Playboy:

[Iconic American liberal Paul] Krassner thought it might be fun if he rang up his longtime cultural adversary and invited him to sit down and discuss their differences and similarities. Breitbart wanted to meet at Applebee’s, says Krassner, but the actual location remains a secret. The result, we think you’ll agree, is one hell of an interesting dialogue.

KRASSNER: I was surprised to learn you consider my work to be one of your inspirations. You also claim that the mainstream media had a double standard and didn’t criticize me the way they do you and the conservative movement that you represent. That’s not true, though. I’ve been excoriated in papers from the Los Angeles Times to the Chicago Tribune to The Washington Post. My favorite headline was give this man a saliva test. You’ve also praised Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies and Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters as heavy influences. Both those men were close friends of mine and remain my touchstones, and yet you’re at the other end of the social and political spectrum. What I want to know is, how do they fit into the context of your personal mission?

BREITBART: Well, at the time you were doing what you were doing, trailblazing and causing mischief and mirth and effecting the type of political and social change you were attempting, there’s no doubt you were being challenged by others. What I’m talking about is the current order of the media in the 21st century and how history now looks on the Merry Pranksters, Abbie Hoffman, Ken Kesey and Hunter ­Thompson with great reverence. It’s as if they’ve been given their own wing of the journalism school. I don’t want to simplify history. I understand that, at the time, you went through hell, and the same could be said of Matt Drudge. From 1995 until about 2002 the same forces were trying to claim that Matt Drudge had no right to be doing what he was doing, which everybody now accepts as commonplace and accepted ­practice—AOL just purchased the Huffington Post for $315 million for replicating, on a left-of-center bent, what Matt Drudge does. So the trailblazers, while they’re trailblazing, can have slings and arrows hurled at them, and I’m not trying to diminish the peril you went through. I’m stating that right now, when I’m reporting truths on Wednesday and causing mirth on Thursday, the press has a problem with that. I’m saying no, you’re not going to define me; I’m going to define what I do, and you’re going to have to deal with it. I gained my inspiration from the knowledge that you guys went through the same process, and I’m using you as models.

KRASSNER: In your book you write, “Man, how I long for the days of Sam Kinison, Richard Pryor, Abbie Hoffman, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, George Carlin and Lenny Bruce, and today the only people upholding their free-speech legacies are conservatives like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.” At first I thought you must be kidding. What about Louis C.K., Chris Rock, Sarah Silverman, Lewis Black, Margaret Cho, Marc Maron, Rick Overton, Harry Shearer, Kathy ­Griffin, Wanda Sykes, Richard Lewis, Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, ­Stephen Colbert, Larry David, Rachel Maddow, Paul Provenza? The place is overflowing with liberals upholding their free-speech legacies.

(more…)

—–

NSFW … obviously.

Click here for Part 1 on Ben Shapiro’s Primetime Propaganda, here for Part 2 on Roger L. Simon’s Turning Right at Hollywood and Vine, here for part 3 on David Mamet’s The Secret Knowledge, and here for part 4 on Breitbart’s righteous Gen-X indignation.

Generation Y’s great filmmakers have not yet arrived. And don’t expect too many of them.

William Strauss and Neil Howe argue in their fourth book of generational theory, Millennials Rising, that the babies born from 1982 through 2003 are part of a “Civic” generation. This is the same as the GI Generation (the accurately named “Greatest Generation”) born from 1901-1924 who went through World War II as young adults.

The Greatest provided us with many cinematic giants but none made a deeper footprint on the 20^th century than Walt Disney. The Disney Effect came not just in the artistry of his films but his technological innovations and capitalist ventures. He constructed a billion-dollar corporation which has changed our lives. That’s what leaders of Civic generations do: build transformative institutions.

The Millennial Generation has already seen our Walt Disney emerge and release his equivalent of “Steamboat Willie.” It’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Facebook is only the primitive beginning of what he’ll build in the coming decades. Today because of our saturation in cartoons we fail to appreciate how groundbreaking “Steamboat Willie” and “Snow White” were to a world that had never seen such creatures. And so it shall go with Facebook in a few decades’ time.

Narrative films and television programs were America’s unifying, transformative cultural experience of the 20^th century. Computers, the internet, and technology are their equivalent for the 21^st. (more…)

UPDATE: After Chris Matthews backed out, the creators of the show decided they would take this scene in a different direction that doesn’t feature known pundits.  Sorkin and his team expressed interest in having Breitbart on in a future episode, should the show go to series.

***

There has been some speculation over the last 24 hours that Andrew Breitbart will be making an appearance as himself in Aaron Sorkin’s upcoming HBO project “More As This Story Develops,” and that is indeed the case.  “More,” which will star Jeff Daniels, is a dramatic pilot based on the world of cable news.  Originally, Breitbart was to be in a debate scene opposite MSNBC anchor Chris Matthew, but MSNBC has squelched Matthew’s participation.  New York Magazine reports (emphasis mine):

Vulture hears that plans for Matthews to shoot a roundtable debate scene in Develops alongside conservative muckracker/ Weiner-eater Andrew Breitbart have had to be scrapped because, according to a production insider, Matthews’s bosses at MSNBC nixed the idea.

It’s not like MSNBC has a blanket no-scripted-programming order for their anchors: Matthews played an MSNBC reporter two years ago in the Russell Crowe pic State of Play. And a guest spot on Sorkin’s show would likely be good for publicity; assuming it goes to series, Develops will likely boast an audience filled with the sort of left-leaning smarties targeted by the news-and-opinion network. So what was the problem? Our spy speculates that even though Sorkin’s ideology meshes with MSNBC’s, the network’s brass may have taken issue with the way More portrays the world of cable news and its corporate culture.[...]  (UPDATE: Our source has further elaborated to us that MSNBC also didn’t like the fact that parts of the show seemed to be skewering left-leaning media.)

NY Mag describes the lead character, an anchor to be played by Daniels, as “a passionate, liberal Keith Olbermann–esque character.” (more…)

Click here for Part 1 on Ben Shapiro’s Primetime Propaganda, here for Part 2 on Roger L. Simon’s Turning Right at Hollywood and Vine and here for part 3 on David Mamet’s The Secret Knowledge.

A new kind of film emerged in the late ‘80s and first half of the 1990s to as an alternative to the mind-numbing noise of the Boomer Blockbusters. Smaller studios like Miramax rose to champion independent films. Generation X auteurs shaped by obsessive home video viewing – Quentin Tarantino, P.T. Anderson, Robert Rodriguez, Kevin Smith, and Darren Aronofsky – passed on the Hollywood path and instead built careers through low budget, DIY productions. “Reservoir Dogs,” “Sydney,” “El Mariachi,” “Clerks,” and “Pi” launched careers that would lead to Academy Awards and some of the most exciting films of the 1990s and 2000s.

These filmmakers’ origins are true to the generational temperament of their peers.

Children born in the ‘60s and ‘70s did not grow up in the affluence and tranquility of the 1950s consensus. Instead they took a backseat as the Consciousness Revolution of the 1960s raged. It was now when the younger Silent and Boomer Generations rose up to challenge the cultural institutions built and maintained by the GI Generation who fought World War II.

The children of this era were forced to become independent, entrepreneurial, and innovative early on. Unlike the Boomers growing up in the ‘50s and the Millennials in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Gen-Xers were not protected. The adults were too busy with the cultural chaos of the ‘60s and ‘70s to be the parents they should have been. Thus, Gen X knew that they had no one to rely on except for themselves. According to William Strauss and Neil Howe in their histories of American generations, this is standard for “Reactive” generations – and equips them for crises come middle-age. George Washington, John Adams, Ulysses Grant, Dwight Eisenhower, and Harry Truman were all part of “Reactive” generations too. (more…)

A common refrain used by progressives against conservatives is a deconstructionist war against the concept that there even is such a thing as the Left: “There’s so much diversity and disagreement in ‘the Left’ that you can’t just call it ‘the Left.’”

This is just a defense mechanism the leftist employs to avoid having to actually examine their movement. Cult members need to have criticism of their cult obscured. It’s the equivalent of “The first rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club…”

There’s a grain of truth here, though. All leftists share core ideas – particularly hatred of conservatives and an infinite faith in big government – but there is a range of thought, not unlike denominations within religions. There are variations in doctrine and tactics between Marxists, Alinskyites, Mother Jones populist progressives, Nation socialists, Daily Kos Democrats, Counterpunch communists, and Dissent social democrats. Grouping them all together under the label “the Left” is no more inaccurate than describing Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, and Lutherans as Christian.

Today, thanks to the extraordinary journalism and research of Ben Shapiro for his must-read book Primetime Propaganda, the focus is on one “church” in particular: the Hollywood Left. (more…)

Join Andrew Breitbart and Melanie Morgan for Troopathon 2011, today from 4pm to Midnight EDT!

Troopathon brings together famous celebrities from radio, television, the movie, musicians, journalists, and more to create a one-of-a-kind event with one purpose – to support our troops on the front lines in the war on terror and honor their service and sacrifice for our nation.  Guests include: Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, Mark Levin, Kelsey Grammer, Former President George H.W. Bush, Gary Sinise, Dennis Miller, Former Ambassador John Bolton, Greg Gutfeld and many more!

Click here to send your care package or call 866-866-6372.

On Thursday June 23rd celebrities from Hollywood, radio, and TV will gather at the Nixon Library for a one of a kind event with a special purpose: to support our troops on the front lines in the war on terror and honor their service and sacrifice for our nation.

Troopathon 2011, as it is called, has the focused goal of sending as many care packages as it can get sponsored during an eight hour event. It its first year (2008) Troopathon brought in over $1.5 million for care packages for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. A $25 donation buys and delivers one care package.

One of the scheduled speakers is war hero and marine Nick Popaditch. Nick (a frequent guest on FOX’s “Red Eye”) was the tank commander and platoon sergeant in Baghdad during the historic fall of the statue of Saddam.

Recently Nick and his wife April joined me to talk about Troopathon and the significance it has for our troops serving in the Middle East. The YouTube video of the interview is below:

Troopathon Facts:

What: Troopathon 2011, the largest care package drive in America in support of our troops.

When: Thursday June 23rd, 4pm-midnight EDT / 1pm-9pm PDT

How You Can Watch: Right here at the Bigs!

How To Donate: Donation page.

Hosts: Andrew Breitbart and Melanie Morgan

Who Will Be Participating?: Several famous celebrities including actors Jon Voight, Gary Sinise and Robert Davi, media personalities Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, SE Cupp, and many others including yours truly. (more…)

Daily Caller:

Conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart has been blasted by many since breaking the story of New York Rep. Anthony Weiner’s erect Twitter picture nearly two weeks ago, but wasn’t offended when Hollywood funnyman Alec Baldwin insulted him via Twitter on Thursday.

Baldwin, a long-time Huffington Post contributor, wrote a column on Thursday titled, “Anthony Weiner Is a Modern Human Being” and went on to slam his critics on Twitter, “A lot, a real lot, of sanctimonious d-bags on HuffPo.” The New York Democrat, who many speculate will run for office next year, knocked Breitbart in a follow-up tweet, “…Andrew Breitbart is the D-Bag-In-Chief.”

In a phone interview with The Daily Caller, Breitbart said he was not hurt by Baldwin’s put-down.

“He’s a comedic savant,” Breitbart told TheDC of the actor. “He is perfect in the realm of comedic acting yet he falls short in all other human endeavors.”

(more…)

So the perfect narrative for any movie is “David vs. Goliath.”

The whistleblower vs. the evil corporation. the tough reporter vs the corrupt politician.

the half-naked talk show host vs. a team of rambunctious houseboys.

But for the narrative to be accepted, David must be a lib, and Goliath an evil Republican.

So when these roles are reversed, in real life, it confuses the crap out of the mainstream media.

Andrew Breitbart was accused of trying to destroy a Congressman, of fabricating a scandal, of hacking social networks.

These accusations were pushed by the left, and a carnal Congressman.

So when Breitbart took the stage at Anthony Weiner’s presser, it may have been one of the greatest, “speaking truth to power” moments ever: Breitbart vindicated himself, and Weiner imploded.

As I tweeted earlier, if Breitbart were a leftist, Sean Penn would die to play him. But since he’s not: I guess it’s Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

Because this battle doesn’t fit one’s assumptions, just ignore it, or mock it.

And, as Jon Stewart says about Weiner, ‘We sometimes forget these people are human’.

Remember him saying that about Palin, Cheney and Bush?

No?

(more…)

I had the pleasure of interviewing the beautiful and talented Janine Turner last night on my radio program, The Stage Right Show. Her enthusiasm and sincerity is infectious and is evident from her very first “howdy” greeting to my listeners.

Her knowledge of the founding fathers, the national debt problems and the current state of the elite media led her to a new career as a radio talk show host.  Her new show, “The Janine Turner Show”, will stream live here at Big Hollywood at 11:00 PM ET.

Enjoy this glimpse of Janine as we discuss her show, her enthusiasm for the work done by Andrew Breitbart and the crew here at Big Hollywood.  I even get her to sing a verse from her favorite Broadway musical,  “1776″:

YouTube

(more…)

On his Wednesday show, Adam Carolla interviewed Andrew Breitbart to discuss Andrew’s new book, Righteous Indignation. Let me assure you, you’ll LOVE this duo. Andrew’s been a guest on Carolla’s show before, but this was hands down the most entertaining so far.

Check out some of the comments from Carolla’s regular listeners – not surprisingly, some aren’t exactly Breitbart fans (which makes it that much more enjoyable for me, at least).

Carolla tackled topics with Andrew on just about everything – from Righteous Indignation to Communism, the Left’s Racist meme, the racket of building permits and greenwashing, and unions, just to name a few. And a whole lotta LA, which, as Andrew illustrates for us, ain’t what is used to be. The two were on such a rant roll over our waning freedoms, Carolla, who has described himself as having libertarian leanings, almost sounded like another grassroots activist. Who knows? Sounds like he may just have a bit of Presidential appeal. Andrew certainly thought so!

“By the way, are you aware that the Republican Party has nobody running for the presidency right now, and if you had put that out there by mistake and people heard that, and that was your spiel, you would have gone up to Donald Trump level, you would have gone up to 17%?”

Oh yeah – Carolla’s also not a big fan of Maxine Waters. Not. At. All. Which reminds me, this audio is NSFW.

(more…)

CNSNews:

In his new book Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World, conservative crusader and new media pioneer Andrew Breitbart has plenty to say about the mainstream media (the Left controls it), Republicans (many are spineless), Democrats (America is the bad guy), academia (Marxist at heart), the Tea Party (real and relevant) and, of course, online “citizen journalism” (it could save America, if not the world).

But it is clear throughout the story of his transformation from liberal slacker to passionate conservative and his unplanned plunge into the new media tidal wave on which he is now riding high, that Breitbart thinks Hollywood and its pop-culture-promoting celebrities have more political clout than a multi-million dollar ad campaign.

“When Lady Gaga tells her flock that she is for a certain political position, she affects people with the wave of a pop-culture wand far greater than 10 million dollars in political advertising can do at the height of political season,” Breitbart told CNSNews.com by telephone from his not-too-far-from-Hollywood home in Brentwood, Calif.

(more…)

Color of Change is a Racial Indignation Machine founded by 9/11 truther and confessed Marxist Van Jones, who’s probably most infamous for being President Obama’s Green Jobs Czar before being forced out of that position after a number of very disturbing revelations about his racially divisive, radical past were broadcast at BreitbartTV and elsewhere. Since then, his race-baiting organization has led a blacklisting crusade against Andrew Breitbart using the community organizing tactic of pressuring any outlet that offers Breitbart a platform into rescinding the invitation. And they’ve had some success. Both ABC News and the Huffington Post folded like cheap card tables and it looks as though MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan might as well have.

Graphic via Steven Clark Bradley

Overall, Color of Change is on a desperate witch hunt to pressure media outlets and sponsors into silencing speech they disapprove of, and this is usually done through the irresponsible hurling of the R-word. Today they’re targeting Donald Trump in the most cynical way imaginable — through what can only be interpreted as some sort of obscene racial loyalty test. The Hollywood Reporter:

Black Stars of ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ Urged to Denounce Donald Trump

An African-American political advocacy group is targeting Celebrity Apprentice star Donald Trump in the aftermath of what many feel are racially tinged political comments made about President Obama.

On Thursday, the organization ColorOfChange launched a Twitter-based campaign to persuade black Celebrity Apprentice cast members Star Jones and Lil Jon to denounce Trump for what the group terms “race-baiting.”

(more…)

Smitten by her blonde curls and still blissfully unaware of how cruel the world could be,  at the age of eleven I called my first crush on the phone fully confident it would end with the beginning of a lifelong romance.  Yes, I had watched many a friend go down in a flaming ball of fail in similar situations, watched them die slow deaths brought on by awkward pauses and fits of panic blanking the mind. But that wasn’t going to happen to me. I had learned from their trauma. There was no way anything could go wrong because I … had written a script that laid out every possible conversational scenario…

If you’re wondering how my pathetic little phone call went,  watch Laura Flanders’ sorry attempt (video here) to confront Andrew Breitbart. Methinks that the moment Flanders learned she would be on national television seated next to Breitbart, visions of liberal glory popped off in her fevered mind as she plotted to publicly demand he apologize to Shirley Sherrod.

Train meet wreck. Ooh, that left a mark. But the truth usually does.

I was in the audience last night (pretty sure that’s Alex Marlow and I clapping all by our lonesome at the 11:05 mark), and while the crowd (who took our solo applause in stride) was obviously on Flanders’ side politically, her humorlessness eventually cost her their sympathy. Throughout the night, she tossed out one wet blanket after another with her joyless left-wing talking points that violated the spirit of the conservation. Eventually, in the “Overtime” segment, Breitbart turned to her and said:

(more…)

If you tuned in to Rush Limbaugh yesterday, you probably caught El Rushbo talking about Andrew’s new book.  Rush reminds us that Andrew, yes, Andrew Breitbart, “was a big lefty until he heard me.”  Me, meaning…Rush Limbaugh.

YouTube

By the way, great news!  Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World has been hovering between #1 and #2 on the Amazon Bestseller’s List in Non-Fiction, and between #10 and #12 Overall. Congratulations, Andrew!!!

Check out Andrew’s list of upcoming appearances and other press coverage.

Ed. Note: Please welcome Lee Stranahan to Big Hollywood. This is actually his second piece for us, but things were a little hectic last time and things got away from me. It’s an honor to have him as part of the BH family and I very much encourage you to seek out his superb work ast the other BIG sites. –JN

No, I still haven’t seen it but the business side of Atlas Shrugged is of interest to me as a filmmaker, political writer and former Objectivist. Plus my friend Andrew Breitbart and my ex-wife Kat are both in movie – in the same scene. (Kat is wearing pink, Breitbart isn’t.)

Some people – like liberal blogger and (former?) friend Bob Cesca – want to say it’s doing very badly. This is from his subtly titled post Nobody Likes Atlas Shrugged.

Did you know there’s a movie version of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged?

No? Well, you’re not alone. The first part of a trilogy (!!!) based on Ayn Rand’s libertarian bible was released in limited theaters on Friday and it currently has an 8 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s really awful.

And the reviews are generally bad. Some are sort of mixed, like this one by Kyle Smith from the New York Post…

Though a bit stiff in the joints and acted by an undistinguished cast amid TV-movie trappings, this low-budget adaptation of Ayn Rand’s novel nevertheless contains a fire and a fury that makes it more compelling than the average mass-produced studio item.

The low-budget / casting angle comes up in many reviews and I certainly raised them myself. But the original reviews of Atlas Shrugged were…well, awful. Really awful. And not all the data is that negative. On IMDB right now it has a kind of okay 6.8 rating. And on Box Office Mojo, it’s got a solid B with 74% giving it an A.

Criticism is all opinion, however. How did it do business wise?

(more…)

UPDATE: To his credit, Mr. Roeper printed a gracious correction today. — 4/19/11

Famous film critic Richard Roeper tee’d off on Andrew Breitbart in his Sun-Times column today.  Here’s the passage:

Here’s ultraconservative activist Andrew Breitbart at a Tea Party rally in Wisconsin last Saturday, with a message for pro-union forces that had shown up:

“The Tea Party has been the most peaceful, law-abiding . . . group in the history of American protest. . . . You have no right to lecture us on civility. You have no right to lecture us on language. . . . Go to hell! No, serious. Go to hell! Go to hell! You’ve been so rude, you’re trying to divide America. . . .”

Right. And telling people to go to hell because you disagree with their politics isn’t divisive at all. That’s an instant classic of hypocrisy and a breathtaking lack of self-awareness right there.

Then again, this is the same Andrew Breitbart who went on Twitter in the hours after Ted Kennedy’s death to call Kennedy a “villain,” a “duplicitous bastard” and a “prick,” so he’s well-qualified to tell others they can’t lecture him about civility.

Roeper walked into two Breitbart traps in less than 200 words.  Can you identify what they are?

The first one is that Breitbart didn’t tell the union protesters to “go to hell” because he disagreed with their politics, but because he considered their tactics reprehensible.  Breitbart explained this in the column he posted following the rally. Simply take a look at the full context of the speech.

Here are some examples of the incivility Breitbart may have had in mind:

Note the attempt to drown out the rally with vuvuzelas and the WalkerHitler sign. (more…)

John Hawkins of RightWing News recently interviewed Andrew Breitbart about his new book.  It’s a fun interview and a great read!

I always find it fascinating when people who used to be liberal say they turned to the right. That happened with you. Can you tell us about it?

Well, it’s a cliché from the left to the right. And it’s usually a story of opportunism in those few cases where the people move from the right to the left. It’s almost embarrassing to go back into my liberal background because it was about as shallow a belief system as humanly possible. It was go-along to get-along social. It was living in Los Angeles, being young, and single, and flowing with the trendy liberal crowd.

When I started to work in Hollywood at a fairly low level delivering scripts around town, listening to AM talk radio, I at first listened to it as a novelty. But I started to have certain things in my life going on such as living in a rent controlled apartment, having listened to the Clarence Thomas hearings, the OJ Simpson trial — I just started to see trends in my personal experiences that ran so contrary to what the media narratives were. At first I was flummoxed by it and then I just started to listen to certain people on the radio who were more clear thinking than the professors that I had in college.

I remember thinking when I was in college that a lot of these known Chomsky-like, verbose high lefty thinkers made absolutely no sense but I thought that was my problem. So when I started to listen to conservative thinkers and to read conservative thinkers, there was a clarity of thought. It wasn’t muddled. It wasn’t confusing. It started to make sense at an intellectual level and tie into the values that my parents gave me when I was a young kid that I diverted from when I was in high school.

So it was basically a reconnecting with everything that my parents attempted to instill in me in my youth. It has made me sleep a lot better at night, being centered and oriented with human nature as opposed to living in a world of self loathing nihilism, trying to undo human nature, and trying to create a path towards an unrealistic utopia.

Now, you were recently banned from the front page of The Huffington Post….

Oh, the tragedy of my life.

(Laughs) It is, it is. Apparently you made some sort of ad hominem attack on Van Jones and The Huffington Post has a policy against that. It must have been in place for at least two minutes or so before you were banned. Can you talk about that?

Read the entire review at RightWing News.

Check out Andrew’s list of upcoming appearances and other press coverage.