room for three caraway seeds and an agent’s heart.”
Hollywood is well known for its off screen characters. Its vicious producers who treat their staff worse than slaves. Its drug addled celebs who are always checking in and out of rehab. Its fake wannabes who tell you how wonderful you are while they hate you in their mind. It’s a place known for the carpet of eggshells its minions must tread lightly on. And even the most powerful can fall from grace if their company’s stock slides or a big picture bombs.
No one is really safe there. So fear is the true king of Hollywood. Or make that Emperor with a capital E.
In such a climate it’s not surprising that many there have extreme personalities and beliefs. They look to strange religions and philosophies to sooth their worried minds. It’s bad enough that most of us mortals only have to worry about our jobs and our health. In the ‘Logan’s Run‘ reality of La La Land, you’re “old” at 35 and a senior citizen north of 40. As ridiculous as that sounds.
And the place is noted for its lack of faith. While there are many religious people there, they don’t want to admit it unless it’s a religion that’s not part of any Christian orthodoxy. Can’t have that. Christians are seen to be equal to Islamist bombers, or worse, rednecks! Yes, this is a belief held by those who think Kaballah Water and E-Meters are the height of rational thought.
But not everyone in Hollywood is like you see in the tabloids. Many are working people whose craft just happens to be entertainment. They really aren’t that much different that the rest of America. After all, that’s where most of them came from.
For every loon, crank, deviate and strange-o, there are three or four decent, ordinary people there with a head on their shoulders. And many people there are like you and I, trying to get ahead in this crazy world and take care of their family.
Yet fear rules that town. And one of the greatest fears is being perceived as belonging to the wrong club. As Lionel Barrymore once put it: “Half the people in Hollywood are dying to be discovered and the other half are afraid they will be.”
You see, at one time Hollywood was largely made up of all kinds of people, of all sorts of political persuasions. But at some point after the 50s, that changed with the culture. People on the left took over most of the positions of power. And many of them felt they had to punish anyone who deviated from the approved script. Perhaps they felt they had to use the media to push their political views, as they felt conservatives had done to them. Perhaps they felt their perception of reality is the only one that matters and nothing else was acceptable.
If you wanted to get ahead, you had to play the game by their rules.
The end result is we’re pounded day in and day out with one cliche after another. The old cliches like the flighty woman and the black pimp were replaced by new ones, only even more trite. Policemen were only seen as good in the Hayes Code days, now they’re mostly seen as bad. Unless they have a hit TV show. And corporations are evil. And men are stupid. Women are all smart and capable. Minorities are almost never the bad guy. And villains are white guys unless they’re part of a multi-cultural gang with a delicate mix of minorities.
And if you don’t accept this view, or if you do something really insane like believe that America is an exceptional place which is a force for good in the world. Why, you better not let anyone hear you!
Think about it…what kind of place would make people feel ashamed of sticking up for their side in the war on terror? What kind of place would make it a social crime to support your government or want to express patriotic thoughts in a public forum?
Fortunately, while fear may rule Hollywood, it doesn’t scare everyone. People are coming out to say that it’s OK to be yourself. If Tom Cruise can defend L. Ron Hubbard’s “tech”, if Madonna can invest millions in “Kabbalah Centers”, if Stephen Soderbergh can make movie love to a murderous thug like Che Guevara, why can’t we say we think American is a mighty fine place. What’s the harm in that? Why is that “crazy” or “stupid?”
Many of the people sneering at “conservatives” fail to realize that most people, including “liberals”, even lefties, happen to like the United States. They may have their problems with it. Everyone does. We all have plenty of reason to complain about the state of things. But ultimately, there’s no where else most of us would want to live.
Notice that Michael Moore did not move to Canada or Cuba despite their “great health care”. Sean Penn may have visited Iraq when Saddam was in Power, and hobnobbed with Hugo Chavez, but he didn’t buy a house in their countries. Funny how the people who claim to have so many issues with the states sure do like living here.
See! They do have something in common with conservatives.
In fact, many of the Hollywood crowd who liked to condemn President Bush or question our motives in Iraq are just saying that to look cool. To fit in with their crowd. In the 50s, it helped to be a smoker to fit in. In the 60s and 70s, it helped to be a druggie. The trend lately was be a lefty, America-basher. But with Bush out and Obama in, we can’t have that anymore. You can’t bash America with a black president. That wouldn’t be PC! Besides, he’s a Democrat.
Watch Hollywood change its tune. Meanwhile, those of us with a consistent point of view have something to say. To paraphrase Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction: “I’m not going to be IGNORED!!!”
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20 Comments
Outstanding! I used to enjoy movies before acting was not enough for actors. It seems the time between theatrical releases is to much for actors to be out of the spotlight. Reigniting a has been career with an outlandish political position fed to the “They’re an actor so they must be right” crowd sours my entertainment options when a movie comes out with one of these hacks that I might want to spend my money on. I’m tired of the Susan Sarandons and Sean Penns coming into my kiving room trying to tell me what’s good for me. I wonder how long they’d let me sit in their living room and tell them what I think?
Hi Jim, love your piece and you are right on with what is going on in Hollywood. As Errol Flynn once said about Hollywood, ” Hollywood has no respect for the living , only for the dead.”
First of all these phony actors who you mentioned don’t give a damn about politics, to them this issue is a play they are in and rubbing elbows with dictators is a publicity coup. How else can you jump start a career with the left wing media by kissing the butt of a commie dictator. This kind or PR they can’t pay for and won’t pay for because they are cheap SOBs. Hanoi Jane pulled this crap off in 71 when she sat her ass in that gun turret. You really think she was against the war as the perception she created? What kind of films was Jane Fonda doing before she went to Vietnam and what roles was she given after. This is what this is all about. These low life’s have no conviction in any belief but the narcissistic obsession to get their mugs in the media, so we can hate them or love them. They don’t care if we hate their guts, we don’t hang with them in their circles so they are cut off from the hatred. They do just to get more work for more money. They are high class whores with no soul. They don’t care about the damage they cause to our culture, they live in gated worlds. All they have to do is get on a TV show spill out their vile nonsenses the media goes mental and they get FREE PR and are in a next film. You ever notice every time Sean Penn does something stupid and is in the news a few weeks later his films comes out. This is a game and they are playing the public as fools.
This is why they will never let any conservative get his film in the big time. This is a closed shop and they can’t handle the competition. Look what they did to Mel Gibson, they went after him like he was a war criminal. His film gross 600 million and not one penny when to anyone in the business and they hate him for it. Mel’s personal beliefs are his business and the libs attacked him and the conservatives abandoned him. THis is where we lose as a group. Sean Penn or Jimmy Carter can say any outrages insult to Jews, christians, America and the libs circle the wagons as a unit and will die for the offender’s insane babble. We conservatives are all divided and this is why we can’t gain any ground in this cultural war.
If we don’t stick together and help those conservatives that have project to market out there, then nothing is gain against this war on our culture. This needs to be our motto in this war against the mad dog nazis
“If we do not hang together, surely we will all hang separately!” ~ Benjamin Franklin
This means we help each other no matter what personality clashes there are or conservatives don’t like the project or the person doesn’t have name recognition or we only help those with name recognition in order to hang out with them. This tactic isn’t working and won’t work. We must learn from the mad dogs and fight them like mad dogs. Why don’t you think that guys like Mel don’t get involved in our war? Why would he, have the conservatives attacked him on the few conservative blogs out there. The liberals will back and support the lowest of scumbags, crooks, inexperience people they can find. While we conservatives look for the best, perfect, most talented, pure individual we can find and we are still looking and we will continue to look long after everything we love is gone. If we don’t get behind any conservative filmmaker, writer, actor or anyone on our side we will never win battles let alone the war. It starts down here in the trenches, we all need to think about this, move on it and stop taking about it. Action gets achievements not wishing about it.
Well written, James.
I have no problem with actors and actresses having their own opinion so long as its an informed one based on truth and facts. However, most of the time they just sound like a bunch of parrots spewing rhetoric, where if you closed your eyes you’d swear it was said with a Cold War Russian accent.
To them I say….More Rocky Balboa, less Ivan Drago. Da?
Hud,
Great debut post!
Who did the portrait of you?
What do you think triggered the leftward shift after the 50s? Was it a reaction to McCarthyism? Part of the bigger culture-wide shift of the 60s?
I especially like how you point out that most people of varying political persuasions “happen to like the United States.” We aren’t that different from them. We all just like different things about America.
Paul,
I love your question.
I’m sure activist-actors don’t want me in their living room, so I keep them out of mine. I hardly ever watch TV or movies anymore. I’m too tired of the cliches Hud mentioned.
Uncle Mike,
Да!
Tom Wolfe nailed it in “Radical Chic.” The pampered and privileged have always attempted to don the accoutrements of whatever seems edgy at the time, be it jazz in the ’20s, the drug culture in the ’60s, radicalism in the ’70s and beyond…
Maybe conservatives need to embrace–not shirk from–their inherent iconoclasm in the Hollywood culture… take it up a notch… be louder, prouder, more “in your face.” They despise rednecks? Wear a red-checkered tux to the Oscars. They loathe Christians? Organize a “pray-in” at a high-profile eating establishment at lunchtime. This movement needs a few Hunter S. Thompson types to get crazy and shake things up a bit. I have no doubt they’ll emerge sooner or later, and History will be very kind to them.
Amritas, That was done by Dan Brereton, artist of my book “The Psycho”. I think a lot of leftists decided to strike back after the 50s, but it has also been a goal of the left to take over the media and education system. They has been well documented all over the place. They wanted their view to be the prevailing one and they’ve succeeded for a time, but all things must pass.
Paul, a lot of of celebs think they are more “in the know” because they believe that belonging to the club of fame makes one more “connected”. Hearing some nonsense from another celeb does not make you more knowledgeable, and knowing famous people does not make you smarter. Many celebs are as bright as a three watt bulb in a bucket of BS. And passing on the “secret knowledge” that they heard from “good sources” does not make you in the know, when these sources ultimately lead to the usual suspects. The cranks, grifters and leeches that troll the streets, alleys and clubs of the City of Angels.
Mike, they are parroting leftist propaganda, passed along by those hysterical paradoxes you find in moneyed places, rich Marxists. Hollywood has more than its share.
The result of all of Hollywood’s stultifying liberal conformity is a product lacking in any form of original thought. What are the movies today, what is the best that Big Hollywood can do, eh? The crop of film entertainment has for years consisted of sequels, rehashes of old comic books and TV shows, remakes of old movies, or condescending missives from the self-anointed Hipsters of All Higher Thought telling us what a nation of greedy, bigoted, intolerant, jingoistic, I-can-see-Russia-from-my-front-porch sheeple we are. Whenever a flick that actually stimulates the mind and/or conveys a positive message is released, it’s usually the work of a minuscule budget indie studio, or a foreign film, or a flick made by one of the few remaining Hollywood types with enough money and power to tell the story they really want to tell, so Big Hollywood be damned!
Forty years ago we put a man on the moon, and the likes of John Wayne and Charlton Heston strode across the silver screen like giants. Today we drive around on roads with lunar sized potholes and the silver screen has turned a loathsome scatological shade what with all of the potty mouthed, hyper ego, snail trailing actor-persons crawling and vomiting their invective strewn propaganda all over it.
Forget the popcorn bag, where’s the stomach distress thingie?
A friend of mine whose been in the TV business for over 20 years read this article and opined: “I’m still looking for the real tinsel.”
I agree with all above, we don’t try to change their POV, or even care what their POV is on any social issues. We just want them to quit telling us about it all the time. If you go back and watch old episodes of Steve Allen, or say Carson, unlike Dave and Jay et al, you don’t see them asking actors their opinions on this politician or that policy. They asked them about their projects, had pleasant conversation, and that was that. They didn’t stick a mike in John Wayne’s face outside of an eatery and ask his opinion about what some pol said. They all might have been rabid lefties, but for the most part, we didn’t know, or need to know how they felt about politics. Can we please return to those days, Hollywood?
As the saying goes “right on” Hud ! I especially agree about the fact that the people with so much negativity still decide to live in the Good Ole USA !!
I am loving this site as it makes me feel less alone. I have also stopped going to the movies. I just can’t bring myself to contribute one dollar to their in “your face lifestyles”. The last few times I went to a movie and later saw one of the actors in that movie degrading this great nation, I felt responsible in some small way. I didn’t like the feeling and have since refrained from being a part of their cash flow. I live in the “fly over country” and I realize that we are of no consequence to the left coasts, unless it’s to fleece us for our hard earned cash on their America bashing films.
“Well hit, sir! Very well hit!” — Mary Poppins
A great debut article. They live here, so it can’t be quite as bad as they say. I had not thought of it like that.
Besides, you agree with me which proves that you are educated and clear thinking. If only more people were so.
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any columnist that mentioned Fred Allen has my attention. Great job!
[...] and insightful commenters — some who are now contributors (Bill Willingham, Stage Right and James Hudnall). I know of few sites with as literate and knowledgeable a readership. (So far!) I must even praise [...]
Please don’t forget my favorite Tinsletown quote of all…..
Hollywood is the gold crown…..on a tooth that should have been pulled out long ago.
W.C. Fields
I have to wonder, Hud: Will it be necessary to destroy Hollywood in order to save it?
A comment on the pic & Logan’s Run reference.
I watched this movie again, a few months back, after seeing it many, many years ago. I was struck by how conservative a movie it really is. It hits every Left-wing trope smack in the face and leaves them bleeding and begging for mercy.
This is something I posted about at my little corner of the blogosphere some months ago.
For proof contemplate the film’s opening statement:
“Sometime in the 23rd century… the survivors or war, overpopulation and pollution are living in a great domed city, sealed away from the forgotten world outside. Here, in an ecologically balanced world, mankind lives only for pleasure, freed by the servo-mechanisms which provide everything.
“There’s just one catch: Life must end at thirty unless reborn in the fiery ritual of carousel.”
This makes me wonder what today’s Hollywood will do to a Logan’s Run remake.
Hollywood is destroying itself. The cost of production is driving shows and films to shoot elsewhere. The changing media landscape due to downloading will probably change the system as we know it the same way the old studio system fell apart in the late 60s. early 70s.
The system in Hollywood is going to change one way or another I don’t think they can continue on the way they are going now.
Everytime I get suckered into going to a movie I feel I got robbed. The one exception was Fireproof. I give up. Also, I wont even watch a commercial that has Sean Penn in it.
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