Story and the Power of Conservative Themes in Film

Boy, did I ever kick a hornet’s nest with my tongue-in-cheek Archie Bunker-on-steroids BH post, “My Secret Life as a Conservative Republican.” Lefties called it Reaffirmation With Senator Smalley, which I expected. But Righties nearly wet their pants in fear, which I did not expect in the least. Where’s the pioneering spirit, self-confidence and gutter-level humor that founded this country?

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

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

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

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Tags: Academy, Afghanistan, al qaeda, American Gangster, AMPAS
Posted Jul 21st 2009 at 10:22 am in Classic Hollywood, Film, Politics, Religion | 184986103 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jtsimpson/2009/07/21/taking-the-fight-to-the-left/Story+and+the+Power+of+Conservative+Themes+in+Film2009-07-21+17%3A22%3A45John+T.+Simpson

On the Record, Off the QT and Not Very Hush-Hush

Dear Big Hollywood readers, it gives me great satisfaction to report to you that BH has been out on point not only on compelling film industry issues, which will never be covered in promo rags like Variety and the Hollywood Reporter (but then again, AMPAS and the studios aren’t buying us off), but on many controversial issues being played out in America and the greater world at large as well.

I know this to be true. Being a news junkie myself, I have found time after time as I was reading about a supposedly breaking subject, like ABC’s recent coverage of the targeted LGBT murders in Iraq, that it had already been on display for all to see in Big Hollywood posts for months.

Not to toot my own horn, but…well, okay, I’m tooting my own horn. And those of Andy Breitbart and John Nolte, who have given I, and so many other wonderful and insightful Hollywood right-wing fringe types, a magnificent bullhorn we otherwise would not have. We appear to be doing the dirty jobs our media just refuses to do. It’s a labor Hercules would completely sympathize with. (more…)

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Tags: abc, Academy of Motion Picture arts and Sciences, Adrianne Curry, Ali al-Sistani, AMPAS
Posted Jun 3rd 2009 at 5:20 pm in Entertainment, Politics | 1476823 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jtsimpson/2009/06/03/on-the-record-off-the-qt-and-not-very-hush-hush/On+the+Record%2C+Off+the+QT+and+Not+Very+Hush-Hush2009-06-04+00%3A20%3A57John+T.+Simpson

From Fourth Estate to Fourth Branch of Government

I remember when the term investigative journalism used to mean something. My first introduction to it was through Peter Maas’ seminal classic The Valachi Papers at the tender age of eleven. Hooked me right away. A year later, at the age of twelve,  I devoured William L. Shirer’s monumental and award-winning ‘Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany.’ A very heady 1250 pages of fine print in paperback, and I do mean fine print. Worth its weight in gold.

From that point on, I was addicted. I couldn’t get enough of Peter Maas, Robin Moore, Woodward and Bernstein, Nick Pileggi, Ovid Demaris, James Bamford, James Michener, Cornelius Ryan, anything from the Ballantine Espionage/Intelligence Library, and too many others to list here.

I only recently read Michener’s The Bridge at Andau, an account of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising based on hundreds of eyewitness accounts, written in novelized form to protect identities at the time. It takes you right into the chaotic and revolutionary Bupapest of the day as though you were there. (more…)

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Tags: abc, Albert Speer, Arthur Sulzberger, Ballantine Espionage/Intelligence Library, cbs
Posted Apr 27th 2009 at 8:40 am in Media Criticism, Politics | 1147024 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jtsimpson/2009/04/27/from-fourth-estate-to-fourth-branch-of-government/From+Fourth+Estate+to+Fourth+Branch+of+Government2009-04-27+15%3A40%3A43John+T.+Simpson

Obama Tortures Me Every Day

Let me see if I can understand the liberal view of so called torture. I really am trying to understand why the left, especially the ones that work near downtown Los Angeles, have their shorts so far up their behinds. As I see it there are two questions: What is torture? Does it work?

Let me take the second question first. Yes, enhanced interrogation techniques work. If you don’t think so then come by my house, sign the release form and I guarantee I will have your computer password, your ATM PIN and your wife’s safe word in the bedroom in an hour. The memos which Obama released last week in order to placate his far-left base say so. It’s hard to accept one part of the memo and say the rest is a lie. Yet, for some strange reason he refuses to show the memos which the dreaded Cheney say further support the claim that enhanced interrogation worked and saved American lives. Even the guy from the right lefties love to point to as an expert on torture, John McCain says that everyone breaks. Just for the record, Mr. McCain believes all of the enhanced interrogation techniques, except for water boarding are acceptable. (more…)

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Tags: Daily Kos, John McCain, MoveOn, Obama, torture
Posted Apr 26th 2009 at 11:03 am in Featured Story, Political Humor, Politics | 11643818 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjena/2009/04/26/obama-tortures-me-every-day/Obama+Tortures+Me+Every+Day2009-04-26+18%3A03%3A07Jeffrey+Jena

A View From Stage Right; Part 2

Part 1 of what I half-jokingly called my “Manifesto.”

In a fiscal conservative’s utopian dreamworld, there would be no federal funding for the arts (or so many other government agencies or programs for that matter).  This has been our position since the inception of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in the early 1970’s.  We’ve been saying that if elected, we would abolish these misguided programs and departments and bring our government back to the bare-bones constitutionally described role that it has and leave everything else to the states.

We’ve held the influential bully pulpit of the presidency for twenty of the past twenty-eight years, and what has happened to the NEA?  It has grown.  While we have stood on principle,  we have also stood on the sidelines.  The founding fathers would be outraged that the federal government is funding art with taxpayer money, but because we are on the sidelines standing on our principles, all of that money is going to the people creating art with messages that undermine our very existence. (more…)

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Tags: "And the Band Played On", "Angels in America", abortion, AIDS, Andre Bishop
Posted Mar 4th 2009 at 5:50 pm in Entertainment, Politics | 7162661 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/sright/2009/03/04/a-view-from-stage-right-part-2/A+View+From+Stage+Right%3B++Part+22009-03-05+01%3A50%3A22Stage+Right

The Lives of Other Inconvenient Truths

It comes as no surprise that the liberal blogosphere did a collective spit-take over the National Review’s recent list of the top 25 conservative films of the past 25 years (full disclosure: the Buckleyites invited me to comment on one selection).

One lefty blogger wrote, “In the end, right-wingers cannot excape [sic] from the fundamental fact that great art challenges assumptions and received wisdom and calls on us to look at the world with new eyes — and therefore is inherently progressive.”

If true, then the left’s claim on the arts is about to weaken. Because the “assumptions” and “received wisdom” of the Establishment these days are predominantly progressive. After all, who is the Establishment now? No matter your ideology, surely you must agree that there’s nothing more tired and cliche than a “rebellious” artist infusing his work with the same old leftist bromides. (more…)

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Tags: Daily Kos, Liberal Fascism, National review, National Review 25 Best Conservative Movies of the last
Posted Feb 20th 2009 at 5:30 pm in Entertainment, Media Criticism | 56326126 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/aleigh/2009/02/20/the-lives-of-other-inconvenient-truths/The+Lives+of+Other+Inconvenient+Truths2009-02-21+01%3A30%3A39Andrew+Leigh