So many deserving, yet-to-be acknowledged men and women who actually work in and contribute to the film business, and here goes the Academy making a choice that’s quite obviously geared toward television ratings as opposed to merit:

Hollywood Wiretap:

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has selected actor James Earl Jones and makeup artist Dick Smith as recipients of this year’s Honorary Awards. And, in something of a head-scratcher, Oprah Winfrey will be honored with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

The Academy’s board of governors voted on the awards on Tuesday night. They will be conferred at the 3rd Annual Governors Awards on Nov. 12 at the Grand Ballroom at the Hollywood & Highland Center.

Winfrey, best known for her TV contributions, received an Oscar nomination as best supporting actress for her film debut in 1985’s “The Color Purple.” The Hersholt prize goes to someone “whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry.”

Deadline Hollywood Daily:

Suffice it to say that of all the lousy decisions made by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and its Board of Governors, choosing Oprah Winfrey to receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award has to rank among the worst. This Oscar statuette is supposed to be given “to an individual in the motion picture industry whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry”. …

And while we’re on the subject, tonight’s AMPAS announcement specifically points to the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls which opened in South Africa in 2007. Who has forgotten the sexual abuse scandal that rocked that school set up for disadvantaged girls by the syndicated talk show queen? 

Year after year, Hollywood’s been embarrassed by the lack of television ratings for their Oscar telecast. And so now they’re embarrassing themselves trying to fix an embarrassing problem.

Desperation is never pretty.

Probably a little sucking up to Obama going on here, as well. We should be grateful they didn’t award him the Thalberg.

“Secretariat,” a movie about the horse who won more awards than Al Gore, will not be in the starting gate at the Oscars, February 27. What could be the problem? It opened the weekend after the “Social Network,” so it wasn’t like the Academy of ADHD Artists had time to forget about it. It wasn’t that it didn’t have a good enough campaign team working behind it either. Disney pitched it right alongside “Toy Story 3,” a long-shot which actually made it into the Best Picture category, a rare occurrence for a cartoon.

Diane Lane put in an undeniably Oscar-worthy performance that recalls some of the most glamorous actresses of a Hollywood’s golden age. She played Secretariat’s owner, Penny Tweedy, with the poise of Grace Kelly, the brash of Katherine Hepburn, and the warmth of Donna Reid. John Malkovich should have been a shoe-in, with one of his quirkiest characters to date, as the trainer Lucien Laurin; a role that recalled some of the greater comedic sidekicks from the heyday of Disney like Don Knotts, Tim Conway, and Buddy Hackett

Perhaps the PG rating made it into a film that no one in the Academy bothered to watch. After “The Blind Side” took two nominations last year, the members of the Academy became aware of the disturbing trend of solidly entertaining family pictures that are uplifting and not vulgar. Perhaps a few more jokes about cleaning out the stables could have won a PG-13 rating and a couple seats in the Kodak Theater.

There were other things that the Academy couldn’t overlook. The film opens with a bible quote (which is about as welcome in Hollywood as a silver and garlic crucifix in Transylvania), and top-forty gospel music of the era is predominant throughout. There is also the portrayal of war protesters as children, something that probably got under the craw of Iraq War protesters within the industry. There is a wonderful scene with a group of stern-faced kids dressed up in a coolie costume chanting “War” while flying cardboard planes and carrying “War is Bad for Children” placards around A.J. Michalka singing “Silent Night.” While touching and beautiful it seemed almost condescending to the anti-war movement.

Of course, the Vietnam War was protested by children, but those who look back on those years tend to imagine themselves more mature than they really were. In the film they’re treated as being kind of cute. Penny tells her daughter, “Kate, our political beliefs can change, but our… our need to do what we believe is right… that doesn’t.  I’m proud of you.”

While “Secretariat” was a little corny around the edges, it was a good, solid picture. I found it at least as entertaining as “Inception,” which put me to sleep (I thought it was a special effect of the movie, kind of like 3-D, that you were supposed to nod off during certain intervals of the film, so you would be immersed in the experience–if putting you to sleep weren’t intentional, then Leonardo DiCaprio shouldn’t have been so boring).

Perhaps Hollywood takes issue with a movie where the heroes are upper-middle class white people, and the bad guy is an inheritance tax. Few in Hollywood are concerned with that tax, since legacies there are not always financial, and often squandered by heirs like Charlie Sheen. No one seems to understand the idea of holding on to a father’s memory, so perhaps the central theme of the picture was lost in Hollywood.

I was concerned that I might be thinking conspiratorially, until I read the Salon review by Andrew O’Hehir (that I won’t flatter with a link here, you can google it if you’re interested). In his review, he not only hit all the subjects I just did, but also expressed the danger of upper-middle class white people being portrayed sympathetically. He goes completely hyperbolic and compares it to the films of Leni Riefenstahl.

I think the biggest problem was the happy ending. Movies today are all supposed to end unresolved, in the event of an inexplicable sequel. While looked down upon as trite, a happy ending in 2011 is actually less predictable than the ending of the “Black Swan.”  You would think that Hollywood, who claims to push envelopes and cherish out-of-the-box thinking, would get behind such a revolutionary picture as “Secretariat.”

Newsweek scribe Ramin Setoodeh writes about the trend in the liberal magazine’s latest edition. Setoodeh bemoans the fact that some of the best films lately take a too sober view of society. On that we can agree.

Then, Setoodeh whips out his trusty Bush bashing cudgel and starts a whacking:

You can blame Hollywood’s doom and gloom on the Oscars, but I’m not going to. Instead, I think it’s George W. Bush’s fault. Most liberal directors felt restless under his presidency, and they pushed the envelope with over-the-top, operatic tragedies.

He then compares the recent Oscar nominees to ones during the end of President Bill Clinton’s tenure in the White House – noting such gut-busters as “Shakespeare in Love” and “The Full Monty” to burnish his case.

Suffice to say Oscar voters have a plethora of comedies to choose from every year, but they simply go toward films which have that Academy vibe.

Biopics and Bush bashing documentaries usually lead the way.

But big screen comedies enjoyed  a renaissance during the Bush years, partly thanks to the Judd Apatow machine. Consider “Wedding Crashers,” “Superbad” and “Borat” as just a sampling of the side-splitting films from the last eight years.

And, in a just world, a smart, sweet and bawdy comedy like “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” would have earned a Best Picture nomination. Too bad Oscar voters look down their collective noses at such material.

Comedies, we’ve learned over the years, need not apply when Oscar season begins.

In fact, it’s hard to imagine a film like “Annie Hall” would be an Oscar favorite today, even though it walked away with the 1977 Best Picture statuette.

Blaming Bush for the glut of oh-so serious movies makes little sense – unless you’re writing for a magazine eager to keep slamming the former President while apologizing for the current Commander-in-Chief.

Don’t get me wrong. Moore came up with a clever shtick that can be amusing, but he doesn’t make real documentaries. He makes sophomoric  agitprop that violates the Oscar’s rule against fiction in that form which other documentary makers must apparently follow — a double standard point I’ve made to the Academy awarders twice. Only the first of those letters is listed below because of space limitations, but a key point made in that second note is that there should be a separate category for Moore’s type of fabricated political schlock if such stuff is going to be receiving awards .  Sans that, “anything goes with documentary film … there are no standards … it’s all a game,” as University of Texas film professor and indie producer John Pierson put it.

The Academy’s silence was and remains deafening. Disquieting as that is, the worst silence is that of the news media that has known about Moore’s lies and kept mum. Such has been the case ever since this baseball capped faux populist schlub allegedly chased General Motors Chairman Roger Smith around for an interview to no avail in “Roger & Me.”

The entire premise of that Warner Brothers distributed film was that Smith would not meet with Moore to explain why the cruel GM capitalists annihilated Michael’s Flint, Michigan home town with plant closings and loyal employee firings. But according to the makers of two separate real documentary films who researched Moore’s methods and fidelity to his socialist political message, it’s all baloney.

Roger Smith never did an interview with Moore?

Kevin Leffler, a Flint CPA who grew up with Moore and made “Shooting Michael Moore” confirmed to me that a member of the “Roger & Me” crew told him he was present when Moore did interviews with Smith. Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine, makers of “Manufacturing Dissent,” corroborated that in their film research.  “Anyone who says that is a fucking liar,” responded Moore.

Michael doth protest too much.

How about those fired General Motors workers Moore shows?

According to Leffler, two of the film’s main characters, Flint locals Rhonda Britton and James Bond, are presented as fired GM employees when, in fact, neither worked for GM. They told Leffler that Moore coached them on what to say, how to say it with the most drama, edited their comments out of context and even promised money to the illiterate Britton if she’d sign a paper Moore gave her. The paper was a trick forfeiting any right to money from the film.

How about Fred Ross, the Flint hard heart presented as evicting fired
GM employees from their homes?

Ross told Leffler those he was evicting were not GM employees either.

The bottom line is that there are no limits to the outright lies Moore has embraced in all his his films to create false realities that can be exploited for leftist political causes, including the fabrication of quotes. That’s what he did to the late Charlton Heston by editing two speeches he made a year apart in order to make him say something on screen he never said in person. He hid the cut with a cut-away shot. Notice that Heston is wearing different suits, but the viewer doesn’t catch the deception in real time and Moore wants to keep it that way.

Kevin Leffler’s well-researched film has so upset Moore that he is trying to block it from being shown. Leffler told me Moore intimidated Carmike Cinema, the fourth largest movie house chain, into pulling it from its Traverse City, Michigan theater, a bully he may try elsewhere. One reason among many Moore probably does not want “Shooting Michael Moore” seen is that Leffler snuck into Fidel’s Cuban hospitals with a hidden camera to show what socialized Castro care is really like and it ain’t pretty.

That’s a sharp contrast to the Cuban hospital Moore showed in “Sicko” which was exclusively for rich foreigners and top communist party officials in Fidel’s regime.  But Moore never mentioned that and neither have government health care advocates here who have shamelessly used that Cuban hospital as an example of the utopian system Americans are being denied.

Leffler says he does have a distribution deals in Europe and America and that “Shooting Michael Moore” is likely to be on its way to a screen near you.

***

April 21, 2003

Bruce Davis
Executive Director
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
8949 Wilshire Boulevard
Beverly Hills, CA 90211

RE:  “BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE” INVESTIGATION REQUEST

Dear Mr. Davis:

This is a letter I had hoped not to write. However, the disturbing amount of credible evidence published in reputable venues such as “The Wall Street Journal” and “Forbes” that “Bowling for Columbine” violates the Academy rules which define a documentary feature can no longer be ignored.

Therefore, as a prior Academy Award nominee who is concerned about the integrity of the Oscar, I hereby respectfully request a fair and complete formal Academy investigation as to the eligibility of this year’s winner.

Should that investigation determine that “Bowling for Columbine” contains, as claimed, fabricated scenes and video of real people that has been edited to manufacture a fictional reality intended to mislead viewers, then the director and producer of this film should be stripped of their award.  That Oscar should then be awarded to the runner up.

Failure to conduct such an investigation and act according to its findings will diminish the stature of the Oscar, establish an exploitable precedent for future rule violators and be grossly unfair to the other nominees who did follow the rules. That unfairness will be particularly bitter to those whose film would have been nominated in place of “Bowling for Columbine.”

Even the accusation of such rule violations taints the Academy Award with implications of politics and favoritism that are most damaging. So, I again respectfully ask that you not delay your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Dan Gifford
Producer, “Waco: The Rules of Engagement”

People, this is OUR Fortress Hollywood! This is OUR sanctuary! Since when the hell do we care about what demagogues like Keith Olbermann think or say? Or any other mental tinfoil hat Lefties like Garofalo for that matter? It’s like Churchill worrying about Hitler calling him a fat cigar-chomping drunk! Who won that fight, and why? And who was in the right, despite all the insipid name-calling?

Time to grow a pair, people. It’s also time to raise the stakes. Now, I’ve heard from some contributors here at BH that it is really bad in Hollywood in places. That people might even lose their jobs if they spoke up like I do here. If true, that’s McCarthyism at its worst. Fortunately, that’s not my experience. I still have great relationships with people in the biz who could care less about politics. All they care about is finding great scripts or literary works to adapt, and telling great stories on film.

And that is where the battle really needs to be fought: on their playing ground. An insurgency of ideas, if you will. Example. Just under the Big Hollywood sign today, I saw the banner “TNT’s ‘The Closer’ Thrives on Strong Moral Foundation.” That PJM-linked article describes how The Closer, a show that portrays the border, the illegals situation, and even the cops themselves in very gritty and realistic fashion, is the top-rated scripted show on ad-supported cable since its inception.

The Pajamas Media reviewer, Jim Kearney, finished off his glowing review with this statement:

Perhaps if we spent more time following positive stories about law enforcement professionals, it would elevate consciousness and support for crime fighters in our culture.

Bingo! Give that man a Kewpie doll! Because he just threw down the same gauntlet I’m about to throw down to all of you conservative creative types, and it extends far beyond just cop stories. Screw what Lefties think! No changing minds there. But we conservatives believe what we believe for good reasons. In fact, only 21% of Americans identify themselves as liberal, the majority conservative. That’s a lot of box office just waiting to be tapped.

We conservatives need to address our talents not only to making better films than Hollywood Lefties do, but better films than anyone. The foundations are already there. How we can succeed in Hollywood, and reel ‘em in at the box office, is by telling great compelling stories with universal themes that in and of themselves advance our values systems, like the aformentioned The Closer. In the end, Hollywood is a business. If You Write It, They Will Come. Box office talks and BS walks.

The story should always come first. It is great compelling stories that should drive a film’s politics, not the other way around. That is the big mistake Hollywood Lefties make, and why they bomb so badly with politically-motivated films. The best way we can succeed is with desperately compelling stories that demand to be told. Success is the best revenge. And with the best stories, the morality and politics are already embedded. Just like Geraldo Rivera in Iraq, remember?

Examples. Even today Ben Hur, which still ranks #13 all-time in adjusted dollars, retains wide and astonishing popularity fifty years on. The other Biblical Charlton Heston classic, the Demille-directed Ten Commandments, is holding steady at #5 all-time adjusted. It also remains a very popular film. The over-the-top success of Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, a film project every major studio in Hollywood turned its collective noses up at, is confirmation that there is still a huge religious market just waiting to spend their money on great moral Biblically-themed films.

If they’re done right. They must first and foremost be great compelling stories with universal themes.

The irony here is, I am not a religious person. But my Dad was a Baptist deacon, and I know vast swaths of the Bible inside out. And I LOVE Ben Hur! Who doesn’t? From purely business and film perspectives, I see great stories there just waiting to be told. But they have to be told in the right way. Ben Hur, despite its Biblical underpinnings, is perhaps the greatest epic revenge tale of all time. Who didn’t pump their fists when Massalah fell under his chariot and got trampled underfoot?

Ultimately, films should reveal their morality without being preachy. Ben Hur does not advocate conversion to Christianity. Nor does Passion of the Christ. But what both of those extraordinarily successful films share is great storytelling in a moral Biblical context. Story is all. In the framework of great marketable stories, we can advance our ideals of, say, true lifelong romance as opposed to freestyle sex. Huge market. Harlequin didn’t become the mega-empire it is today by promoting the zipless fuck. They did it by tapping into every woman’s deep inner yearning for True Romance.

In short, the best films don’t preach. They don’t even tell. They throw moral monkey wrenches at us during moments of extreme conflict. They make we, the audience, judge and jury. To me, the best dramatic films are morally ambiguous in the extreme. A Clockwork Orange, for example. Kubrick just threw it all in our faces and left us to ponder all the dark moral conundrums. The moral dividing line in film, as I see it, isn’t right and left. It’s right and wrong. Even between very wrong and evilly wrong.

Examples. What would you do differently as Denzel Washington’s John Creasey character in Man On Fire? Or Dirty Harry? Or Liam Neeson in Taken? Or Gene Hackman’s Popeye Doyle character in The French Connection, with New York about to be flooded with potentially fatal high-grade heroin? Would you push the envelope of the law as Popeye did? Perhaps most relevant to today, and which fellow BH contributor Matt Patterson so eloquently examined in his post The Dark Knight: Year One, what would you NOT do to stop Heath Ledger’s Satanic megalomaniac Joker?

Isn’t even American Gangster an epic American tale of good and evil? Super Cop vs. Superfly? Even Pulp Fiction, as decadent as all the characters in that brilliant film are, contains a gritty street morality we can all understand, as does The Shield. And what gritty gin-soaked smoke-clouded morality could possibly be higher than that of Casablanca? Yet I also believe that most of those films, not by design but by default, actually advocate the conservative position of imperfect people making tough, often distasteful decisions, and taking violent action with resolute determination when necessary.

All of those films and TV shows I’ve listed are populated with dark, troubled anti-heroes who make very unsavory choices, and aren’t necessarily people we’d want marrying our daughters. Yet in each case, varying degrees of evil are put side by side, and we are left to decide which is the lesser. If you are repulsed by, but deep-down agree with, the brutal actions of such outside-the-law characters as Vic Mackey, Dirty Harry and John Creasey, and what they do to enact vengeance and street justice on the slimiest of perps to either save or avenge their victims, you just might be a conservative.

By contrast, do you really think many Lefties, especially the ACLU, would have given Bruce Wayne the same slack on omniscient cellphone monitoring, no matter what the threat, as Lucius Fox gave Batman to take down the Joker, however personally unpleasant that choice was to Mr. Fox? Or given The Shield’s Vic Mackey the green light to pummel a sick child molester to find out where Dr. Perv had a young girl locked away and possibly dying?

Or given Man On Fire’s John Creasey carte blanche to jam a C-4 Easter egg up a corrupt Mexican cop’s ass in order to extract information on the kidnapping and presumed murder of Dakota Fanning’s Pita Ramos? Ya, as if! Yet in all those cases, those characters get right in our faces and demand of us, “what would YOU do in this situation?”

Sometimes the questions themselves are way more important than any answers. In fact, sometimes the questions ARE the point. The greatest, most compelling stories have moralities and politics all their own and tell us what they are, not by preaching or shoving the answers in our faces, but by raising troubling questions that force us to ask, “what would we do?”

Even in comedy, there is a deep morality in Leslie Nielsen’s Frank Drebin pounding the crap out of the Ayatollah Khomeini and wiping the birthmark off Gorbachev’s forehead in Naked Gun, or Stewie giving Osama bin Laden a Naked Gun-like beatdown in Family Guy. But that morality is just a side benefit of writing great comedy that everybody gets deep-down, like Team America: World Police. It’s the ultimate in vicarious fun. What Americans, besides Lefties, wouldn’t want to do all that?

The larger point here being, we should always strive to make the best movies and documentaries possible that expound on and examine closely our ideas and values as conservative Americans, without actually expounding on or examining them. Just present the story, the facts and the evidence, and all else follows. It’s the Art of Fighting Without Fighting, as Bruce Lee so eloquently put it.

A lot of great compelling stories for documentaries, too. The Iraqi national soccer team, once tortured, now heroes. Played their first home game in Iraq last week since the Saddam era. Was a smash hit. A great human interest story, with political overtones that go way beyond soccer. If they lose now, they’re still heroes. As opposed to Uday Hussein making them kick concrete soccer balls.

For much darker subjects, there is the ethnic cleansing of black Americans from LA neighborhoods by illegal racist Mexican gangs. Of how Los Zetas and the drug cartels now control and use our southern border like the Taliban and Al Qaeda use Pakistan’s. Or how Phoenix is now the second-ranking kidnapping capitol of the world, behind only Mexico City. Again, all you have to do is present the ugly stories on the ground and let the viewers decide. The human stories drive the politics, see?

Another great doc subject would be Iran’s Green Revolution and the regime’s iron-fisted response. I would include in such a documentary the fate of the dead and imprisoned protesters, the role of modern technology in fostering a democratic uprising in a fascist state, and how it all symbolizes the eternal struggle between those who seek freedom, and those who seek to crush it to remain in power. But it is the personal accounts and tragedies that should reveal its morality, not a narrator.

As to purely feature films, I am very much looking forward to the upcoming Lone Survivor hitting theaters. Peter Berg, who is slated to direct the project for Universal, seems a most capable director, and the producers can’t fail if they stick to what made Lone Survivor a huge bestseller. In other words, if they just tell the story and leave politics out of it. That said, I sure would have liked to have seen what Spielberg and Michael Bay could have done with that story on film.

Inglourious Basterds is also high on my must-see list this summer. Makes a nice bloody contrast to all that liberal Lefty nailbiting about CIA hit teams lately. What’s the big problem there, anyway? I LOVED the Dirty Dozen! Looked like a plan. Why shouldn’t we unleash all our condemned Maggotts on Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in exchange for a shot at freedom? Liberals are such pussies!

Lastly, being conservative doesn’t mean being a stuffed-shirt Polly Prim. I’m as rude and raunchy a bastard as they come, just like Mozart. Six years Navy, okay? My writing reflects that. For those of you out in BigHollywoodLand who took such offense at my taking the name of the Lord in vain, you’re in the wrong place. Now, I don’t curse just to offend. But like my idol Gen. George S. Patton Jr., when I want it to stick, I give it to ‘em loud and dirty. Just like my Baptist deacon Dad did behind the wheel.

But just as you can tell a very high moral tale by creating a landscape of pure evil and forcing characters to make desperate and irrevocable choices, you can also tell a story with a romantic or moral heart with the crudest humor and language imaginable. Wedding Crashers, anyone? By the way, Rotten Tomatoes favorably reviews Wedding Crashers as “both raunchy and sweet.”

I rest my case.

I am fully on the same page with one scribe who said, “I write extreme right-wing material with extremely raunchy language.” I could have been looking in a mirror when I read that. But in the end, it’s all about great films and great stories. Yet all the greats have contained within them important moral and political themes and parables, be it A Bugs’s Life or Taken.

By writing or adapting great stories that contain within them the core values we as conservatives believe, as do most Americans, we can take control of the fight. If we’re lucky, control of the box office, too. Far more Americans consider themselves conservative than liberal. We have a distinct advantage. We can wage our insurgency of ideas within the system. And we can do it with great stories in so subtle a way even Hollywood Lefties wouldn’t know they’re making a conservative-themed film. Best of all, they won’t even care if the story’s a total can’t-miss winner.

A lot of it starts with conservative writers like me, or like-minded producers and other Hollywood professionals choosing great stories to adapt from existing literary works or screenplays, and pushing hard until they’re made. The Stoning of Soraya M. is one good example. The Passion of the Christ is perhaps the gold standard. No major studio in Hollywood would touch it, but who was right? The studios or Mel Gibson? Whose minds were closed there?

Most important, who laughed all the way to the bank? Box office talks and BS walks, and I believe there is a ton of box office yet to be reaped from some great stories that are just dying to be made. So if I don’t show up here at Big Hollywood for awhile, y’all know what I’m doin’. Break a leg, All!

P.S. As an entertaining aside I’ve just discovered, it seems the founder of Air America is on the same page as Rush Limbaugh when it comes to the Orwellian Fairness Doctrine.

Hope Springs Eternal

A young and beautiful former Miss North Dakota and reporter for the BBC and NPR, among others, falsely arrested by misogynist Iran and tagged with a series of escalating charges, from buying wine to reporting with expired credentials to espionage, charges even Roxana’s lawyer has not officially seen to date, but upon which Ms. Saberi was just sentenced to eight years in the Iranian Hell of Evin prison in a one-day kangaroo court trial. Coercion was also involved, including a threat to kill her.

Any questions as to who and what we’re really dealing with here now? According to ABC News, Roxana is now officially a pawn in the Great Game between Un-Islamic Iran and the Great Satan. How much more of a blockbuster storyline could you ask for?

And that doesn’t even scratch the surface of all the world-turning subplots of international intrigue, conflict and sinister intent that drove such taut films as “North By Northwest,” “The Manchurian Candidate” and “Team America: World Police.” With me so far?

Oh, and I say un-Islamic, because the Hitlerite child-murdering and kiddie martyrdom-training fascist Nazi regime in Iran has nothing to with Islam or God. Just the opposite, in fact. They may call us the Great Satan, but you tell me who acts more like Lucifer here. What has Argentina ever done to Iran to deserve terror attacks and the mass murder of civilians? Am I Reich?

But I digress. We writers do that in moments of passion. Onto the subject at hand.

The backstory. Roxana was arrested on January 31, eleven days after Barack Obama was sworn in as President of the United States. A test? If so, more drama. On March 5th, SOS Clinton demanded Roxana’s release from Iranian custody. The very next day, March 6th, Iranian authorities said they would release Roxana ’soon.’

On March 13th, Human Rights Watch issued a statement calling Roxana Saberi’s detention unlawful under international laws and conventions, in effect declaring her a hostage. Being as the media is so on the ball lately, I didn’t hear about that bombshell HRW press release until five days later, and even then I had to search for it. Somebody has to report this stuff.

Yet, in a twist of fate, I had declared Roxana Saberi a hostage that very same day. Not so much based on international law as knowing how much un-Islamic Iran loves to punk the Great Satan.

Roxana’s parents, father Reza and mother Akiko, flew into Tehran recently with assurances that Roxana’s release would be speeded up, only to land and see their daughter sentenced to eight years in Evin prison for espionage. Which she will not survive. In protest to this abomination of justice that’s S.O.B. in Iran, Roxana is now on a hunger strike. Her situation is precarious at best.

Some in the press have mused that Roxana may even be a pawn in Iran’s own nationwide elections in June. A rouse to the hardline un-Islamic base, who love nothing better than to see the Great Satan get a black eye. Makes them more prone to overlook troubling domestic issues that are hounding Ahmadinejad et al right now. The hardliners are even using Team Oscar as their Willie Horton against moderates. “Who invited the Great Satan in!” That kind of stuff.

It’s called externalizing. Any good dictatorship worth its salt excels at it. Make us look so bad that they look good, no matter how much bad shite they pull. Others in the press believe Iran may be setting up a swap of Roxana for Iranian diplomats arrested by US forces in Iraq, curiously with no questions from the media as to it being an unseemly act. Anyway, lots of storylines. No doubt many in Hollywood will be lining up for the rights to the story of Roxana Saberi.

I only wish they were lining up right now to speak up for HER rights! Where ARE they? They’re the Human Rights Champs! Right? You want to see something REALLY sick? Twenty-six videos on YouTube for Roxana Saberi, and most are news reports! There are 35 alone for Jim Carrey’s video on Burma’s imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, 168 for George Clooney in Darfur. Not counting playlists.

UPDATE: Eighty-four videos now. Still no celebs. So where is Hollywood on Roxana Saberi?

Totally MIA, from what I can see. Or can’t, I should say.

Hell, Clown Man is protesting Iran more than all of Hollywood combined! Speaking of clowns. Or Stooges, I should say. Former Team Oscar leader and Academy president Sid Ganis is still too busy on the Mad Mullah Promo Tour to have a clue. Annette Bening is no doubt still raving about how fabulous Iran and women’s rights for filmmakers are there.

Tell it to Tehmineh Milani, Annette! She was sentenced to death for her celluloid slanders! Tell it to Iranian-American filmmaker Esha Momeni, who awaits trial in Iran before a political tribunal on similar charges for filming a women’s rights documentary in Tehran for her masters degree!

Hopeless. Like the rest of Team Oscar, none of whom has mentioned Roxana Saberi to date that I can find, they are too busy living the fantasy of Iran to see the cold, hard realities staring them in the face, even when those realities involve imprisoned fellow filmmakers and the extermination of gays as state policy. Or an American woman being held hostage, even as they partied it up in Tehran.

Where is UNIFEM Ambassador of Good Will Nicole Kidman? She should be front and center on this! Not one statement on Roxana Saberi I can find. In fact, a search of UNIFEM, the United Nations Development Fund For Women, comes up a big fat zero on a Roxana Saberi site search. What you will find is “Women’s Voices Raised on Climate Change” and “Training of Gender Audit Facilitators.”

In fact, the last UNIFEM entry on the stoning of women in Iran, of three total on the entire site, was from 2002, though it’s gotten much worse since. Iran even imprisons women indefinitely for protesting stoning now! They gonna stone them, too? Wouldn’t put it past them! They feed off that shite! What do you expect from Nazis? Won’t find that at UNIFEM, either. In fact, Iran wasn’t even mentioned at their 53rd Session last year, and they’re the worst offenders on the planet!

How lame is that? Some “spotlight on violence against women” THEY are! Oh, but they do have a spotlight on violence against women in Canada. My women’s rights heroes. UNIFEM. Just as silent on Roxana Saberi, Esha Momeni and the horrific abuse of women in Iran as Hollywood. Yet one more useless UN bureaucracy we’re paying for. Good press, though. PR is all. Right, Nicole?

Gwyneth Paltrow, also silent, is probably too busy boycotting we greedy, unintelligent and uncivilized Americans and prepping for Iron Man 2. She may denigrate and boycott us from Britain as the world’s real capitalist enemy, but she sure seems to know where her Socialist bread is buttered. You Go, Girl! Bravo and Tally Ho! And I do mean Ho. What else do you call someone who sells their virtue for money?

I think I’ll wait to see Iron Man 2 for free. Borrow the DVD. I can boycott on principle, too.

You know what the most pathetic thing is here, people? Even the real Stooges spoke out against the fascist dictator of their age more than all of Hollywood today. Seen any Hollywood rips on Ahmadinejad or Iran at all? Sorry. Shhhh. Don’t want to offend anyone. Walk softly, but carry a big carrot. And no gay jokes about that big carrot, either! Got it?

They don’t like those. Not one bit. Gays, I mean.

I have to wonder. To paraphrase Jon Stewart, Is this Hollywood Diplomacy Inaction? Like they’re afraid if anyone in Hollywood said anything bad about Iran, it might set back the Obamamessiah’s ‘reaching out’ to today’s Third Reich? Or if AMPAS said anything bad about Iran in a press release, they might not be allowed back to apologize, or train Iran’s propaganda film stooges again?

Or is all of Hollywood just so totally duped by the Mad Mullahs of Iran, or so blinded by the Obamamessiah, Roxana doesn’t even register? I do know one thing. If this Roxana Saberi Hostage Crisis occurred on Bush’s watch, how many in Hollywood would have blamed him for Roxana’s horrific situation? Not the hostage-takers, mind you. Don’t answer, it’s a rhetorical question.

No, my guess is, Hollywood Diplomacy is in full effect for the Obamamessiah. Don’t bring up Roxana Saberi, their shady nuke program, their stoning of women, their executing of children, their killing of bloggers, their threats of genocide, not even their gay extermination program: “Don’t give them anything else to apologize for. We have enough already!”

Walk around those blogger-murdering, Jew-bombing, women-stoning, gay-hanging, kid-executing, Armageddon-threatening un-Islamic Nazis like we were in a minefield? NOT ON YOUR LIFE!

What are we gonna do speaking up? Make things worse? HOW? But no. Give Peace a Chance. Here’s what Peace Hath Wrought, Hollywood. The Team Oscar olive branch slapped out of Obama’s hand with the demand for apologies and submission. The Obama Peace Video met with scorn, derision and ‘Death To America’ rallies. And the Roxana Saberi Hostage Crisis. Not to mention all the horrors they’re inflicting on their own people as we speak.

And now this: ‘On Tuesday, Reuters reported that a spokesman for the Iranian judiciary, Ali-Reza Jamshidi, had termed calls for Ms. Saberi’s release from American officials “utterly ridiculous.”

Based on Iran’s total contempt for international law regarding Roxana Saberi, and the mountains of bloody and horrific evidence on un-Islamic Iran staring us in the face, I’d tell everyone in Hollywood that we are dealing with an irrational fascist regime in Iran, and to start speaking up for Roxana Saberi, Iranian-American filmmaker Esha Momeni, the abuse of every other woman in Iran, the executing of children, and the ruthless and brutal anti-gay pogrom Iran is now exporting to Iraq.

If there were anyone rational left in Hollywood to say that to. Used to be. To be sure, if there are any Hollywood celebrities who have been pulling for Roxana Saberi and I just didn’t find you, appy-pollie-logies. But I had to kick some asses here. I hope you understand.

Speaking of which, here’s AMPAS. Tell them Academy members need to start speaking up for Roxana Saberi, and starting acting like the human rights champs they play on TV and claim to be. And see if they can roust Sid and Annette from their next Iran promo video long enough to say a few words on behalf of Roxana Saberi and Iranian-American filmmaker Esha Momeni.

Not holding my breath. But how nice would it be for the next act of Roxana: A True Story to open with crowds of well-known Hollywood faces twisted in outrage over Roxana’s abysmal human rights situation, not to mention the rest of Iran’s. Roxana’s a lucky one. Oh, and to make one point perfectly clear, the question here is not whether Iran recognizes Roxana’s American citizenship. The real question is, do we? She was born here. Good enough for illegals, ain’t it?

And I am certainly hoping Roxana’s story has an ending in Evin prison more like Haleh Esfandiari’s than murdered Iranian-Canadian journalist Ziba Kazemi, who was beaten, raped, her fingernails pulled and her skull fractured, all for the crime of taking photos outside Evin prison. In other words, I’m hoping for an ending more Hollywood, and less un-Islamic extremist Iran.

By the way, Roxana turns 32 this Sunday. Friends of Roxana have set up an email account for well-wishers around the world to say Happy Birthday to Roxana at happybirthdayroxana@gmail.com One nice birthday present would be to see a lot more people in Hollywood and Washington speaking up on her behalf. If it’s not too much trouble, that is.

Raised voices helped free Haleh Esfandiari, Tehmineh Milani and others from the hell of Evin prison. They can do so once again for Roxana. Iran’s Thugocracy, like Hollywood, hates bad PR. Ruins their image. Speaking of which.

On that note, here’s Congress. Here’s State. Here’s the White House. Roxana is an American citizen, not a pawn, and she has been held unjustly in Iranian captivity for 81 days now. Where are the strong words? The Congressional resolution in support of Roxana, like North Dakota’s?

What good are they?

Our government should tell Iran to release Roxana right now, or we cut off their gasoline. For starters. See how fast they move then to avoid gas rioting at home! And if that doesn’t work, warm up the B-52s. And I don’t mean the rock band. But the other type will also be free to roam if they want to, i.e. take out government-financed terrorist training camps, nuke facilities, etc, etc.

Roam around their world. Rock their world, I should say. Do it for Roxana. But only if the gas thing don’t work first. No, I didn’t mean bomb ‘em right away. I’ll give peace, a gas cutoff and some gas rioting in Iran a chance. What do you think I am, a warmonger?

FREE ROXANA SABERI! LIKE RIGHT NOW!!!

In the Iranian Daily Kayhan, Ali Khamenei’s own personal Islamist rag, the Supreme Asswipe in his March 2nd Op-ed titled “What Are the Producers of Anti-Iranian Films Doing Here?” called Team Oscar, “the planners and heads of a new Hollywood project against Iranian national security.”

The article then stated that an examination of Universal Pictures’ output in recent years shows that of over 200 films, 200 insult God, Islam, and Muslims, promote propaganda of the CIA and of the “Israeli terror organization” the Mossad, and contain other shameful content.

In addition, it said, in the past two years Universal promoted an anti-Iranian revolution animated feature titled “Persepolis.” The article expressed opposition to the visit, and added that “it remains only to hope that this type of anti-Iranian attempt will not cross over to our cinema.”

Also, Mr. Ahmadinejad had his own harsh words for Team Oscar and Tinseltown. On top of his Foreign Minister demanding apologies from Team Oscar for celluloid slanders, that is: “We believe that the American cinema system is devoid of all culture and art and is only used as a device to further Western imperialism.”

Ya got all that, Sid? Annette? William? Alfre? All you guys?

In other words, Iranian leaders are using Team Oscar’s visit to Iran as an ideological battering ram in their upcoming political campaigns, in much the same way George H.W. Bush used Willie Horton against Michael Dukakis in the 1988 US presidential campaign.

The whole soft on the Great Satan thing, you know?

Speaking of Team Oscar, it has been very tough to find any news on them at all, lately. Even the Academy hasn’t issued any Team Oscar press releases since March 2nd. Given the gold-plated PR status and historic implications of Team Oscar’s Iran trip, very odd. Then again, maybe not.

I had actually begun to wonder whether Team Oscar had suffered the same fate as Roxana Saberi, though they are not out of the Iranian woods yet. Hope Springs Eternal. However, I have discovered a blog by Team Oscar member William Horberg, the Executive Producer of “Milk,” following his experiences in today’s Islamic Republic of Iran that butchers their Harvey Milks worse than cattle.

Anyway, some snippets from Mr. Horberg’s Team Oscar in Iran blog.

From his March 9th entry, a lovely picture of Team Oscar holding roses at Imam Khomeini Airport in Iran. No determination if this photo was pre or post-punked. Hard to tell. They seem to smile like idiots no matter how badly they’re treated.

In his March 11th entry, “Cool Hand Frank,” Mr. Holberg tells of a screening of “Cool Hand Luke” at the Iran House of Cinema, with a follow-up by screenwriter Frank Pierson, who adapted the novel to the screen. Here’s an enlightening excerpt:

It was an inspired piece of casting, but (one) scene whose very Hollywood and Western depiction of yearning sexual desire, while hardly explicit by today’s standards, nonetheless had our Iranian hosts quite glad that the movie was only being shown to a select, hand-picked private audience of filmmakers from the House of Cinema, and not to the public-at-large.

In Mr. Holberg’s March 12th entry, he compares a photo of he and three burqa-clad Team Oscar members walking in Tehran as The Power Walk. The Power Burqa Walk is more like it.

In his March 13th entry, Mr. Holberg adopts Iranian-style clothing himself. No doubt to show off for his next Power Burqa Walk. Five more Iranian clothing-clad Team Oscars members to go, and the transformation of Team Oscar to full-fledged Stooges will be complete. Who needs Jim Carrey and Sean Penn?

On March 14th, William Holberg celebrated his fiftieth birthday in Tehran. Is he a Jolly Good Fellow or what? No word on if fellow American Roxana Saberi was invited. In fact, no word on her at all to date in his blog. I mean, it’s not like Roxana Saberi hasn’t been in the news. Actually, I take that back.

On March 16th, Mr. Holberg meets up with Iranian actor and old friend Homayoun Ershadi, who invited him up to his upscale apartment in Northern Tehran. Upscale, as opposed to say, Evin Prison. Mr. Ershadi is well known for his role as a suicidal character in the film “A Taste of Cherry.”

Much like, say, the blogger who committed suicide in Evin Prison after insulting the aforementioned Supreme Asswipe Khamenei. Lot of that going around in Evin Prison, you know. An unexplained epidemic of suicides. Maybe that’s endemic to today’s Iran as well.

On March 19th, Mr. Holbert visited Persepolis, and also praised the graphic novels and animated film of the same name. You know, the same animated film the Supreme Asswipe called “anti-Irainian revolution” in his political campaign to use Stooge Team Oscar as his Willie Horton against Iranian lefties. 

In Mr. Holberg’s March 20th blog entry “Lost In Translation,” Mr. Holberg describes how he and Annette Bening encountered two young Iranian men in the ancient city of Isfahan who wanted some Eminem lyrics explained to them. Terms like “my dogs are barking” and “roll like a renegade.” Just read it. Although from what I can see in today’s Islamist extremist Iran, most renegades don’t roll. They hang. Or commit suicide in Evin Prison.

In his March 23rd entry “Noir in Iran,” Mr. Holberg describes how many locations in Iran would be perfect for B&W Noir film shooting. Fittingly, his blog entry has a “Brute Force” movie poster of Burt Lancaster standing behind bars, with only darkness as a backdrop. Again, Evin Prison comes to mind as a perfect noir shooting location. Scouting time!

In his March 25th blog entry “Farsfilm,” Mr. Horberg refers in-depth to an opinion piece by Iranian film stalwart Massoud Mehrabi, in which the esteemed Iranian filmmaker bemoans the state of Iranian film after the CIA coup and instatement of the Shah to power in 1953:

During the decade (1953-63) the history of Iranian cinema presents no event of major significance. Public screens catered to the tastes of the mass audience with mass productions of utter worthlessness, and no sign of any rejuvenation or emergence of new talents brightened the prospects. Under the circumstances any hope for the birth of an avant-garde cinema for an intellectual elite would have been highly unrealistic.

Sounds like our Hollywood of today. But I digress.

The rigorous censorship imposed after the 1953 coup d’etat made it impossible for the intelligentsia to dictate its elitist modes of thinking to people through a mass medium such as cinema.

No mention of the rigorous censorship imposed by the Iranian Thugocracy. What else is new?

In his March 28th entry, “Persian Bloggers,” Mr. Holberg tell us of his meeting with two Iranian bloggers, and how he hopes for their success in the future. Considering the Iranian thugocracy will soon be passing a law giving the death penalty to “offensive bloggers” and have already murdered one blogger in Evin Prison, I don’t see much of a future for blogging in Iran. But that’s just me.

In his March 30th blog entry of yesterday entitled “The Bare Feet Shoe Store,” which is as analogous to the Team Oscar trip to Iran as “The Emperor’s Clothing Shoppe” might have been, Mr. Holberg puts the icing on Team Oscar’s utter idiocy cake with regard to the real Iran of today:

On the one hand, filmmakers in Iran face hurdles of lack of funding and resources (the average mid-level budget film is made for @ $500,000 there I was told) as well as quixotic government censorship (films can be approved by the ministry at the script stage there and yet the finished version might be banned from local release) that we would find insurmountable or intolerable here.

And yet these very pressures and lack of freedom might be said in some way to have fostered the subtlety and artistry of their internationally recognized and award-winning cinema, as the creativity born of great constraints has shaped their response to the world around them.

You got all that, people? Government censorship in Iran is actually a creative plus! Not one word of condemnation of the stifling prior censorship by the Iranian thugocracy! Not one word of support for Roxana Saberi, or for filmmakers and documentarians like Iranian-American Esha Momeni, who was thrown into Evin prison, and now awaits trial for the celluloid slander of interviewing women’s rights activists on the streets of Tehran for her UCLA master’s thesis.

Taking into account, of course, that the term ”women’s rights in Iran” could not be more oxymoronic.  

Throughout Mr. Horberg’s Kodak Moment Tour of the Islamist Republic of Iran, the Executive Producer of “Milk” had even less to say about the gay extermination program in Iran than fellow “Milk” superstars and Gay Heroes Sean Penn and Dustin Lance Black. In fact, Annette Bening’s burqa-clad praise for women’s rights in Iran actually does even more harm for women in Iran than the aforementioned’s silence on the Gay Holocaust in Iran.

Why? Because now Supreme Asswipes like Khamenei and Ahmadinejad can hold up Stooge Bening and say, “Look! Even Hollywood says we have full women’s rights!” Even as they continue to stone, hang and abuse women worse than any regime on the planet.

Judging by Mr. Horberg’s statements in his blog, the Iran trip only lasted ten days.  Yet the Academy and industry PR on this trip has been nonexistent. No Red Carpet landing at LAX. No Academy press releases on a Job Well Done. Think about it, people. The biggest PR machine in the world, a total black void on Team Oscar in Iran. Now that’s gold-plated silence you can’t buy! Or is it?