Many have speculated (including me) that Sony, Bigelow, screenwriter Mark  Boal, and the White House all got into bed together to create a propaganda film that would hit theatres with the kind of exquisite timing that is never an accident. It’s no secret Sony, like the rest of Hollywood, is deep in the tank for President FailureTeleprompter, and this $40 to $70 million propaganda film would most certainly serve as an in-kind propaganda contribution  that delivered the kind of deus ex machina that can only be dreamed up in Hollywood. Yesterday, and for very good reason, the story turned once again when the Pentagon and CIA got involved.

Apparently, it’s not just us extreme right-wing Republicans who are concerned over the possibility that the White House might have given the studio and filmmakers classified information they weren’t cleared to receive:

[Republican Congressman Peter] King has expressed worries about the administration’s cooperation with Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. and Kathryn Bigelow, director of the Oscar-winning picture “The Hurt Locker,” who is working on a movie about the hunt for bin Laden. In August King wrote the inspectors general of the Pentagon and CIA noting a New York Times column saying that Sony and Bigelow had been given “top-level access to the most classified mission in history.”

In his letter, King said that leaks of classified information related to the bin Laden raid had already resulted in the arrests of Pakistanis believed by Pakistan authorities to have assisted the CIA. Participation by the Pentagon and the CIA in making a film about the raid “is bound to increase such leaks, and undermine these organizations’ hard-won reputations as `quiet professionals,’” King said.

As a result, the Pentagon has started its own investigation, and the CIA is now re-examining its policies when it comes to dealing with Hollywood:

Did the Obama administration release classified information to Hollywood notables for a film about the operation that killed Osama bin Laden?

That’s a question Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) wants answered.  And in response, the Pentagon’s inspector general has launched an investigation, King disclosed Thursday.

“We plan to begin subject investigation immediately,” Patricia A. Brannin, deputy inspector general for intelligence and special program assessments, wrote in a memo that King emailed to reporters.

At issue is whether the filmmakers — director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, who both won Oscars for their 2009 Iraq war movie “The Hurt Locker” — were given access to classified information about a mission that remains shrouded in secrecy.  While newspapers and magazines have published detailed accounts about the raid, much remains unknown to all but a few. …

In addition to the Pentagon investigation, the CIA has decided to craft a written policy about how its public affairs division works with authors and filmmakers, the agency said in letter to King released Thursday.

Hollywood being wicked, anti-American leftists cranking out film after film to undermine our military in the War on Terror is bad enough, but if there was some kind of collusion where in exchange for  a sweet piece of bigscreen propaganda the Obama Administration compromised national security, that needs to be fully investigated and anyone found guilty needs to go to jail… forever.

After his non-recess recess appointment earlier this week, I put nothing past Obama when it comes to what he’ll do to win another term. As far as Hollywood, that treasonous industry sold out its country years ago. So this is par for the course.

Over the past five years, a dozen-plus anti-war films have flopped at a 100% rate (Boal and Bigelow’s Oscar-winning “Hurt Locker” only grossed $17 million domestically — and in my opinion it did not look favorably on our military), and if that doesn’t prove the power New Media has to compete with and even defeat The Hollywood PR Machine, nothing does. Why Sony ever believed they could get away with  releasing into the 2012 election narrative a multi-million dollar feature focusing on one of President Obama’s very few successes is beyond me.

Sony’s plan was an obvious one. Not only would the release of the film in the crucial weeks leading up to the election bring this event back to the forefront of voter’s minds, it would also give Obama’s Media Palace Guards the excuse and cover they desire to resurrect this story just when the President might need it most. This was cynical, sinister, and the worst kind of exploitation of our Military.

I don’t give credit when people do what they should’ve done in the first place, but I am glad Sony came to their senses. However, their excuse for bumping the release date is a laugh-out-loud howler. Apparently they were askeert of Kevin James, you know, because his ”wacky shenanigans” might compete for the same ticket-buyers:

Sony Pictures has set Kathryn Bigelow‘s untitled hunt for Bin Laden drama (unofficially titled Kill Bin Laden) for December 19, 2012.  The studio had originally set the film for October 12, 2012, but moved it to make way for Kevin James‘ wacky shenanigans in Here Comes the Boom.

And if this is indeed the case, it’s almost as entertaining…

According to Box Office Mojo, Kill Bin Laden currently has the December 19, 2012 date all to itself[.]

…because one of the reasons Sony gave for the original release date was that no other Oscar-season dates were open.

I’m not so sure that even five years ago Sony would’ve felt any pressure to do the right thing here, to NOT exploit the valor and bravery of our Military in a multi-million dollar, in-kind campaign commercial to benefit the re-election of a failed president.

God bless New Media.

Finally, with the pressure of the release date off, the pressure is also off Bigelow and Boal to take the election into consideration during the creative process. We might just get a better film out of this.

More on the story here, here and here.

The rest of the entertainment media is downplaying the news, but that’s probably because they’re pouting.

If the studio and filmmakers want to begin to repair the damage they’ve created by pretending their multi-million dollar film’s release date wasn’t intended to be a multi-million dollar in-kind contribution to the Obama 2012 campaign, they need to bump the picture well into 2013. Or…

They can be honest about what they’re up to, like the “Atlas Shrugged” producers have been, and admit their desire to impact the election.

“Who, us?” just isn’t going to cut it. The good news is that someone over at Sony might be coming to their senses.

Hollywood Wiretap:

Sony’s planned October 12, 2012 release of Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal’s film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden may be shifting. The New York Times on Wednesday reported that the picture may be moving from its slot – which would have fallen shortly before next year’s presidential election – to a post-election date, and possibly not until 2013.

In its report, The NYT cited two people who were briefed on the studio’s plans.

Back in August, Maureen Dowd reported the pre-election release date and pointed out that the film might boost re-election prospects for President Barack Obama by dramatizing the killing of Bin Laden.

Following that, Rep. Peter King, a republican from New York who is also the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, voiced concerns over the White House’s cooperation with the filmmakers.

According to the story, Sony will make up their minds in a few weeks.

Though I was no fan of ‘The Hurt Locker,’ I’ve been a Bigelow champion going back to ‘Near Dark’ and love the idea of her being the one to tell this story. But whether or not the film becomes tainted as a partisan, political football is completely up to her and the studio.

Furthermore, the men and women who risked their lives to bring bin Laden down deserve better than to have their courage, duty, and sacrifice exploited in a campaign commercial.

No one loses if the the release date is moved into 2013… other than those with mercenary political motives.

It was not the public’s ambivalence to the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq that caused director Nick Broomfield to portray our soldiers as adrenalized murderers in “Battle for Haditha” or cinema legend Brian De Palma to do the same in “Redacted.” Nor is it a sudden focus on capitalism, as filmmaker Peter Berg suggests in the article, that is motivating Universal Studios suddenly to produce “Lone Survivor” four years after its publication. It is politics.

Numerous books have analyzed politics in Hollywood, including Ben Shapiro’s recent Primetime Propaganda: The True Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV. So, the fact that Hollywood is an unabashedly liberal community is no revelation. But filmmakers’ covert attempts to shift public opinion to the left needs to be understood better.

Berg explains that Hollywood now “supports these men” but fails to disclose that this is because our troops have a new boss. The equation is simple: When the commander-in-chief is a Republican, Hollywood sees him as a corporate stooge and jingoistic warmonger. But when he is a Democrat, he is a visionary and a reluctant hero.

Hollywood does not make films that celebrate American values and our men and women in uniform during GOP administrations. Those films could send the wrong message and stir public sentiment in favor of a disliked president. But trade in a Right-wing saber rattler for some hope and change, and suddenly a powerful propaganda machine positively portrays the country that today’s president leads. The new message: Feel good, America. We are noble, just like our cosmopolitan president. Let’s give him four more years and keep feeling great about ourselves.

Fast forward to the upcoming film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, which is slated for release in October 2012, just before the election. Some conservatives worry that the filmmakers — Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal — will spend more time praising President Obama for his “gutsy call” than they will on the heroes who tracked, found, and killed the late al-Qaeda chief. But those fears are unfounded.

Bigelow and Boal understand the firestorm that they would unleash. Instead, they are likely to create a genuinely great movie that makes our intelligence agencies and special forces look like gods among men. They may even throw George W. Bush a bone, which will make them look magnanimous and their critics seem small. It will be enough that the film will make people feel warm about the country and its leadership a few weeks before the election they vote. That’s their goal, and that’s the power that Hollywood has to influence our culture.

The real question isn’t: “Can Hollywood make a film that presents American values in a good light?” That’s not a problem. The question should be: “Would Hollywood produce it if their man wasn’t in the Oval Office?”

To answer that, just look at Boal’s own work. Far from celebrating the bravery of American soldiers, his 2007 screenplay for Paul Haggis’s “In the Valley of Elah,” portrayed American soldiers as murderous psychopaths who dismember one of their own. Back then, the cowboy from Texas was president.

As for Boal’s last collaboration with Bigelow, while “Hurt Locker” was released under Obama in June 2009 and widely applauded for portraying US GIs in an heroic light, the film was written and shot under Bush. As such it reflects — albeit subtly – Hollywood’s skepticism about Americans in uniform.

The film opens with the sentence “WAR IS A DRUG” and proceeds to show how the war in Iraq takes a toll on the main character, depriving him of love for his child, and creating in him a reckless junkie who puts his men in danger for his own sport. George Bush’s war does that to a man.

There was also the commanding officer who ordered his men to leave an Iraqi to die, and the few political statements were all decidedly in the liberal, “we make them terrorists” vein.

For those of us who love America, as well as the men and women who protect her, Hollywood’s new attitude will be refreshing, even if it is tainted by the certainty that one election can change everything for the worse.

For a more consistent way to see pro-American films made – one that is not dependent on who occupies the White House — more conservatives working need to work in the entertainment industry. We need more conservatives to learn the craft, create films, produce television, and sway the culture. For too long, conservatives have been only reactionary toward what Hollywood produces. We cannot leave America’s most powerful pulpit in the hands of the left.

Those of us appalled by the idea that Sony Pictures and their politically-mercenary filmmakers would use a universal American triumph and our selfless troops in this partisan manner, need to find something to do with our sudden ten-dollar windfall. It’s quite likely that by the time the film’s released, just a few weeks prior to the election, America might need that ten bucks to buy a gallon of gas or milk. But let’s be optimistic and dream a little…

Me? Thanks to reader Carol, who emailed with the marvelous idea, I’m going to give the money to a military charity.

INT.   HOLLYWOOD STUDIO CONFERENCE ROOM – DAY

“Hurt Locker” scribe MARK BOAL slams his mighty fist down hard on the conference room table, making the HOLLYWOOD EXECUTIVES surrounding him jump in their leather seats.

MARK BOAL

Now listen up.  I don’t care about your liberal preconceptions and your smug certainty that you’re somehow better than those men and women out there in Afghanistan and Iraq just because you work in the movie industry and they actually work!

EXECUTIVE NO. 1

But, but…

MARK BOAL (pointing an accusing finger)

Put a sock in it, meat puppet!  You want to use those American heroes as a backdrop for some politician’s reelection campaign?  Well, you can take my Oscar and stick it in your Fonda-hole!  I’m not having any part of it!

Ed. Note:  We now pause for a photo of sensitive, introspective hipster Boal:

Big Hollywood has been all over the story of screenwriter Mark Boal’s collaboration with the Obama campaign’s usurpation of the work of our SEALs and other covert warriors in hunting down Osama bin Laden.  It’s outrageous – you know you’ve crossed a line in the sand of decency when even Jurassic liberal-saur Maureen Dowd seems creeped out by your shameless SEALS-ploitation.

As Big Hollywood has pointed out before, Boal is Hollywood’s go-to guy for sending the leftist message du jour about our troops.  When President Bush was in office and the party line was that fighting terrorists was a bad thing, Boal was there with In the Valley of Elah (2007).  That one painted our soldiers as hideous psychopaths driven crazy by the war, so nuts and evil they murdered one of their own because of, well, Bush or something.

But always one to be surfing the liberal zeitgeist, Boal caught the wave of supporting our troops with The Hurt Locker.  His script was superficially sympathetic to our warriors, but when you got past Kathryn Bigelow’s well-staged action scenes, all you had was an over-wrought fantasy that depicted our fearless bomb disposal troopers as unstable, undisciplined clowns.  The guy who claims Boal used him as material was not impressed either; he sued.

Not surprisingly, reinforcing Hollywood’s stereotypes about military people as alien, scary freaks, got Boal an Oscar.

Afterward, Boal went back to reporting and writing anti-soldier hit pieces like The Kill Team: How U.S. Soldiers in Afghanistan Murdered Innocent Civilians for that Tiger Beat of the sagging baby boomer set, Rolling Stone magazine.  His laughable reporting drew a forceful rejoinder from the legendary Michael Yon (Calling BULLSHIT on ‘Rolling Stone’).

Yon is the real deal and trusted by the troops.  Yon’s column points out distortions and omissions in Boal’s reportage.  As a reporter, when you get the small things wrong, it’s no surprise when your big picture conclusions are just as flawed.  Not that the liberals whose prejudices his writing studiously reinforce care much about accuracy, but maybe Boal would be better off learning a little more about the organization he purports to write about and spending a little less effort cultivating the neo-hipster, tousled-hair-and-goatee look he’s been rocking in all those paparazzi pics.

Now comes a chance to work hand-in-hand with the Obama campaign to create a movie about the hunt for Osama bin Laden.  Apparently, the hunt for Saddam Hussein was of no interest (or use) to Boal, it having taken place under the wrong president.

What are the chances that Boal won’t come through with what the liberal establishment wants?  About zero – he’s never let them down before.  With an October 12, 2012, release date, this is a transparent attempt to distract attention from the utter disaster the Administration’s ultra-liberals policies have inflicted upon the economy.  Boal, along with director Bigelow and the Obama-backing Sony studio, are eager to help.  Dollars to doughnuts, the focus of this tribute won’t be the men and women who risked their lives but the candidate who made the “gutsy call” that anyone else would have made too.

But then, Boal has made a career of meeting liberal expectations within his little niche as the Hollywood hipster who always writes just what his bosses want to hear about the military.

Boal rises from his chair and takes his Oscar in hand.

MARK BOAL

You make me sick.  I’m done with you.  I’m walking out of here and down to a Supercuts to get a high and tight and to get rid of this stupid hipster goatee.

EXECUTIVE NO. 1

Come back!  What will we do when we need someone to write another script pretending to support the troops while actually depicting them as psycho losers and mindless stooges of the Bu$hitler-Haliburton wars for oil?

MARK BOAL

It shouldn’t be hard to find someone else like that here in Hollywood.  After all, when you’re looking for a turd, what better place to look than a toilet?

Boal takes the OBAMA ’12 button off his jacket and tosses it on the table, then storms out the door and into the sunset. The button spins on the wood surface…..

FADE OUT.

Sadly, all characters appearing in this work are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Bigelow and Boal

The Hill:

A Republican lawmaker from Kansas wants to prevent the administration from helping Sony make a move about the killing of Osama bin Laden.  

The Stop Subsidizing Hollywood Act introduced by Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-Kan.) would stop the Obama administration from spending taxpayer money to share information about the killing of bin Laden with Sony Pictures, which is looking to release a film about that event in October 2012. 

Jenkins said the bill, introduced on Friday, is necessary because the government has no role to play in helping the movie industry at a time of fiscal crisis.  

“In an era of 9 percent unemployment, trillion dollar deficits, credit downgrades, and record debt ceiling extensions it is unconscionable that tax payer dollars are being used to aid the Hollywood film industry in fact checking and script research,” Jenkins said. “American families have been forced to go through their budgets line by line and look for ways to tighten their belts, and it is time the federal government does the same.”

Sony, Bigelow and Boal have been given every opportunity to do the right thing and push the film’s release date into late December and out of the political arena. They have CHOSEN not to do so. Furthermore, they were the ones who chose to play politics with this film to begin with, not Rep. Jenkins and not anyone on the Right.

There’s nothing we would all like more than to enjoy a non-partisan, pro-American film about the killing of Osama bin Laden, nothing we would all like more than to anticipate the film we’ve been waiting ten years to see — the one where Hollywood finally takes our side in the War on Terror. But the decision has been made by the Hollywood Left to cynically use a key moment in our history and, worst of all, the bravery and heroism of our troops, as partisan political pawns.

As of right now, conservatives not only have the right to do everything within their power to bring down this film, they have an obligation.

If the filmmakers and studio want to play politics … let’s play.

Director Kathryn Bigelow with screenwriter Mark Boal

Screenwriter Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow, those responsible for anti-war film The Hurt Locker, have decided to assist President Obama in his re-election. Together, they have been granted unprecedented access to some of America’s most classified data pertaining the death of Osama Bin Laden and the dark secretive world of our U.S. Navy SEAL’s and Joint Special Operations Command. They will be using this information to create a film about the “heroic leadership” within this administration based upon the U.S. led Navy SEAL kill mission which inevitably made OBL fish food.

It wouldn’t be surprising at all to see anti-war actors like Sean Penn, George Clooney, or Matt Damon partake with leading roles.

Sony Pictures is behind this madness and the same politicians who so tirelessly have gone out of their way to prosecute CIA and military interrogators are supporting them. With an S&P rating lower than any president, Obama needs all the help he can get for re-election.

Timing is everything. The release of this film is scheduled to open October 12th. October leaves just enough time to socially condition a grave amount of Americans in believing President Obama is truly the “chosen one.”

The President just addressed the nation on August 8th where he expressed sincere condolences for the loss of 31 Special Operators this past weekend in Afghanistan. His words, like normal, never add up to his actions. He has failed to disrupt Hollywood’s new film as he fully understands what type of push this could provide during such troubling times under his Presidency.

The shallowness of Washington and Hollywood combined is unfathomable. 31 lives have just been lost, 31 families shattered, and 31 new graves will be dug, yet some elitists would love to capitalize on their lives all for their own agendas.

As a combat disabled veteran, I am outraged. These were my brothers in arms– your sons, nephews, teammates, and our nation’s truest of heroes. With $50-75 million used to create and market this film, this money should be construed as fraud, waste, and abuse.

No matter the cost, I for one will be protesting this film.

What are your thoughts on this?

Obama is on a downward slide everywhere in the country, except in 10 of the most liberal states in the union (i.e., these states that would still vote for FDR or Woodrow Wilson were either miraculously resurrected and placed back on the ticket). As a matter of fact, Obama-nomics have been so disastrous to America that one of the DRUDGEREPORT’s most recent headlines was “BARACKALYPSE NOW.”

So what’s Hollywood’s response to the first two and half years of Obama? Wel,l duh, they’re helping him out by producing an October 2012 surprise that will highlight the killing of Osama bin Laden just in time to get voters excited for The One again.

In all fairness, let me say that from the moment I first learned bin Laden had been killed, I immediately thought Obama would release the pictures of the terrorist’s body during October 2012 in hopes of making us think he really is a war president worthy of re-election. Now it appears he won’t have to do that, because Hollywood is going to use a gazillion dollar movie set to provide us scenes that look even better than the real ones. At least they’ll look better to Obama: our wonderful president who, after meeting SEAL Team 6 said, “They looked less young and fearsome than he expected, and more like guys working at Home Depot.” (According to Maureen Dowd)

The movie, directed by Oscar-winner Kathryn Bigelow and written by Oscar-winner Mark Boal, will likely cast Obama isn the most positive light possible and the White House is so desperate for eager to get some kind of boost in the polls that they’ve even allowed Boal into parts of the White House and Pentagon that are normally off-limits (which included allowing Boal into a “CIA ceremony celebrating the hero seals”).

We can only hope that as this movie enters serious production stages Bigelow and Boal will consider the recent loss of so many members of SEAL Team 6 Six and make this movie more about them and less about our stutterer-n-chief, Barack Obama.