For those of you here at Big Hollywood who think you are playing a whole new game in taking on the Tinseltown establishment in force, I have news for you. Scribe Extraordinaire and futurist iconoclast Harlan Ellison beat you all to the punch by about forty-five years. And if you don’t know who Harlan Ellison is, shame on you! He is a living legend with more Hugos and Nebulas than I care to count, as well as four WGA Awards and an Emmy nod. And all that’s just for starters.

Much of Harlan’s writing defies description or genre. If I had to describe it, I would say that Harlan paints with words like Picasso and Salvador Dali painted with canvas. Even that description is severely lacking. Perhaps Dali on acid would be more apropos. Harlan’s writing does have a peyote-flavored tinge to it than can induce a trippy narcosis in readers, yet Harlan has never touched a drug in his life. Some studio execs, producers and others in the screen trade who have meddled with or lifted Harlan’s work in the past might find that news surprising, given Harlan’s reactions to those mortal offenses resembled a tiger on methamphetamine.

In point of fact, there are two kinds of Harlan Ellison people in Hollywood, and both are foaming-at-the-mouth types. There are those in the studio system who despise Harlan with every atom of their being, and those who would take a firing squad for him. I have a blindfold on standby just in case. Have for about thirty years now. But let us discuss some of the other foaming-at-the-mouth types, why that is, and why he is my Hollywood hero and role model as a writer in that regard.

As noted in the preamble, Harlan does not care who he offends for the sake of pure art. Never has. How about we start at the top with Gene Roddenberry on the set of Star Trek in 1967? Though City on the Edge of Forever won Harlan Hugo and WGA Awards and is considered by many Trekkies to be the finest episode written for that show, Harlan begged to differ at the time. See, Harlan’s original script contained various moral ambiguities (including a drug-addled Enterprise crewman) that countered producer Roddenberry’s less dark and dystopian vision of the Star Trek future.

So Roddenberry rewrote it. Harlan protested vehemently, to the point of trying to replace his own name on the script with that of his oft-used contemptuous pseudonym Cordwainer Bird, which literally translates to “He who makes shoes for birds.” Roddenberry refused to let Harlan make the change, and added insult to injury in later years by proclaiming he had saved the script.

Ten years later, while working as creative consultant and staff writer on the darkly brilliant but highly underrated Twilight Zone reboot in the mid-1980s, Harlan once again came to artistic blows with the show’s producers over his proposed episode titled ‘Nackles,’ a story of good and evil Santas having at it on a Christmas Eve most dark and dystopian. Seeing a trend here? Harlan refused to budge, so the studios canceled ‘Nackles at the last minute, fearing it was too dark for the ‘fragile’ American market. Imagine that. A dark and dystopian Twilight Zone episode. Who’d a-thunk it?

Had the studio forced a rewrite not to Harlan’s liking, Mr. Bird’s name would no doubt be on the credits. Alas, the evil St. Nick was not to be.  And we are all the lesser for it, I can assure you. I guess Bad Santa is as far as the studios will go. Harlan also sued Jim Cameron over the original Terminator film as being derivative of his two scripted Outer Limits TOS episodes Soldier and Demon With a Glass Hand, and won. A settlement was reached, and Harlan is now acknowledged in the film’s credits. Harlan also sued and won over City on the Edge of Forever residuals, and recently settled with Paramount Pictures on the matter.

For me, the toppings on the Harlan Ellison Hollywood Rebel cake are The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat, Harlan’s two collections of scathing essays on television’s moral and intellectual vacuity, previously published in the Los Angeles Free Press in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Even today they are enthralling reads, and are required reading in many college media classrooms. Example. Harlan thought the concept of Hogan’s Heroes, i.e. a comedy set in a German POW camp, was offensive in the extreme given the real-life brutality in those settings. In response, Harlan asked the pressing question, “What next for a studio sitcom? Bernie Goes To Auschwitz?”

Love him or hate him, Harlan Ellison cannot and will not be denied. Yet Harlan’s approach to screenwriting and storytelling as a pure art form is as relevant to Hollywood today as it was forty years ago. I can guaran-damn-tee you, even if Harlan thinks Al Gore doesn’t go anywhere near far enough in his alarmism on Global Warming, God have mercy on the poor studio bastard who would try to compel Harlan to inject An Inconvenient Truth into his scripts. I’m thinking a response less Academy Awards and more tiger on meth.

And that is what is truly disappointing to me in Hollywood today: that so many great studio writers are so willing to pervert their art and God-given storytelling talent just to keep working a show. Or worse, to corrupt it willingly for the sake of propaganda. I understand their real world concerns, but I wish at least one WGA writer would toss up a Cordwainer Bird-like pseudonym to let us all know there’s at least one ghost in Jeffrey Immelt’s Big NBC Green Machine. At the very least, lay down some wood here in the comments section. I’m 99.9% sure Harlan would. Hollywood could use a few good rebels right now. Rebels that may sell their work to make a living, but draw the line at prostitution.

And Harlan, if I’m wrong on any of this, please feel free to give me Hell. Even if you do, that get-out-of-a-firing-squad-free card will always be good with me. I would also be greatly interested in hearing from any other creative film artists tossed into the political mud pits at NBC and elsewhere who could not be more offended if they were Harlan Ellison. Your secrets are safe with us. Trust me.

Be a Hollywood Rebel! Let ‘er rip! Fight The Power! Do it for Harlan

Recently, actor Matt Damon narrated a video for the State Department, addressing the problem of chronic  worldwide hunger. The video is extremely well made; those who watch it can’t help but be touched by it.

This first minute of the three-minute video revolves around one problem: Hunger. Poor children are seen dying of starvation, others are lying on the streets of third-world countries, not able to walk. Damon explains that six million children die of hunger every year – needless to say, a shocking statistic.

Even the most egotistical viewer cannot help but get angry at and upset by so much suffering, most of which is needless.

But then, one minute into the video, the subject suddenly changes. We move from dying children to tornadoes and tsunamis. Damon forgets about the children for a while to focus on … you knew it was coming … global warming.

Dying, hungry, suffering children are used as tools to talk about leftists’ main obsession; the myth of man-made global warming. The opportunism of these people never ceases to amaze me. They truly know no shame.

Damon’s video likely has something to do with the upcoming climate change talk in Copenhagen, Denmark. The U.S. State Department is clearly stepping up its efforts to influence public opinion and to prepare it for a deal that would do tremendous, needless, damage to Western economies, all in a vain attempt to combat climate change.

That is sad. What’s even sadder, however, is that videos such as Damon’s can have a major impact in global policy. Although increasingly more Europeans are becoming skeptical of man-made global warming leading to catastrophe, they still form the minority – and a pretty small one at that. Videos such as the one produced by the U.S. State Department and narrated by the world famous actor Matt Damon will undoubtedly cause many Europeans to support whatever treaty comes out of Copenhagen.

Although Americans may be more critical about global warming than we Europeans, it’s hard to imagine they will be left untouched by the video. The average voter is likely to think, “but if we don’t do something, millions of innocent little children will die!” Who can argue against that?

Interestingly enough, the last thirty seconds of the video are dedicated to different subjects. Suddenly Damon switches to “opening strong markets” to African products (since when do leftists love globalization and the free market, you have to wonder?) and to “empowering women.” What that has to do with global warming, no one knows, but that is not the point. No, the real subject of this video is global warming and the goal is to prepare Americans for an overly expensive treaty, which will do nothing whatsoever to actually change the climate for the better.

Using imagery of dying children, hunger, and oppressed women to butter-up Americans (and Europeans) to embrace an unnecessary, expensive and probably counterproductive Copenhagen-treaty… for Hollywood, it’s business as usual.

Some of the things he swore to included keeping lobbyists out of his administration, providing five days for the public to review pending legislation and a bi-partisan approach to problem-solving.  Instead, lobbyists, particularly those representing unions, have freer access to the Oval Office than Michelle and the kids.  Not only is the public not given time to digest major legislation, neither are the legislators.  Early on, you may recall, Congress was given less than 24 hours to vote on an 1100-page, trillion dollar, so-called stimulus bill; more recently, when it came to health care, Obama was telling the sheep on Capitol Hill to vote even before an actual bill was written!

So far, as bi-partisanship is concerned, the Republicans have been banished to Washington’s equivalent of Siberia.  These days, bi-partisanship simply means that  David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel are in agreement.

There is one promise, however, that Obama has kept.  He vowed transparency, and anyone who can’t plainly see what the rock star and his left-wing groupies (Axelrod, Emanuel, Jeff Jones, Valerie Jarrett, Cass Sunstein, Anita Dunn) are up to is simply spending too much time watching “American Idol” and college football.

Consider, if you will, the way that Obama has managed to take the spotlight off his attempt to grab control of one-sixth of the nation’s economy that’s devoted to health care and to put the kibosh on conservative talk radio and free access to the Internet.  All he had to do was declare war on Fox News.  Just like that, the mass media, otherwise known as faux news, turned its attention to the phoniest battle since Gorgeous George and the Super Swedish Angel hung up their wrestling tights.

The way the media carried on, you’d have thought Obama was trying to decide whether to send 40,000 additional troops to fight in Afghanistan or to invade Fox.

On the other hand, it is just possible that Obama’s feud with Fox merely proves that he is as thin-skinned and as vain as some of us have suspected all along, which would fit right in with the narcissism that his constant TV appearances suggests.  Not since FDR have we had a president so in love with the sound of his own voice.  Not since Jimmy Carter have we had a president so convinced of his own saintliness.

Although Obama is a prime example of egomania, liberals generally hold themselves and one another in such preposterously high regard that normal people — in other words, conservatives — can only laugh.

For instance, because liberals are always blathering on about how much they love Mother Nature and how concerned they are about ecology, they are never asked to explain why they are so much better at talking the talk than they are at walking the walk.  It’s not just the obvious phonies, either — elitists such as Al Gore, Arianna Huffington, Michael Moore, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Kennedy, Jr., who live in mansions and fly around in private jets, leaving carbon footprints the equivalent of fair-sized communities in their wake — that I have in mind.

I’m also referring to the crowd that showed up in Washington for Obama’s coronation and left our nation’s capitol looking like a pigsty.

I’m thinking of the California Coastal Commission, the folks entrusted with keeping the Golden State’s coastline pristine, but who can always be convinced, for the right price, to come up with a variance.

While on the subject, we shouldn’t overlook the greenies who populate Hollywood and who never once gave George W. Bush a thumbs-up for taking out Saddam Hussein even though his setting fire to the oilfields of Kuwait was the single greatest man-made ecological disaster in history, rivaled only by Adam Sandler’s 30-odd movies.

Finally, we come to nature boy himself, Robert Redford.  Although I am a free market capitalist and believe that Redford should be allowed to build a ski resort, a giant cell phone tower or even have his head carved out of a mountainside, if he chooses to on his own land, I have to question the environmental bona fides of a guy who creates a film festival in the snow-covered hinterlands of Utah.

I mean, every year, upwards of 50,000 people jet in from all over the world for the Sundance Film Festival.  It may be swell for the Utah economy to have all those coke-sniffing, fossil fuel-burning, mugs showing up to watch bad movies and make distribution deals, but if you were really concerned about preserving the environment, wouldn’t it make more sense for these clucks to stay home and watch the movies on their TV sets the way the rest of us do?

In my experience, which consists of watching movies on airplanes, a movie that stinks at sea level reeks just as badly at 30,000 feet.  Otherwise, why settle for Utah?  It would make far more sense to hold a film festival atop Mt. Everest.

(Not the people who really work hard here like the drivers, grips, electricians, greensman, editors, carpenters, etc. – just us so very important ‘Stars’)

- on what YOU the World – can do to save our planet: (Listen up you nasty smelly little flyover stalker freaks.)

1.  Conserve Water!

(Don’t you dare water your 40′ x 100′ lawn. Let it go brown. We’ll keep swimming in our 3 pools, The infinity one in Malibu, and the two at the compound in Palm Springs.)

2. Airplanes are the grossest polluters. Fight Climate Change, take the bus, or ride your bike!

(All you little people, not us right now – we’re too busy with our awesome important star stuff, and we have a very important film festival to attend in a foreign country that mostly hates the U.S. and we just don’t want to miss out on this opportunity to knock America and Americans. P.S. the film is about Climate change, so it is very important we get there fast with our very snobby entourage.)

It’s high time we fix the earth for our children and our children’s children.

(Or my carpet-pooping maid-humping misbehaving half-assed show dog that is really like uh… my kid.)

We all need to change the way we live and CONSERVE NOW!

(You conserve, so WE can have our large mansion, with armed bodyguards, payed for by the most wasteful business on the planet that includes a private trailer on the back lot, with a carbon monoxide chugging gas-guzzle powered generator, long tables of uneaten food, climate controlled tents for lounging with our hanger-on loser friends in between shots that are cooled by A/C that’s powered by 4 honkin’ assed semis with cranking megawatt oop-dee-boop generators, then private Jetting to our mansion in East Hampton that sits empty three fourths of the year although being heated and cooled constantly, and of course our Jet-off lunch trysts in San Fran, Aspen, and sometimes just for kicks oh so FUNKY-FUNKY Mexico City, then jetting back to Van Nuys, jumping in the gas slugging super stretch and speeding – (not signaling at all)  and cutting everyone off on the 101 so as to get back to Universal in time for our masseuses who we won’t tip at all.)

THE TIME IS NOW TO REDUCE YOUR CARBON FOOTPRINT!

(You go first, as I am not a loser like you and can be excused from conserving, because the purpose of my life is to help all of you turds learn to respect the elite and powerfuls’ message of political peace and green global harmony.)

THIS IS EVERYONE’S PROBLEM,  NO MATTER WHAT POLITICAL AFFILIATION, RACE CREED, GENDER, OR SEXUAL ORIENTATION.

(As long as you are not Conservative  or Libertarian and be so insane as to oppose our idea of what we know constitutes an intelligent person. You’d better fit exactly into the box we want to put you in, ie: no gay conservatives, African American conservatives, artist conservatives, musician conservatives etc. because those fakers are shamefully wrongheaded, and just so very freakin’ unfashionable. …. Wait a sec, what the hell is a Libertarian anyway? )

How can you tell when they’re lying?    Their lips are moving.

They think you’re stupid.   It’s understandable that they should think that, because though they may on occasion listen to you, they never really hear you.  Hence, the only frame of reference for feedback on their incredibly absurd redistributive ideas, tax-and-spend proposals and unprecedented treasury-busting health care take-over bills…comes from their own constituents, the Democrats.  Whoops and hollers, cheers and laughter, nods, smiles, enthusiastic ‘yes-we-cans!’… as they serve up yet another heaping portion of socialist slop you’ll be expected to grab your ankles and pay for.  They think you’re stupid.

As the entire Democratic Party has now been fully commandeered by the hard Left, I wrestle daily with the following quandary:  Are they evil?  Or merely dense? 

Anyone paying attention and not mired in self-deceit can easily see that everything the current administration and Democrat-controlled Congress is doing and attempting to do is based in Marxian principles of redistribution, government takeovers of private industry and control of the American citizenry.  And anyone with just a rudimentary knowledge of basic economic principles and merely a modicum of historical perspective can see that capitalism lifts up and advances any civilization it touches; whereas socialism degrades quality of life by enriching the government as it dis-empowers the individual.  Freedom-loving people worldwide have been battling these statist oppressors throughout the millennia.  The failure of a modern American voting populace to intellectually link the smiling promises of today’s ‘free’ lunch with the blood, death and horror of tyrants of the past is to shame us all with a new definition of national  myopia.

They’re lying to us.  A bill crafted behind closed doors, excluding participation by the opposition party, the Republicans, and rejecting all alternative ideas about health care reform like freedom to shop insurance plans interstate?   Or TORT reform,  so that doctors don’t have to practice defensive medicine?   Or how about cutting down government red tape so hospital administrators don’t have to add the cost of voluminous paperwork to medical bills, and pairing back excessive government regulations so that hospitals and doctors can drive down costs through healthy competition?   But Steny Hoyer called it an open and transparent process.   Right.

Timothy Geithner is asking the government for more control over the Fed.  That’s certainly comforting.  His answer to current economic woes is to borrow more hundreds of billions from China…and print more money.  But – if they’re printing billions and billions of more dollars, doesn’t it make the dollars already in my hand…worth… less?  Uh…yeah.   And just wait until next year when the banks start to put these newly printed dollars into circulation.  And gold shoots sky high and the dollar plummets.  Then the fun begins…

They’re stealing from you.

Not only are they working around the clock to shore up their losses and lunatic-lefty programs, but they are preparing to raise your taxes through the roof.  Some of them will be hidden ‘fees.’ (Watch for them to pop up like measles spots when the virus begins.)  Some of them will be overt, you’ll be able to see them, at least for the ‘wealthy’ – you know, anyone earning over 100K.  But once inflation kicks in, pretty soon that will be the greater majority of us.  And they’ll expect us to be happy we’re earning so much.  And never mind the fact that those dollars we’re earning are becoming ever-increasingly worthless, and our standard of living is starting to tank.  Shortages, rationing, loss of services…   Anyone remember the long lines at the gas stations in the Carter years?  Odd-and-Even days to fill up?  Fist fights at the pumps…station owners wearing side-arms?

But our leader smiles endearingly and promises us that it will all work out.  After all, there is a beautiful rainbow in the sky and if we just follow his dream for America we will find at the end of it (after eight short years)…a pot of gold.  We merely have to Believe.  Just close our eyes, stare at his picture, click our heels three times and the Leprechaun in Chief will deliver us a pot of gold.

As the media and the Marxists march us to the edge of the bottomless pit of total government control of our wealth, our businesses, our property…our very lives…(some call this tyranny)…we are left with this question about our current leaders:   Are they evil…or merely stupid?   Or both?

And more importantly…what are you going to do about it?

This message approved by Larry Elder, with some slick moves by James O’Keefe.

Online video chat by Ustream

**If you are having problems watching the film, watch it here.***

Big Hollywood is proud to be a part of the “Not Evil Just Wrong” premiere.

The film Al Gore and Hollywood doesn’t want you to see premieres right here, online at Big Hollywood, RIGHT NOW, Sunday October 18th, 8pm ET/5pm PST.

For more information, please visit the “Not Evil Just Wrong” website.

Leave comments below.
]]> http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/bighollywood/2009/10/18/right-now-not-evil-just-wrong-premiere-big-hollywood-live-stream/feed/ 98 http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/cftoto/2009/10/18/not-evil-just-wrong-will-open-eyes-to-inconvenient-facts/ http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/cftoto/2009/10/18/not-evil-just-wrong-will-open-eyes-to-inconvenient-facts/#comments Sun, 18 Oct 2009 14:03:38 +0000 Christian Toto http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/?p=247742 “Not Evil Just Wrong,” the new documentary debunking much of the global warming movement, is reaching the public at an opportune time. Not only did the film’s director, Phelim McAleer, just publicly embarrass former Vice President Al Gore at a global warming Q&A, but major news outlets are now revealing the earth’s temperature hasn’t gone up for at least a decade.

Yet, “Not Evil Just Wrong” still won’t get the attention of your average Michael Moore polemic. That’s a shame, since it’s far more balanced than Moore’s body of work and offers a message few mainstream documentaries are willing to touch.

What if global warming is just another wide-scale scare tactic, like Y2K, the killer bees or mad cow disease, but with far more devastating results? These questions are rarely asked in the press, so kudos to “Not Evil” for doing so in such a methodical fashion. The film isn’t as entertaining as a Moore screen rant, but it still looks snazzy while imparting a raft of enlightening material.

Naturally, the film presses its thumb on the scale to favor the skeptics, but the global warming believers here add both texture and perspective. “We live in an age of fear, but humans have never lived longer or been healthier,“ the narrator says.

The film then trots out a wealth of experts to address the global warming movement and its flaws, but none are more passionate than Patrick Moore, a founding member of Greenpeace. He’s aghast at the direction the environmental movement has taken in recent years, and thinks too many of his peers take an “anti-human” approach to the matter. “They care more about fish eggs than humans, and there’s something immoral about that,” he says of some enviro-peers.

“Not Evil” spends too much time addressing, and debunking, the case against DDT as a weapon against malaria. Yes, demonizing DDT had disastrous consequences and there’s plenty to be learned from this chapter in environmental history. But focusing so long on the matter blunts the overall theme.

Some film polemics pluck at our heartstrings without shame, and while “Not Evil” shows a lower middle class family to showcase the results of potential green legislation, it also subverts the genre’s touchy feely clichés.

The film shows school children in Northern Ireland who sketch frightening drawings inspired by Gore’s fear mongering. Given the recent news headlines concerning brainwashed kiddies singing odes to President Barack Obama, the sequence proves even more chilling than intended.

The documentary could have gone the Moore route, blasting away at its opponents while overstating its case with fast edits and slippery truths. But McAleer meticulously states its arguments, sometimes to the film’s detriment.

Take the movie’s debunking of the “hockey stick” graph used to highlight one the global warming movement’s key talking points. We’re walked through the entire process, learning step by step how two curious men were able to puncture the stick myth once and for all. The film also deftly illustrates the “Kumbaya” mentality so prevalent amongst environmentalists. One do-gooder wonders what Uganda would be like without birds, which she fears would be the result if DDT were introduced into the country.

“Can you imagine Elton John with no piano?” the environmentalist asks. We’d rather imagine an African country fighting back against a killer disease.

“Not Evil Just Wrong” may not be as flashy as “Sicko” or as easily digested as “Super Size Me,” but it could open up viewers’ eyes to some inconvenient facts about the global warming debate.

After a court in England decreed that there were 11 “inaccuracies” in “An Inconvenient Truth”, many of which could be classified as outright lies and false claims, Gore did not recut the film. So when film director Phelim McAleer asked him if he would fix the problem, Gore refused to answer and McAleer’s mic was cut.

It’s not surprising that Gore is being evasive. When a “peer reviewed” study of tree rings used in the UN’s IPCC reports referenced by people like Gore, was revisited by scientists, guess what they discovered?

At least eight papers purporting to reconstruct the historical temperature record times may need to be revisited, with significant implications for contemporary climate studies, the basis of the IPCC’s assessments. A number of these involve senior climatologists at the British climate research centre CRU at the University East Anglia. In every case, peer review failed to pick up the errors.

Yes, these peer reviewed scientists cherry picked the data to arrive at a conclusion they liked. Sound familiar? It gets worse, They mysteriously lost the climate studies they did over the years that were supposed to prove the climate was warming. Oops!

British news sources that once told us Global Warming was real are now changing their tune. In fact, 2009 may become the year that the Global Warming scam met its “tipping point.”

It should come as no surprise Gore was made a hero by people who like to believe in the AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) fantasy. After all, it’s immensely egotistical to think humans are going to change the climate when one major volcano eruption can easily eclipse all the industrial output of the 20th century combined. It’s happened before in modern times and we’re still here.

Considering that Gore based his film on fiction and lies, and has made no effort to correct his “mistakes,” he deserves neither a Documentary Oscar nor a Nobel Prize. Of course, the Nobel has been given to other liars, terrorists and frauds so we can focus on the Oscar.

Ann McElhinney’s and Phelim McAleer’s film “Not Evil Just Wrong” takes apart Gore’s crockumentary piece by piece. It’s part of a growing movement against the AGW movement as the earth gets colder, not warmer. Gore was not only wrong, he was scaring people. His motives are purely avaricious, not humane. Since the film debuted he has made millions and stands to make millions more from so called “green companies” he put in place to reap the windfall from the hysteria.

For this and the fact that documentaries are supposed to be based in some kind of facts, Al Gore’s Oscar needs to be rescinded.

Let’s start a petition.

Big Hollywood is proud to be a part of the “Not Evil Just Wrong” premiere.

The film Al Gore and Hollywood doesn’t want you to see premieres right here, online at Big Hollywood, Sunday October 18th, 8pm ET/5pm PST.

For more information and a look at the trailer, please visit the “Not Evil Just Wrong” website. ]]> http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/bighollywood/2009/10/14/big-hollywood-to-premiere-the-movie-al-gore-doesnt-want-you-to-see/feed/ 64