Part of what I love about my father is how he is a vessel that carries the good things from the past into the future. His generation may have brought some bad things along with them too, but we don’t mourn or fear the passing of bad things. It’s the good things that I fear are leaving us, and our society no longer produces men like Lincoln, Johnny Cash or even my dad. That’s what a father is, a vessel that ushers greatness into the next generation. Dads bring great things from the old school to the new school.

The only DVD my dad owns is “The Magnificent Seven.” The only video tape he owned before that was… “The Magnificent Seven.” There will come a time when Dad’s voice will be silenced by mortality and I’ll watch “The Magnificent Seven” with even greater meaning.

So here goes: Dad, when I was a teen I thought you were the worst son of a bitch to walk the planet. You want a shock, Pop? Now I think you’re the greatest man I’ve ever known.

We all get into show business for the right reasons — because we love entertainment and want to have a hand in creating that special magic. I don’t think anyone begins down the road to Hollywood because they feel the urgent need to inject politics into their work in order to change the world. I certainly didn’t. And I bet George Clooney wasn’t thinking that way when he was on the set of “Facts of Life” for the first time at the start of his career. 

I started young, first as an actor, and now a writer. This is the only thing I have ever pursued and I have been at it since the day I left my small town in the summer of 1991. The Reagan/Bush era was coming to a close and I voted for Bill Clinton in 92 because as a reasonable person who watched the six o’clock news I could tell we needed something fresh. It was the first year I was old enough to vote and I was very excited to do it. However, in all those years that I was booking commercials or bit parts in movies and TV, no one ever made a peep about politics. To me politics was something separate and pretty boring compared to the dream I was after. If you asked me back then which political party my friends belonged to, I couldn’t tell you who was a Republican or who was a Democrat because it just wasn’t an issue.  

Divide and Conquer

Not anymore. Now I know just about everyone’s political views and they know mine. Is this really such a bad thing? No. In fact it’s a pretty amazing and healthy development for a democracy that has had less and less of its citizens participating in the voting process over the years. I have mostly liberal friends that absolutely hate my worldview and some of them have changed the way they treat me over the past few years, much to my disappointment. But at the end of the day I look at it like this — by standing up for what I believe I’m taling one for the team. The team being my country that I love.

It’s healthy that we’re at each others throats, fighting and battling for what we think is the best future for America. This seems to have been the only thing that has brought record numbers of people to the polls and in a short amount of time re-legitimized our Democracy as one that’s worth fighting for — even if we start by fighting each other. As I see it we’re more legit for having a family fight then we have been in years. Now we have to come together and start to get along. Please.

That’s why Big Hollywood is so vital to me — it understands what’s at stake and has the power to heal this divide in an industry that ultimately is the face of the nation and should better reflect its free citizens’ values — all of them. There really is a time and place for everything. We have so many outlets for content delivery that it shouldn’t be such a big deal to a small minority of citizens with one view that their values are not the dominate ones from coast to coast. It’s false domination through strong arming and it’s killing the product. So instead of movies as an escape you get movies as indoctrination tools. 

There’s a saying that politics is show business for ugly people. But recently show business has been politics for mean people. It has to stop. I never forget that when I disagree with someone they are simply one voter and do not have the power to single handedly change things. Some of the more enraged people in show business are too blind with hate to see this in someone like me. And to them I say — I still love you.

I can guarantee you that we will have a Republican president in office again. When one party loses it’s never the end for the other — it’s the new beginning. And this country elects only two types of leaders — hand shakers and butt kickers. So let’s get over our totalitarian dreams of winning this political battle forever because it’s not going to happen and it really would be the death of America to not have opposing points of view ultimately working in harmony.

Rounding Home

We don’t go to the movies to see how bad we are. We go to see how good we can be. To lift up the spirit and remind ourselves that the drama of our lives are shared by our neighbors. 

Until the climate in Hollywood has changed and all sides are free to express themselves, there ought to be a new sign added just underneath the Hollywood one that warns all dreamers; “George Bailey wasn’t born here”