—–

The tagline: “In her acceptance speech, the “Black Swan” star suggests that pregnancy trumps a career. She’s wrong.”

Did you hear that, Natlie Portman? What’s-her-face at Salon thinks you’re wrong. No! Williams couldn’t let Portman have her moment in the sun without seizing upon her big, round, potential-laden belly.

thanking her fellow nominees, her parents, the directors who’ve guided her career, and then at last “my beautiful love,” dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied, for giving her “the most important role of my life.” That’d be when he impregnated her, I’d wager.

At the time, the comment jarred me, as it does every time anyone refers to motherhood as the most important thing a woman can possibly do. But the reason why didn’t hit until I saw the ever razor sharp Lizzie Skurnick comment on Twitter today that, “Like, my garbageman could give you your greatest role in life, too, lady.”

Yes, because turning bathroom stall wall-level writing into an article for Salon is exponentially more important than creating and fostering life and raising it for the next eighteen years. (Natalie Portman is a/n [insert pejorative here]!)

But is motherhood really a greater role than being secretary of state or a justice on the Supreme Court? Is reproduction automatically the greatest thing Natalie Portman will do with her life?

Williams’ presuppositions are based on humanism which downgrades the divine and places greater emphasis on man’s desires. Williams misses that her examples of secretary of state or the Supreme Court were created by man, and that man had to be born in order for those positions to be created. She argues that the things created by humans, who required birth for their establishment, are greater than the that which created their originator.

This is indicative of what’s wrong with progressivism. The logic is insipid.

If Williams can point to me an example of a job created by an individual who existed without birth, I’ll be glad to discuss her argument on those terms.

It’s interesting to note that in her acceptance speech, Portman thanked her parents for “giving me my life,” a birth without which the moment would be impossible. But the Oscar is more important than the original circumstance which allowed for Portman to be there, apparently.

And as Portman looked out into the audience at her main competition this year, mother of four Annette Bening, I wonder if she saw an actress who has admitted freely she’s limited her career for her children, who says, “I have all these conditions on which I can work,” but who also cops freely that work “is very important.” “Women aren’t supposed to acknowledge that,” she said in an interview last year, “and pretend that it’s all just fabulous and we love every moment and it’s just a wonder … It is a wonder, but it’s also tiring and really, really hard work and a lot of the time your life is not about you, it’s about what everyone else wants. There’s that selflessness you need to find, and on the other hand, you hire a babysitter and you go out and you do your work.”

Williams hints that the adoration of fickle fans is of greater value than the admiration of one’s own family, and the positive outcomes that affect everyone around said family.

It’s not that motherhood isn’t of huge importance. But there’s a difference between Portman’s conditional acceptance of her lesser triumph last night and Kate Winslet’s simple gratitude toward her “two beautiful children” when she won the Oscar two years ago, or Reese Witherspoon thanking her two children at her Oscar acceptance for “loving and supporting me” — with the caveat that “You should be going to be bed.” Why, at the pinnacle of one’s professional career, would a person feel the need to undercut it by announcing that there’s something else even more important?

It’s good to know that with the prospect of a government shutdown looming, with riots and rumor of war in the Middle East, Williams can devote so many inches to hyperbolic offense at the way in which one woman chose to accept an award. Isn’t feminism all about choice? Oh, but the right kind of choice. If Williams believes that appreciation for children is somehow beneath women then she undercuts the very argument for which she seeks to advocate without realization. It’s comical.

Why, at the pinnacle of one’s career, would you not choose to acknowledge the life within your womb? The role which you will be assuming in just a few months’ time? Williams seems to think that acknowledging one’s joy over impending parenthood undercuts an award, an award that Williams appreciates with a severity that extends far beyond that of a typical fangirl.

Exhibited within Williams’ paragraph are examples of how women chose to celebrate their wins. Choice seems to be a little less than a facade for the left; and how is choice to be encouraged when women are publicly berated for arbitrarily choosing “wrong?”

Any working mom will tell you: They don’t hand out prizes for being a good mother. You just do it, with as much love and heart and soul as you’ve got. If you’re lucky, it doesn’t diminish you as an artist.

If Williams’ is worried about “motherhood” diminishing artistry” it’s a shame. I don’t know a mother, including myself, who doesn’t whole-heartedly love and value their children more than their work. Work doesn’t define a woman, her character, her actions do. If you’re lucky, your children thrive, even if it means you do less movies. If you’re lucky, you’re happy with your choices, as Portman is, without some columnist at Salon deriding you for them. No – if you are lucky you can make your choice freely without someone whose cosmetic advocacy for empowered women is personified in a column which serves little more than backbiting at that free choice. Frankly, I’ve never quite seen someone so out of touch with what it is to be a woman than this author. Attacking a sister in terms of the female sex over her choices is more of an undercut than Portman glorifying her unborn child more than a gold statue which, out of the context of Hollywood fandom, is valueless.

And you don’t have to backhandedly downplay one to be proud of the other.

Who is Mary Elizabeth Williams to deny another woman the freedom of designating, as she chooses, the things of importance in that woman’s life?

The author should take her own advice.

*Slate was initially listed in the headline when Salon was intended. Apologies for the error.

Best Actress:

Will Win: Natalie Portman, “Black Swan”

Should Win: Annette Bening, “The Kids are All Right”

This is the category where I am hoping for the biggest upset. Portman has the momentum but I found both her performance and the film to be disappointing. The plot of “Black Swan” was over-the-top and over-dramatic and the film doesn’t deserve the recognition that it’s been receiving. On the other hand, Annette Bening was in complete control of her character in “The Kids are All Right” and played the part of a woman trying to hold her family together wonderfully. Let’s hope that the Academy agrees and hands Bening her first Oscar.

Best Actor:

Will Win: Colin Firth, “The King’s Speech”

Should Win: James Franco, “127 Hours”

There is no doubt that Firth delivers a strong performance in “The King’s Speech.” However, I prefer Franco’s performance as an athlete with his arm trapped underneath a boulder. In approximately an hour and a half, Franco plays a man facing death who must find a way to save his own life. “127 Hours” would have failed if it wasn’t for Franco’s strong performance and Danny Boyle’s great directing. The two of them made this movie succeed and Franco, who will be co-hosting the Oscars, deserves to walk home with an award for it.

Best Supporting Actress:

Will Win: Melissa Leo, “The Fighter”

Should Win: Melissa Leo, “The Fighter”

“The Fighter” was an actor’s movie and there are two brilliant performances in it. Leo and her onscreen son Christian Bale should both be walking out of the theater with Oscars in hand. In “The Fighter,” Leo shines as an overbearing mother who is trying to manage her son’s boxing career. It’s a wonderful role and Leo excels in it. The Academy Awards often applaud big performances and this year will be no different.

Best Supporting Actor:

Will Win: Christian Bale, “The Fighter”

Should Win: Christian Bale, “The Fighter”

Of the four main acting categories, this one is the easiest bet. As a drug-addicted former boxer trying to reclaim his glory, Bale delivered the second great performance on display in “The Fighter.” In recent years, Bale has been known for playing the straight-laced Bruce Wayne in the Batman movies. In this movie, Bale gets a chance to cut loose and go for broke in a scene-stealing supporting role. Like Heath Ledger did in “The Dark Knight,” Bale overshadows the main character in a great performance that will likely be rewarded.

Best Director:

Will Win: Tom Hooper, “The King’s Speech”

Should Win: Tom Hooper, “The King’s Speech”

Although other critics predict that David Fincher will win best director for his role behind the scenes of “The Social Network,” I think that Hooper has the momentum going for him, especially with his recent DGA award. Personally, I loved “The Social Network” more than “The King’s Speech,” but the directing stood out more in the latter picture. Hooper uses his directing to add a new element to the story. By focusing on open spaces, Hooper brought attention to the importance of the King of England being able to speak across the airwaves to his fellow countrymen and should receive an Oscar for it.

Best Picture:

Will Win: “The King’s Speech”

Should Win: “Toy Story 3”

It’s unfortunate to think that “Toy Story 3” isn’t even really contending in this category. With the assumption that “Toy Story 3” will win in the animated feature film category,  it looks like the voters will ultimately choose something else as best picture. Most of the other contenders in this category (excluding “Black Swan” and “Winter’s Bone”) deserve to be here and “The King’s Speech” is a strong choice for best picture. However, the best picture of the year was undoubtedly “Toy Story 3″ and its producers should be walking away with an award that says so at the end of the night.

Nic (Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) are a lesbian couple in a long-term, loving and committed relationship that from the outside looks perfectly idyllic. The two women live in a nice home in a nice Los Angeles neighborhood and are raising two teenagers of their own. The kids, college-bound Joni and the younger and the somewhat lost Laser, are products of a sperm donor but both kids love their moms and seem as well-adjusted as Wally and Theodore Cleaver.

—–

Beneath the surface, however, cracks are forming in the family’s foundation. Nic is the breadwinner, a physician who drinks too much and likes control over her environment and all those who inhabit it. Jules might be in her forties but she’s still looking for her place in the world, which is a nice way of saying she has trouble holding down a job. These pressures have taken the steam out of the couple’s sex life and undermined their emotional intimacy, and the person who will introduce the element that splits these cracks wide open is Laser. Now that they’re older, both kids are naturally curious as to who their real father is. Especially Laser,  who’s at an age where he’s missing and could use an actual father figure.

Because she’s eighteen, Joni is able to get the information on their donor daddy, Paul (Mark Ruffalo), the shaggy, hippy dippy owner of a organic food restaurant who’s something of a lothario (pretty much the same performance he gave in the vastly superior “You Can Count on Me“).  With his easygoing manner, Paul is a nice relief from the uptight Nic and the neurotic Jules, so the kids understandably take a shine to him and turn a blind eye to his self-centeredness. Though obviously jealous, Nic and Jules do their best to encourage the burgeoning relationship and to make Paul a part of their family. This ends up taking an ugly turn when a sexually frustrated Jules, who’s tired of feeling inferior to the much more successful and centered Nic, engages in heated sexual affair with Paul.

The dreaded Liberal Tell ruins what could’ve been the most suspenseful and interesting part of this story. But because of the rampant political correctness that stifles creativity in Hollywood, because we know the lockstep way this industry thinks, there’s never any doubt that Jules and Paul will break up. They must. A gay person finding real happiness in a straight relationship is not an idea the Thought Police will even allow us to consider these days. So with the outcome inevitable, you’re left to sit through all the soap opera machinations that fill up the time before you arrive at the only conclusion the one-note politics of present-day Hollywood will allow.  

What really kills the story, though, are the TV trappings. Even the cinematography fails here. There are actual television shows that don’t look as televisiony as this film. Furthermore, too many of the jokes not only fall flat, but fall flat in that over-the-top, trying-too-hard sit-comish way. Notably, the one element that rises above all of this is Annette Bening. A formidable actress with real talent, she delivers some terrific moments, including a memorably heartbreaking one. 

She deserved a better movie and so did we.

Why it’s a left-wing film

Sam Mendes’ “American Beauty” opens high above a beautiful American suburb as though the idea is to watch the first-time director pick from at random any perfect-looking American family living in any perfect-looking American home located on any perfect-looking American street in order to make the case that the price of buying into the stifling, conformist American Dream is dysfunction, desperation, and depression.

Furthermore, the only sin in this story is hypocrisy and we know this because it’s only hypocrites who suffer and who are unhappy; those fools who bought into the lie that hard work, sexual restraint, military duty, love of country, status, money, and manicured lawns mean something. On the other hand, it’s those who openly flaunt the norms of society who have been granted the reward of inner peace. This includes Jim and Jim, the openly gay couple who live down the block and Ricky Fitts, the dope-smoking, drug dealing, emo vegetarian able to see through all the suburban phoniness and experience the real beauty available to anyone with the courage to remove the blinders; the elegance of a plastic bag blowing in the wind or the smile of contentment on the face of a man who’s just had his brains blown out.

Because the American Dream is — like the Matrix — the enemy and antagonist of our story, a hero is required to show the rest of us the way out, a Neo who will bravely struggle against all the Agent Smiths dispatched from the Matrix (moral standards, corporate America, status-driven wives, and ultimately guns owned by the insecure) to break free from its insidious hold. Enter Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), a husband, father and cubicle drone who lives in nothing less than a red, white and blue McMansion and, like the proverbial frog in boiling water, has no idea when he finally surrendered to The Depression or became the kind of man whose day is all downhill after his morning masturbatory session.

But something’s happening to Lester, something dangerous to the Matrix American Dream.

Lester is becoming self aware.

His masturbation is more than just an act of sexual release, it’s also a form of secret rebellion against the hollow promise of all the American beauty he’s accumulated over the years, the “stuff” that’s sedated his ability to feel joy.

Game on.

“American Beauty” is a fascinating and revealing exploration through the empty, dark soul of the left, those who confuse the pursuit of pleasure with happiness and the releasing of your inner-narcissist with fulfillment. Though they remain the most conformist, lock-steppers of all, because Leftists are so unhappy and too arrogant to wake up to the fact that they’re the source of their own unhappiness, the left refuses to believe that those of us who disagree with them, those of us who try to live our lives morally and embrace the American dream, aren’t suffering from that hoary cliché known as “quiet desperation.”

Without the patronizing mantra of “quiet desperation,” what does the left have? Nothing. Only the realization that their own conformity and inability to feel and express joy is their own fault and not someone else’s. Specifically not the fault of an American way of life that for two hundred years has disproved and laughed in the face of the left’s arrogant belief in their own superiority.  

Oh, and we’re all gay.

Why it’s a great film

Like John Wayne’s “The High and the Mighty” — the granddaddy of airline disaster films — thanks to countless copycats and spoofs, what wasn’t clichéd at the time of “American Beauty’s” release is now, and sometimes hilariously so. Though not the first unfair attempt to deconstruct suburban American life into something as dysfunctional and depraved as the Hollywood Hills really are, “American Beauty” did re-energize the genre, which in turn makes the best picture Oscar winner look less dynamic and even more pretentious than the first time we saw it.  

Nothing, however, will ever diminish Spacey’s knock-out performance as a man struggling out from under a pile of unfulfilled dreams, a loveless marriage and a thankless job, as he embarks upon one audacious and audaciously entertaining midlife crisis. The vicarious thrill of watching Lester blackmail his employer, rebel against his brittle realtor wife Carolyn (an amazing Annette Bening), and attempt to relive the best years of his life as a pot-smoking teenager with a red Camaro and a no-stress job flipping burgers is unforgettable thanks to the perfect actor being chosen to bring to life a superbly written character. In the mouth of one Kevin Spacey (who won a no-brainer Oscar), Lester’s Burnham’s particular brand of passive-aggressive sarcasm becomes a form of sublime poetry where in scene after memorable scene he serves up enough quotable dialogue for ten films.

Unlike Ricky Fitts, Lester is also a deceptively moral character, a fact that I think gets lost in all the cultural criticism the film receives. Yes, Lester’s sexual obsession with his daughter’s underage cheerleader friend Angela (Mena Suvari) is central to the overall plot and played for both comedy and as part of the vicarious thrill. And yes, that’s sleazy. But don’t forget that when Lester’s about to get what he wants, he chooses not to go through with it. When his conquest is complete and Angela is naked, willing, and ripe for the taking, Lester comes to his senses after she confesses that this will be her first time. Her words snap him out of the fantasy and allow him to see her for the young, insecure, and vulnerable girl she really is. Immediately, he covers her up and even makes her a sandwich. He assumes the proper role as the grown up who, despite his own desires, protects her from herself.

It’s also at this moment when Lester finally figures out that the final piece to the puzzle of his happiness can only be found in his wife and daughter. Unfortunately (for him, us, and the movie), Lester’s murdered by the homophobic, misogynistic, United States Marine who’s really a repressed homosexual before he can make things right. Personally, I would’ve loved to have seen an uplifting third act where Lester fixes his family, but the film’s agenda wouldn’t allow for that. However, the fact that Lester does redeem himself is a moment of real grace that thankfully allows us to remain sympathetic to a truly wonderful character.

Though (as I mentioned above) pretentious in places, Alan Ball’s Oscar- winning script is strikingly elegant and beautiful in spots and while I don’t agree with what it ultimately has to say, at least it’s never SAID OUT LOUD. Instead, the message is crafted into a theme that’s transmitted through believable characters, exceptional dialogue, and a compelling story. Gorgeously photographed by the legendary Conrad L. Hall (who won his second of three Oscars), this is another film with too many great scenes to count, including an early one involving Carolyn’s attempt to sell a house that should’ve won Bening the Oscar (she lost to Hilary Swank’s performance in “Boys Don’t Cry”).

But everything comes back to watching Spacey’s Lester wail on his pecs, stick it to his employer, buy that red Camaro, and pursue the very human goal of just wanting to look good naked.

For all his flaws, Lester Burnham really does rule. 

What’s not on the list:

Let’s add two films where the creators of “American Beauty” crashed and burned upon their return to the same well.

With the godawful “Revolutionary Road” director Sam Mendes hoped to find Oscar gold in American Suburbia once again, this time with the laughably melodramatic tale of a young couple crushed by the American dream during those dreaded ’50s. Kate Winslet (Mendes’ wife at the time) gives an embarrassingly bad performance, the requisite Crazy Guy Character has all the insight and right answers, and narcissism is once again portrayed as a value (even with young children involved). The only saving grace is DiCaprio, in the first performance he’s ever given that I found real, adult, and impressive.

Screenwriter Alan Ball went one better with “Towelhead,” an amoral piece of anti-American kiddie porn where you get to watch a barely 18 year-old actress who looks the age of her character, 13, masturbate to photos of naked women and inhabit a world where she’s sexually abused by all kinds of men, including an American Soldier who outright rapes her. But that’s okay because the healthy result of all this is that she grow into a sexually liberated woman.

You see, the son, Laser, wants to find out who the father is, but can’t because he’s only 15. So, he pleads with his 18-year old sister, Joni (named after Joni Mitchell; more on that later), to help him out. She resists at first, but eventually relents. Without spoiling anything, I’ll only say that the remainder of the movie involves all the twists and turns that any good movie uses to build the tension which eventually leads to a climax that leaves the audience breathless and the characters stocked up with new insights that ensure they will live richer and more honest lives.  Whew! In other words, your basic, garden variety Hollywood relationship movie;  well written, acted, and, photographed.

But, as Wilson Pickett once said: “Don’t let the green grass fool ya!” This is a smartly made and subtle contribution to the debate raging throughout the country that concerns gay marriage, civil unions, and gay rights in general. The director,  Lisa Cholodenko, is no rookie when making movies about same-sex relationships, and it shows in Kids. Given the chance at making a film with Hollywood heavies like Moore and Bening, most directors would wield a two-by-four instead of  Cholodenko’s scalpel. First and foremost, she shows when most would merely tell.

Consider the details of the film, which conservatives could rightly consider red herrings. She sets the film, not in San Francisco, but in a middle class neighborhood of Los Angeles. Moore plays the follow-your-heart, let-it-go, everything-happens-for-a-reason “housewife” who has stayed at home to raise the children, while Bening brings home the bacon as an overworked, underappreciated obstetrician. But the good doctor spouts just enough cute psychobabble to remind us that she’s had her share of Southern California therapy sessions, which no doubt has led to the longevity of their plainly normal relationship (Think Tea Leoni in Spanglish). “It doesn’t work without work”, they emote. Isn’t that what we all tell our  kids?

To make the film’s otherwise controversial central theme as palatable as possible, Cholodenko takes a lesson from Stanley Kramer, the legendary director who made Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, the 1967 film that examined the then-equally as controversial topic of interracial marriage.  But Kramer, no slouch himself at understatement, used popular actors (Tracy and Hepburn)  to help  the medicine go down, and made Sidney Poiter’s black suitor a soft spoken, articulate medical doctor who had overcome a difficult childhood start. In Kids, Ruffalo’s father/donor is a college dropout who runs an organic restaurant, (aww…) listens to Joni Mitchell (bam!), and rides a carbon-friendly motorcycle (oh, yeah, baby).  I mean, times have clearly changed, but who’s not going to fall for  that set up?

So there you are, a center-right,  middle class Joe struggling with mortgages, dirty dishes, divisions of labor, and kids dealing with minor change-of-life stuff, plunked down right in the middle of an Ozzie and Harriet scenario that looks just like your house.  Except for one thing: Ozzie has a different chromosomal arrangement, and he’s missing some significant danglage (see what I did there?). And besides that, drum roll, please: The kids are all right! And, even better, if you buy into the director’s understated point of view, so are you! As well as  your neighborhood, America, and everything else. You see (so the movie implies), same-sex parenting has no different affect on child development than heterosexual couplings. So let’s change those antiquated laws disallowing such things, and move on to  a different and better future. It’s easy, see?

At least that’s what the gay-lesbian community thinks. And you can too, if you want. But, before you throw down your ten bucks for a ticket and five hundred dollars for your coke and popcorn, you need to know that you will be under the spell of a very artful director whose point of view is probably different than yours,  but hidden so well that you might not know you’re being drawn into it. Like lots of other good  movies, as a matter of fact.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

Jules and Paul can't resist each other

In this “The Kids are All Right,” Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) are a Hollywood stereotype lesbian married couple with two teenage children (Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson) who are basically getting along just fine until their kids contact Paul (Mark Ruffalo), their biological father, whose anonymously donated sperm impregnated each of their parents. As the children bond with Paul and his influence grows, Nic, the “husband” in the union takes offense: “I need your advice about child rearing about as much as I need a stiff dick up my ass!” Jules, the “wife,” does need something, however, and Ruffalo and Moore are soon engaged in very sweaty hetero screen sex.

I won’t spoil the ending.

According to the film’s director and co-writer, Lisa Cholodenko, during the Q&A session following a special Screen Actors Guild showing, the story mirrors her own life of artificial inseminated parenthood and shows that lesbian parents are no different from heterosexual ones. But as is the case with anything having to do with Hollywood, there’s way more going on here than may meet the eye. This film is essentially selling a lite version of the leftist utopian political fantasy of not needing men and rejecting male patriarchy.

And what does a hetero guy in Hollywood know about any of that? Please allow a brief digression to establish bona fides.

Del Martin, founder of the modern lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender–rights movement, was my great aunt. It was she and her life partner, Phyllis Lyon, who received California’s much publicized first same sex marriage license in San Francisco.

Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin

That outed, I will note that lesbianism, at least according to my aunt and many other other leaders who defined the movement, is a leftist political statement of female bonding against hunter-gatherer maleness that does not necessarily have anything to do with sex. In my aunt’s own words, a lesbian is “a woman whose primary erotic, psychological, emotional and social interest is in a member of her own sex, even though that interest may not be overtly expressed [sexually].”

That’s what comes through in Moore’s Jules character since she so hungrily embraces heterosexual sex, the thought of which apparently disgusts her parther, Nic. Pure sex aside,  lesbian feminists have always told me that the object of women’s politicized sexual links is to overthrow the patriarchal order and replace it with a feminist culture. “Just as sexism is the source of all our other oppressions, maleness is the source of sexism,” according to a statement from the Dyke Collective. Implicit in that rant is a rejection of males as fathers that provide anything positive to the raising of children.

Can that be true?

A study published in the Journal of Pediatrics found “… children in lesbian homes scored higher than kids in straight families on some psychological measures of self-esteem and confidence, did better academically and were less likely to have behavioral problems, such as rule breaking and aggression.”

Maybe the kids are all right.

But critics say that considering this research was “funded by several lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender advocacy groups, such as the Gill Foundation and the Lesbian Health Fund from the Gay Lesbian Medical Association“  plus the obvious fact that the political left dominates all media, even the scientific media, whatta ya ’spect?

So, maybe the kids aren’t all right.

The film’s telling scenes for me on this issue of a father’s worth involved Paul’s father-son male bonding while shooting basketball hoops, his father to daughter talks and especially the obvious emotional connection when she placed her arms around dad during a motorcycle ride. I didn’t get a chance to ask director Cholodenko if she intended to show the very intangible stuff that women cannot provide, especially for boys. I surely doubt she did,  because what I see being propagandized in this storyline’s big picture is right in line with a passage in the book “Raising Boys Without Men,” by Cornell University psychology professor Peggy Drexler. Its title states:

“[M]averick moms are creating the next generation of exceptional men”  and notes that, whether we like it or not,  “mothering singly and in pairs has not only entered the popular culture and become acceptable; it also is now considered chic.”

Perhaps the fatherless hands that rock the cradle may yet rule the world.

Sixteen of the top 20 box office earners have either a G or PG rating which should be a clue that R rated films ( “Titanic” being the exception) don’t do as well yet studios continue to add gratuitous irrelevant sex scenes that ruin the film. Why? It certainly can’t be artistic license because the principal reaction to them is usually-‘Ew!!! Why did they do that?” 

Movie-going statistics have dropped significantly among older adults and that’s understandable since most fare today cater to hormonal adolescents without a clue as to the true appeal of sensual art. Yet senior citizens today are former film buffs who would relish worthy theatrical offerings but their treks back to the wide screen lonely leave them disappointed. 

A few years ago I went with an elderly friend to see, “Love Actually,” because we’re both great fans of Alan Rickman. The film has various vignettes of romantic couples and their curious experiences pursuing the love game. One of these couples happens to be two individuals acting in a porn movie and although the intent was to inject irony in the sex scenes showing the relative naïveté of the participants as they try to hook up, it failed miserably. My friend later said that particular graphic display spoiled the otherwise charming film which she no longer would add to her DVD collection when it came out. 

Who decides to add these charm-busters to films? What is it about major appliances like washing machines that attract sexual activity? In the film, “Little Children,” Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson drop their drawers to perform sexual gymnastics in the laundry room and several other inappropriate venues. “ Annette Bening has her head banged against a motel headboard while her adulterous lover humps her energetically in the Oscar winner “American Beauty.” Did we have to see Viggo Mortensen’s bare butt as he had sex with his wife on the stairs ( note: stairs are a very uncomfortable place to indulge in this activity) in “ A History of Violence?” Of course not and every film would have generated better box office without these unnecessary insertions — pardon the double entendre. 

I could blame corrupt producers and directors but none of these quality-busting scenes would be possible without the cooperation of the actors and actresses involved. I’m continually flabbergasted that these so-called artists actually consider it of thespian merit to simulate raw sex before the eye of the camera. In a way, Eight Avenue peep shows are more candid about their industry. 

Madonna was said to be embarrassed about old nude photographs that might impede her adoption of  the Malawi child David. Her daughter Lourdes is rumored to be more conservative than her Mom. Big surprise that! 

I wonder what the children of Julianne Moore will think of her naked lap dance in “Boogie Nights” when they’re old enough to see the film.

Helen Mirren has managed to eclipse her “Caligula” and other nude, lascivious roles with an Oscar win for “The Queen,” in which she appeared fully clothed but she’s British so she’s can carry that off somewhat. 

As a teen and a young woman, I’d buy all the movie mags with their color pictures of beautiful people who could honestly be called STARS. Now I find it difficult to name one female star today who doesn’t dress or act like a skank. Sorry. I realize it’s a sign of the times but that doesn’t mean I can’t prefer a time when class was what determined stardom. 

When I look at today’s crop of movie denizens, every single one pales in comparison to our former screen legends. There is no one as gorgeous or as talented as the late Paul Newman. Ava Gardner may have had a checkered love life but her on-screen image is still a paean to her beauty and acting ability not her sexual proclivities. 

Supermarket tabloids used to be my guilty pleasure but for the past few years, I can’t drum up interest in any of the figures that the paparazzi chase down. The word “star” is applied to reality TV people who fail to excite my curiosity. I don’t care who’s sleeping with whom nor do I give a whit about what any of them have to say. 

Erotica is now dead in cinema and has been replaced by pornography. I’m trying hard to imagine which of today’s Hollywood elite could produce the same sexual heat that a long gone Maureen O’Sullivan and Johnny Weismuller managed to generate in our own minds. I’ve drawn a blank. Any suggestions?

“The mainstream Hollywood crowd, an apologist group that enjoys traveling to Taliban-run countries such as Iran spreading their holier-than-thou “cultural understanding” of rogue regimes, has been effectively censored by Moslem clerics. Filmmaker Roland Emmerich chose not to blow up the Kaaba at Mecca in his film 2012 for fear of a fatwa (death sentence issued by Moslem clerics) being placed on his head.

“Yet, in 2005, actor Sean Penn went to cover a so-called Islamic Republic “election” wanting Americans to visit Iran and become familiar with its culture. In March 2009, director Phil Alden Robinson found that Iranians were not very different; and actress Annette Bening (surely with a headscarf given Iran’s brutal enforcement of hijab) hoped her trip to Iran would jump start a bridge between the U.S. and the mullahs in Tehran.

“These frivolous, superficial entertainers turned international political experts, who cause socio-political damages beyond the limits of this article for their misguided trips to imprisoned societies, are now censored in their own free societies by the mere thought of being personally harmed. Ironically, Emmerich’s admission may actually teach Americans about mullahcracy compliments of Hollywood.”

Read the full article here.

Returning once again to the land beneath the Big Hollywood sign for a most important poll question. “The Stoning of Soraya M.” has received powerful rave reviews across the political spectrum. The buzz is hot. From the leftie pundits at HuffPo (who only seem to be discovering the true human rights horrorshow nature of that regime now, most curious) to the Righties at Big Hollywood and elsewhere, SORAYA M. is a must-see movie that will linger with you long after you’ve left the theater.

Strangely enough, Amnesty lnternational’s Elise Auerbach doesn’t like it. Because stonings in Iran are so rare, don’t you know. No suspension of disbelief for Ms. Elsie. I’m sorry, what’s her job again? Oh yeah, Iran Specialist for Amnesty International. Go figure. Personally, I happen to think one stoning is one too many. And it wasn’t the only one, not by a country mile! But that’s just me. I’m not an Iran specialist for AI. Like, say, Ms. Auerbach. Nice work if you can get it, huh, Ms. Elsie?

By the way, did the acronym AI in the context of Ms. Elsie’s employer and thumbs-down review of Soraya M. remind anyone else of Artificial Intelligence? But I digress. To be sure, there are a number of disturbing productions from Thugocracy Studios that have lingered with me for a very long time now. A young woman’s brutal and heart-wrenching Islamic clothing violation arrest I posted last May, which has generated 6000 hits since. The gay executions. The 140 children on Death Row.

The mass hangings. The stonings and executions of a lot more women and young girls than just Soraya M. Here’s a thugocracy twofer, sisters Zoreh and Azar Kabiri, each charged with adultery, already hit with 99 lashes and now awaiting the rock-throwers. Do their husbands want new wives too, like Soraya’s? Who needs a messy divorce when a good clean stoning works just as well? Nice law if you can get it, if you’re a philandering, misogynist God-fearing Islamist, and the fascist women-hating judges give your word as a man twice that of a woman’s in court.

If you want the full bloody extremist Third Reich tour of Iran, here it is. Here’s the regime’s gay-friendly extermination program. Boys In The Band it ain’t. Point being, will SORAYA M. make the AMPAS nominee list next January, even in its now-extended format of ten candidates for Best Picture? Or, will the Academy bury it as a dirty reminder of their collective shame this past March?

First, let us admit that no politics takes place during The Academy’s selection process. FISH HOOK! You people are just too easy. As for me, I’m torn. See, the Academy, particularly the Nine Stooges of Team Oscar, bravely commanded by Academy Prez and Stooge-In-Chief Sid Ganis, may find it embarrassing to rave about a powerful film on a brutal stoning in Iran after producing TEA WITH AHMADINEJAD and praising the regime’s boffo womens rights record, as thugocracy stooge Annette Bening did. Very unfavorable contrast with Soraya M.

Then again, by rallying to the Forces of Good and whitewashing that abysmal affair in now-chaotic Iran, as they’ve already attempted to with their lame website promo The Road To Isfahan (seen the real Road To Isfahan lately? It ain’t no Bob and Bing movie, that’s for goddamn sure!), they can once again proudly don the mantle of human rights champs, the one they so misplaced for their last tea and finger cookies soiree to the gay-slaughtering and women-stoning Islamist butchers of Iran.

So whattaya think, people? Does “The Stoning of Soraya M.” get showered with Oscar praise, and perhaps even Oscar gold, as Academy absolution of their egregious PR sins in Tehran? Or, do the King-Of-Hearts on Wilshire Boulevard put SORAYA M. in the closet, with all the 4000-plus exterminated Iranian gays? You know, the ones they so forgot about to play the roles of Hollywood Diplomats at the Ahmie and Khamie Punking Extravaganza? Or is it just too powerful a film for even the Academy to sweep under the rug as an Inconvenient Truth?

Cast your vote in the Comments section. Assorted woolgathering on the subject will also be welcome. I leave it to you fine folks at Big Hollywood to ward off the trolls. I’ll be too busy working on my Oscar-quality script honoring and paying homage to no less than Oscar himself.

That is not a punchline, either. Truth is stranger than fiction. Started it last year, when I still adored the Academy and all its members beyond measure. So shall it end, in the spirit of that love. I don’t let politics poison my scripts. I guess I now know why they call it La La Land. You really do have to exist in a state of unreality to get anything worthwhile done. Speaking of states of unreality, feel free to cast your own vote here with the Asylum of Motion Picture Airheads and Stooges.

Lastly, the WaPo, and others of the Leftie LibDem persuasion like President Obama, say any help to the people of Iran, or even siding with them, is a bad move. That smells like moral cowardice to me. Such naive and wishy-washy idealists have stood idly by from King George to Adolf Hitler. I personally believe in calling freedom-crushing, blood-drinking, power-grabbing dictators for what they are. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, Let Iran Be Iran.

Siding with the Iranian people, who are unimaginably oppressed and trying to shake off their Gestapo-like shackles can’t be bad. Besides, should they win this war on ruthless clerical fascism, which has nothing to do with Allah, whose side do you want them remembering YOU being on?

Playing nice never works with the Hitlers of this world. The regime is already blaming us for interfering anyway. Always have. Makes it easy to label people like students and dissenters as Imperialist and Zionist traitors and execute them. Ever read 1984? May as well commit the crime. And it’s not like they’ve been holding Death to America rallies for thirty years to show their affection.

Let’s show some of that love back. I would also add to that love of a free Iran any requests by a future Iranian People’s Resistance, if the bloodshed of innocents mounts to sickening proportions (which it most likely will), to include smuggling arms to them from Afghanistan and Iraq. Let the regime deal with the kind of Islamic-driven insurgency they’ve been fueling in both countries, not to mention Gaza and Lebanon. Sorry, people. I’m siding with the victims here in full measure, not the perpetrators.

I always side with the Resistance against Hitler. I also believe Congress, The White House and the State Department should be made aware of that sentiment as well. Oh, and if you do contact the White House, please have them correct the President in addressing Khamenei. It’s Supreme ASSWIPE. Do we support Hope and Change in Iran? Or do we play nice, so Ahmie can slaughter all the rounded-up protesters with bloodthirsty impunity, then tell us to fuck off as he finishes his shady basement nuclear project, as he’s always done to the UN, the IAEA and every other nation on earth?

As for me, I say DEATH TO THE DICTATOR! FREE IRAN! Good Night and Good Luck, especially to the poor innocent Iranians suffering unimaginably at the hands of Ahmie and Khamie’s Islamist Gestapo goons even as we speak. It’s the Basiji, Hamas and Hezbollah goons that deserve to die. I’ll gladly help with that any way I can. So should we all. Anything less would be uncivilized. Let’s be the Iranian people’s Right Guard, and help eliminate the foul stench of fascism once and for all.

It’s really stinking up the joint, isn’t it? Lastly, I’d like you all to send a shout-out to the stunningly beautiful and incredibly humorous (she thinks I’m funny) Hannah Irani, aka LuvManatee, at her YouTube and Twitter pages. She is an Iranian-American medical student in LA who is spending a lot of her time live-blogging Iran. Tell her a joke to cheer her up, let her know you’re with her and the Iranian people all the way, and ask her how you can help.

I must say, during these tumultuous times, I have truly found out just how incredibly gorgeous Iranian women are. Persian Princesses all. Women that beautiful have to be saved. Just think of the bennies. A lot of hot bennies for you gays, too

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: Here are some protesters in Iran torching the gas lines to a basiji building and blowing it up. It’s at 0:05 on the far right of the screen. Five Islamist Gestapo basiji goons dead, many injured.  It’s the feel-good movie of the summer. Just listen to those cheers! Somebody give that cameraman an Oscar, LOL! You know, I generally don’t like bloodshed. But only if it’s the wrong blood being spilled. Other than that, the Iranian Resistance has carte blanche.

FREE IRAN! DEATH TO THE DICTATOR! Worth a second shout-out, yes? See you at the Oscars!

And let me make this perfectly clear, even if they do say Jehovah!

Sentence must be read before being carried out. And unlike Soraya M., the board members of the Asylum of Motion Picture Airheads and Stooges will deserve every rock that’s thrown their way. I also believe that, in light of events in Iran today, the following commentary will stand out in much starker prominence than it did when I first started reporting on them in early March, when Team Oscar first set off for the Unfriendly Skies of Islamist Iran.

The backstory. In late February, the decision by AMPAS (as defined above) to send the Nine Stooges to the fascist hostage-taking, women-stoning, gay-exterminating Islamic Republic of Iran (at that time, things may be changing) set me off hotter than a Kim Jong Il nuke. Five days after the gay rights infomercial Oscars, no less! My gay rights heroes.

Somebody give ‘em an Oscar! For what it’s worth nowadays. Sean Penn getting an Oscar for playing a gay rights hero with his sorry track record on the subject is like Yasser Arafat, Jimmy Carter and Al Gore getting Nobel Prizes. They just ain’t worth what they used to be these days.

But I digress. On With The Show Biz Trial.

For ten days and uncounted humiliating punkings in early March, Team Oscar was a national embarrassment and a disgrace to this country and people, and an affront to the innocent Iranians suffering under a yoke of oppression not seen since Hitler’s Third Reich. A yoke which they are desperately and bravely fighting and even dying to cast off even as we speak.

And now, despite all that transpired back then, and all that is happening now in Iran, AMPAS is looking to whitewash the whole affair as a Bob Hope and Bing Crosby Road trip! Not on my watch! Fat fucking chance! Can you imagine how Iranian gays felt, watching the same people who facilitated tearful speeches on “gay rights for everyone” socializing and galivanting around town with the very monsters who were hunting them down, torturing and killing them?

If that alone isn’t a stoning offense, then nothing is.

Some may consider my charges harsh, even unreasonably so. So be it. Brutal Injustice and rank hypocrisy bring out the Zarqawi in me. But I will present to you, Dear Hollywood non-Academy Readers and Fine Fellow Americans everywhere, the foul evidence at hand in toto.

When charges have been read, and sentence is to be passed, I will leave it to the rest of you stoners as to which direction your rocks should fly. But first, to put the matter into Supreme Court-like perspective, look at the precedent law upon which I base my charges and my case.

THE WORLD v. SOUTH AFRICA

In 1985, during the oppressive Apartheid era of South Africa’s all-white fascist regime, actors, artists, producers and many fine musicians like Little Stevie van Zandt and The Boss, Bruce Springsteen, united to make a statement against that racist government, which held Nelson Mandela behind bars unjustly for 29 years, and murdered noted anti-apartheid activist Steven Biko while in police custody. That murder was memorialized in the Peter Gabriel song of the same name.

In conjunction with worldwide sanctions and divestment of business from South Africa at the time, the musical statement made by that group of most talented artists, better know as Artists United Against Apartheid, was immortalized in the song Sun City, which became a smash hit worldwide. We all know the rest of the story. The white South African government eventually folded, and Nelson Mandela was freed and then elected to the presidency.

What were South Africa’s crimes besides just Mandela’s imprisonment and Biko’s murder? Officially enforced racial segregation and subjugation, violent repression and the banning of opposition political parties. Certainly more than enough justification for international outrage, and both official and unofficial sanctions.

Yet compared to the current theocratic Hitlerite thugocracy running the Islamic Republic of Iran, which the world is also widely sanctioning today, South Africa’s Apartheid government was operating an island paradise fit for Chinese Uighurs. In Iran, political empowerment is nonexistent, and has been since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

All the power is in the hands of Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei and the Mad Mullah Guardian Council. Reform was impossible. Any measure passed by Iran’s Parliament, the Majlis, deemed ‘un-Islamic’ by the Mad Mullahs could be overturned on review. The Church is the State in Iran. Like a nationwide Westboro Baptist Church from Hell. Only worse. Much worse.

Examples. Children are routinely executed, gays are hunted down, tortured and brutally exterminated, and women and young girls are stoned and hanged, even for the crime of being raped. Until international outrage interceded, as happened vis-a-vis Roxana Saberi, seventeen-year-old Nazanin Fatehi was awaiting a death sentence for the crime of stabbing and killing one of the three God-fearing Islamists who attempted to rape her and her niece in a West Tehran park.

Here is a 27-minute documentary that re-enacts the attempted rape and the unbelievably misogynist injustice which followed. Had the world not screamed so loud in outrage, Nazanin would have suffered the same fate as that of twenty-year-old Delara Derabi, who was hanged by the Islamic Republic only six weeks ago. Iran has held mass hangings as recently as May 14th. And given the official death penalty announcement for Mousavi protesters, many more may follow depending on the outcome of current events.

This doesn’t even take into account the fact that many in Iran’s terror-sponsoring Islamist extremist leadership, including ‘moderate’ Hashemi Rafsanjani and recent presidential candidate Mohsen Rezai, former head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and former ‘diplomat’ to Argentina, are wanted by Interpol for their involvement in the worst terror attacks in Argentina’s history back in 1994. An Interpol warrant was issued for Rezai as recently as May 22nd.

Here is a piece I wrote back in early March, branding the regime as today’s Third Reich. Look at all the horrific and barbaric evidence of crimes against humanity committed both at home and abroad, and you tell me if I’m overstating the case. Keep also in mind that Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists are now in the streets of Iran, beating and killing the same Iranians who have supported and patronized the Islamist groups for decades.

Taking time out from killing innocent Jews to killing innocent Iranians. No surprise there, since the regime already kills its own people on an assembly line basis. Even bloggers. Given all this brutal evidence of the Iranian thugocracy’s bloody track record which spans the globe, I ask you, Dear Readers of jurisprudence and humble advocates of human rights for all, how was the Islamic Republic of Iran worthy of cultural diplomatic exchange, and South Africa not?

They should be forming Artists United Against Insanity to oppose Iran’s theocratic thugocracy, not flying over for tea, fingers cookies, and film seminars! Disgraceful!

Charges as follows. Bear with me. It’s a longer list than you think.

1. THE FIRST PUNKING OF FAR TOO MANY

Even though AMPAS was promised no politics would be involved in the visit, Team Hollywood was no sooner off the tarmac at Khomeini Airport in Tehran than they were totally punked by the best punks in the world, with harsh demands for apologies and submission by Iranian leaders over the films 300 and The Wrestler, or they wouldn’t get to meet their Iranian film buds. Curiously, Team Oscar was allowed to meet with their Iranian counterparts shortly thereafter. My question to the Academy is this: did they apologize or not?

Iif you recall, what so outraged Iranian government stooges over The Wrestler was Mickey Rourke breaking an Iranian flag and tossing it into the crowd. Deliciously ironic, considering the desecration of our flag is a national sport with the regime. There was also a declaration by Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hassan Qashqavi, that thirty films currently in production in Hollywood were ‘anti-Iranian.’

Civilized governments don’t act like that. Yet I broke the punking story in America to Drudge and Nikki Finke because I knew something like that was going to happen. I was looking for it. Hell, the regime has been punking us for thirty years! Ahmadinejad had even said Hollywood was devoid of all culture and art. Something’s Gotta Give. I must admit, however, that maybe Ahmie was onto something with that comment. Never thought I’d agree with anything the Little Hitler said.

Academy politics makes strange bedfellows, I reckon.

That infamous Punking Heard ‘Round the World should have proved to all concerned that President Obama’s attempt at diplomacy through Team Oscar was a horrendous failure, as all other efforts since have been. Like the Khamenei-led Death to America rallies in response to Obama’s peace video. Yet Team Oscar suffered that humiliation and degradation only to suffer many more. And the rest of us, since Team Oscar represented us over there as a nation as well.

Some were even worse, if you can believe it. In short, if somebody wrote a script like this, no one would ever believe it. But I already read the book. Been reading it since 1979.

2. TEAM OSCAR’S STOOGES TRAIN IRAN’S PROPAGANDA STOOGES

Iran ‘film industry’ experts, many of whom Stooge Team Oscar no doubt gave seminars to, gave their own previous film seminars on Iran TV on the Ziono-Hollywoodist conspirators for making such anti-Iranian celluloid slanders as Harry Potter, Chicken Run and Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. And let’s not forget the Jew Disney’s cartoon conspiracy, Tom and Jerry. Also deliciously ironic, considering Iran exports child martyrdom cartoons across the Middle East, a business so thriving the BBC called it, in blackly comic Joker-like fashion, ‘booming.’

I can understand the cultural aspect Team Hollywood pursued. I even respect it. But in my opinion, given the circumstances, it was the equivalent of sending a cultural team to Hitler’s Berlin during the Holocaust. The real great Iranian filmmakers were all heel-ground. The ones who aren’t languish in Evin prison or are awaiting kangaroo court religious tribunals, like Iranian-American Esha Momeni, for the celluloid slander of interviewing Iranian women for a womens rights documentary for her master’s degree.

Filmmaker Tehmineh Milani was sentenced to death for her celluloid slander. Again, only international and, in Ms. Milani’s case, even domestic outrage saved her neck from the rope. Another filmmaker, the French-Iranian Mernousche Solouki, was thrown into Evin prison for the crime of stumbling across a mass grave.

Here’s Ms. Solouki’s recounting of the event. She still suffers nightmares from her experience in Evin. I read that, and other horror stories of the Gestapo-like Evin prison when Roxana Saberi was still there. Horrified me. I know her father must have known of that. He’s from Iran. He must know. They all do. I can’t even imagine how he felt with Roxana there. Again, the South Africa analogy.

Yet despite all those goings-on, Annette Bening took time out to tell the world how great women’s rights were in Iran. Which brings us straight to Team Oscar’s next great offense.

3. ROXANA SABERI AND THE SOUND OF SILENCE

Throughout Roxana’s unlawful detention, i.e. hostage status as a political pawn, and bogus conviction on trumped-up espionage charges, Team Oscar couldn’t have been more silent or unheard from than Roxana herself. Not one public message of support for either Roxana or the Academy during her unlawful detention in Evin, never mind anyone else in Hollywood except us right-wing extremists. In fact, the whole human rights-championing left-wing PRAVDA-like MSM and government pulled a complete disappearing act on Roxana right after Hillary demanded her release, like she was bad press for the Obamamessiah to be swept under the rug.

At the time, my linked article above generated twenty times more Google hits than the entire media coverage combined. It’s at over 7300 hits now, more than 100 times the number of hits generated on Google vis-a-vis coverage of Roxana in late March.  I’m still getting hits on it. I don’t think people can believe what they’re seeing still. But I digress. You get the point.

No public statement of support from Team Oscar for Roxana that I can find. Team Oscar member William Horberg’s Iran blog made no mention whatsoever of Roxana’s unlawful captivity, or any plea they might have made on Roxana’s behalf to Iranian authorities. I have to assume none was made. Perhaps the Academy could clear up that matter, too. Inquiring Minds Want To Know.

Knowing the King of Hearts-like unreality that resides in the La La Land of AMPAS HQ, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to hear any of them claim credit for Roxana’s release in the future, or even for the green revolution going on in Iran today. If they do, just remember Annette praising the regime’s great women’s rights record while Roxana was still in Evin. For starters.

That should clear things up.

What was really depressing to me throughout Roxana’s Hostage Crisis was how few in Hollywood spoke up on her behalf, when no one knew whether she would live or die. That will forever be a black stain on those who profess to be the greatest human rights champs in the world.

4. OF STOOGES FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC

Perhaps the most vocal filmmaker during Team Oscar’s prolonged humiliation in Iran was domestic thugocracy stooge and new Team Oscar BFF Alireza Davudnejad, who wrote an open letter to President Obama claiming that the only road to peace, freedom and justice in this world was for the President to destroy all of America’s nuclear weapons and give up its UN veto.

Mr. Davudnejad also requested a schedule as to when those world-shaking peace, freedom and justice-inducing landmarks would be carried out. This, from a regime that foments war, writes injustice into its penal codes, crushes freedom with an iron boot, and races to build nuclear weapons they swear to Allah and their own people they’ll use on Israel just as soon as they’re built.

Now THAT’S Comedy! Fortunately, the President didn’t fall for it. If he had, it would have been the Punking Of All Time. No punking for Mr. Ali-Duh, but a gold star on the forehead for effort. Mr. Davudnejad did, however, manage to give a closing backhand to his new BFF, Team Oscar:

“My last recommendation is not to follow your previous cultural policies and avoid your Hollywood friends from playing any tricks to dominate the cinemas of Iran. The United States once removed Iranian cinema from the Iranian life with the help of the former dictatorship; and sacrificed our industry with the import of foreign films.

The fallen cinema of Iran has once again regained its footing with the Islamic Revolution and has been fighting to survive for thirty years. We will not forgive the enemies of this cinema wherever they are. By the way, which is harder, to relinquish the veto right, or to forbear the domination of Iran’s cinema again? You have a hard path ahead. I pray for you. Only the right path has no deviation.”

How about neither, Ali-DUH? Over my freakin’ dead body! Go sit on a projector!

By the way, you got all that, Sid, Annette, and the rest of you Ziono-Hollywoodist conspirators? No more tricks! Or they won’t even let you apologize next time!

Q. What was the difference between Team Oscar and Ali-Duh in Iran?

A. He’s a domestic film industry stooge.

Yet another degrading episode Team Oscar let slide. I guess they’re more on the M side of S&M. Seeing as they represented all of us in a diplomatic capacity, so were we. How does it feel? Mr. Ganis also stood by for yet another punking by the Director of Iran’s House of Cinema, one of many he seemed unfazed by. Some people are just gluttons for punishment, I guess.

As a comic relief sidebar, the culture ministers who approved Team Oscar’s trip were summoned before an angry Majlis, Iran’s parliament, to explain who let the Great Satan into their pure Islamist paradise. But that’s how it goes. Nobody is safe in Punkedville. Even the punks! No word on if the ministers apologized, but it was rumored Mr. Ganis couldn’t find his ministerial escort anywhere.

Hell, they’re the liberals in Iran! Fuggeddaboutit!

5. THE BURQA BABES OF BABYLON

It would seem that, as Team Oscar was reeling from their hot-off-the-tarmac punking, the Mad Mullahs used the opportunity to wrap up the goils like mummies in burqas. They may call it a fashion statement or cultural sensitivity, but why didn’t they make a bold statement by wearing Western dress the whole time, instead of looking like every other oppressed woman in Iran?

6. THE GENOCIDE PRIDE PARADES, or BOY, CAN THESE GUYS THROW AN O-BASH!

On March 6th, the same day Iranian authorities promised to release Roxana Saberi ’soon’ after SOS Clinton’s demand the day before, news broke of the ICC warrant issued for Sudan’s genocidal leader, General Omar Bashir. It was an insult, an offense and a crime against humanity (Majlis Speaker Lari Alijani’s words, not mine) against the Iranian regime’s BFF O-Bash.

In response, the entire upper leadership of Iran’s thugocracy, along with their Islamist Gestapo Blackshirt stooges from Hamas and Hezbollah (the same ones beating and killing Mousavi protesters this week), took to the streets of Tehran AND Khartoum, the very streets where the genocide was and is being committed to this day, to throw genocide parades for human vampire and Dear Leader Bashir.

Now, what should you do if you know your host country is officially celebrating the most abominable crime known to man in the streets below your gilded cages? Do you a. speak up in outrage? Do you b. hightail it out of Dodge as fast as you can? My answers are a and b. Team Oscar’s appears to have been c. keep the tea and finger cookies coming, Ahmie! Now I don’t know the law in that situation, so maybe some fine Hollywood lawyer could tell me. Is that being silent accomplices?

See, I believe genocide parades are a crime in themselves, as though other nations were celebrating Hitler in the streets of Berlin and their own streets, had Hitler been charged by the League of Nations for genocide during the Holocaust. But that’s just me.

SUBPLOT: I just read that O-Bash flew to Zimbabwe on June 10th. He’s wanted for genocide. Why is he being allowed to fly all over Africa and the Middle East with impunity? What, we don’t have aircraft carriers out there that could send up a couple fighter jets to escort Blacula to justice?

7. AHMADINEJAD’S WILLIE HORTONS

As a bonus, highlighted by Ahmadinejad’s condemnation of Hollywood as devoid of culture and art, and followed up by the summoning of ministers to the Majlis over Team Oscar’s invite, both Ahmadinejad and Supreme Asswipe Khamenei used Team Oscar as their Willie Horton in the recent elections. You know. Who let the Great Satan in?

So rather than fostering a liberalization of Iran, as they no doubt naively thought, they instead served as a political tool with which hardliners could beat moderates over the head with. Considering the extreme Islamist nature of Iranian politics (as least last week), they made the situation for moderates even worse. The only thing they didn’t appear to do was make the political ads themselves. But they did train the propaganda stooges who no doubt made any, if any were made.

Damage done either way. Hooray For Hollywood!

THAT’S A WRAP!

I suppose I could rummage for even more egregious offenses, and glaring or willfully blind oversights. But I have far more than enough to convict. If you seek more for purely historical reference, feel free to check all my linked articles above. You’ll find ‘em. My problem was trying to choose which offenses and oversights to pick from.

WILLIAM HORBERG FOR THE DEFENSE

Currently posted at the Academy website is the following prosaic account by William Horberg of Team Oscar’s late-term abortion of a trip to Iran: The Road To Isfahan. Let’s hear what he has to say in Team Oscar’s defense before we stone them. That may seem predicative of the outcome, but remember, these offenses took place in Iran. Islamist extremist rules apply. Got it now?

Actually, just check the link above. We’ll stone ‘em now and rule ‘em guilty later. I mean, come on people. Given the evidence, they may as well have been jumping up and down and screaming “Jehovah!” Time to get stoned. And if you’ve misplaced yours, here’s another one.

IN CLOSING

Now, I fully condemn the shooting of Dr. Tiller by lone madman Scott Roeder in Kansas, as all right-minded human beings should. But I would fully endorse the shooting of whatever single-digit IQ Academy PR doctors were behind this afterbirth. They Shoot Horses’ Asses In Hollywood, Don’t They? If anyone at the Academy had any brains, they’d be stocking up on ammunition like a right-wing extremist Timothy McVeigh-like Montana militia for that very purpose right now!

QUALIFIER: Yes, I’m kidding. No need to call DHS just yet, thank you very much. Besides, you’re as likely to find a gun at Academy HQ as you are a hymen on Heidi Fleiss.

Despite the current brain-dead off-the cliff lemming leadership at AMPAS today, I love film. I love Hollywood I even love the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences. Always have. Broke my heart to declare war on them. I even told them so. But all the above is Casus Belli. Gloves are off.

The blackest irony of all? I was in the middle of writing a loving screwball comedy tribute to Oscar when the news of their trip broke! By the way, I even warned them that if they tried giving all this Iran shite the Red Carpet treatment, I’d pull the rug out from under them. And I know and they know I’ve caused a lot of PR damage already over their Iran trip, both here at Big Hollywood and elsewhere.

My Iran opeds since the PUNK’D piece on Nikki Finke February 28th are pushing 30,000 hits at one blog alone. Can’t anyone in this business keep their mouth shut? How stupid can you be? Are they total masochistic gluttons for punishment? Oh yeah, I already covered that. Drop that last one off at the Department of Redundancy Department, LOL! In the meantime, I’ll do my best to have the Nine Stooges ejected off the Academy board and into the Pacific.

Now, I’ve had some very juicy tastes of Tinseltown. The Red Carpet A-List circuit in Beverly Hills and Los Angeles. I’m not a Guild Member, but my first screenplay got a number of finalist nods from some of the toughest Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated contest judges in Hollywood. And I got an option with it. I got some chops. And I’ve only gotten better over the years through hard work, practice and learning. I know that because industry pros doing my coverage told me so.

But you know what? As much as I wanted to trash that story and never write another word in screenplay format again, I love that script. Put a lot of love and time into it. Think it’s my best work so far. So does my writing partner. In fact, I’m going to finish that script very shortly. And I’m going to finish it in the spirit in which I started: with love, tenderness and affection, even towards Academy members I wrote into the script with boundless love that I totally detest now.

How? I call it professional detachment. Like sniping Nazis as I lovingly listen to Mozart. Best of, worst of. I don’t let politics poison my scripts. I’ll leave the Lefties to do that. I’d rather not bomb at the box office. And I’ll have coverage done by someone I know and trust networked into the industry like a spiderweb. If I get a nearly impossible grade of RECOMMEND and it doesn’t move, I know my self-inflicted film industry Hiroshima is complete.

But you know what, people? I’ll take as many of them with me as I can, just like the wounded Mickey Rooney in Ambush Bay offering Japanese soldiers pineapples. He had plenty for everybody. Point being, I won’t stand for this crap and let it slide just to sell a script. This matter goes way beyond film to me. Look at it this way. AMPAS spends four hours championing gay rights at the last Oscars, then flies off to Iran to give that gay-butchering regime its gold-plated PR kiss, even praising women’s rights in the most violently misogynist regime on earth? STUFF IT!

God, how I wished I lived in the era of the Hollywood of an earlier day, when the top stars flocked to the service of their country, instead of the service of thuggish and violent dictators like Chavez, Castro and Ahmadinejad. By the way, Sean Penn holds the Trifecta of Shame on that one.

Let me be explicitly clear that I believe extreme left-wing morons like Sean Penn, Danny Glover and Harry “Bananas” Belafonte are the minority in Hollywood. Squeaky left-wing wheels get all the grease. I know a lot of great people in the industry personally. And I can’t praise highly enough Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Mia Farrow, Jim Carrey, Gary Sinise, Robert Davi and so many great USO supporters like Saddam million dollar bounty-offering Bruce Willis, Scarlett Johansson, Jack Black and Ben Stiller.

There are really too many to name. But you know who they are. As to the distinct minority, I will quote my former Obama-like governor and liberal tank commander Michael Dukakis for the first time in my life: “A fish rots from the head down.”

Tom Hanks dares to call gay marriage opponents un-American? Well, if President Obama, most Americans and 52% of Californians are un-American for not supporting gay marriage, what is Tom Hanks and the rest of the Motion Picture Asylum guilty of for signing off on a trip to a regime that hunts gays online, raids gay parties, tortures them horribly and then hangs them from crane wires to die agonizing deaths that can take up to an hour, as they did with two gay teenage boys?

There’s too much blanket idiocy in Hollywood. Megan Fox, jokingly telling the Transformers to take out all the white trash to save the earth, the irony totally lost on her. The Twitter crowd at afterellen.com. Like Adrianne Curry, who calls Prop 8 a human rights offense, but remains dead silent on the holocausts against LGBTs in Iran and Iraq. Why isn’t Dustin Lance Black screaming to the skies about this stuff? I couldn’t find any evidence of him opposing the AMPAS Iran trip on purely humanitarian grounds. WHY NOT?

No. I, a straight conservative Republican screenwriter, offended to my very core by the savagery of Shiite extremist gay death squads in Iran and Iraq, have to be the one screaming to the skies about LGBT terrorists who engage in atrocities even the Nazis can’t compare to. Like super-gluing gay men’s anuses shut and pumping them full of diarrhea cocktails so the gay killers, some on our tax dime, can catch a few pious laughs as their victims endure unimaginable agony before dying.

No. I am left with the dirty jobs and lonely tasks of networking REAL gay advocates like Michael Petrelis and the Gay Patriot blog over these inhuman gay horrorshows. I am the one who has to research and dispatch gruesome reports to sites like BestGayBlogs.com, and LGBT orgs all over the globe like LGBT Network EU. I am the one left to scrape around for signatures on petitions at Iranian Queer Railroad and Iraqi LGBT to save the lives of Iranian and Iraqi LGBTs, who live in fear of torture and unimaginable horrors the incredibly spoiled toddler-like Hollywood Leftie morons and unmarried gays of California will never know.

As a screenwriter, I now know what it feels like to work under an offensive and idiotic oligarchy that is totally brain-dead and out of touch with the realities of the world at large, and those whom they profess to lead. In that respect, though I do not agree with them, I now understand the passionate outrage Lefties felt during the reign of the Bushitler. Like Michael Moore’s and Al Franken’s bloviations during that dark time, I do not expect my heated rants to impact my Golden Bubble-insulated industry oligarchy one whit.

In fact, I fully expect it to to earn me black marks and disfavor, the full McCarthy treatment they so profess to detest, yet practice every goddamn day. Ron Silver, anyone? But like the aforementioned Twin Towers of Leftie-ism, I care not one whit what the ruling establishment thinks. My anger is righteous and justified. In fact, it could not be moreso. What’s happening in Iran and Iraq are de facto gay genocides. What cause could be more righteous than trying to stop those?

Screw sexual conduct! They’re innocent human beings targeted for extermination. They don’t deserve that barbaric treatment. No one does, except the blood-drinking Islamist Gestapo stooges that are doing it all! If that revolution in Iran goes through and the people win, somebody Tweet them to hang on to all the crane wires. They’re gonna need a lot. For the Hamas and Hezbollah Blackshirts, too.

If my harsh words mean my film career is dead, so be it. In fact, if I came to Hollywood for no other reason than to address the horrific hypocrisy of so-called gay and human rights champs who are anything but (some like Bening and Penn even extremely damaging to those they don the mantle of Human Rights Champs for), or to champion the cause of Iraqi and Iranian LGBTs unlike any cause I’ve ever championed based on purely humanistic outrage, then I will feel that my life will have had meaning.

If I have helped to save the life of only one Iraqi or Iranian gay, I have saved the world entire. I can go to my grave totally at peace with myself. If I must bury my screenwriting career ahead of me, this is a small price to pay. So many others, like those now on the streets of Iran fighting and dying for the freedoms that are as natural to us as breathing, or risk brutal torture and horrific death merely for sexual conduct or being raped, are paying far higher prices than we most likely ever will.

In closing, I am resigning from Big Hollywood. I came here on a mission nearly four months ago to bring attention to all I have highlighted above. All the in-between was a bonus. And I do have a comedy piece in the hopper, which is rare for me. Haven’t had much to laugh about lately. Which is why I want to return full-time to screenwriting as well. There’s enough tragedy on Planet Earth. If I can use my award-nominated humor to inspire laughter and comic relief, then that is my main mission now. The rest I leave to the card deck of fate.

If I return, it will be in the cause of those who cannot speak for themselves. There is no shortage of hacks and pundits flame-throwing politics these days, and there are far too many not flame-throwing at all on issues that should enrage them beyond measure. As I am enraged today. Certainly beyond politics.

I do not need anger management. Like Johnny Rotten sang with Public Image Limited, Anger is an Energy. Righteous anger is what freed South Africa. Righteous anger fills the streets of Tehran as we speak. Righteous anger is why we Americans no longer say to each other, “G’day, Mate! ‘Ow about a pint and some bangers and mash? Got some up in me lorry! God Bless the Queen!”

In closing, God Bless The Queen anyway. And God Bless America. I say that as an agnostic secularist, okay? It’s good luck! And may God look down a lot more kindly on the poor LGBTs in Iran and Iraq. Perhaps, if there is a God, and I’m hedging my bets here, I hope his hand is in events in Iran. Maybe with a youth-driven revolution, LGBTs, filmmakers. students, dissidents, bloggers, and raped women need not fear for their lives anymore, or offered the choice of castration or death if they wish to remain gay.

What? Did you think Ahmadinejad was kidding when he said there were no gays in Iran? He said it with the same certainty Hitler said there were no Jews in Germany. The discussion is moot. I really hope to God that changes, as Iran itself seems to be right now.

We do, however, have a most powerful hand in Iraq. The gay killings must stop. The gay death squads must be disbanded with an iron fist. Just like Al Qaeda. Or, to tell the truth, I don’t care if Al Qaeda takes the place over. I would feel the same way if I were in West Berlin in 1947 and the locals were still hunting down and killing Jews. Let the Red Army move in.

Uncle Joe, they’re all yours! Bin Laden, they’re all yours! Let them ALL share in the terror they love with a religious fervor! OR, they can wise up and join the human race. If not, screw ‘em. Let ‘em go back to Al Qaeda torture houses and eating bombs for breakfast. I may not be gay myself. No, really. But must one be Jewish to be totally repulsed by Auschwitz?

Good Luck and Good Night, all. Peace. I hope