On February 7th, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the marriage protection amendment, commonly known as Prop 8, violates the U.S. Constitution. Although it passed with the support of 52% of California voters in 2008, the court said it “serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples.”

From where I sit, this ruling was a travesty, not only because it discarded the wishes of 7 million Californians who voted for it, but because much of the money to overturn it came from Hollywood elites who are completely out of touch with the heart and soul of America.

Honestly, watching the decision come down from the 9th Circuit was like watching Brad Pitt and Elton John stomp all ever everything that flyover country holds near and dear to its heart. I cite Pitt and John because Pitt gave at least $100,000 to “fight the proposition,” and in Jan. 2011, John played a benefit concert in Beverly Hills that raised $3,000,000 for the same cause.

Of course, these two were not alone. Steven Bing, long time Democrat Party donor and Hillary Clinton supporter, donated $500,000 to the cause, and according to Advocate magazine, Mary J. Blige and Melissa Etheridge were right there in the mix as well. Oh, and we can’t overlook old “Meathead,” Rob Reiner, who opposed Prop 8 when it was on the ballot in 2008 and who’s been “one of the biggest fundraisers behind the legal effort” to overturn it since. (more…)

There’s nothing better than being able to do the right thing and the politically savvy thing while simultaneously paying back a long-time abuser in spades.

And that’s just what the Republicans in Congress did to Hollywood when it abandoned the rush to pass SOPA and regulate the Internet for the benefit of Tinseltown. Astonishingly, considering its usual inability to perform competently at even the most basic level, the GOP not only managed to embrace good policy but drove a wedge into the Democratic coalition that may well have dramatic consequences down the road. And, best of all, it provided a bit of long overdue payback to the smug oligarchs of LA’s West Side who have spent the last couple decades treating Republicans like something you’d hasten to flush.

Hey, suckers, how do ya like us now?

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is only the latest attempt by Hollywood to breathe some life back into its dying business model. Enraged that online “pirates” are passing around bootleg copies of movies, shows, books, music, and all other manner of intellectual property, the industry did what it has done for years: ran to Congress for ever more burdensome and onerous laws designed to hold back the inevitable consequences of progress. 

But this time, it went too far. Perhaps it was Hollywood’s arrogance. Perhaps it was the provisions allowing Hollywood to use the United States government to shut down any website it pleased on the mere accusation of “piracy” without any due process, a power lefty–fascist bureaucrats would be only too eager to accept.

Not surprisingly, the people who make their living on the web were less than thrilled about giving Uncle Sam and the media conglomerates an off-switch.

(more…)

I loved going to the movies.  I always have, but I’m not so sure I do anymore.

We all know Hollywood is spinning around the bowl, waiting for the final flush. Attendance at theaters is not just flat-lining, it’s in free fall. There are a lot of reasons, some of which Hollywood really cannot do much about. Video games occupy young eyeballs. Technology now delivers a tsunami of entertainment options to our TVs, computers and iThings. But there are ways that Hollywood can respond. It can make movies that don’t suck, but that’s another subject for another time. And it can make the theaters into something new and different – that is, it can make them into places we want to be.

I (and folks like me) should be a target demographic for the green eyeshade guys who supposedly run Hollywood.  While, even if all the conditions were perfect, I wouldn’t go as much as I used to, I used to go a couple times a week before I was married, and even after I’d go weekly. I’ll spend my few free bucks (including the fortune for babysitters) if there’s something I want to see (doubtful, and again another issue for another time) and if going to the theater itself is something other than a nightmarish death march.

Which brings me to my trip to the El Segundo, California, ArcLight Cinemas on a recent Friday night to see “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”…

The ArcLight, and other “premium” theaters, represents the industry’s attempt to address some of the more common complaints about theaters from people like me – decrepit facilities, careless projection, and snack options that range from bland to hideous.  As a drunken college student, I didn’t mind going to some hellhole theater on dollar night to see awesome fare like “The Exterminator II” and “Pieces”– hey, aesthetics aren’t Consideration No. 1 when your flick’s tagline is “You don’t have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre!” But today, I want a little more than sticky floors and discreet ticket takers who overlook the beer cans I had obviously secreted in my pockets. (more…)

As much of the rest of Hollywood dutifully sides with an abortion mill (responsible for killing more unborn women than Stalin), over a respected foundation that has done more to fight breast cancer and save women’s lives than any other, one high-profile star isn’t afraid to swim against these left-wing Tinseltown hordes:

—–

—–

Ellen Barkin, Roseanne Barr, John Legend, Lance Armstrong, and many others have pledged to not only end their support of Komen, they are also urging others to do the same. But that’s how the left thinks. First off, how dare a private charity make a private decision (so much for “choice”). Secondly, you can’t support both for heaven’s sake, Harvey might not invite you to his next shindig.

(more…)

For lefty movie reviewers already bitter that Margaret Thatcher even existed – and especially bitter because her three terms as Britain’s prime minister utterly repudiated their most sacred beliefs – the new Thatcher biography The Iron Lady offers them a chance for some quality ankle biting.  Of course, this living legend will survive both the film and the wailing of these liberal pipsqueaks.  The problem is that we still can’t be sure whether we ought to see it or not.

The arrival of a serious film about a serious conservative presents liberal reviewers with a quandary. When the film trashes the conservative, that’s great – the slander in and of itself is good for at least a star on its own, and if the boom mikes aren’t looming in the frame and the actors don’t forget their lines you’re guaranteed at least a three star review if only in the name of socialist solidarity.

But if the movie, as some say happened here, refuses to take a position on its subject, then there’s a problem for the liberal reviewer. As we shall see, they tend to handle it by simply inserting their own limousine liberal insights into the review. Somewhere, sometime, someone must have lied to them and told them that the world gives a damn about the political views of guys whose job it is to discourse upon movies that feature singing chipmunks, space robots and/or Ashton Kutcher.

(more…)

And you wonder why Apatow’s overlong, forgettable films are about as edgy as a baby’s pacifier.

Huffington Post:

While accepting the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Comedy film, “Bridesmaids” producer slammed Jerry Lewis for a sexist remark the legendary comedian once made.

“Jerry Lewis once said that he didn’t think women were funny, so I’d just like to say, with all respect, ‘F*ck you!’” Apatow exclaimed at the end of his speech to cheers from the audience.

Lewis made the comment in 1998 at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen. He told an audience during a Q&A session that “I don’t like any women comedians” and “A woman doing comedy doesn’t offend me but sets me back a bit. I, as a viewer, have trouble with it. I think of her as a producing machine that brings babies in the world.”

With its all female leading cast headed up by co-writer Kristen Wiig, “Bridesmaids” scored critical raves, took in $288 million worldwide and is nominated for three Golden Globes. Though it seems silly to think that there were skeptics, its success proved to many in Hollywood that women can anchor successful broad comedies, not just the romantic comedies and “Sex and the City” films.

Jerry Lewis pushing ninety and this jerk is making his life miserable over a 14 year-old remark?

How ballsy.

(more…)

Like many of you, I started off 2012 with a new year’s resolution to work out.  And, hopefully unlike many of you, two weeks into the new year … I’ve yet to do a single push-up. (sigh)

“Where to find a little workout inspiration?,” I wondered. “Ah, yes, Rocky IV.”  Watching it for the 5,849,948th time, I am compelled to share with you my thoughts on… the greatest film ever made.  Yes, that is not mere opinion but fact.  Rate it on a sheer entertainment, emotions-evoking, never-goes-stale standard and surely you’ll agree.

To be fair, “Rocky IV” is not an overly political film, nor was it intended to be.  But it nonetheless encapsulates several key conservative points, so much so that it was, and still is, slammed by leftist critics as right-wing propaganda.  Behold, the top 10 conservative lessons of “Rocky IV”:

1) Communism… (let me be succinct and find the right word here…) sucks.

(more…)

I highly recommend the documentary “His Way” as a testament to one man’s persistence, the value of being optimistic and looking for opportunities when others see problems. In covering a man, Jerry Weintraub, for whom the Bush family helped end anti-Semitic policies at many Kennebunkport, Maine establishments in the 1960s and who counted both Ronald Reagan and Armand Hammer as friends, Douglas McGrath directed one of this past year’s best biographical documentaries.

—–

In these trying times, this story of one man’s unrelenting efforts to succeed can serve as an inspiration to many. I know “His Way” inspired me. After learning how Jerry cold-called Elvis Presley’s Manager, Colonel Tom Parker, every day for an entire year for the right to take Elvis on tour (for the first time in nearly a decade), I decided to roll the dice and take my own film out on the road to build an audience. Concluding our interview with Douglas McGrath, director of the documentary “His Way,” we talked about more of the film, including the amazing segments on Weintraub’s experiences with Elvis Presley and Colonel Tom Parker and Frank Sinatra.

KW: How did you go about choosing which stories or chapters to cover or not cover from the book?

DM: Well, I didn’t do it that way. I didn’t think of them in terms of chapters. I just thought of them in terms of stories. But, I knew we’d have ninety minutes, an hour and forty-five maybe at most and I just thought, there’s no way to go through everything. I just thought “I’m going to ask about all the stuff I liked the best and the things that were really the big tent poles of his life.” So, I thought I’d better go with the things that really tell us, without repeating it, what his magic was. And the Elvis story is emblematic of his whole career, you know, that tells you how he started with nothing, he persisted. He won the contract, so to speak, the right to take him. He almost blew it. When you think of 20th Century entertainment, particularly musical entertainment and particularly male musical entertainment — you know, you have Elvis and you have Sinatra. Those guys are the big tent poles in that story. (more…)

The love between then-Sen. Barack Obama and the Hollywood elite was so deep Oscar winner Halle Berry proclaimed she would “collect paper cups off the ground to make his pathway clear.”

Director Spike Lee insisted history would be measured in two distinct times – “Before Barack and After Barack.”

For 2012, said love may be on the rocks. Why else would Obama dispatch a key lieutenant to mend the fences torn down by three years of his administration in action?

President Barack Obama’s top Hollywood fundraiser has resigned the ambassadorship to the Bahamas and returned to Los Angeles in the hopes of patching up the incumbent president’s battered relationship with the entertainment industry, The Hollywood Reporter has learned….

Sources told THR that Obama’s reelection campaign plans to use Avant as one of its top liaisons to the entertainment community.

These sources characterize the relationship between the Obama administration and Hollywood as tense and troubled, even though all of the president’s fundraisers in town have sold out and have been attended by a diverse array of industry leaders.

(more…)

Hollywood is like a child, a spoiled child you can’t help loving but desperately want to see do and be better. Hollywood can be cruel and petulant, small and bigoted, hateful and depraved. But every once in a while you see what it COULD be — the talent, the charm, and the ability to inspire and create joy. So we keep coming back to them in the hope that if and when Hollywood ever grows up, they will be what they could be — what they once were, so many years ago.

Today, our spoiled child is in trouble and with only the best of intentions I’m going to see if I can’t take the sting out of the boo-boo with the best advice I can offer.

1. Hollywood Needs Movie Stars, Not Brands

You can trace most of Hollywood’s problems back to the death of the movie star. At first, the industry was thrilled with this development. No movie star meant no big payday, no ego, and none of the baggage too many stahs carry with them. The industry also found that, at least for a while, they could get away with this. Audiences were still packing theatres to see pre-packaged brands developed from high concepts, comic books, novels, and television shows. Sequels, remakes, and prequels were still sure-fire. Who needs to pay Tom Cruise $30 million to run around with CGI’d dinosaurs when just as many people will pay to see Jeff Goldblum do the same?

This was all well and good until the “brands” ran out. Now Hollywood is down to “The Green Lantern” and board games like “Battleship.”

Movie stars, on the other hand, are the most reliable brands out there. People come to see them and if you have enough of them and if you keep developing them, the inventory is limitless. From the 1920s straight through to right around 1990, if you built it with movie stars, audiences would come. Hollywood didn’t need to rely on “brands” because they built pictures around their stars.

(more…)

The documentary feature “His Way” premiered on HBO this past Spring. “His Way” is based on  the autobiography “When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead,” which highlights the life and career of the great film producer/concert promoter/manager/philanthropist/entrepreneur Jerry Weintraub over seven decades.

Weintraub first managed musical acts ranging from The Four Seasons to The Moody Blues, then promoted artists such as Led Zeppelin, John Denver, Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, Kiss, Aerosmith and Queen. He also promoted the “comeback” tours for Elvis Presley, then Frank Sinatra. Weintraub’s movie producing credits include “Nashville,” “Oh God!,” “Diner,” “Cruising,” “The Karate Kid,” “National Lampoon’s Vegas Vacation,” “The Karate Kid” (2010), and the 2001 remake of “Ocean’s Eleven,” as well as “Ocean’s 12″ and “Ocean’s 13.” He appeared in all the “Ocean” films as well as “The Firm.”

“His Way” is the first documentary feature film directed by Douglas McGrath. McGrath is an actor/writer/director whose past directing credits include “Emma,” “Nicholas Nickleby,” “Infamous,” and “I Don’t Know How She Does It.” In my opinion, “His Way” is pound for pound and frame for frame the most entertaining and inspirational documentary of this past year. “His Way” was shot and edited for nearly ten months and culled from approximately seventy hours of interview footage.

KW: You took an autobiography and turned it into a documentary film. That doesn’t seem like it is usually done very often.

DM: It wasn’t quite as direct as that. Graydon Carter [Managing Editor, Vanity Fair] had called me and asked if I was interested in making a film about Jerry and Jerry’s book was not out at that point. So I read Rich Cohen’s piece that he had done for Vanity Fair and said, “Boy, this guy sounds like quite a character.” (more…)

Did you know, Kim Jong-Il, the now-dead slave master of North Korea, loved Hollywood films?

“The cinema occupies an important place in the overall development of art and literature. As such it is a powerful ideological weapon for the revolution and construction.”

So wrote Kim Jong-il in his 1987 essay The Cinema and Directing

How right he was.

And what isn’t there for a brutal, murderous dictator responsible for the oppression of millions to love about modern-day Hollywood; an institution that opposes liberty, worships the state, and can’t wait to  suck up to a couple of other King Jong-Ils in the form of the Castro brothers and Hugo Chavez?

But Kim was less than enamoured by Hollywood’s portrayal of his own regime.

(more…)

Thank you to everyone who participated in the informal have you been ostracized? poll. The results were interesting. More “in the closets” than I expected, and as I read the words, “just keep my mouth shut,” I became rather angry that my fellow Big Hollywood readers feel bullied in the workplace. Because that is what it is: bullying. When a human being fears that he may lose his job if he has the wrong thoughts, he is being bullied. Period. It doesn’t matter if the taunts are in your face or hovering unannounced in the air, only a bully uses his size and power to intimidate others into toeing the line.

Several of you indicated that you have lost your job, left your career or been blacklisted, which is even more disheartening.

Graphic designers and people in advertising, according to the comments, feel compelled to keep a very low profile. It makes sense, because this is an industry where the work must be commissioned. In order to stay employed, the artist needs to stay in the good graces of the powers that be. (more…)

These kinds of articles are a little silly. Every single one of these Limousine Leftists will be in line by 2012, even if Obama does tank the economy, destroy health care, funnel millions of taxpayer dollars to his cronies in a can called green energy, and give a whole lot of guns to Mexican drug-runners. Oh wait–

Leftist Hollywood’s ploy is two-part.

1. High-profile liberals complaining about Obama not being socialist enough and too eager to compromise is all designed to appeal to the independents President FailureTeleprompter desperately needs to win reelection.

2. It’s a way to push Obama even more to the left.

Hollywoodists like Norman Lear are partisan animals who know how this works.

The Independent:

He was young, good looking, and photogenic. He swept to power against heavy odds on the back of a heart-warming, hopey-changey message, completing a rags-to-riches journey that might have come straight out of a blockbuster movie. It isn’t hard to see why Barack Obama’s election in 2008 was the toast of Hollywood.

[...]

Four years later? Not so much. When they enter the polling booths, the stars and the power brokers who run this town will still put their crosses against his name. But the sense of warm, fuzzy optimism that characterised his last election has more or less vanished.

Nowhere was the disillusionment more keenly felt than at the Beverly Wilshire hotel last night, as liberal Hollywood gathered for an exercise in champagne socialism. People for the American Way (PFAW) – perhaps the mostinfluential advocacy organisation in the US – planned to celebrate its 30th birthday in style, with the cost of a table at between £3,200 and £64,000.

(more…)

This will likely get Mickey Rourke in some trouble. Hopefully he already has his Get Out Of Hollywood-Jail Statement prepared that calls the Pope a Nazi, Sarah Palin an idiot, or Obama a god.

Yes, it’s that easy.

Yikes:

You visited a Russian prison to prepare for your role in Iron Man 2. How did you prepare to play an ancient Greek Titan king for Immortals?

I showed up. The director spent three years working on the overall look of the film and that really helped. They paid me a lot of money for a few days of work so I was happy to go. It’s just a shame I didn’t get to work with the hot blond chick, Isabel Lucas. [below] I also loved Frieda Pinto, but she has a boyfriend. She’s a really nice person and I have great respect for her as an actress — and I think most actresses are c*nts with a capital K.

[...]

When are you going to write a memoir?

(more…)

Thank you, Veterans, for … everything.

And now a look back at a time when Hollywood fought for America and liberty, not against it. There are notable exceptions today, but sadly the word “exception” does apply.

—–

Much more below the fold…

(more…)

Did you hear the news? Chuck Woolery came out of the closet! No, not that closet. Coming out of that closet in Hollywood gets you applause for your bravery. Instead, Woolery came out recently to admit that he is a … wait for it … conservative!

If you have not read “Primetime Propaganda” by Ben Shapiro or Andrew Breitbart’s “Righteous Indignation,” I suggest adding both of them to your fall reading list. Both books do a great job of explaining how we got to this point in, supposedly, the most tolerant and accepting nation in the history of the planet, where the one thing that will not be tolerated in Hollywood is admitting you are a conservative. As someone hoping to one day make a living as a working actor, I know I have a difficult road in front of me due to my political views.

So why is it newsworthy when someone in Hollywood admits they are, indeed, a conservative? Everyone knows that Kelsey Grammer is a conservative, yet he still works regularly. His former co-star, Patricia Heaton, also has another hit series despite her apparent drawback. It is news because, at least until now, they have been the exception. It is news because the Hollywood power brokers have set up a system that, until now, has kept conservatives too afraid to admit their true political views for fear of being ostracized from any future work in “the business.”

There’s also the fact that conservatives do not feel the need to spout their political views at every opportunity the way liberals in Hollywood do. I’ve never understood why someone who relies on reaching the largest audience possible to view their work would alienate half of their potential fan base. Granted, not every Hollywood liberal has called Tea Partiers racists, but enough of them have to affect their box office numbers. According to Box Office Mojo, the 2011 box office take is down 4.2 percent compared to the same point last year. That is hundreds of millions of dollars. Sure, the down economy is having some effect on movie going, but it is not the only reason people aren’t going. I, for one, have stopped going because I don’t want to give my hard earned money to someone who thinks so little of me.

(more…)

You’re not a conservative if Kim Kardashian making millions for being a half-witted, no-talent reality TV star bothers you. In fact, if you feel “there oughta be a law” somehow regulating, limiting or otherwise controlling in any manner at all how much dough she rakes in from the drooling morons who choose to fling it at her, you are part of the problem.

This woman took very, very little in the way of ability and somehow provided a service – of a kind that frankly baffles me – that millions of people nevertheless want to spend their money on. Regardless, it’s none of your or my business, and it’s especially none of the government’s business.

But now, here comes “Occupy Hollywood,” a hilarious exercise in poetic justice in which the left proposes to chase its own tail by attacking the same cretinous celebrities who have been the first to parrot every commie slogan the bongo-playing degenerates of Occupy Wall Street have misspelled on their placards.

Jo Piazza, the author of some remainder bin perennial titled Celebrity, Inc.: How Famous People Make Money, is leading the bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you-athon with an article in The Huffington Post called “Occupy Hollywood: Why It’s Time To Call Out High-Earning Celebrities.”

For some reason, she thinks what movie stars make is some sort of problem:

(more…)

The Gary Sinise Foundation is bringing the award-winning GI Film Festival to Los Angeles on November 5 for one day of great independent military films.  These films highlight current and former veterans in and out of the arena of war.  Beginning at noon at the Raleigh Studio Theater on 5300 Melrose  Ave in  Hollywood, fans from the west coast who missed this year’s DC festival will have an opportunity to view the best of the festival’s films.

vimeo Winner Best Feature Documentary

—–

“We are proud to partner with the Gary Sinise Foundation,” said GI Film Festival’s executive director and co-founder, former Army Major Laura Law-Millett. “They do amazing work.  It’s so important that people understand the important role film and the media play in the minds of every American when it comes to supporting our brave men and women in uniform.”

The one day event will screen 9 films and play host to an evening reception where you can meet and greet the filmmakers.  To see the line-up, view the trailers, and purchase tickets to attend the event, please click here.

(more…)