I’ve written several articles skewering HBO for producing political projects destined to air immediately prior to the 2012 election, where the vast majority of the cast and crew are passionate Barack Obama supporters, and where the content is aimed at the Democrat’s two favorite Republican villains: Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney. So, when I sat down to watch HBO’s Too Big to Fail, I prepared myself for the worst. What I didn’t expect was the big surprise awaiting me.

Too Big to Fail, which premieres on HBO on May 23, 2011, features a star studded cast recounting the events that led to the financial crisis and bailouts by the U.S. government in 2008. It is a mini-series packed into a 98-minute made-for-television movie where several essential characters are quickly introduced and where finance and economics are casually discussed. It may help if one has a baseline of knowledge about the crisis before watching the movie. If one doesn’t know who Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and Timothy Geithner are or what Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, and AIG are, it may prove slightly difficult to follow.

Although the Director, Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential, 8 Mile), was limited to telling a very long and complicated story in a very short amount of time, he was able to skillfully pull it off. Perhaps this is because the screenwriter, Peter Gould (Breaking Bad), deftly adapted Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 2009 prize winning New York Times Bestseller, Too Big to Fail. (more…)

Michael Moore’s publicist contacted me to set up an interview about his new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, but then Moore canceled at the last minute. I wasn’t surprised. It’s unlikely that he would have been able to hold up to hard questions about this patently dishonest film. 

In Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore describes America has having been founded on genocide and having gotten rich on the backs of slaves. This is egregiously false. Ayn Rand explained the truth: “Capitalism cannot work with slave labor. It was the agrarian, feudal South that maintained slavery. It was the industrial, capitalistic North that wiped it out—as capitalism wiped out slavery and serfdom in the whole civilized world of the nineteenth century.” 

Moore kicks off his movie equating America to ancient Rome, running stock footage of Rome from bad B-movies, and draws all the wrong conclusions. Rome grew its greatest in its period of freedom as a republic, and collapsed after it morphed into an empire with the uncontrolled growth of government controls, including welfare state measures – bread and circuses. 

The growth of taxation and government control destroyed the Roman economy and caused the collapse of Rome – yet more taxes and government control are the very things that this fat bastard is advocating. He mocks America’s predominance in the auto industry by saying that we eliminated our competition, Germany and Japan, when in fact we saved the world from Germany and Japan not in order to destroy their auto industry but to protect the world from the tyranny and darkness they represented. Moore mentions that we destroyed Japan and Germany and claims that that’s why our auto industry became number one, but he neglects to explain why we destroyed Japan and Germany. And he says nothing about how we rebuilt Japan and Germany. In fact, we made it safe for Germany and Japan to dominate the auto industry.  (more…)

If there is one overriding theme coursing through reviews of Smokey and the Bandit, it is superficiality. Read through the mountain of pieces out there, and you’ll continually be assaulted with adjectives like “silly,” “mindless,” “breezy,” “fun,” and “stupid.” Taken together, they blend into a gargantuan wall of polite derision. Even those who genuinely adore the movie scoff at efforts to peek under the film’s thematic hood. Burt Reynolds himself has stated that “Anybody who would take that picture seriously needs a psychiatrist.”

Well, I disagree. A movie’s effect on the culture is often independent of intellectual considerations. The passage of years highlights a film’s vintage regardless of pedigree or awards. Father Time has a sneaky way of giving even erstwhile pop-culture artifacts a rich patina of nostalgia and meaning. And so it happens that light-footed entertainments like Smokey sometimes have lessons to teach, if only we can muster the wisdom to listen.

Let’s return for a moment to the film critic Gary Arnold, who in the summer of 1977 penned a lengthy appreciation of Smokey for The Washington Post. Along with Star Wars, Hal Needham’s film was dominating the domestic box office, especially at the drive-in theaters that were still fairly common in rural America. Given the movie’s success and the CB phenomenon, an article about the picture was a no-brainer. But what’s interesting about Arnold’s essay is how he goes beyond mere cinematic merit and expands his analysis into the realms of culture and politics: (more…)

These days, big-city philistines posing as cultural elites call it “flyover country.” From the comfort of a private jet, it looks like a vast ocean of emptiness. And yet, every election day, media newsrooms find themselves grudgingly painting that part of the map red — blood red.

To them, the American hinterland is part Deliverance, part Raising Arizona. Toothless gas-station attendants. Frumpy diner waitresses. Motor-home brothels hedging the highways. In the Heat of the Night racist police officers on the prowl, yee-haw! Ignorant picnicking churchgoers spewing toxic barbecue fumes into the pristine blue sky. Country-music lovin’ high school students destined to grow up into unwashed, uncouth, uneducated truckers.

Coast-bound libs fancy the South as kinda like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, but with Wal-Marts. Flyover country. A nightmare realm.

Well, back in the summer of 1977, flyover country was pissed. The nation they loved was being run into the ground by the jet-setters. Skyrocketing inflation. Rampant unemployment. Plummeting GDP. Crushing misery index. Multiple oil crises. Vanishing trade surpluses. A wretched President. Ordinary people were scared and angry, looking for — what’s the word? — oh yeah, “change.” Spare or otherwise. (more…)

Fellow conservatives, the time has come to drop the facade and come clean with the American public! Let’s admit that Carter, Clinton, Maher, Garofalo and a host of others are right and that we are just a bunch of low IQ, knuckle dragging, mouth-breathing, inbred, sheet wearing racists.

There I said it. I feel better already. It’s time to fess up that it isn’t about our beliefs or principles, or morality or the Constitution.  It’s all about race. We conservatives have feigned our approval of Michael Steele, Condi Rice, Clarence Thomas, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Larry Elder and a host of other Black conservatives for far too long.  We reject Ward Connerly, Niger Innis, Shelby Steele, Armstrong Williams and Kenneth Blackwell. Who needs them!

The leftist are correct: (more…)

So President Barack Obama said he was surprised that he won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize – making him the only person on earth who was surprised that he won the 2009 Nobel Peace prize.

I’d like to say that I’m really happy for him…. but isn’t that what this is all about? Being happy for “him?”

Wasn’t that what the Olympics were about? Rooting for “him?”

Wasn’t that what the last presidential election was about? Electing “him?”

It’s never about us. Or the U.S. (more…)

[ed. note: republished and amended from a 2007 post]

Dear   BARACK OBAMA  :

Congratulations! On behalf of the selection committee, I am pleased to announce that you have been named a 2009 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, in recognition of your tireless efforts to   STRENGTHEN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMACY AND COOPERATION    .

I am also pleased to tell you that as a winner, you have been pre-approved for membership in the Nobel Peace Player’s Club, offering exclusive money-saving benefits available only to laureates like you. Please take a few minutes to look over the enclosed enrollment materials. At only $299.95 per year, I’m sure you’ll agree that membership is a bargain at twice the price! Here are just some of the benefits you’ll receive:

• A handsome 14-karat gold membership crest badge to display proudly on the grille of your limousine or official state aircraft
• A framed, hand-calligraphed certificate (add $19.95 for gold leaf)
• Special discount shopping bargains for for you and your family
• Great travel packages to the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro
• Listing in “Who’s Who of Global Salvation” ($49.95 per copy)
• Great coupons for Olive Garden, P.F. Chang’s, Six Flags Theme Parks, and more!

Plus, you’ll receive the exclusive Nobel Peace Player’s Club GoldCard entitling you to discount air travel and 5-star hotel accommodations from Kyoto to Darfur. But don’t take our word for it! Listen to these testimonials from some of our current members: (more…)

President Obama has made the rehabilitation of the reputation of our country one of his top priorities. He wants to be the Sally Field of the international politics and know that other nations like us!  They really, really like us. To achieve that end he has apologized for just about every action of the Bush Administration and yet at the UN this past week several of the people the President has been trying to win over still seemed a bit distant. His new BFF Hugo Chavez did give him a nice “smells like hope” compliment, but several other still haven’t gotten the message.

President of all Iranians — both living and dead in the streets — Ahmadinejad still wants to build a few nukes even though Mr. Obama has told him not to. Colonel Qaddhafi, or Gaddahfi or Khaddafi, or Kaddafy or however you spell it, isn’t on board the love train either.

This has not deterred President Obama! Moving swiftly, he said he will name a new Apology Czar, rumored to be either Jimmy Carter or Maxine Waters and set a schedule for more apologies to settle all past wrongs of the United States. (more…)

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“Honky,” “cracker,” “whitey,” “spot,” “the white guy” and “my white nigga” are a few of the words and phrases used to describe me by fellow co-workers (along with a few white jokes told to my face on the set of a film) I co-starred in called “Caught Up” in 1998. I was in fact the only principal white actor on a set dominated by black actors, a black director, a black writer and a predominantly black crew. Not once did I think I was being treated in a racist manor. I just felt it was okay for blacks to describe me this way having been led to believe that I owed them this bit of racial jabbing because I, as a white individual, had something to do with the racism they’d experienced throughout their lives.

If the tables had been turned and a predominantly white cast and crew used such racially charged language to describe a black cast member, the Screen Actors Guild would have invaded that production and we would have seen headlines in the media “Racist Cast and Crew, Film Shut Down By SAG.”

In that film one of my scripted lines required that I use the word “nigger.” Before I shot the scene I pulled my fellow actor aside and assured him that this was not a word I took lightly and that I was aware of its historical implications towards blacks. He looked me over as if I were an alien and said “Give me a break, I don’t give shit, I’ve been a nigger all my life. I’m cool with it.” That response came to me as a mixed signal. Not one that said it was okay for me to use the word “nigger,” but one that said my efforts at trying to understand his side of race didn’t matter. (more…)

You may remember when, a few years back, the tour bus belonging to rabid environmentalist/human kazoo Dave Mathews dumped up to 100 gallons of human waste through the grates of a Chicago bridge, drenching folks on a boat below, as well as polluting the river. Well, the chirping goggle-eyed warbler is at it again – this time spewing a load of crap on America, in an interview with CNN.

When the network asked whether the singer agreed with Jimmy Carter, who said America is rife with racism, Matthews said, quote, “Of course it is! I found there’s a fairly blatant racism in America that’s already there, and I don’t think I noticed it when I lived here as a kid. …There’s a good population of people in this country that are terrified of the president only because he’s black, even if they don’t say it. And I think a lot of them, behind closed doors, do say it.” (more…)

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Watch CBS Videos Online

Obama on Jimmy Carter: “I think it’s important to realize that I was actually black before the election… So the American people I think gave me this extraordinary honor and that tells you I think a lot about where the country’s at.”

Speaking to NBC News Anchor Brian Williams, former president Jimmy Carter (who was taking a breather between having tea with dictators and lunatics) proffered that not only was South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson’s inappropriate outburst during President Obama’s speech before a joint session of congress fueled by racism, but the wider opposition to Obama is also based on the fact that Obama is black. Said Carter: “I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African-American.”

During Obama’s 400th speech defending his plans to reform healthcare the president responded to charges that the proposals before congress would provide healthcare for illegal immigrants. The President called the charges false whereupon Wilson forgot his home training (or lost his mind) and called the President a liar.

As it happens, similar words were falling from my own lips at that very same moment. I think most people recognize that a private citizen calling the President a liar in the privacy of their living rooms is rather a different animal from elected officials doing so during a Presidential address. I would also like to believe that most thinking people recognize that boorish is not the same thing as racist. (more…)

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So on Tuesday, we did a segment on this black dude who showed up in Arizona where Barack Obama was speaking – with an assault weapon and a pistol strapped to his shoulder. We all pretty much agreed, that despite his actions being legal, it was still idiotic. There are many things in life that are legal, but totally nuts if done at the wrong time. For example, when I shower I’m completely naked – no law against that. However, try showing up nude at a Jonas Brothers lunch box signing – that’s another story (I blame it on the Ambien).

But this leads me to MSNBC, where on Tuesday Contessa Brewer – someone I’d like to see in a shower – filed a report about health care protesters showing up armed. In it, she used tape of that same black man carrying an assault rifle and said “there are questions about whether this has racial overtones….white people showing up with guns.”

Of course, like I said – the guy was black. But you never would have known. Because MSNBC has strategically edited the tape, so the race of the armed dude wasn’t revealed. You just assumed he was white, thanks to Contessa. (more…)

I suspect that because George Bush and Condoleezza Rice were so respectful of Muslims, constantly telling us that theirs is a religion of peace, some otherwise sensible Americans actually began to believe it.  Now we have a president who not only kowtows to a Saudi prince, but carries on as if Israeli homes are more threatening than Iranian nukes.

What is wrong with our leaders?  Are they worried that they won’t be invited to those cool Ramadan parties?  The Islamists have been actively at war with us for 30 years and generally at war with western civilization for well over a thousand years, and still we pay lip service to these people in a way we never did with Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan or the Soviet Union.  Is it because the Muslims commit sadism and murder in the name of religion and not country?  If anything, I would think that would make their evil acts all the more contemptible. (more…)

I often find myself thinking that if liberals didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all. 

For instance, consider the uproar from the left when Don Imus opened his silly yap about the black women on the Rutgers basketball team.  Now compare that to their response when David Letterman made his smarmy cracks about Sarah Palin and the governor’s 14-year-old daughter.  The liberals immediately sprang to his defense, pointing out that Letterman is nothing more than a TV personality and is therefore free to make offensive jokes without fear of censure.  So what do they think Don Imus is?  The secretary of state? 

Or consider how choleric those on the left become any time that Dick Cheney defends the former administration.  Well, if Obama and his cronies didn’t constantly attack Bush and Cheney and their policies, the chances are the ex-vice president wouldn’t feel compelled to set the record straight. Furthermore, Jimmy Carter never stopped bashing George Bush during the eight years he was the president, and yet nobody on the left ever suggested he shut up.  On the contrary, he was hailed at the 2004 Democratic convention, and even had the honor of being seated next to the patron saint of left-wingers, Michael Moore.  Speaking of Carter, how is it that he, who is always volunteering to monitor elections anywhere on earth, including the Westminster Dog Show, wasn’t in Iran, making sure that Ahmadinejad got 110% of the vote?  (more…)

You know, people, it’s a damn shame. I remember when great comedians like Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce held nothing sacred. I know I don’t. And so many comedians, especially late-nighters, are really missing the boat with President Obama. There’s a wealth of material just waiting to be tapped, and I’m really not looking forward to four more years of lame Bush and Palin jokes. Are you?

All it takes is one person to break the ice. Example. Twenty years ago, my brother won tickets to a Journey concert in Worcester, Massachusetts on the radio. We rode a packed WBCN Party Bus out of Boston, but everyone was kind of uptight and kept to themselves, like there were cops in the crowd. So I took a risk and lit up a big fattie anyway. Within minutes, it was like a Cheech and Chong movie. You couldn’t see out the windows. Everyone was laughing, joking, hacking and toking. (more…)

In the 1930’s, when world audiences were asked to name the capital of the U.S.A., one answer was high on the list: “Hollywood.” That was the location listed at the end of every amazing movie: “Made In Hollywood.” How could such magic not come from America’s capital?

Such is the power of a single word.

That power has not diminished but only increased with an ADD, multi-channel, hyperactive media-centric world. The silver screen has long given us immortal dialogue which now blends so deeply into the culture that people may not know their origin, but we know the meaning.  A wise man I know said, “Image creates perception, perception creates reality.”  It couldn’t be more true in the film business.

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In a media-centric world, from motion pictures to internet to phones, we are pounded with images, forming our perceptions and then creating our reality. How fast did the Internet meme “Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys” become a daily reference at the coffee klatch, in your email, or on phone calls?  Not long.  We forget how powerful words can be when written in a clever and pithy way.  The masters of dialogue like Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, and the Epstein brothers, knew irreverent and immortal lines.  And as producers, writers or just Americans who appreciate a good, nimble turn of a phrase, we should excel at creating phrases that demonstrate the values we hold dear.  Don’t understand?  “What we have here is a failure to communicate!” (more…)