While I definitely respect all these points of view, I have to question why many of us are questioning Hollywood instead of questioning ourselves. And what we should be asking ourselves is why many of us complain so much about Hollywood’s output but at the same time fail to support the burgeoning artists, musicians, writers and filmmakers in our own community?

For full disclosure:  yes, I am a conservative, and yes, I am a filmmaker trying to get my art out to the greater world. For the life of me, I have never understood why we monetarily and spiritually support artists, studios and media companies while simultaneously berating them for what they offer us. If someone delivers crummy pizza that smells weird, tastes worse and gets me sick, would I still call the same pizza place every time? No. So, why do we do the same when making entertainment or artistic purchase choices?

In film, you don’t get to shoot on 35 mm with big-name actors, commissioned scripts, or the best D.P.s using someone else’s money unless you have a track record and have proven you can make money. To become a great artist, you need time to develop and hone your craft.  You need to be able to make a living in your particular medium to justify working in the arts and to gain that 24/7 time needed to create and edit better and better material.  Having a paying audience is the only way to make that happen.  Not all “conservative” films or shows will be great and not all will be good, but all should be supported by the people most predisposed to enjoy the material, fellow conservatives.  Still, it seems to me that the right’s expectations are too high when art comes from one of their own.

It’s like being the guy or gal who struggles to make it as a local artist.  The hometown crowd is much tougher on you, and their expectations of success are so high that the bar they set just to earn a “You know, it’s alright” is almost impossible to surmount. Are “conservative” audiences really saying that until you start winning Oscars, Emmys, Tonys, and Grammys, you haven’t achieved that much? It seems that way for both new artists as well as some of the more established ones.

I paid money to see An American Carol in a theater.  Atlas Shrugged, too.  They weren’t films that met the unbelievably high expectations of their audiences.  So what? They were not bad films.  Hello? They were trying to do a helluva lot with limited budgets and the expectations that came with being the first “conservative” films in their genres.  Almost no film could have met the expectations those two had to deal with. No new artistic movement occurs overnight, and these films were steps in the right direction that deserved our money.

How do you expect to see more artists, musicians, filmmakers, etc., who think like you do if you aren’t willing to support the ones you already have among you?  Can you really expect those who are successful and established to risk everything by deciding to “come out of the closet” politically?  God bless Gary Sinise, Patricia Heaton, Jon Voight, Angie Harmon and the other stars who have come out, gotten involved and led from the front.  They are an inspiration, but fortunately for them, they had established resumés to help them weather the natural blacklisting faced by entertainment-industry conservatives.

If you don’t support conservative artists’ material, especially when they are putting their livelihoods, careers and more on the line, then don’t pine for “better” content, and don’t condemn them for not outnumbering the artists you can’t stand.  At the end of the day, you, the audience, are a vital part of Hollywood too. Your time and money determines what future projects are financed, so keep in mind that we can only make what we want if you signify to our investors that those projects will be profitable.

Unfortunately, they chose to fight for the other side.

If our history is written by honest brokers, this generation of Hollywoodists will be remembered as those who openly enabled evil and spent hundreds of millions of dollars making bombs for the enemy — box office bombs. Over a dozen of them, specifically engineered with equal parts lies and hate and propaganda to undermine morale at home and on the battlefield in the hopes that we would lose this war.

Never forget the crime committed in New York, Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon on that terrible day.  And never forget  how Hollywood turned on your country.

There were some exceptions, however, and chief among them was Joel Surnow, the co-creator of “24.” Each week, for eight seasons, he gave this country a hero who openly loved America, did what was necessary to protect her, and who was willing to pay a terrible price for it. ”24″ also delivered the goods. Cathartic, exciting and righteous without being self-righteous, the addictive adventures of Jack Bauer became an oasis in a cesspool of Hollywood product delivering the exact opposite message.

As the face of the program, Surnow paid a price for his apostasy and because he’s a smart man who knows how the world works, my guess is that he knew that someday he would. We all watched as some of the biggest forces in the world of entertainment and politics ganged up to exact their revenge with “The Kennedys.” Don’t believe for a second that wasn’t a form of payback.

For whatever it’s worth, we thank you, Joel Surnow.  You can’t imagine what it meant to millions of us  to have something to count on over those weeks and years — something that told us we weren’t crazy and we weren’t alone.

And thank you to the subversives who used their art and magnificent artistry to take our side through thinly veiled allegory. Thank you Frank Miller and Zack Snyder for “300.” Thank you Christopher Nolan for “The Dark Knight.”

There were others. Men like Gary Sinise who tirelessly support the troops and David Zucker who took the fight directly to that anti-American pig Michael Moore. There is also Robert Davi, Jon Voight, Kelsey Grammer, Michael Moriarty and those like them who have bravely and eloquently spoken out against the talking points issued by their Hollywood Overlords.

For fear of missing one, I won’t attempt to name everyone in Hollywood who did the right thing, who openly supported our military and refused to participate in the resume-enhancing undermining of our country. Within the context of the whole of the entertainment business, however, they make up a heartbreakingly short list. But you know who are and we know who you are and we thank you.

The rest of you can burn in Hell.

In William Strauss and Neil Howe’s Generations, the babies born 1925-1942 are classified as members of the “Silent Generation.” These were the kids who grew up during the crises of the Great Depression and World War II, entered young adulthood at the postwar high of the 1950s, and hit middle age during the cultural chaos of the late 1960s and ’70s. This life sequence puts them in Howe and Strauss’ “Adaptive” archetype, a recessive generation less populous in numbers than the ones before (the GI Generation) and after (the Baby Boomers.)

When this generation started making movies they transformed Hollywood. Peter Biskind’s 1998 book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and Rock ‘N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood lays out the popular narrative. The tail of the Silent Generation and the beginning of the Boomers (filmmakers born 1939-1946) put out major dramatic work that challenged the more bland conventions of mid ‘60s Hollywood cinema. The 1970s were the R-rated decade. Francis Ford Coppola made “The Godfather.” Martin Scorsese released “Mean Streets” and “Taxi Driver.” New serious actors like Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Jon Voight, and Robert De Niro delivered legendary performances. This was a film generation inspired by the French New Wave to treat movies as serious art.

Oscar Nominated-screenwriter, award-winning mystery novelist, and now Pajamas Media CEO Roger L. Simon was a member of this clique. Born in 1943, Simon is like others born at the edges of generations, a blending of both appears in his re-titled memoir Turning Right at Hollywood and Vine, recently released in paperback with new material.

Part 1 of this series established the unique nature of the Hollywood Left with Ben Shapiro’s Primetime Propaganda. This West Coast socialist colony of wannabe revolutionaries is superficial and anti-intellectual in its politics. It’s this aspect of Hollywood leftism more than any other that destined Simon to one day escape.

Simon was a serious leftist and Turning Right establishes his credentials. The Civil Rights Movement was his first taste of activism. His second chapter describes a misadventure in 1966 when en route to integrate a segregated bathhouse in Myrtle Beach he encountered a racist Southern cop and severed his finger while changing a tire. Turning Right is filled with these narratives of the strange situations Simon’s leftist politics took him. One chapter recounts his journey through Red China, another his trip to the Soviet Union, another to Cuba. In one chapter Simon describes the KGB’s attempts to recruit him via a crime writers’ association front group. (Simon was the creator of the Moses Wine series of mystery novels, a hippie detective conceived long before the Coens dreamed of The Dude.)

This is a far deeper political experience than Simon’s Hollywood peers and in the hands of an award-winning novelist it makes for an infectious page-turner.

Simon did not have a Road-to-Damascus moment that pushed him to the Right. It was a slow surrender over the course of decades. He notes that by 1987 he was no longer a Marxist but still a man of the Left. During the 1990s the O.J. Simpson trial’s racial politics were another nudge. However, it was not until 9/11 that the Left’s disgraceful reaction pushed Simon to the edge and eventually overboard.

But did he emerge as a conservative?

I have often said that I’m uncomfortable being called a conservative—it’s so square—but these days I almost always find myself getting along more with conservatives on political issues—except for social ones, as you can tell.

On religion Simon identifies as an agnostic. His conservatism takes a similar open-minded, anti-ideological path:

What I am left with is a collection of ideas with which I have dabbled throughout my life, never fully discarding any of them, even though some are completely contradictory of others. I regard Marxism, Freudianism, libertarianism, laissez-faire capitalism, Zen Buddhism, Quaker pacifism, neoconservatism, neoliberalism, that whole galaxy of isms, as arrows in a quiver to be drawn at will, depending on the adversary or the necessities of the situation. That may sound dangerously close to yet another ism—cultural relativism—but I assure you it is not. I do think there is almost always a good and evil, a right and wrong—although often you have to look closely—and the relativist view of the world is at best lazy and at worst a stalking horse for fascism. Those arrows in my quiver are no more than an arsenal for helping me find that elusive truth. And perhaps for taking action. Sometimes one is not enough. Sometimes I don’t need or want any of them.

Such is the endowment that the Silent Generation of Hollywood Apostates: skepticism toward easy ideology and a celebration of serious thinking across the disciplines.

This is a different message than that of a solid Baby Boomer like the 1957-born David Mamet. In Part 3 of the Hollywood Revolt we’ll consider the lessons of Mamet’s exciting essay collection The Secret Knowledge.

Check out the new Chris Weitz-directed “A Better Life,” based on a screenplay written by Simon 20 years ago.

Director Jonathan Flora frames the film around Gary Sinise, an actor and director with a long, intimate history with soldiers and veterans, though he himself has never served. From his brother-in-law, who was killed in Vietnam, to current bandmate Kimo Williams,  a ‘Nam veteran who started jamming with Sinise after they met on a production of A Streetcar Named Desire in the mid-90s, his career has always seemed to providentially intertwine with the military. Following the jihadist attacks of 9/11, Sinise felt compelled to help those directly affected by the Twin Towers’ destruction, volunteering in campaigns to benefit the FDNY. This spirit of volunteerism, in concert with his ever more frequent band practices with Williams,  materialized into a USO tour in 2003. Despite his diverse résumé, Sinise was universally associated with his Oscar-nominated performance as “Lieutenant Dan” from Forrest Gump, so as the group expanded, Sinise named it the “Lieutenant Dan Band,” and the rest is history.

It’s tempting to think this is a vanity project for Sinise, now better known for his long-running role on CSI: New York–that like other celebrities, he’s got a pet cause designed to make him look like a good guy. It’s certainly clear the producers ask virtually every interviewee their opinion of the man, but any doubts the viewer entertains about his sincerity quickly evaporate as the film reveals a level of determination and effort that would be noteworthy from anyone, celebrity or no. We see him orchestrate an increasingly elaborate stage show, drawing on his experience running Chicago’s Steppenwolf theatre. We see his family silently bear the burden of his prolonged absences; they miss him but recognize his time away as tours of duty. We realize Sinise and co. aren’t ego strokers reading a PSA script for a check, whipping up crocodile tears over the ozone layer so they can lecture flyover country and feel morally superior. They’re hard-working entertainers willing to put their lives on hold and travel to war zones all to display their gratitude to our servicemen and women.

Aside from the warm fuzzies it’ll put in your heart, For the Common Good is an entertaining and exhaustive documentary. We’re treated to a brief history of the USO, Gary’s young introduction to both music and acting, musical numbers by the Lt. Dan Band switching seamlessly from one concert’s footage to the next, and plenty of interviews with soldiers and veterans. We get to meet members of the band as well, and it becomes rather apparent why Kimo and Gary gravitated toward each other; both are natural storytellers and performers. One of the film’s highlights is Kimo revealing how he almost got shot playing a concert (while still a soldier) at a fire base in Vietnam. Other notable sequences include a view and discussion of the inside of one of Saddam Hussein’s mansions, a “Snowball Express” concert for the children and other family members of deployed soldiers, and a few cameos from other celebrities such as John Ratzenburger, Robert Duvall, Gary Cole, and Jon Voight.

The film’s title comes from an Abraham Lincoln quote that perfectly sums up its themes: “Honor to the Soldier and Sailor everywhere, who bravely bears his country’s cause. Honor also the citizen who cares for his brother in the field, and serves, as best he can, the same cause. Honor to him, who braves for the common good.” In any other context, I know the phrase “for the common good” would cause many here to blow a gasket over its collectivist implications, but in this documentary we see the concept in its noblest form. Our soldiers sacrifice themselves not to prop up dependents but to protect independence, and we see how one man’s thankfulness for that protection plays its own part in carrying our troops forward in their mission.

Lt. Dan Band: For the Common Good is available through On Demand nationwide, or  you can view the film directly through its website.

Troopathon 2011, as it is called, has the focused goal of sending as many care packages as it can get sponsored during an eight hour event. It its first year (2008) Troopathon brought in over $1.5 million for care packages for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. A $25 donation buys and delivers one care package.

One of the scheduled speakers is war hero and marine Nick Popaditch. Nick (a frequent guest on FOX’s “Red Eye”) was the tank commander and platoon sergeant in Baghdad during the historic fall of the statue of Saddam.

Recently Nick and his wife April joined me to talk about Troopathon and the significance it has for our troops serving in the Middle East. The YouTube video of the interview is below:

Troopathon Facts:

What: Troopathon 2011, the largest care package drive in America in support of our troops.

When: Thursday June 23rd, 4pm-midnight EDT / 1pm-9pm PDT

How You Can Watch: Right here at the Bigs!

How To Donate: Donation page.

Hosts: Andrew Breitbart and Melanie Morgan

Who Will Be Participating?: Several famous celebrities including actors Jon Voight, Gary Sinise and Robert Davi, media personalities Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, SE Cupp, and many others including yours truly.

Nick Popaditch will be speaking at Troopathon.

Big Peace: Professor Kengor, Hollywood is celebrating its Academy Awards, a look back at great actors and actresses and films.

Kengor: For me, it’s a moment to look back at Hollywood’s worst communists, communist sympathizers, Stalinists, and duped liberals and progressives—as well as the good guys (and gals) that fit none of those categories.

Big Peace: Fair enough. This should be fun. Let’s start with communists.

Charlie Chaplin comment, “Thank God for
communism!” will make you see (him) red.

Kengor: How about the Hollywood screenwriters who liberals still insist were innocent lambs? Dalton Trumbo, Communist Party code “Dalt T;” Albert Maltz, party no. 47196; Alvah Bessie, no. 46836; John Howard Lawson, no. 47275. Or, if you turn to page 191 of my book—if you don’t have a copy yet, shame on you—you can view Arthur Miller’s party application. Miller wrote The Crucible, about how Joe McCarthy pursued “liberals” unfairly suspected of being communists—“liberals” like Miller, Trumbo, Maltz, Bessie, Lawson.

Big Peace: As you say in Dupes, Hollywood produced “quite a cast.” Let’s narrow the focus to the Academy Awards.

Kengor: Among films that have canonized communists, Julia (1977) celebrated the scowling Lillian Hellman and her mystery lover/writer, Dashiell Hammett, who we now know was a CPUSA member. Hellman wrote a bitter play called Scoundrel Time, about Joe McCarthy. In Hellman’s universe, it was Joe McCarthy, not Joe Stalin, who was evil. Winning Oscars for Julia were Jason Robards and Vanessa Redgrave. Fittingly, Lillian Hellman was played by Jane Fonda, recently retired from her real-life role as Vietcong go-go girl. “If you would understand what communism was,” Fonda pleaded with a student audience, “you would pray on your knees that we would someday be communist.”

Big Peace: Another film from that period that celebrated American communists was Warren Beatty’s Reds (1981).

Kengor: That film lionized American Bolshevik John Reed. Reed today is buried in the wall of the Kremlin, a structure responsible for upwards of 60-70 million deaths. Maureen Stapleton won an Oscar for her role in that film as “Red” Emma Goldman, a woman so radical that Woodrow Wilson’s Justice Department deported her to Russia.

Big Peace: Which Academy Award winner made the worst statement about communism?

Kengor: I would roll out the red carpet for Charlie Chaplin. “Thank God for communism!” said the silent film star. “They say communism may spread all over the world. I say, so what?” The Daily Worker thrust that comment onto its front page. Communism, of course, did spread around the world, killing 100-140 million. How’s that for a “so what?”

Big Peace: You have several Oscar winners in Dupes whose names were raised as potential communists by a party organizer in Los Angeles who testified under oath to a grand jury and to Congress.

Kengor: The party organizer was John Leech. Most of those he named turned out to be proven party members. Among those who denied Leech’s charges were Jimmy Cagney, who won an Oscar for Yankee Doodle Dandy, Fredric March, who won it twice, and Humphrey Bogart, who won for The African Queen. I think Cagney was at least momentarily interested in the Communist Party.

Big Peace: We talked previously about your fascinating material on Humphrey Bogart, profiled in a feature by Big Hollywood (click here).

Kengor: In the Soviet Comintern Archives on CPUSA, I found a “Bogart” at the Workers School in New York in 1934. With great care, and with all the declassified documents, I consider whether this was Humphrey Bogart. I found no smoking gun, but it’s extremely intriguing.

Big Peace: We do know that Bogart was a dupe.

Kengor: He was a self-admitted dupe, ashamed at how the communist screenwriters lied to him and other celebrities that formed a group called the Committee for the First Amendment. They flew all the way to Washington to defend their “progressive” friends, only to learn that the screenwriters were closet Stalinists. Bogart was enraged, snapping, “You [expletives] sold me out!” Yes, they did. The Reds had no concern for the reputations of these actors.

Other duped liberals who threw their support behind these communists, and won Academy Awards, were Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck, and Judy Garland.

Big Peace: Perhaps the biggest Oscar winner is also one of your biggest dupes: Katharine Hepburn.

Kengor: Yes. One of the sorriest episodes in Hepburn’s illustrious career came when she delivered, in flame red dress, a speech at a May 1947 Progressive Party Rally. The speech was unerringly close to the Soviet line. Why wouldn’t it be? It was written by one of those “liberal” screenwriters: Dalton Trumbo. People’s Daily World reprinted the entire text. Hepburn hit a home-run for the comrades.

Big Peace: Burl Ives won an Oscar for The Big Country (1958). Tell us about Ives.

Kengor: Burl Ives also sang some wonderful Christmas tunes. He was in a folk group called “The Almanacs,” which alternately included Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and (among others) Will Geer—“Grandpa Walton” on The Waltons, a wild left-winger, and Columbia University grad, naturally. Some of these guys joined the party. “The Almanacs” were exploited by the seditious communist front-group, American Peace Mobilization, which appeased Hitler because Hitler signed a non-aggression pact with Stalin. They were the musical entertainment for the mobilization’s signature event in New York in April 1941. Go to pages 142-157 of Dupes, which presents materials from that rally—including Soviet orders to sucker “social justice” pastors, which occurred with tremendous success.

Big Peace: On the plus side, you highlight duped liberals who learned and changed, including in Hollywood. Sticking to Oscar winners, give some examples.

Kengor: If I were giving awards for best converted dupes, male and female—who also won Oscars—they would go to Melvyn Douglas and Olivia de Havilland. Douglas warned his fellow liberals about being duped. Ditto for de Havilland, who we discussed previously (click here). Unlike Katharine Hepburn, de Havilland, who played “Melanie” in Gone With the Wind, refused a pro-Soviet speech written by Trumbo.

Big Peace: Also on the plus side, list some Oscar winners who remained committed anti-communists throughout their career.

Kengor: Top billing goes to John Wayne, of course, who won for True Grit, and declared that Hollywood needed a good communist “de-lousing.” Others: Charlton Heston, Red Buttons, Frank Sinatra, Donna Reed, Loretta Young, Bing Crosby, Ginger Rogers, Jimmy Stewart, Shirley Temple. William Holden, who, with Ronald Reagan (click here), crashed a meeting of Hollywood communists in 1946. Gary Cooper, who won two Oscars, testified before Congress as a friendly witness on communist infiltration in Hollywood. Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert both won awards for It Happened One Night (1934).

Finally, I tip my hat to Haing Ngor, real-life survivor of Pol Pot’s Cambodian holocaust. Ngor won an Oscar for playing “Dith Pran” in The Killing Fields (1984). After all that, he was murdered in California in 1996.

Big Peace: Most of those we’ve noted are deceased. Give us some names of dupes or potential dupes among recent Oscar winners.

Kengor: George Clooney won for Syriana (2005). Mercifully, he didn’t win for Good Night, and Good Luck, another film where anti-communists are the demons. Barbra Streisand won for Funny Girl (1968). Of course, Sean Penn won in 2003 and 2008. Penn fits the theme of my book well, as he’s somewhat of a bridge from Cold War dupes to War on Terror dupes.

Among the non-dupes who won recent Oscars, there’s Jon Voight (Coming Home, 1978). His role in a major film on Pope John Paul II was wonderful, and would never garner modern Hollywood’s approval.

Big Peace: Professor Kengor, thanks for a unique take on the Academy Awards.

Kengor: My pleasure.

Why it’s a left-wing film

“Coming Home” was the first film produced under Jane Fonda’s terribly important-sounding production shingle, IPC Films or, Indochina Peace Campaign. She was inspired in part by her friend Ron Kovic, a Vietnam Veteran turned anti-war activist who would later be the subject of his own biopic, Oliver Stone’s “Born on the 4th of July.” Set in 1968 and focusing primarily on three veterans and their personal and emotional struggles after returning home from the war, this well-produced, well-directed and brilliantly acted drama nonetheless aids and abets the left’s monstrous view of the American fighting man and does its part in cementing the unfair stereotype of the Vietnam Vet as victim, dupe, war criminal, crazy and any or all of the above.  

Director Hal Ashby immediately sets his theme in place during the opening scene where a half dozen or so wounded vets sit around a pool table in a Veteran’s hospital drinking beer and debating the war. Quite deliberately, the lone man defending America’s decision to defend our South Vietnamese allies from brutal communist aggressors in the North, is thoroughly drowned out by the “moral authority” of the others (as Jon Voight’s Luke silently listens on). In the end, all voices are quieted by the Veteran who speaks film’s real message, how Vietnam Vets must learn to live with what they did over there.

Luke is a Marine who returned from the war a paraplegic and a bitterly angry one at that. Like Ron Kovic, he went to war for God and country and came back disillusioned and haunted by what he saw and did. Eventually he’s able to reenter the world thanks mainly to a tender love affair he engages in with Sally (Fonda), a conservative  militarywife married to the chauvinistic Bob (Bruce Dern), a Marine officer who’s just left for his own tour in Vietnam. Luke’s anger over his war experience soon turns into activism. He vows to stop as many young men as he can from making the same mistake he did, going so far as to chain himself to the front gate of a Marine base.

Though Bob was eager to fight for his county, upon this dedicated and career military officer’s return, he too is haunted, not only from watching his men commit heinous war crimes, but also that a military more interested in creating heroes than actually being heroic pins a medal on him for accidentally shooting himself — the humiliating reason he was sent home. Military Intelligence finally pushes Bob over the edge by informing him of the affair his wife had with Luke. The military’s insidious rationale for dropping this grenade into Bob’s life is Luke’s anti-war stance. As if shooting himself and Sally’s infidelity weren’t bad enough, the military is now questioning Bob’s patriotism because of his wife’s association with a radical. Stripped of everything he once thought he was — husband, patriot, warrior — Bob suffers flashbacks and becomes violent. But before he can hurt anyone, he drowns himself in the Pacific Ocean.

Bill Munson (Robert Carradine) was in Vietnam for only two weeks, but for reasons that don’t need explaining he came back completely out of his mind and also ends up committing suicide. 

Even though there are as many as 2.5 million Veterans who served “in country” in Vietnam, “Coming Home” refuses to introduce us to a single one who can make a moral case for the war, who believes he fought for the important cause of keeping the South free from communist rule or who didn’t psychologically crack up upon his return. Not to take away from or to dismiss in any way the obvious difficulties all Veterans face upon returning from battle, it’s just a fact that almost all of our Vietnam Veterans came home, kissed their wives, hugged their kids, and then quietly worked through their problems as they successfully slipped back into the slipstream of a productive American life. And yet, though obviously untrue, through films like “Coming Home”, the vision Hollywood has painted of the mentally unstable, disillusioned, and dangerous Vietnam Veteran is so strong that it’s the first that comes to mind. The word defamation doesn’t really begin to cover it.

Of course, this is all part of the agenda, something we see even today; pretending to sympathize with the Veteran even as you turn him into a terrible symbol and stereotype in order to further a political cause.

Furthermore, “Coming Home” was made a couple of years after the April, 1975 fall of Saigon. The horrors that the defenders of the war had warned would occur if the anti-war movement won the day (including, by the way, John Wayne’s “Green Berets”) had and were coming true during the film’s production. But “Coming Home” is its own piece of re-education. Though set in 1968, there’s still an elephant in the room Fonda and company refuse to acknowledge.

Like Korea, militarily Vietnam was a partial victory. North Korea is a communist hell hole today but our intervention there likely saved untold millions of lives in the South and most certainly saved our allies from the brutal fate that comes with everyday life under Kim Jon-il. Vietnam could have ended in the exact same way. In 1973 the military conflict came to an end with a peace treaty signed between the North and South. America pulled all of our troops out, the fighting came to an end, and like South Korea, South Vietnam could’ve defended itself indefinitely had we kept the aid flowing, which in 1973 was $2.8 billion a year but was cut dramatically the following year.

Unfortunately, after President Nixon resigned in disgrace in late 1974, anti-war Democrats promising to end all aid to non-Communist Indochina took control of Congress in January of 1975 and one of their first acts was to ignore President Ford’s desperate pleas for the increase in aid necessary to save an increasingly beleaguered South Vietnam and Cambodia. Needing spare parts, ammunition, and tactical weapons to defend themselves, in violation of the Paris Peace Accords which promised our allies “unlimited military replacement aid,” Congress sent an unmistakable signal with a 189-49 vote against additional military aid to both Cambodia and South Vietnam.   

Within weeks an emboldened North Vietnam swept into the South and on April 30th Saigon fell — just thirteen days after Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge took control of Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.

As a direct result, between the re-education camps in South Vietnam and the Killing Fields of Cambodia, it’s been estimated that over 3 million innocent people were massacred in what’s been called the Cambodian Holocaust — and “Coming Home” is a Cambodian Holocaust denier, a film set in 1968 that argues — as though millions weren’t dead as a consequence — that opponents of the war were right all along and that every nightmare scenario argued by those in support of the war (in 1968) hadn’t been fully realized … and then some.

The fact that Fonda and her then-husband Tom Hayden vigorously campaigned to turn public opinion against the post-war aid explains a lot.  And it’s worth noting that Jon Voight’s politics have matured considerably since 1978 and that today, during our present war, he has openly and selflessly supported both the cause and the men and women fighting for it in a Hollywood climate where such things can damage a career.

Why it’s a great film

First off, let’s give “Coming Home,” and that era of Hollywood as a whole, credit for not making anti-war films while we were still fighting the war in Vietnam. What today’s Hollywood has done (and continues to do) with at least a dozen box-office flops that, by design, attempt to undermine our country and troops in a time of war is at best traitorous and at worst the enabling of evil. No matter how dishonest and unfair, it’s one thing to create this kind of propaganda after a war and something entirely different to do it during.  Jane Fonda will likely end up in Hell but not for making “Coming Home.” I can’t say the same for Paul Haggis, Brian DePalma, Kimberly Peirce, Robert Redford, and all the rest.

Creatively, within the context of the world created by Ashby, Fonda, Voight and Dern, “Coming Home” is a home run. While the story has some blatantly political moments, they fit as a whole because the individual characters are well drawn and sympathetic. What they do and say, how they change and grow, makes sense and while you have to credit a solid and well-structured script, it’s three astonishingly good central performances that really pull it off.

Both Fonda and Voight won much-deserved Oscars for their work here and it’s a testament to Fonda’s abilities as an actress that once she arrives in character you completely forget what an appalling human being she is. Voight’s just as impressive as Luke, effortlessly and convincingly taking his character from embittered and selfish to someone ready to make peace the world and more importantly, with himself. Finally, there’s Bruce Dern, who plays a thoroughly unlikable character who takes over the third act of the story and in doing so earns so much of your sympathy that his Norman Maine finale is truly heartbreaking.

Wisely, the film mostly avoids melodrama by turning in unexpected directions. You expect the story to cut from Luke chaining himself to the Marine base to him leading a fiery anti-war protest but life doesn’t work that way and wisely the film doesn’t either. It’s a nice touch that Luke’s as surprised by his act of protest as we are and also a nice surprise that Sally and Luke both understand that she’ll go back to Bob when he returns, thus avoiding all the nonsense that usually accompanies such cinematic scenarios.

The great Hal Ashby

Best of all, these are real characters. The film itself might be propaganda but the players are given a depth and humanity that makes them more than just symbols or simple anti-war pawns. Obviously, it helps that you have talented and mature actors playing these roles, but unlike today’s sinister portrayal of our troops as unstable (“Hurt Locker’), dangerous (“Redacted,” “In the Valley of Elah”), and dupes (“Stop Loss,” “Lions for Lambs”), Luke, Bob, and Sally are real people; human, complicated, and ultimately sympathetic.

And the story itself is a good and compelling one. You like and root and want to know what will happen to the characters and the credit for keeping all the necessary plates spinning to pull that off goes to Hal Ashby, one of the few directors capable of creating character-driven pieces that hold your attention. Set in San Diego, the film also looks great, thanks to legendary cinematographer Haskell Wexler who recreates 1968 in such a convincing way that I frequently forget the film was made a decade later. Finally, there’s an almost continuous soundtrack of music from the era, from Dylan to the Rolling Stones, that’s second-to-none.  

I’ve said more than once that if today’s leftist filmmakers had half as much talent as their political counterparts of the late 60s and early 70s, the Iraqi people would be screwed because present-day Hollywood’s wicked cinematic attempts to embarrass the United States into abandoning 25 million innocent Iraqis to death squads and terrorists might’ve hit their mark. And when I say that, “Coming Home” is the example foremost in my mind. 

What’s not on the list

WALL-E (2008) – Charles Johnson’s essay went a long way toward changing my mind about the film. Not completely, but just enough not to rank it here.

Three Kings (1999) – I didn’t leave George Clooney, George Clooney left me! What you essentially have here is a neo-con argument criticizing a President named Bush for abandoning the Iraqi people to violent madmen after a Gulf War. Yeah, it’s the first Gulf War and the first Bush, but the humanitarian plea is the same. If there’s better piece of evidence that Leftist Hollywood is more interested in criticizing America than the innocent people of Iraq, the fact that this same argument was never once made on film during the Iraq War (in fact, just the opposite was made) closes that case forever.

Wall Street (1987) – Not an indictment of capitalism or even Wall Street itself, just the people who break the laws. The characters played by Hal Holbrook and Terence Stamp represent the good in the system as much as Michael Douglas represents the bad. In the end, the system works and Gekko and Bud go to jail. Leftists complained that director Oliver Stone (the son of a stock broker) didn’t go far enough in condemning Wall Street, and that’s a credible complaint from their wrong-headed point of view.

Heat (1995) is more than just a heist film – it’s an epic, a shambling three-hour monster of a movie that soars and frustrates, leaves your jaw hanging in awe and you scratching your head wondering what the hell is going on.  The star power it unleashes is literally unparalleled, the direction by Michal Mann is superb, the music is incredible (go buy the soundtrack now), and the cinematography creates a vision of Los Angeles that is more real than the reality.

—–

I will not insult your manhood by recapping the plot.  Actually, it’s so dense and convoluted it would take forever anyway.  Plus, there are the tangents that I still don’t fully get – what the hell is that whole Natalie Portman subplot doing in there anyway?  And some parts you just have to see for yourself – think Waingro’s plot line.  Bottom line: if you have never seen Heat, go buy it immediately.  Until you do, if you are biologically male, you are not entitled to stand while urinating.

For many of us, Heat has a personal connection that comes from both its time and place.  I saw Heat in Houston the day it came out (December 15, 1995), having been waiting for it for months thanks to the remarkable trailer.  I was there for a buddy’s wedding the next day; at that wedding, I would meet my hot wife for the first time.  About a month after, the giant law firm I was then slaving away for moved into the 444 South Flower building.  You probably know it best as the bank De Niro’s crew robs.  Before I quit (I had more business than many of the partners but they offered me the same crappy $500 bonus they gave to the guy caught sleeping under his desk, so I counter-offered that I’d keep everything), I must have walked past the spot where Val Kilmer first opens up with his CAR-15 a hundred times thinking, “Dude, I know where you’re coming from.”

But even if the movie might not be wrapped around your life as it is mine, it’s likely to have hit you at some deeper level.  Heat is a man’s film in a very true way – it’s about loyalty, honor, and commitment.  It brooks no compromise – the men in it must do what they must do regardless of the cost and regardless of their personal feelings.  Al Pacino’s Vincent Hanna gives up his potential for a normal life because Robert De Niro’s Neil McCauley must be stopped.  And De Niro’s McCauley gives up his chance too because he owes it to his dead buddies to see that Waingro pays for his betrayal.

These are men who live this code.  They don’t whine.  They don’t talk about their feelings.  They don’t make excuses.  They are everything our liberal culture despises – real men, even if not necessarily good men.  And they sure as hell don’t buy into that “COEXIST”/“Violence Never Solves Anything” crap.

These men walk to their fates heads held high, knowing their ends are the results of their choices and accepting the responsibility for the consequences.  I’d take a Neil McCauley over a Harry Reid and his liberal ilk in a heartbeat – they both pillage money from decent folks, but at least McCauley doesn’t wrap it in sanctimony and pretend he’s something else.

The film’s classic set piece – one of many classic set pieces – is the high intensity bank heist and shoot-out scene on downtown Los Angeles’s Fifth Street.  Let me throw this out there: it’s the best gunfight in the history of the cinema.

—–

Watch Val Kilmer in particular.  Now, director Michael Mann had former SAS operators train the cast on weapons and tactics, and Kilmer really took to it.  Check him out as he pivots, fires a short(ish), controlled burst, then pivots again and engages a new target.  When he runs out of ammo, watch him drop the empty mag, slap in a new one, and re-engage in about a second.  That’s some nice suppressive fire there, Tex.

And listen to the sound effects – Mann understood the effect of the shock of the noise from the gunfire (especially in an enclosed space surrounded by skyscrapers) and cranked up the volume.  You feel every burst of fire.

Interestingly, Heat is a remake of Mann’s 1989 TV movie L.A. Takedown, a nearly forgotten flick made on about a thousandth of the budget.  Most of the key elements are there, including much less awesome versions of the bank shootout and the famous Pacino/De Niro coffee scene (the Heat scene was filmed at Kate Mantalini in Hollywood – you can sit at the same table).

The cast is remarkable not just because of the big stars but the ones filling in the supporting roles.  William Fichter is great as a scumbag businessman.  Henry Rollins, taking a break from bad slam poetry and punk rock, is a terrific petty criminal.  Danny Trejo is in the house too – he has a great death scene.

One guy who stands out is Big Hollywood’s own Jon Voight as Nate, the crew’s sickly fixer and voice of reason.  I saw him and, frankly, thought Voight was about to die.  I mean, he looks like he’s at death’s door – which is a tribute to Voight’s power as an actor.  You see him in Heat and come out thinking he needs either an Oscar or an IV or maybe both.

Hell, Jeremy Piven is in it for about a minute as a squirrely doctor and even he’s great.  Yeah, that Piven!

And the dialogue is alternately funny, harsh, and (again) true.  Michael Mann’s words take the cast’s work to the next level, elevating it into the iconosphere.  You could go an entire day speaking in nothing but cool lines from the movie.

Finally, there is the music.  Much of it is electronic, giving the film a kind of tech noir vibe that works perfectly.  Of special note is the Moby(!) cover of Joy Division’s ominous New Dawn Fades that plays while Hanna roars down the I-105 freeway after Cauley.  And a Moby original, the soaring God Moving Over the Face of the Waters, plays over the climax and the credits.  Who would have thunk it – a pinko, vegan twerp like Moby making some of the most amazing music ever on screen in a flick like Heat?

Now, if you’ve read this far and have not gone to get your Heat DVD, or went out to buy a DVD, or borrowed a DVD from someone much cooler than you, I’m not sure I can help you.  Heat is one of the rare movies that is truly essential – a movie that tells basic truths that many people don’t want to acknowledge and that strikes a common chord in its fans so that it has become a part of the American male canon.

To paraphrase De Niro’s Neil, you must have nothing in your life that will prevent you from seeing Heat in 30 seconds flat.

The film, directed by Jonathan Flora, follows Sinise and his band as they support the troops and first responders around the world including Kuwait and Iraq.  The Lt. Dan Band began playing shows in 2003 and has played close to 200 concerts for America’s heroes and their families.
Films that receive the Crystal Heart are being honored for best meeting Heartland’s mission of “exploring the human journey by artistically expressing hope and respect for the positive values of life.”  Having seen this uplifting and inspiring film, I can assure you that it does just that. 

“Having long known the high reputation of the Heartland Film Festival and the quality of films it showcases, it is a true honor to be recognized and I tip my hat to Jeffrey Sparks and his staff for all they do,” said Flora, who hails from Ohio, served with the 82nd Airborne and also produced the film along with his wife, Deborah Flora.  “As a veteran and filmmaker working in Hollywood, it is a privilege to be able to support our troops and first responders through our medium.  The spirit of service and commitment to the greater good has always served as an example to me.  At its core, this movie is about remembering those who are willing to lay down their lives for others and those who are left behind.  Gary Sinise is a man who has chosen to remember and to honor.  Gary truly is the Bob Hope of this generation.” 

Lt. Dan Band: For the Common Good is a moving documentary that transcends genres.  

With an amazing soundtrack and special appearances by Academy Award winners Jon Voight and Robert Duvall, as well as Raquel Welch, Connie Stevens, John Ratzenberger and more, this film is one of those rare movies that entertains even as it inspires and has been praised by Hollywood filmmakers Jerry Bruckheimer and Ron Howard, NBA Hall Of Fame Coach Pat Riley, and many more. 

Gary Sinise will be in attendance tonight for the evening screening of the film and I’m confident you Hoosiers will come out and show him a warm welcome. 

I know that Big Hollywood readers will want to get out and support this fantastic documentary.  To check out the trailer, find out more about the movie and to stay tuned about its upcoming release, please visit the official website, LtDanBandMovie.com.

If for no other reason than she saves me from having to spend money on a “Variety” subscription, I love Nikki, but this conservative has no problem whatsoever with Michael Moore being elected to the Academy’s prestigious Board of Governors, because this conservative believes Michael Moore has earned it.

Yes, Michael Moore is a liar, a shameless propagandist and an anti-American leftist of the highest order. But he’s also one helluva talented filmmaker and it would be wildly hypocritical for me to believe or argue that anyone should be blacklisted from AMPAS due to their political beliefs. And that’s the only reason I could possibly use to argue against this appointment.

In the medium of documentary filmmaking, Michael Moore is one of the very best at what he does, no more or less accomplished than Kathryn Bigelow, who was also elected this year. No more or less accomplished than the other Governors.

We Hollywood-hating conservatives are not the ones looking to hold people back based on their political beliefs. If I have an argument with AMPAS it’s not that they should blacklist Michael Moore, it’s why not elect Jerry Bruckheimer, Jon Voight, Michael Moriarty, or Robert Davi to this board? For they are also no more or less accomplished than many of the others.

I’m sorry to disappoint those looking for outrage over Michael Moore’s new gig, but we’re not the blacklisters here. I despise everything Moore stands for just as much as the Left surely despises everything Jon Voight stands for. But a blacklist is a blacklist is a blacklist.

Big Hollywood will fight Moore in the arena of ideas and expose him as the liar he is any day of the week, and relish it. But my frustration with his agitprop — especially the fact that he’s good at it — isn’t about to turn me into what disgusts me.

UPDATE: Commenter shinsnake says it better than I could….

Difference between them and us: they fight for power, we fight for balance. They fight for submission, we fight for freedom. No one cares that Michael Moore is a tool of a lying leftist filmmaker. We only aim to point out his lies, not to silence them. There’s no doubt he’s talented. He’d have to be to make his propaganda seem interesting and truthful.

I think that’s the single biggest thing people misunderstand when us crazy, right wing, conservatives rail against America-hating Hollywood. We’re not saying they shouldn’t be able to say what they want. We’re merely saying why they’re wrong. And we argue that they shouldn’t keep conservatives out of the conversation. People don’t seem to get that.