Our first Theater-Size (27x41) poster - "hot off the presses." (Actually - hot off Kinko's large-format printer.)

Well, in the spirit of “Colonel” Tom Parker and THE POLICE – ’78 Tour of America (in a cargo van), we have gone ahead and put together our own “Southern Tour – 2011″ for FEAR OF A BLACK REPUBLICAN.  After driving twelve hours or so, we will be having our World Premiere in Atlanta GA tomorrow at 7 PM at the Landmark Theatre – Midtown Arts Cinema.  Two days later and four hours up I-85, we’ll be screening in Charlotte NC on June 25th (Blumenthal Performing Arts Center) and then in Greensboro NC on June 26th(Carousel Cinemas at Battleground) .   These will be the first public screenings ever for our little film.  We did hope to add another city or two, but as this is our first foray into “Movie Touring”… we figured short and sweet would be smarter and safer.  

In order to make this tour happen, we are “four-walling” (renting out) two movie theaters and are renting and sharing space in a “black box” theater running a stage play.  Luckily, the space can project films and do stage plays in the same venue.  Pretty convenient, but if you ever want to do something like this, here are a few things to think about ahead of time:  Insurance and advertising.  In booking our theaters, we learned that you now have to have some type of “Event Insurance” to screen your film as an Independent filmmaker.  Ouch.  Enough said.

Regarding advertising, we learned that you cannot rely on the theaters to advertise your film as their distribution agreements with the studios essentially prohibit them from publicly advertising your film.  However, their own box office websites can include your film.  Now, I can tell you that all three venues we will be screening at have been great to us and I could not recommend them more. 

However, you as the filmmaker/producer will have to work really hard on sending press releases, calling media, creating & placing ads and creating posters and postcards (if you can afford them)… if you want people to know about your screening.  Also, you need to go old-school and send out movie postcards.  A lot of folks might say don’t do this, but I think a short hand-written note with a hand-written address still means something.  We sent over 200 postcards (and did e-mail) to all the colleges and university Political Science and History Departments in Atlanta, Charlotte and Greensboro.  Hit your niche market, right?

We’ve also been fortunate to have some allies in all this.  I would be remiss if I didn’t thank all the folks who know social media WAY better than we do and who are trying to help us promote our screening.  There are people we don’t even know trying to help us because they want to see us succeed.  That is very humbling and I hope we do succeed for our sake, for them and for other right-leaning filmmakers.  Because it would be nice if the next right-leaning filmmaker who makes a film has a lot easier time finding a distributor.  Self-distribution is controlling your own destiny, but a lot of “wheel-inventing” goes on in trying to prove that there is a market for films like ours. 

The past few months have been exciting, fun, challenging, inspiring and expensive at times – but empowering too.  In putting together “Southern Tour ’11,” I’ve come to realize that many of us (myself included) tend to forget that while there is always risk involved, but there is also the great possibility for reward too.  And that we can’t wait for “someone” to come find us and our work.  

We’d love to have some of the many Big Hollywood readers in our audiences, so if you are in driving distance of Atlanta, Charlotte or Greensboro – please join us in our first public screenings.  You can find tickets and/or check out our tour at www.fearofablackrepublican.com/screenings .

See, to me, the speech came and went like one of those “serious” high school assemblies: you know, when a teacher finds out about a student defacing a locker with unicorn stickers, she decides we all need to sit in a humid gym for an hour and be told “it’s okay to be different.”

But in case you missed the speech, here’s my summary:

“We face challenges, IT’S NOT MY FAULT – but that’s what makes us great.”

Try that on a losing football team.

The point is, even though he never mentioned GWB, he more than alluded to the poor guy, constantly reminding us how Obie inherited this mess. Sorry dude, it’s been a year – it’s your mess now, and you’re making it messier.

Obama also spent a lot of time blaming his problems on vile partisanship. But how can it be partisanship, when one party rules everything? Mr. President, these are your people. The Republicans eat Thanksgiving dinner in the kitchen. Don’t blame them. If anything, real partisanship would make you a stronger President.

Anyway, here are some other thoughts from yours truly (i.e., me)…

*I don’t care how cool the president is, watching members of Congress scrambling for autographs afterwards seems a tad cheesy. It’s not like he’s Erik Estrada. No one is like Erik Estrada.

* An hour into speech, “security” finally makes a cameo. Summary: stop making it an issue, already.

*Apparently if you become a public servant, you will be able to dump your student loans. This is not what I would call a rallying cry for a generation.

*I’m glad Joe got his whitening strips back. It helped deflect the shine off his forehead.

*Female Democrats dress like real estate agents. It made me wonder, do they also have their pictures on their business cards? It might be a nice touch.

But, here’s what drives me batty like a big fat bat.

Check out this part of Obama’s speech:

“From the day I took office, I’ve been told that addressing our larger challenges is too ambitious, such an effort would be too contentious. I’ve been told that our political system is too gridlocked, and that we should just put things on hold for a while. For those who make these claims, I have one simple question: How long should we wait? How long should America put its future on hold? ”

Okay: Obama keeps bringing up these mysterious people who keep telling him what to do and what not to do. Which begs the question: Who’s he talking to who keeps giving him this great advice that he keeps ignoring? It seems to me, If he had listened to them, we’d all be better off.

But that’s just me. Not you. Be thankful for that.

Tonight we’ve got comedian Jamie Lissow! the great actor from Avatar, Joel David Moore, and radio talk show host Mary Walter!

Plus: Ambassador John Bolton!

The man who would become one of the most popular movie stars of the last quarter century was born in 1936, the son of a small-town police chief in Florida. He grew up handsome and tough, randy and reckless — by fourteen, he had lost his virginity to a much older woman, and soon after knocked up the prom queen (his attempts to cajole her into marriage were rebuffed by the girl’s society-maven mother, who forced her daughter to abort the baby). Such antics were an early harbinger of both the charismatic charm and voracious, self-destructive appetites that would define (and sometimes decimate) his later career (a typical joke — Q: Why didn’t Burt Reynolds ever take Loni Anderson out to dinner? A: He made it a rule never to date married women.)

Like John Wayne thirty years earlier, an injury ended Reynolds’ budding college football career, and in 1955 he turned toward acting. Future stars like Joanne Woodward and Rip Torn were early friends during his New York salad days, and the connections he built there ultimately allowed him to journey west in the late Fifties to seek his fortune in Hollywood. At the time he bore an uncanny resemblance to superstar Marlon Brando, and along with new pals like Clint Eastwood he spent long, disheartening years scrambling between minor roles in various television shows such as Riverboat and Gunsmoke. He even served as a contestant on The Dating Game. “I spent a long time playing the third Indian from the left,” he says ruefully of those early jobs.

From the start of the “swingin’ Sixties,” he seldom felt at home among the young, self-important thespians who would eventually rule the industry. “I don’t belong in places like New York or Los Angeles,” he insisted when pressed. “I should be on a farm with a few cases of good beer.” Reynolds’ first marriage, to the English actress Judy Carne, disintegrated when he couldn’t bring himself to join the never-ending drug-infested parties she presided over with an assortment of heroin-addicted hippies and Charles Manson rejects.

While many of his friends tried to emulate the new hip stars of that decade and their space-cadet ways, Reynolds was drawn to a different world, one to which his pal Hal Needham provided the gateway. “One time,” Needham remembers, “[Burt] mentioned that he didn’t know much about motorcycles, so I suggested that he come over to my place and practice. I had motorcycles and a tree where we used to do high falls. Every weekend there were fifteen or twenty stunt guys practicing. Burt started coming around every weekend. He got along well with all of the guys.”

In that way, over a long period of association, Reynolds’ persona became more of a stuntman than an actor — and for the most part, that was fine by him. The rarefied careers of emotive twerps like Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino didn’t interest him. “There are two or three young actors around,” he once said in his heyday, “I won’t mention any names — who if I see them painfully staring at the rug in one more picture, I’m gonna puke.” I imagine Reynolds shares that thought, then and now, with a vast swath of the nation’s movie-going public. The Needham/Reynolds friendship grew over the course of fifteen years, and Reynolds never forgot the way his pal shared his contacts and expertise.

By the end of the 1960s, Reynolds was an established television personality, but his early work had stereotyped him as a serious, angry, morose action star, a role that didn’t jive with his true nature. Something important was missing from the mix: humor. The venue Reynolds ultimately used to introduce his jocular side to the public was novel. “The beginning of almost everything good that ever happened to me,” he says, “was a result of my being on the Tonight Show.” His first appearances there were a revelation, creating a pop-culture electricity that today is hard to fathom. “The guy on Evening Shade [his successful early 1990s TV sitcom] is who I am and always was,” Reynolds feels. “The guy on the Tonight Show is who I was after seven vodka and tonics, which is generally what I had before I walked out.”

Whatever he drank, his stints on the program utterly transformed his persona in the eyes of the public. Instead of the usual actors taking themselves ultra-seriously, mumbling about how much effort and technique and skill they put into their roles, Reynolds would cheerfully call his latest film a flat-out turkey, poke fun at his lack of top-flight acting ambition, and shamelessly play the part of a rich, sexy, fun-loving Hollywood star who was enjoying the wild ride like no one else.

The following 1974 appearance on the Tonight Show, made while promoting The Longest Yard, gives the modern viewer an idea of the early swagger that he would later parlay into the films that made him the top box-office attraction of the late Seventies and early Eighties:

Soon the fairly unknown TV star was Johnny Carson’s hottest guest, to the point where Carson often had Reynolds guest host the show for him. The fame gained from these appearances rocketed him out of the Hollywood doldrums. For the first time, the name BURT REYNOLDS on a marquee opened movies all by itself, and he now had his choice of what kind of projects to do.

But crucially, rather than go the usual route of chasing Oscars, he opted for a more personal direction. “My friends all wear cowboy hats and have horse manure on their boots,” he said. “They ask me if I knew John Wayne, and I say ‘no,’ and that’s the end of the show business talk.” So with his new-found clout he began doing Southern “hick flicks,” many of which (Deliverance, White Lightning, The Longest Yard, Gator) became popular, making him a beloved figure throughout flyover country. Tellingly, these projects were spaced out with other, more mainstream roles, many of which weren’t popular at all. Reynolds was getting stereotyped again, but this time as a character America was warming to.

In the mid-Seventies, with Needham still living in Reynolds’ guest house after his divorce twelve years earlier, the chance finally came to pay back a karmic debt to his old friend. “One day,” Reynolds says, “[Needham] gave me a script he’d written. Titled Smokey and the Bandit, it was scrawled on a yellow legal pad in his own handwriting. Cheap bastard hadn’t even had it typed.” He read the script and was underwhelmed. “Now Hal and I had one of the tightest friendships in show business. He’d directed second-unit footage and coordinated stunts on six of my films. My God, we’d lived together longer than either of us had lived with any of the women to whom we’d been married. So it was hard to tell him I thought it was the worst script I’d read in my life.”

Nevertheless, he saw some potential in the tale — its outlaw, Robin Hood conceit might be greatly appealing, if the dialogue and scenes could be spruced up to match. Various agents and hangers-on told Reynolds he would be crazy to star in a madcap, low-budget screwball comedy. He needed more movies, they argued, like Deliverance — parts that could further his reputation as a serious actor. “Every single one of my advisers and friends,” Reynolds says, “went down on their hands and knees begging me with tears in their eyes not to make that film. Mind you, if you had read the original script, you’d probably have done the same.”

But beyond Reynolds affinity for the basic plot and the Southern atmosphere, he felt he owed his friend a good turn. Hal Needham was in his forties and nearing the end of his useful life as a stuntman, and Reynolds well knew of his desire to move into directing. So, when Needham tried and failed to get any of the studios interested in the picture, Reynolds made it known around town that he would be willing to star as the Bandit. Instantly, studio doors opened wide, and Needham found his previously derided script in demand. It was, Needham later admitted, “the biggest thing anyone has ever done for me in my life.”

If Reynolds had saved the script by putting his potent box-office muscle behind it, Needham himself added some necessary guts to the package. Reynolds remembers how

[film executive Mike] Medavoy wanted to make a movie with me — but not Smokey. Instead, he handed Hal the script of Convoy and said he could direct that one if I starred. Hal, who’d never directed, considered the bigger-budget offer and said, “No, it’s mine or nothing.” That’s the reason I love Hal. He’s a hell of a man.

It would have been easy for Needham to fold his hand, toss away his script, and try to make someone else’s movie. But he perceptively decided that Convoy had none of the charm, authenticity, or raw excitement that his own Smokey and the Bandit tale promised, and he held firm under withering studio pressure.

Looking back, Burt Reynolds epitomizes not only the best but much of the worst that movie stardom has to offer. Stardom often went to his head, something he freely admits in his autobiography. He’s known for having a short fuse. All the womanizing left him a twice-divorced, 73-year-old lonely bachelor. Vanity led to cadaverous plastic surgery (compare Reynolds’ futile attempt to still look 40 to the gracefully aged visages of contemporaries like Sean Connery and Clint Eastwood). Many of his films are now derided as junk, projects he undertook even as he rejected such choice roles as James Bond, Trapper John in M*A*S*H, Han Solo in Star Wars, the (Oscar-winning) astronaut Garrett Breedlove in Terms of Endearment, John McClane in Die Hard, and many others.

In 1996, the former superstar’s spendthrift ways caught up to him, and he was forced to file bankruptcy with assets of $6.65 million against debts of $11.2 million — a pathetic pittance of an estate for a four-decade member of Hollywood royalty. Reynolds suffered his share of plain old bad luck as well: acute hypoglycemia in the Seventies, a horrible case of temporomandibular joint disorder in the Eighties. He once mused wryly that when life-threateningly ill, “you make a hundred bargains with God. But as soon as you feel better, you break them.”

But there’s another side to Burt Reynolds: the stand-up guy, full of graciousness and generosity to fans and friends. Note that he never has built his personal politics into a wall between himself and the public. One incident in particular hammers this home for me. Back in 1985, when AIDS was first entering the nation’s consciousness, the activist group AIDS Project Los Angeles asked Elizabeth Taylor (a close friend of the then-dying Rock Hudson) to organize a fundraiser that would help create mainstream awareness of this feared disease. Taylor called everyone she knew asking for help, but according to her virtually everyone balked. “The people in this town didn’t give a damn!” she remembered many years later. “That made me cynical about Hollywood. What a sad lesson. It’s a very sad comment on this town.”

Actually it’s par for the course — today many of those same people fly private jets while lecturing the rest of us about carbon emissions. But it says a lot that — with Rock Hudson having only weeks to live, and everyone else afraid to attend an AIDS fundraiser that might hurt their careers — Burt Reynolds was one of only a small handful of stars to say “yes” to Taylor’s request. Not only that, he took upon himself the most thankless task of the event: reading aloud the pledge of support that the hated Republican President, Ronald Reagan, had generously sent from Washington. Let it be noted for the record that, on September 19, 1985, actor Burt Reynolds stood up at Taylor’s event and read Reagan’s letter, while being roundly booed by a mass of angry activist attendees. That counts for something in my book.

(as an aside: at a similar event some time later, Reagan showed up in person to once again graciously pledge his support for AIDS research. The same classless ingrates from ACT UP who had booed Reynolds began doing the same thing to the President. To Elizabeth Taylor’s everlasting credit, she grabbed the mic and shut them all down, yelling, “I don’t care what your politics are, I don’t care how you feel about the President or what he’s not doing, he is still the President of the United States of America and you owe him some due respect, so shut the f*** up!” Properly chastised, the buffoons did shut up, and Reagan was able to give his speech.)

In light of all of this, I’ve got a question for you: do you know if Burt Reynolds is a Democrat? A Republican? An Independent?

No clue, right?

Good.

“Most of my friends are very political,” Reynolds admits, “and they were chagrined when I wasn’t active during the 1976 Presidential campaign.” He was making Smokey and the Bandit during that time, and could have joined the usual suspects in protesting and posturing and shrieking hate at ordinary Americans, all in an attempt to fit in with the Hollywood gang and grease the wheels of his career. Instead, he chose to “shut up and sing.” As conservatives and as movie lovers, we should give him due credit for that gift of silence.

Hal Needham dismisses those in Hollywood who think of Reynolds as a jerk, and reminds us that, “Without Burt, I’d never have had a chance. Burt has this capacity for loyalty and caring. He has made it and he doesn’t forget anyone he has ever cared for, man or woman.” That caring extends not only to friends like Needham, but to all the people who have enjoyed his films over the years. On September 24, 1981, at the height of his fame, Reynolds immortalized his hand and footprints in the famous forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood. He took the opportunity to scratch a simple line into the moist cement, one that speaks for itself and that modern Hollywood would do well to emulate:

Next Saturday in For Conservative Movie Lovers: The Great One. ’Nuff said.

Previous posts in the series “Hal Needham, Burt Reynolds and Smokey and the Bandit”:

Part 1

FURTHER READING and VIEWING

If you ever find yourself in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale/West Palm Beach area, you might consider taking a detour to Jupiter, Florida to visit the Burt Reynolds Roadside Museum, located in an old bank building and filled with memorabilia, autographed pictures, awards, and other items.

After making such a point about Reynolds’ laudable decision to keep his politics to himself, I should mention that NewsMeat: America’s Most Popular Campaign Donor Search Engine lists a mere two political contributions from Burt Reynolds: one to Florida Senator Bob Graham way back in 1986, and one to Bill Clinton during his first run in 1992. Both Democrats, but also Southerners who Reynolds might have known and felt obligated to help on grounds other than raw politics.

To balance the scales, the entry for Smokey and the Bandit director Hal Needham lists three donations, one for the Dems and two for the GOP. Poke around the site and examine their celebrity donation lists — you might be surprised to find out how many of your favorite stars are closet Republicans.

Reynolds’ My Life is one of the better celebrity autobiographies out there. Like all such volumes it is more than a bit self-serving, but overall it lays bare the ups and downs, and gives some crucial insights into the blessing/curse of fame. If you haven’t seen Reynolds’ excellent four-hour-long one-man show An Evening with Burt Reynolds (alas, it’s not available on DVD, and who knows how many more times the seventy-three-year-old Reynolds is going to perform it live), reading this book is the next-best thing.

Like Barbara Walters’ painfully inane TV specials, Inside the Actor’s Studio has long been a safe place for actors and directors to preen like peacocks, cry like children, and indulge in the fantasy of being a thoughtful intellectual. Nevertheless, excepting perennially vacuous questions like “What sound or noise do you love” and “What is your favorite curse word,” this Bravo TV show occasionally teases enough insight and anecdotage out of its subjects to make it worthwhile. Here are four YouTube videos (part 2 has been deleted by YouTube, probably because of the Smokey clips) showing Reynolds braving host James Lipton’s Lamb’s Den.

Part 1 | Part 2 (missing) | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

For the past year I have been saying the current President is one of the biggest megalomaniacs in history.  And Tuesday night he proved it again.  While the state of New Jersey, which is one of the bluest, was falling and the State of Virginia was being swept by Republicans (which has not happened since Reconstruction), the President refused to acknowledge any of it mattered. I wonder if he was wearing his lucky tie. 

However, we all know who definitely was not:  Doug Hoffman.  This is the man who ran on the Conservative ticket in NY-23, a district in Upstate New York that has been Republican since the Civil War.  Well, in the immortal words of Jacques Clouseau, “Not Anymore!”  Doug Hoffman was defeated garnering only 46% of the vote.  The projected winner, the Democrat Bill Owens, garnered 49% and the liberal Republican who withdrew last week received 5%.  She proved to be the spoiler. 

I find this race in NY-23 to be very disturbing.  It is a race that garnered national attention when Sarah Palin, the Queen of the Far Right, decided to support the Conservative Candidate and not the Republican.  Before that, the race was hardly being looked at. NY-23 is a district which borders on Canada and Vermont.  It is more than 90% white and skews Republican by a margin of more than five percentage points.  The area has been Republican for as far as anyone can remember.  But, last night, it elected a Democrat.  Why? 

The Republican Party nominated Dede Scozzafava to run without a primary.  Ms. Scozzafava is one of the most liberal Republicans in the history of the Party.  She is not pro-life, supports same-sex marriage and has strong ties to Labor — positions which are opposed by the majority of the Party.  She does support the Bush tax cuts and is against Cap-and-Trade.  It was rumored during the election that she hinted she might caucus with the Democrats if elected. 

Obviously the nomination of Ms. Scozzafava was a big mistake.  By nominating her, the Party allowed a three way race to occur thereby guaranteeing a Democrat victory.  Of course, it did not help, that upon quitting the race five days ago, Ms. Scozzafava gave her support, not to the Conservative Hoffman, but to the Democrat Owens.  The Party should have run a primary before nominating Scozzafava or, at the least, seen the power of the conservative movement and nominated someone more in line with the mainstream Republican platform. 

But, that is not really what disturbs me about the race in NY-23.  What disturbs me is the ramification of what happened there to the rest of the country and to the 2010 election  The Republican Party seems to be splintering into two halves, the conservatives and the moderates.  The Conservatives are being supported by Ms. Palin and a large group of right-wing pundits.  They are represented by the Tea Party organizations and the States’ Rights Groups.  I am probably one of them. 

However, without the moderates; the center of the political spectrum, the Party will not regain control of the Federal Government.  There is simply not enough on the Far Right to support a majority anywhere in the country.  The moderates and independents win elections.  And, boy was that clear last night. 

All of the exit polling shows that McDonnell and Christie won because there was a major swing in the independent voter to the Republicans.  These swing voters stated they were against huge government spending, the failed stimulus package and were in fear for the future of their children.  The majority of these independents voted for Obama in the last election. 

We need them, these independents.  We must do whatever is necessary to maintain their support.  We cannot swing to the far right and expect to do anything in 2010.  If we do, there will be a lot of Democrats wearing their lucky ties.  If we continue to attract the moderates and independents as happened Tuesday, it will be a large group of Republicans wearing theirs.

Credit where credit is due, and let’s face it. We Americans, right, left or center, take a churlish pride in a good slam dunk epithet. Not the hardcore racial third rail stuff, mind you. Just the playful sort. You know. Moonbat. Libtard. Tinfoil hat. In fact, tinfoil hat kind of backfired on Righties. Originally used to denigrate Lefties who adhered to psychotic conspiracy theories like 9/11 Truth, the term was embraced in full by the far Left as demonstrated by Markos Moulitsas’ Tinfoil Hat KOS conventions, smashing successes which attracted major left-leaning LibDem politicians over the past few years.

So Lefties revel in their psychoses. What else is new? Yet I seriously doubt teabagger is an epithet conservative Republicans will embrace. Who would? But then it occurred to me. Who’s doing the real oral servicing here? We Tea Partiers, who object tooth and nail to every major scam and power grab liberal Democrats and the President are trying to shove down our throats? Or liberal left-wing mouthpieces who can’t open wide and fast enough for Obama’s Chocolate Munchkin Donut Drop?

Let’s face it. When the White House emails you on the air to correct you, there’s some serious dunking going on there. Funny. Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, who foisted that term in full measure on the public consciousness in mid-April, spent two and a half hours in secret with the President and some other major Obama microphones a few days ago. From what little we hear, the President spent some time railing against FOX News and Glenn Beck, but lips have been sealed very tight around the rest of what went on there. Could it be it was “time to take the dough nuts”?

Personally, I wouldn’t want that getting out either. But I think there was some hardcore slam-dunking going on there, and I’m not talking LeBron James. Whatever is was, I’m sure it would all give Chris Matthews a tickle up his nose. Ironic how the President injected himself orally into this debate, given the circumstances:

“You Democrats, y’all be dunkin’ for yourselves. Those Republicans, they just dunk what they’re told!” Oh really? Like Republicans are just opening wide for Dede Scozzafava? Arlen Specter? Lindsey Graham? John McCain? LOL! Ya, as if. Last I checked, there was a full-fledged rebellion going on in the GOP regarding who dunks who. Conversely, the new mouthpieces over at the NEA can’t seem to service the President fast enough:

“We have received a call from a house that is vanilla to dunk some donuts that are chocolate. Let’s get those lips and brushes moving, people!”

Speaking of servicing, from EIF we have a list of “organically” inspired shows. Need more be said? So the next time some lefty libtard moonbat tinfoil hat Obama mouthpiece like Janeane Garofalo, Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, Anderson Cooper or even George Stephanopoulos talks about teabaggers,  just keep in mind whose lips are sealed and whose are always wide open, very receptive and ready to form an airtight seal.

When they do, please remind them not to talk with their mouths full. It’s very rude.

Speaking of sealed lips (not to mention wallets), I myself re-registered this week as an Independent after 29 years as a Republican. Never voted Democrat in my life. But I did not leave the Republican Party. The Republican Party left me. I will not lean across the aisle in order to teabag Obama and the Left on the massive frauds of amnesty, climate change, the government takeover of health care, and all the other budget-busting and power-grabbing LibDem Lefty scams that will have us all teabagging the government in abject serfdom for the next thousand years.

I am a free man. I will not be a teabagging mouthpiece for anyone. Unlike some people

Present were swatches from every race, creed, color, age, and political and socio-economic background.  Conspicuously absent were members of the mainstream media who seem determined to continue treading a poison ivy laden path towards irrelevance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I rest my case.

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

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

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

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

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

Hope Springs Eternal

I go to bed full of hate and wake up the same.  I hate blacks, Hispanics, gays, women, abortion doctors, liberals, Lefties, Democrats, you name ‘em, I hate ‘em if they’re not like me. I especially hate President Obama for being black. Just ask Janeane Garofalo, although being a Stalinist Socialist doesn’t help Obama’s cause any with me. Fact is, Obama could be a GOP Michael Steele Uncle Tom, and I’d still hate him even more than liberals hate Steele. Skin color trumps all. Thank God I was born the right color, or I’d probably kill myself. Wait, the hoods are dry! Be right back.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Joe is my hero and role model, Archie Bunker a distant second, Ted Nugent a close third. I have posters of all of them lining my walls, alongside such conservative Republican heroes as Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Richard Nixon, Adolf Hitler and Darth Vader.

I used to have one of Robert C. Byrd, but he lost me when he left the Klan and became the Conscience of the Senate. Whatever that means. Didn’t know the Senate had one. But I never understood that. How can a white guy in good conscience leave the Klan? But I digress.

I have a mega-gun collection and a huge stockpile of hollow-point Teflon-coated ammo that’s just itching to be used. Haven’t decided yet on which abortion doctor I’m going to target next. Maybe I’ll just go down to the border and shoot brownskins for sport. dHs, sToP mE BefORe I KilL aGAiN!

And though I really hate homos like the Good Book says I should, I spend a lot of my free time cruising aiport rest rooms and tapping footsies like Larry Craig. If I’m lucky, I’ll get some real teabagging in. If not, I’ll try to get some in at my local Tea Party. Of course, my shotgun wedding Handmaid’s Tale wife with the nice tooth doesn’t know about any of this. She’s usually home watching Jerry Falwell and the “700 Club” most of the day, and role-plays being Sarah Palin for me at night. Is that kinky or what? God, I love my wife! Would never be unfaithful to her with another woman.

As to being with other men, well, nobody in the GOP’s perfect. But it beats being a liberal! Except for the part where they get away with murder, and we get stoned for jaywalking.

Our favorite day is Sunday, named after our favorite radical fire-and-brimstone preacher Billy Sunday. We sing hymns like ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ and wash ourselves clean in the Lord. Really necessary for me. A conservative Republican can get real dirty during the GOP workweek. Good thing my wife’s family is rich. Her toothless redneck dad gave us a beat up ‘78 Ford pickup with NASCAR and confederate flag bumper stickers and an Easy Rider rifle rack. Pride of the Bayou!

I want war. Lots of it. Want the economy to get a boost? Works every time! Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran! Of course, in the interest of disclosure, I must confess to being a consultant for Blackwater, Halliburton, the Carlyle Group and Big Oil. And so what if we all staged 9/11? Made a ton of dough and dusted enough Islamist ragheads to fill the new Yankee Stadium, didn’t we?

Liberals are such pussies! And screw Global Warming! I WANT the world to burn! Only then can Jesus bring Paradise to earth. Speaking of which, where’s that landing strip for Christ in Yosemite National Park James Watt put on order? Days are gettin’ short! And don’t forget, Jesus is white, and might is right. I’m sorry, what was the problem with slavery again?

Actually, I have to confess yet again. All the above is only what I aspire to be, i.e. the best GOPer Repug Nazi I can be. Like most mortals, I fall far short of my goals and dreams. I don’t even own a gun or hollow-point Teflon-coated ammo, but I support the Second Amendment, which is just as bad. May as well be a co-conspirator with Scott Roeder and James von Brunn.

I detest the corrupt Mengele-like genocidal statutory rape-hiding abortion industry that needs reform even more than Iran’s government, but support a woman’s LEGAL right to choose. It’s the law. Until and unless it’s overturned, what can you do? Shoot up clinics? Ya, in my Rethug dreams!

I’m really not a bathroom footsie player, or like cock and hairy ass in general. But gay marriage is legal in my home state of New Hampshire and I haven’t been sodomized yet, so live and let live. What can I say, I’m weak. And even though as a six-year veteran I believe in General Douglas MacArthur’s axiom that “no one hates war more than the soldier,” sometimes they just gotta be fought if civilization as we know it must survive. Be it a cold war with the Russians or hot ones with Hitler and bin Laden, the dirty deeds must be done. And without quarter until victory is complete.

Fight a war to the end or don’t fight it. You can’t do both. One way assures victory, the other defeat. The Art of Fighting Without Fighting doesn’t work with the abu Musab al-Zarqawis of this world.

Worst of all? I was born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Now THAT’S a confession! How can I ever face my conservative redneck Republican sister-banging moonshine-guzzling Zionist drinking buddies at the NRSC and AIPAC again?

I put it all on the table, people. Now, if only liberal Democrat lefties would freely admit to all the world that they’re all hypocritical, mentally disordered, drug-addled, tree-hugging, America-hating, nihilist anarchist recruiting office-bombing, terrorist and dictator-loving, tinfoil hat, limp-wrist pansy spoiled brat full-grown trust fund Stalinist toddlers who couldn’t get gangbanged by the Green Bay Packers hard or fast enough (practice squads included), maybe we’ll get somewhere in this country.

I seek progress, not perfection. We can all sit down together and have one big ideological circle jerk. Get it out of our systems, you know? Hey, we’re all Americans here! Confession is good for the soul. Or your metaphysical, Pagan or Wiccan existential plane of being, depending on your religious or non-religious proclivities and inclinations.

God, I feel so good now. Got it all out. Okay, let’s hear it in the comments section now. No holding back. That includes you, Unrighteous Bubba and Cognitive Dissonant. Tell us about all the kinky things you like to do with tinfoil, Vaseline and vacuum cleaners while watching sick online German porn in your mothers’ basements

I beg to differ.  In fact, I believe the evidence is stronger each day that the Republican Party is making inroads into the Democratic “majority.”  The election happened and Obama and the Democrats are in power.  We have to live with that for another 18 months.  But when one looks at the trends a new picture begins to develop. 

All evidence indicates that the country is going the other way and still leans center-right.  Look at what happened in Virginia yesterday.  In a hotly contested Democratic primary for governor, R. Creigh Deeds, a conservative Democrat, whooped an ex-head of the DNC and staunch supporter of the Clintons.  Deeds is about as far to the right as the Democratic Party gets.  He is so pro-gun that he supports concealed weapons in bars and nightclubs.  I’m not even sure if I go that far.

 Why did Deeds get the nomination?  Well, according to every article and news report, it is because the Virginia Democrats are afraid of losing the governorship in November to the Republican candidate.  Robert McDonnell is a staunch Republican Conservative and the Virginia populace is definitely to the right regardless of whether the state went with Obama.  A liberal Democrat is never going to win Virginia right now and probably never. 

Another example can be seen by the current events in the New York Legislature.  The Democrats which have had control of the New York Senate for as long as anyone can remember have physically locked the chamber to keep the new majority Republicans from enacting any legislation.  How has this happened?  Well, two members of the Senate switched sides tipping the scales in favor of the Republicans.  The Democrats, according to Governor Patterson, a Democrat, are now acting like children and have physically taken the keys to the chamber to stop the Republicans from doing anything.  In fact, they are refusing to recognize that two of their brethren have abandoned them. 

Speaking of Governor Patterson maybe we should talk about his approval rating for a minute.  This is the man that became governor after Eliot Spitzer resigned in disgrace about a year ago for being the typical Democratic hypocrite.  He “played” with the people he took on.  Governor Patterson’s approval ratings are so low that some people believe that a Republican may actually have a chance to win New York.  That would be only the second Republican to hold office in New York since 1975.  The last, George Pataki, took power during the Republican revolution in the mid-nineties and barely lasted two terms. 

What would happen if New York gets a Republican governor in the next election cycle?  With California currently having a Republican governor and a strong potential candidate in Meg Whitman, the top two states would be Republican.  If you factor in Texas and Florida which are third and fourth in population, and both of which have Republican incumbents, you would have approximately 32% of the US Population controlled by Republican governors in just four states.  To me that doesn’t sound like a dead party!  Rather, it sounds like one that has the potential for a strong majority.

On the national front, Nancy Pelosi’s current popularity is at the lowest it’s ever been.  According to a Gallup poll released on Friday, Pelosi’s ratings are currently at 34%.  If I’m not mistaken, these are lower than President Bush’s at the end of his administration.  In fact, the same poll showed that Ex Vice President Dick Cheney’s popularity is actually higher at 37%.  Eight months ago, this was one of the most disliked men in the country.  I guess that speech he gave a few weeks ago on National Security and the effects of 9/11 made a lot of the population think. 

One of the most important facts about these poll numbers is where the change is actually coming from.  Both Ms. Pelosi’s fall and Mr. Cheney’s rise are directly related to a change in independent electorate which went strongly Democratic last November.  And, we all know that is where elections are won. 

Just yesterday, the Obama spin started on the stimulus package.  The President stopped talking about creating jobs and started talking about saving jobs.  How will anyone prove the accuracy of his statement yesterday that 150,000 jobs were saved as a result of the stimulus package so far?  Last month the economy lost more than 500,000 jobs net.  That’s a loss, plain and simple.  When that number turns around and there is job growth in a month, then he can start to claim credit.  But, by saying that 150,000 jobs were saved last month, he is making it look like the stimulus worked when there is no proof one way or the other.  It’s spin, pure and simple. 

Newt Gingrich, it seems, is already running for President and his popularity is growing.  At a conference in the past few days, he stated that Obama has already failed.  And, he is strongly criticizing Ms. Sotomayor.  Maybe, the American public is beginning to agree.  For the first time, the President’s approval rating has sunk below 60%.  I predict it will be teetering around 50% by the end of the year. 

Jon Voight publicly stated at the same conference that he is embarrassed by the President and that the President will cause the downfall of this country.  Jon Voight, who in my opinion is a great American, should probably think about running for Congress.  I am still moved by his Memorial Day comments about Hollywood being in a sorry state when it cared more about Earth Day than Memorial Day. 

Why is this change happening so shortly after the “Democratic Revolution?”  I can answer that one, but it would take a book.  To put it simply, the American people are beginning to see this Administration for what it is:  A return to the failed policies of Jimmy Carter and Democrats of the seventies.  Weakness in Foreign Affairs and out-of-control spending will not sit with the American electorate at either the national or state level.  And, unfortunately, that is what the first five months of President Obama’s Administration has brought.  And, unfortunately, that appears to be what the future will bring as well. 

©2009 by Frank T. DeMartini.  All rights reserved.  Permission to copy will be freely granted upon request.