A lot of my slack jawed knuckle-dragging conservative friends ask me why I remain a member. If I ever want to work in film or television again I have to be a member. The “art” of  television and film-making is a closed shop. I do get a really cool card to carry around in my wallet and I get to vote on the SAG Awards every year. Getting to vote on the SAG Awards has a great perk; I get screener copies of a number of the nominated movies. I got “Up in the Air” and “Precious” today. Most of them are films I would never pay $12 to see in a theater. I usually see a lot of  the nominated films during downtime on ships or airplanes.  For example, I recently saw “Inglourious Basterds” on a plane. I thought the first scene was compelling and then the movie disintegrated into mess which couldn’t decide if it was a farce or a Sam Peckinpah homage.

I understand that the vast majority of folks in my profession don’t agree with me when it comes to politics or art. Many of the films that get nominated for awards make less money than General Motors, and that isn’t easy. Also, in Awardville, making money and entertaining people are almost grounds for disqualification from receiving accolades unless, like James Cameron, you throw in an anti-American undercurrent. Then, of course, there is the question of values in films.

The liberal elites that run the entertainment industry tend to “pooh-pooh” films that have what they consider to be pedestrian middle-class values. Apple pie, motherhood, traditional marriage, fidelity and patriotism are a one-way ticket to being ignored. But… Putting a gay couple, a woman with a stripper pole or a heroin problem or anything that says America is the bad guy at the center of your film usually means a seat up front at the Kodak Theater in April.  

This is probably why the two best films I saw in 2009, “Up” and “The Blind Side” got a total of one SAG Award nomination. I don’t think we’ll see a lot of support at the DGA or at the Academy Awards for these or any other “family” films, either. 

The best award will come when they’re released on DVD and thousands of us out here in Flyover Country watch them at home.

1. Up – Married Life Montage: Four of the most memorable and moving minutes you’ll ever see. Most montages and flashbacks of this sort focus on what David Zucker lampooned so well in the “Naked Gun” films: the run-on-the-beach type of stuff. Director Pete Docter not only captured the harsh realities of life with a miscarriage and the tragedy of growing old, but also the small everyday moments that later become the most poignant. Docter’s real accomplishment, though, was in setting the early bar so high with these heartrending few minutes and then living up to them for the next 90. 

2. Inglourious Basterds –  Once Upon a Time… In Nazi-Occupied France:  After “Death Proof” I worried that one our great directors had started to buy into his own fanboy press that he could do no wrong. But the “Basterds” opening scene with “The Jew Hunter,” SS Officer Hans Landa (Christopher Waltz —  who must win the Oscar), psychologically destroying a French farmer, not only unnerved me completely but eased all my fears regarding Mr. Tarantino.

3. Watchmen — Death of the Comedian: Brutal macho carnage set to Nat King Cole’s “Unforgettable.” An extraordinary moment of poetic violence in a movie destined to be more appreciated in the years to come. 

4. The Hangover — End Credit Photographs: I was on the floor. An absolutely brilliant payoff to the first classic raunchy comedy since “American Pie” way back in 1999. Unfortunately, because this was such a monster hit, the Hollywood copycats are sure to get everything wrong in their attempt to recapture the lightening. ”The Hangover’s” success had nothing to do with raunch and everything to do with laughs that built one upon the other, a meticulous structure, and a 100 minute runtime that moved like Patton’s army.

5. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen — End Credits: Seeing this punishing, dreadful, 9 hour, soulless piece of dreck come to an end made me weep with joy like Papillon after a stretch in solitary. I get that Michael Bay’s sequel to a much better movie was the anti-Avatar — a pro-military, action-adventure with the Obama administration as the bad guys, but please Mr. Bay, don’t do me any more favors.

6. Bruno — Richard Bey Show: Now that he has a pretty serious flop on his hands, maybe some smart producer can get Sacha Baron Cohen under control and force him to tone down the off-putting raunch. You remove the pointless, fetishistic sex from Bruno and you’ve got a hands-down brilliant short film. Bruno and “Gayby” on “The Richard Bey Show” was an epic piece of social satire deflating more sacred cows than I could count.

7. Crazy Heart — Closing Scene: One of those quiet but still startling dénouements where nothing ends up as you expect but still as it should be.

8. Star Trek – Birth of Captain Kirk: J.J. Abrams’ opened his reboot with a mythological wowser. Too bad the whole thing would eventually devolve into a shaky-cammed, unfocussed mess starring an absurdly dull villain.

9. Hurt Locker — Sniper Duel: With an actual story and less military-bashing, Katherine Bigelow might have enjoyed the box-office comeback she deserves as opposed to the one she’s currently enjoying only within the small, cloistered critical community. But as a series of stand-alone scenes, Bigelow proves herself  a second-to-none director of men and action and slow-winding tension. The sniper duel might be her finest moment since the cast of Aliens walked into a shit-kicker bar.

10. Terminator: Salvation — Giant Robot Chase: One of the best action scenes of the franchise. An exhilerating chase involving a crumbling bridge and a Thing That Just Won’t Stop. When the tower of the Terminator releases the two motorcycles on its human prey you can feel the whole movie kick into gear – McG gets it! And then he doesn’t…

Where my colleague Chris and I most disagree is with the assertion that Hollywood chooses “politically correct” or “safe” villains because Hollywood is all about the money and therefore wants to appeal to audiences who care what the villain looks like:

The film industry, like any other business, generally wants to appeal to the largest audience possible.  Picking “safe” enemies is one way to do that. 

Two of the most profitable films released this past year were “Gran Torino,” where our hero confronts black and Asian street gangs, and “Taken,” where the henchmen are Muslims and the arch-villain Middle Eastern.

With a $33 million production budget, “Torino” made nearly $270 million worldwide. On a budget of just $25 million, “Taken” made an astonishing $145 million domestically and another $79 million overseas. And before you give Hollywood credit for producing two films with politically-incorrect villains, keep in mind that both are notable exceptions; that only a Clint Eastwood could’ve made “Torino,” and “Taken” was produced in France, of all places.

To be clear, my point isn’t that international moviegoers flock to see politically-incorrect villains. My point is that is that audiences don’t care what the villain looks like and that Hollywood’s being dishonest when they say different.  

Like the mainstream media, Hollywood’s cry of being money-driven is a lie to cover an increasingly obvious Leftist political agenda. If Hollywood really is all about making money by “appealing to the largest audience,” why no follow up to one of the most profitable films of all time, “The Passion of the Christ?” Why the three-year run of A-listers starring in box-office embarrassments with the most politically correct villain of them all: Americans in the Middle East? Define these films any way you want, I define them as loss-leaders to put Democrats in office. 

Money-driven industries don’t keep making Edsels and ignore the Mustang.

Filmmakers and producers with access to Box Office Mojo know that whether politically “correct” or “incorrect,” who the villain is has nothing to do with box office. “Torino” and “Taken” were monster hits because they’re both extremely satisfying films. If there’s a single quality that made them successful that bucks the current Leftist Hollywood agenda, it’s their lack of moral equivalence. Both are straightforward good versus evil stories with a protagonist willing to sacrifice everything for something bigger than himself.

Because the human condition knows no boundaries, it’s old-fashioned heroism international audiences crave, not “safe, politically correct” villains.

“Basterds” only proves this point. “Politically correct, safe” Nazis are not what’s drawing audiences but rather the vicarious pleasure of watching something Hollywood doesn’t give us enough of: the delicious spectacle of evil receiving a reckoning at the hands of American good guys.

Both “G.I. Joe” and “Superman Returns” are all-kinds of politically correct. Neither, however, is likely to break even for years to come. “Spider-Man,” “Iron Man,” “The Dark Knight” and “300″ are a diverse mix of villains but pretty straight-forward in the good versus evil department … and all are monster hits.

Here are two other major areas of disagreement:

With the current economy, filmmakers don’t want to risk losing any potential audience.  Even when ticket sales are up, filmmakers may not want to pick sides on an issue. 

The decisions surrounding “G.I. Joe” and “Basterds” and so many politically correct others had nothing to do with the economy. They were in the works long before the recession hit. But this idea that directors keep their politics ambiguous and “not pick sides on an issue” disregards a never-ending avalanche of anti-Iraq, anti-Bush, pro-Leftist films that never stop flopping.

Hollywood doesn’t always like a clear line between good and evil, so in order to lock a distributor, a director might keep his or her politics ambiguous (especially if those politics are right of center).

On the left, I would say this is the exact opposite of what’s happening. Over the past ten years directors have become less and less politically ambiguous, and I would argue, increasingly strident with their on-screen agendas. This is why the adult drama is all but dead today. The agenda turns off a mainstream audience tired of paying ten bucks to be insulted and in turn no longer trusts Hollywood with anything other than tentpoles. Liberal audiences stay away because political stridency makes for bad filmmaking.

On the right, sympathies hidden and made ambiguous in fantasy films like “300″ and “The Dark Knight” have nothing to do with anything other than an intolerant film and media industry poised to pounce. The personal attacks leveled against a pre-drunk driving Mel Gibson before anyone had seen “The Passion,” and David Zucker and Jon Voight make clear that there’s a heavy price to pay for political apostates.

It comes down to this Gutfeld quote from the Yogerst piece:

“It is distasteful to consider a battle between good and evil if it’s happening now, because then you have to choose sides.”

For my money, mainstream Hollywood has chosen sides, and not ours. And that choice has nothing to do wanting to “appeal to the broadest audience possible.”

It’s not the economy stupid, it’s the agenda.

“Basterds,” misspelled the way Brad Pitt’s moonshining Lt. Aldo Raine character carved it into his rifle, takes place in German-occupied France from 1941 to 1944.  Tarantino makes a point of specifying “Nazi-occupied France,” justifying to the film watcher the extreme measures needed to deal with this particular type of human evil.  That National Socialist German Workers’ Party membership never numbered more than about 20 percent of the adult German population is beside the point; the Nazi Party in the guise of Hitler (played by Martin Wuttke) controlled the Wehrmacht from the top.  

“Basterds” follows three characters.  ”Chapter 1″ introduces Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) a young Frenchwoman whose dairy farmer family is wiped out in 1941 by the Germans and Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), who directs the killing.  Landa is a member of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the intelligence service of the SS and the Nazi Party, who considers himself a detective asked by his government to find every last Jewish person in France.  In “Chapter 2″ we meet U.S. Army Lt. Aldo Raine. Raine’s crossed arrows insignia on his collar identifies him as a member of the First Special Service Force, a U.S.-Canadian commando force called the Devil’s Brigade.  Lt. Raine leads a small band of soldiers, all of whom happen to be Jewish, on a mission of retribution, mayhem and terror behind enemy lines, the goal: take 100 “Nazi scalps” each. 

While “Basterds” is pure fiction, it does trace historical actions depicted in “Bodyguard of Lies” by Anthony Cave Brown.  “Bodyguard” details the deadly cloak-and-dagger action surrounding the effort to return Allied forces to the Continent on D-Day.  The scene with Mike Myers’ as British spymaster General Ed Fenech and Rod Taylor as Churchill suggests Major General Sir Stewart Menzies, Britain’s WWII head of the Secret Intelligence Service, as the basis for Myers’ character.  “Bodyguard’s” riveting accounts, such as the German capture and interrogation of British agent Princess Noor Inayat Khan (she was killed in Dachau, her last words being “liberty”), echo parts of “Basterds” – reminding one that “Basterds” may not be real, but it’s true – which brings up an inconvenient truth for some enthusiasts of Mr. Tarantino’s latest work. 

The theme of “Basterds” is revenge.  But revenge in this case takes place in occupied France in 1944.  In this context, Lt. Raine and his encouragement of scalping and other torture methods, violate the Hague Conventions (the forerunner to the Geneva Conventions) to which both the U.S. and Germany agreed.  The Hague’s Article 23 specifically prohibited the “treacherous” killing of an enemy, or harming enemies who had surrendered, or “declar(ing) that no quarter will be given.”  Of course, Raine’s men, usually operating sans uniform, were in violation of The Hague’s Chapter I, The Qualifications of Belligerents, Article 1, reading in part, that proper belligerents must, “have a fixed distinctive emblem recognizable at a distance” and “conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.”  Executing prisoners is, unfortunately, an unspoken reality of swift-moving commando forces operating behind enemy lines.  Beating enemy prisoners of war to death with a baseball bat while not wearing a uniform is an even more obvious violation of the law of war.  Under rules then in effect, if Raines’ men were captured while operating outside of these rules, they could be treated very harshly – even summarily executed. 

In 1949, the Geneva Conventions updated the Hague Conventions. The Third Geneva Convention, Part I, Article 4, parallels The Hague’s Article 23 in specifying the attributes of a legitimate prisoner of war who is deserving of protection by his captor.  It is this part of the law of war that the Bush Administration cited when justifying their treatment of men captured as part of the Global War on Terror (now called “overseas contingency operations”), i.e. al-Qaeda didn’t fight with “a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance” or carry “arms openly” or conduct “their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war” therefore they were “unlawful combatants.” 

It is interesting indeed to see those who applaud Tarantino’s latest, admittedly excellent work, revel in the unbridled revenge against Nazis who get what’s coming to them.  Many of whom, without batting an eye, view al-Qaeda killers as deserving of respect, protection, and the benefit of civilian law.  Since all that separates al-Qaeda from the Nazis is the means – industrial power, modern education, and an organized national base – one wonders why a certain amount of cognitive dissonance wouldn’t kick in after a liberal enjoyed screening “Basterds.” 

To the point, what would a liberal think of the scene where Lt. Raine interrogates a captured German sergeant, demanding the location of a German outpost and its supporting artillery?  As the German NCO refuses to talk, Raine orders one of his men to kill the prisoner with a baseball bat.  When the two remaining German prisoners see this, one runs in horror and is shot down, while the other is brought over and threatened with the same deadly treatment.  He talks, saving the lives of the American commandos.  For the prisoner’s troubles, Raines carves a swastika into his forehead.  By comparison, the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed during interrogation seems rather pedestrian. 

Were Lt. Aldo Raine unleashed in Waziristan today, he and his men (all from New York City to provide the needed element of justifiable revenge) would no doubt relish taking al-Qaeda and Taliban scalps.  Alas, were Tarantino to make this flick, it would end prematurely just as Osama bin Laden was about to be relieved of his wavy locks by Raine’s massive knife.  The unsatisfying closing sequence would have a shocked Raine arrested by FBI agents after the Basterds’ cover was blown by the New York Times.  The credits would roll on Raine’s trial by Attorney General Holder’s Department of Justice with bin Laden in protective custody as a witness to Raine’s heinous war crimes. 

I don’t see Tarantino making that film – it might not be real, but it’s too true for Hollywood.

Look, I applaud Sylvester Stallone’s heroic stance against human traffickers and kidnappers – for I know there will be quite an outcry especially from the large and very influential human trafficking and kidnapper lobby.

Of course, this movie comes on the heels of two other edgy ventures: The G.I Joe flick – which turned a gritty American icon into an airbrushed Benneton ad, and “Inglourious Basterds” a fantasy that has average Jews hacking Nazi soldiers to pieces.

These three movies have two things in common:
1) They avoid present, real danger in the world and instead choose villains that are not just safe, but politically correct to hate. You’d think it would be easy for Quentin Tarantino to find a present day enemy for the Jews (like, say, a terrorist group that denies the Holocaust and wants to wipe Israel off the map), but maybe none exist! And what of those guys who flew planes into the World Trade Center? I suppose in the era of the “unclenched fist,” we must be more sensitive to “backlash” than barbarism.

2) They want to make money. And to make money these days, it means putting the world first, not America. Global tickets sales mean eliminating any scent of American justice – that evil Cowboy mentality that reminds the world we’re reliably awesome. But most important, it’s distasteful to consider a battle between good and evil when it’s happening today.

Because then, you have to choose.

Tonight we’ve got the lovely Lauren Sivan, Carl Cameron, Ron Geraci, and Dr. David Tolin, from the great show “Hoarders!” (love that show)

It’s 1944 in Nazi-occupied France. Joseph Goebbels’ (Sylvester Groth) latest film triumph starring Germany’s latest hero, Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), is set to premiere for the top brass of the Third Reich – including the big cheese himself, Adolf Hitler – and their guests. Funnily enough, the premiere is to be held in a cinema owned by Shoshanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), a Jewish refugee with her own obvious reasons for hating the Nazis. Naturally, she plans her revenge for the fateful night.

Meanwhile the Basterds, a crack group of Jewish-American soldiers under the leadership of Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), is undercover in France and “in the business of killing Nazis, and business is booming.” Those Nazis who manage to escape death are given meaningful souvenirs of their time with the Basterds. The paths of these two groups cross in a way that only Tarantino, master of gory coincidence, could imagine.

A good ol’ boy and Jews brutally mowing down Nazis. What’s not to like? It’s probably one of the few times you’ll see a redneck positively portrayed in Hollywood.

Don’t be fooled by the trailers that feature Pitt prominently. The film is an ensemble effort, with all of the key players turning in fine performances. Probably one of the best performances is by Christoph Waltz as the cold, evil, calculating Col. Hans Landa, whose unofficial nickname is the “Jew Hunter.” A true chameleon, he’s the master of charm one moment and a murderous bastard the next. No one – and I mean no one – can trust him. (I’ll never view an innocent glass of milk in the same way again.)

This is not your average World War II film. The heroes aren’t conventional “good guys,” but flawed human beings who don’t always come out on top. There are a number of “knots in the stomach” moments as you wait to see if someone will be exposed, and long conversations and monologues serve to heighten the tension. The sometimes choppy cinematography, ridiculously long close-ups, cheesy music and vigilante-style justice all contribute to the theme of a spaghetti Western set during World War II. It’s not all serious, however – there are a few laughs. There are also a few helpful voice-overs that give crucial background information, even though they are somewhat odd.

If you hate Quentin Tarantino’s films, you’ll probably hate this one. By the same token, if you love his films, this one’s for you. I remember being horrified by “Pulp Fiction,” but either I’ve become more jaded over time or the “violent with a purpose” theme works for me – or both. Think about it: Nazis getting a taste of their own vile medicine. It’s quite a satisfying scenario. And the unabashed pro-American stance is refreshing as well.

Just this week, the New York Times ran an article about the fact that A-list stars are failing to deliver big returns on their movies. But these days, Americans expect a lot for their entertainment dollar. It doesn’t matter how big the star is; if the movie’s crap, it’s going to bomb. No matter how big the name, it can’t save a rotten film. And with regard to “Basterds,” I found the premise intriguing enough to overcome my dislike of Brad Pitt and plunk down my $10.50. Oh, and keep an eye out for an almost-unrecognizable Mike Myers.

As to be expected in a Tarantino film, there is plenty of violence and gore, but not the slick kind that you’re used to seeing in the usual blockbuster. It’s raw and it’s very realistic – the woman next to me gasped out loud a number of times. If you have a weak stomach, think twice before going. And really, kids should not see this one. In fact, they were actually checking ID at the theater – which, by the way, was packed full.

Following on the heels of the strong opening weekend for the relatively intelligent alien invasion story District 9, Quentin Tarantino’s World War II adventure Inglourious Basterds opened at number one at the U.S. movie box office this past weekend, taking in $37.6 million.

That’s the most, by far, any Tarantino film has brought in during its first three days, greatly outpacing the $25 million for Kill Bill, Volume 2. Coming in second on the week was District 9, last week’s top attraction, with just under $19 million.

While those aren’t quite G.I. Joe/Transformer numbers, they’re definitely solid and suggest that audiences are looking for more than superficial thrills as the young ones head back to school. Even though Inglourious Basterds manifests Tarantino’s stylistic self-indulgence and evidently vastly greater interest in movies than in reality, the film does have a real story line and more interesting characters than the great majority of summer blockbuster contenders.

Joining Basterds and District 9 in the weekend’s top five were two strongly character- and story-driven films, The Time Traveler’s Wife and Julie and Julia. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra fell to third with an unspectacular $12.5 million.

Although Tarantino provides plenty of sensational and bizarre scenes in his films, they typically include vivid, interesting characters, occasionally clever dialogue, and strong story lines–while adhering to the contemporary cinema’s cavalier attitude toward both logical and psychological plausibility, its preference for the sensational over the sensible, its penchant for bad taste, its admiration for personal willfulness, and its advocacy of hedonistic utilitarianism.

Meaning: the strengths of Tarantino’s films lie in their similarity to the best of modern American dramatic series television, while his weaknesses are those of the contemporary Hollywood cinema.

On my Facebook profile page, I dutifully filled out my personal interests. Under favorite movies I listed “anything Quentin Tarantino”; under novels I listed “anything Elmore Leonard.” What I left out under “movies” was “anything Elmore Leonard which seem like Quentin Tarantino” and vice versa. To me, they are almost indistinguishable. I have read virtually all of Leonard’s books. I just purchased today his latest, “Road Dogs.” I have seen nearly all of Tarantino’s movies. I have read or seen many of their works multiple times. I still get surprised by a Leonard movie from time to time. I recently saw “3:10 from Yuma” on TV. There was something rivetingly familiar about it. It turns out it was adapted from a 15 page short story by Leonard that I had never read.

The first Elmore Leonard novel I read was “Rum Punch.” I was vacationing in St. Martin with my family in 1995 and we had rented a house. I just picked up a book at random on one of the shelves and began to read. I remember two things clearly. I kept having to reread these short, seemingly simple, sentences to understand them. This fits with what I have subsequently learned to be a rule of Leonard’s; “if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” The second thing I remember is that the characters were shockingly amoral. It was almost frightening. But not so frightening to prevent me from reading the other Leonard book in the house, “Freaky Deaky.”

It is still amazing to me to that “Rum Punch” was the only collaboration Leonard and Tarantino have had in films. “Rum Punch,” of course, became the 1997 hit film, “Jackie Brown.” There have always been rumors about other films. At various times, Leonard novels, “40 Lashes less One,” “Killshot,” and “Freaky Deaky” were all rumored to become Tarantino movies. “Killshot” has already been made without Tarantino.  Some movies which Tarantino directed seem like they were written by Leonard (“True Romance,” “Pulp Fiction” and “Reservoir Dogs” in particular, even “Kill Bill: Volume 1″) and some Leonard novels which became movies seem like they were produced or directed by Tarantino (“Be Cool,” “Get Shorty”–I have not yet seen “Killshot”).

When I first saw “Pulp Fiction” (on video, a year or two after its release), I assumed Leonard had to be involved. “Pulp Fiction” is one of my top 5 movies of all time. I still see new things when I watch it. To this day, I could swear I read in the movie credits that Leonard advised on “Pulp Fiction”; but he had nothing to do with it. In my memory, before writing this essay, I actually thought “Be Cool” and “Get Shorty” were Tarantino movies. But of course they are not. And I now remember being surprised back then they were not! I did not even see “Reservoir Dogs” until last year on DVD and, at first, thought it might have been a Leonard novel I missed. It was not, obviously. Interestingly, there are some crossover actors/producers in both sets of films, as well as in their one common film, which helps contribute to my illusion. They include; John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Harvey Keitel, James Gandolfini,  Danny DeVito (a producer of “Pulp Fiction” and “Get Shorty”), and probably some others.

It turns out there is a pretty strong link between Tarantino and Leonard besides just my own imagination. Charlie Rose interviewed Tarantino in 1994, the year “Pulp Fiction” was released. To quote Tarantino;

QUENTIN TARANTINO: Oh, I love Elmore Leonard. In fact, to me True Romance is basically like an Elmore Leonard movie–

CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah.

QUENTIN TARANTINO: -that he didn’t write, you know. And like, actually, I actually owe a big debt to like kind of figuring out my style from Elmore Leonard because, you know, he was the first writer I’d ever read……

What they both have in common is an ability to tell a compelling story. The characters are completely amoral, yet can still be appealing. They retain, usually, some moral code, even if self designed. They are not evil, but certainly do not follow traditional morality either. Somehow, we still want to find the protagonist and root for them. Clearly, they are tapping into something beneath the surface of our conscious minds which we somehow find “freeing,” at least during the fantasy of reading their books or watching their movies. In a moral world, can we justify such fantasies? I really have no idea, but they provide some “great escapes.”

I am also quite lucky. I have both a new Leonard book and a new Tarantino movie to look forward to. Perhaps if they collaborated more, there would be only one.

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