Skidoo has been seen as something of an oddity in Preminger’s body of work, a director primarily known for heavier films like Laura, Exodus, and The Man With the Golden Arm.  The film was largely panned upon release as a cynical attempt to pander to a hip crowd, Preminger even brought in a young Rob Reiner to do uncredited rewrites on the script, reportedly telling him to “write scenes for the hippies.”  This DVD release marks the first time that this movie has even gotten a home video release, it’s current advent to video being probably due to the cult appeal it’s gained playing late nights on Turner Classic Movies’ TCM Underground, where bizarre not-quite-classics of yesteryear find their modern audience.

The DVD details on this one are virtually non-existent, though I can happily report it’s being released in it’s original anamorphic widescreen, and not a cropped frame.  Other than that though, we get no special features to speak of.  Given that this is the first and only release of Skidoo available to date, those of us wanting to own it will have to as our current President commands of we his subjects: shut up and eat our (Preminger) peas.  Though, really, this movie had me at Jackie Gleason and Harry Nilsson.  Sold.

Available on DVD

So, here’s where I ask everyone to indulge me for a second: I love Steven Seagal movies.  The early Seagal movies are legit, flicks like Above the Law, Hard to Kill, Out for Justice, all of those are great.  Then Seagal’s ego got so big it began to eat itself, which was in direct disproportion to his physical weight.  He directed what is one of the greatest so-bad-it’s-good movies ever, On Deadly Ground, in which Seagal blows up an Alaskan oil rig, no doubt wrecking the local ecosystem, and then proceeds to preach to us about the environment.  It’s action movie stupidity that is too good to pass up.  Then the studios decided they didn’t want to do movies that starred Seagal anymore, while Seagal decided he didn’t want to stop starring in movies either.  Thus the direct-to-video era of Seagal’s career was born, in which we got two or three sub-par action movies from the rotund action star each year.  Nine out ten of these movies are completely worthless, and devoid of entertainment.  There is, however, the occasional diamond in the rough, a movie that actually delivers some cheap Seagal thrills, and one of them is coming to Blu-ray this week: Belly of the Beast.

What Belly of the Beast is, is a Hong Kong style action movie with the belly of Seagal being dragged around on wires instead of Chow Yun Fat or Jet Li. It’s directed by Ching Siu-tung, one of Hong Kong’s premiere choreographers, the man responsible for the balletic action in films like A Better Tomorrow II, Shaolin Soccer, Hero,  and Peking Opera Blues to name a few.  He also directed excellent movies like the hyper-kinetic Duel to the Death (which if you haven’t seen, do yourself a favor and do so), and the classic A Chinese Ghost Story.  With a resume like that, you know we’re not working with the usual hacks behind the camera.  The problem is that Seagal’s rotund figure looks silly gliding and flying around in epic action movie bullet ballets (though Tom Cruise didn’t fare much better when John Woo did the same thing to him in Mission: Impossible 2).  But as far as Seagal movies go, though, it’s one of the best movies he’s done in his direct-to-video doldrums in that it’s relentlessly entertaining, even when it’s as silly as it gets.

The plot is a bit like Taken, Seagal is an ex-CIA/NSA/other mysterious government organization acronym agent, whose daughter gets kidnapped by terrorists, therefore Seagal must stomp the crap out of their colons.  Pretty simple stuff, it’s action movie comfort food.  It’s not the second coming of Above the Law, this is Seagal in his lazy period of body doubles after all.  But it does what most Steven Seagal movies these days fail to do: get your action flick rocks off.

I have this movie on a cheap DVD, and frankly, I see no reason to upgrade to the Blu-ray.  It’s not exactly a visual delight, and I doubt the studio has spent time lovingly restoring it, so if I were you, I’d just hunt down a cheap-o DVD, used if possible.  Or better yet, just NetFlix it, your wallet will thank you, and you’ll probably hate me less if you don’t like it.

Also, a big PS to Seagal junkies out there: if you’ve never read the book Seagalogy: A Study of the Ass-Kicking Films of Steven Seagal by Vern, do yourself a favor and pick this bad boy up from Amazon.  It exhaustively covers every Steven Seagal film from Above the Law, to Pistol Whipped, including a breakdown of his hilarious musical ventures, as well as movies he was involved with that never got made.  Vern makes some mildly obnoxious political statements here and there, but the rest of the book is a hilarious, excellent read by a true, blue Seagal nut that proudly sits on my shelf.

Available on Blu-ray

Other Noteworthy Releases

Limitless: Bradley Cooper is a writer who takes a pill that unlocks the other ninety percent of his brain and makes him awesome, or something like that.  Robert De Niro shows up for a paycheck.

Available on Blu-ray and DVD

Take Me Home Tonight: An homage to eighties teen comedies, word on the street is it stinks.

Available on Blu-ray and DVD

Tekken: Fun fact: this video game adaptation was directed by Dwight H. Little, the guy who made Halloween 4, Marked for Death, and Phantom of the Opera starring Robert Englund.

Available on Blu-ray/DVD combo and DVD

Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and The Beast: Criterion is upgrading their edition of Cocteau’s classic with a brand new Blu-ray edition.

Available on Blu-ray

The Music Room: Satyajit Ray’s 1958 film about modernity catching up with the old Indian aristocracy doesn’t look like the sort of film we associate with today’s Bollywood productions, and it’s getting a release this week from Criterion.

Available on Blu-ray and DVD

We Live in Public: A collector’s edition of this bizarre documentary on the sociological possibilities of the internet based on the insane experiments of Josh Harris comes out on DVD this week.

Available on DVD

Boyz ‘N The Hood: John Singleton’s breakthrough hit comes to Blu-ray

Available on Blu-ray

Amelie: I gotta say, every idealistic girl I met in college was in love with this movie.  I think director Jean-Pierre Jeunet has a unique visual style that’s all his own, unfortunately most of his movies do nothing for me, and this is one of them.

Available on Blu-ray

Chocolat: Another movie a lot of people I know adore that I never caught the appeal of.  I fully admit that I’m probably the problem in this faulty equation.

Available on Blu-ray

Bridget Jones’s Diary: To whom it may concern, it’s out on Blu-ray, so there you go.

Available on Blu-ray

This article originally appeared over at Parcbench

NY Post’s Lou Lumenick:

A petition is circulating to stop an outdoor screening of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” next month at a Brooklyn Park. The beloved romantic dramedy starring Audrey Hepburn, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary in October, has long been considered problematic by many because of the bucktoothed, splenetic and bumbling Japanese character played by Mickey Rooney — an ethnic stereotype that was outdated even in 1961, and seems much more offensive than funny today.

A planned outdoor screening in Sacramento in 2008 was replaced by “Ratatouille” after a public outcry.

You do know this is just the beginning with these neo-fascists, right? After “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” they’ll go after “Gone With the Wind” and all the rest. And they and their ilk won’t stop until every film that offends everyone except white, Christian male conservatives disappears entirely — just like “Song of the South” has.

It may take years, decades or even generations, but the Left never stops. Never ever stops.

Orwell called this memory-holing.

Mickey Rooney’s Japanese character in “Breakfast” is way too over-the-top to ever be considered funny (I also think the movie is overrated in general), but if we’re going to start banning and making lists of “offensive” characterizations, I’d like to start with every portrayal of a Caucasian Eddie Murphy has ever done. And what about Archie Bunker? Talk about ethnic stereotyping.

See how that works?

Keep in mind that “offensive” has nothing to do with this attempted purge. If that were the case, these same petitioners would be demanding museums throughout Manhattan remove whatever might offend Christians and Republicans. Maybe they’re doing that. My money’s on not.

MGM’s roster of female stars constituted the greatest collection of beautiful and talented women the world has ever known.

One of the greatest was Ava Gardner.

Ava Gardner in “The Killers,” her breakthrough role, 1946.

As an emerging starlet in the early 1940’s, before she made a single movie the breathtaking Southern beauty was the talk of the town.

Mickey Rooney was MGM’s golden boy, a versatile star equally adept at musicals, comedy and drama. His signature role as the small-town youngster Andy Hardy made him something of a cash cow for the studio. The Hardy movies were cheap to produce and earned enormous profits.

In his compulsively readable autobiography, Life is Too Short, Rooney claims that his mother worked as a prostitute in order to put food on the table during the depths of the Depression. Thus, it’s not surprising that Rooney pursued women with an obsessive compulsion, seeking affection and love in all the wrong places: call girls, ambitious actresses and mature women—including Irving Thalberg’s widow Norma Shearer—smitten by Rooney’s brash boyish charm.

The first time Rooney laid eyes on Ava Gardner was when she visited the set of “Babes on Broadway,” in 1941. She was wearing a wispy summer dress and high heels. Rooney was also wearing a dress and high heels—a Carmen Miranda costume.

Rooney recalls the gauzy moment:

“Hello,” said Ava. That’s all. Just hello. And without a smile. But she said it in the soft drawl of her native rural North Carolina, and I was a goner. I had known many beautiful women in my lifetime, but this little lady topped them all. She was five feet one, but she invariably wore high heels, so she was about my height when I was wearing five-inch wedgies.

Ava was eighteen years old, Rooney, twenty-one, and his technique with women, he admits, was a combination of early Neanderthal and late Freud. He pursued the gorgeous young starlet with ferocious determination. After turning down five dates Ava finally succumbed, no doubt out of sheer exhaustion and because as one of MGM’s most powerful and bankable stars Rooney could, Ava understood, help advance her career.

After a night of drinking, dancing and table-hopping at Chasen’s, Rooney was smitten. Ava was exhausted by Rooney’s non-stop patter. He was, she realized, always performing. When Rooney saw Ava to her door at two in the morning he impulsively proposed marriage.

Ava, playing a cool customer but in truth a tongue-tied country girl, gave a little hoot, smiled enigmatically, and ducked into her apartment.

For the next few weeks Rooney kept asking and Ava kept evading. Ava was told by everyone in the Hollywood colony that Rooney never took no for an answer.

Soon after December 7, 1941, Rooney presented Ava with a huge diamond ring and once again popped the question.

There is nothing like war to concentrate the mind on love and romance.

Ava finally surrendered.

They kissed and Rooney started to grope the inexperienced young woman from Grabtown, North Carolina.

But Ava Gardner would not sleep with Rooney before accepting the sacraments of marriage. She was a virgin, and she insisted, that was the way she was going to keep it until the wedding night.

Rooney was out of his mind with desire.

Ava Gardner before her MGM glamour make-over.

Informed of the engagement, L.B. Mayer hit the ceiling. He accused Rooney of trying to destroy MGM. There was an image to preserve and marriage to an unknown hillbilly starlet did not fit the carefully crafted studio profile of Andy Hardy, the clean-cut all-American boy.

Terrified of Mayer’s incandescent temper Ava was ready to postpone the marriage. But Rooney stood up to the most powerful studio chief in Hollywood and threatened to break his contract if Mayer did not give his blessing to the union.

L.B. Mayer realized he was no match for Ava Gardner’s smoldering sensuality and wisely backed down. The wily mogul even hosted a bachelor party for Rooney. The guest list included: Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Robert Taylor, Lewis Stone, Bill Holden, Robert Montgomery, Lionel Barrymore, William Powell, and Frederic March.

Ava and Mickey were married on January 10, 1942.

The wedding night should have been an MGM soft-focus dream of deep kisses, moonlight and unquenchable passion.

Ava Gardner and Mickey Rooney on their wedding day.

Mickey Rooney confesses the awful truth:

After the ceremony, we kissed our families good-bye and headed for our honeymoon in Carmel, at the Del Monte Inn…

We didn’t have a normal, sexy wedding night. I was a nervous wreck. Getting there had been more than half the fun. Now I didn’t quite know how to savor my victory. To quiet my nerves I drank too much champagne at dinner and barely made it back to our room before I took off my pants and sank into the bed. By the time Ava emerged from the bathroom, all dressed in white satin and lace, I was snoring heavily—dreaming, no doubt about how nice it was, being married to the most beautiful woman in the world.

The marriage was a predictable disaster. Rooney was interested in booze, betting, and babes—not necessarily in that order. Ava reports in her autobiography, Ava: My Story, that she spent her days posing for MGM publicity photos—her career had yet to ignite—then cooked, cleaned, and decorated the house. She was trying to be a good wife.

But Rooney was a serial adulterer who spent all his time at the studio, the track, and a brothel stocked with prostitutes who were dead-ringers for Hollywood movie stars.

Go figure.

Finally Ava walked out on him. One year and five days after he slipped a ring on her finger bearing the engraving: “Love Forever,” they were divorced.

Years later, Ava somewhat wickedly characterized their union as Love Finds Andy Hardy.

Ava’s career soared after appearing as the femme fatale opposite Burt Lancaster in “The Killers,” 1946. But her love life was tumultuous, a blizzard of booze, wrenching love affairs and failed marriages to Frank Sinatra and Artie Shaw, volcanic and abusive men.

Rooney racked up an astonishing seven additional marriages after Ava.

Neither ever found true contentment in love or marriage.

Hollywood was and still is a dream factory that all too frequently weaves nightmares.

Mickey Rooney has made more than 200 movies during his long career as an actor, but when the limelight faded a shadow was cast over his personal life in the form of elder abuse. He says his stepchildren Chris and Christina Aber took his identification cards and denied him basic necessities like medicine and food. He says he even suffered physical and verbal abuse.

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2. Lame Celebrity Tweet of the Day: Seth MacFarlane:

I wonder if anyone called him “Andrew Breitfart” in high school.

MacFarlane, radio host actress Amy Holmes, and Breitbart will meet this Friday night at the roundtable on HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher.”

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3. Fugitive child rapist attracts A-list cast

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4. “International human rights and climate change advocate” Bianca Jagger wants Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell to stop an execution. I’d listen to her. She is a international human rights and climate change advocate.

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5. The most rewatchable movie ever “Goodfellas” is 20 years old today and might become a television series. GQ takes a look back with the cast and crew, including director Martin Scorsese, Robert DeNiro and Ray Liotta:

“Do I Amuse You?” and Other Happy Accidents

Schoonmaker: [editor] Scorsese wanted to show that as [Joe] Pesci gets angrier and angrier, the men around him and Ray [Liotta] stop laughing, and you see the look of dread come on their faces. The key moment was how long we waited before Ray says, “Get the fuck outta here, Tommy,” in an attempt to break it. We kept screening it over and over again to get just the right beat for that one incredible moment where Ray knows if he doesn’t make this work, he’s going to get shot. [laughs]

Liotta: It was supposed to end when I say, “Get the fuck outta here, Tommy.” But you let it breathe, just to see what happens. And for some reason I said, “You really are a funny guy!” and he gets the gun. We made that up in the moment, literally.

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6. More details on the ’Matrix’ Filmmakers’ Gay Iraq War romance complete with assassination plot targeting George W. Bush:

The heroes are indeed a gay American soldier named (with little irony) “Butch” and an Iraqi soldier turned militant. Butch is endearing, young, and a ravishingly handsome Marine. Our spies tell us that he “just wants to fuck and kill everything” in Iraq — until, that is, he falls in love with the Iraqi. …

[T]ragedy radicalizes the pair and they become convinced that the only way to rid the world of evil is to kill the architect of the invasion, the then-president of the United States, George W. Bush. And so, during one of the president’s secret sorties to Iraq, they attempt to assassinate him.

Set in the future and told partly in flashback, the $20 million production is called “Cobalt Neural 9.” Both Arianna Huffington and Jesse Ventura will appear in the film. No one knows if it will really get made but the Wachowskis certainly have the cash to do it on their own.

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7. The new “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I” trailer:

“Harry Potter 7″ hits theatres November 19th.

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8. Interview with Tom Selleck about his new television series “Blue Bloods”:

“When I first saw the script, written by these terrific writers, Mitchell Burgess and Robin Green (“The Sopranos”), I felt New York could be a central character; the streets, the neighborhoods, things we don’t often see in a television series.”

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9. Turner Classic Movies weekend host Ben Mankiewicz counts down his top 25 favorite Bruce Springsteen songs and some bad choices are made due to their shared Bush Derangement Syndrome.

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10. Coming Soon: “Crazy Heart” with a sex change.

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11. Below are the trailers for the films the ”Smart Set” in the critical community have thus far chosen as this year’s top Oscar contenders:

“The King’s Speech” is scheduled for a November 26th release date.

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“The Social Network” hits theatres October 1.

She always wanted to be “glamorous,” forgetting her far-surpassing appeal as the very essence of America. 

Her story, the final earthly chapter ending forty years ago today, embodies American triumph and tragedy.  

Born Frances Ethel Gumm on June 10, 1922, in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, her life nearly ended in 1921 after her parents’ marriage was rocked by revelations of her father’s homosexual infidelity. 

But, family physician Dr. Marcus Rabwin told Frank Gumm, “you go back to your wife and tell her I said she must have this baby.”  The “powerful” Garland “force field,” as fellow MGM star Ann Miller put it, was evidently already at work. 

“Baby” Gumm first stole hearts when, at age 2½, she performed “Jingle Bells” before an audience, discovering to her delight that, besides her father, her other great love was performing and making people happy. 

She just couldn’t stop singing; so her father finally had to carry her off the stage.  

The family soon decamped to a desert California town north of Hollywood after her father was “caught with a young boy.”  There, Ethel, sought solace from her troubled marriage by single-mindedly devoting herself into making the “Gumm Sisters” stars.  

Needless to say, little Frances was the standout-their big break coming in 1929 with four one-reel shorts.  But when comedian George Jessel evoked howls of laughter just by mentioning their name, he suggested they take New York Drama critic Robert Garland’s surname; Frances took her first name from Hoagie Carmichael’s popular song “Judy.”  

On November 16, 1935-six months after Metro Goldwyn Mayer’s Louis B. Mayer signed up “Judy Garland”-she sang her first professional rendition of “Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart,” live on coast to coast radio, as her father lay dying.  Dr. Rabwin, who 14 years earlier had advised the family to bring their daughter to term, called Judy to let her know her beloved father would be listening-radio waves being their last physical “connection;” he died early the next morning.  

The young, 4′11″ Garland came to studio executives’ attention when she sang “You Made Me Love You” to Clark Gable at MGM’s party celebrating his 35th birthday-a rendition she repeated, while looking adoringly at Gable’s photograph, in the all-star extravaganza Broadway Melody of 1938. 

Bandleader Artie Shaw famously summed up Judy’s talent, singing and dancing her way into America’s hearts, telling her, “You become the song.” 

So, too, she became the tragedy of American culture-force-fed uppers and downers, plus diet pills, by five different doctors so she could keep up the pace of performance demanded by her MGM bosses who were giddily beside themselves with her money-making potential. 

MGM hit the jackpot when it paired Garland with Mickey Rooney in a string of “backyard musicals.” This winning formula, first showcased in the ironically titled 1937 B movie Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry, was followed by Love Finds Andy Hardy, leading to eight more films featuring this adorable, dynamic duo. 

Dr. Rabwin’s wife, Marcella, then working at MGM, asserted, “They didn’t mean to addict her. They were trying to get a picture finished.” Yet, the hard truth is, in the process of finishing the picture they laid the groundwork for Judy’s early demise.  

As E.Y. Yip Harburg, Wizard of Oz lyricist, explained, “A picture is one of the most devastating things to your nervous system.”  Even more so for Judy.  As Robert Goulet said, “No one came close to her because she was so vulnerable.”  

Her very vulnerability-she required constant reassurance she was, indeed, talented and pretty, given her high-strung, insecure nature, exacerbated by her teenage loss of paternal affirmation-was the source of her greatness.  This mega-talented star was all heart and just poured herself into her performances.  But, combined with all the barbiturates and amphetamines, it was a toxic mix.  As Oscar Levant wrote in his 1969 book, The Unimportance of Being Oscar, “at parties, Judy could sing all night, endlessly… but when it came time to appear on a movie set, she just wouldn’t show up.” 

In 1940, after Judy collapsed on the set of Strike Up the Band, in desperate need of months-long rest, she was given only weeks to recover.  

Besides her flagging energy, her tendency to show up late rankled her bosses, and on June 17, 1950, a week after she turned 28, MGM cut its prized star loose-the last straw being the demands of Royal Wedding (1951).  Thus, began a series of incredible comebacks, starting with her dazzling concert tour, including her history-making performance at the London Palladium.

Judy became close friends of Betty Hutton during Las Vegas performances, overcoming hurt feelings over Betty replacing her in Annie Get Your Gun (1950). 

Betty-while a lesser star, albeit possessing the same booming talent, paternal void, and extremely sensitive nature-almost died of a drug overdose just three years after Judy’s death, only to be “saved” by Fr. Peter Maguire, who helped her play the role of a lifetime-”Being Beautiful Betty.”  

“Being Beautiful Judy” was the one role Garland never mastered.  But, as a star, looking down from the celestial firmament, it’s a good bet she’s mastered it now.

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Sources (among others): Judy Garland: Beyond the Rainbow, A&E Biography (1997), one of ten lives featured, including that of Ronald Reagan, during Biography’s 10th Anniversary celebration; Me and My Shadows: A Family Memoir by Lorna Luft (1998); Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows (winner of five Emmys, based on Luft’s book), Lifetime Television (2001).

And let me make this perfectly clear, even if they do say Jehovah!

Sentence must be read before being carried out. And unlike Soraya M., the board members of the Asylum of Motion Picture Airheads and Stooges will deserve every rock that’s thrown their way. I also believe that, in light of events in Iran today, the following commentary will stand out in much starker prominence than it did when I first started reporting on them in early March, when Team Oscar first set off for the Unfriendly Skies of Islamist Iran.

The backstory. In late February, the decision by AMPAS (as defined above) to send the Nine Stooges to the fascist hostage-taking, women-stoning, gay-exterminating Islamic Republic of Iran (at that time, things may be changing) set me off hotter than a Kim Jong Il nuke. Five days after the gay rights infomercial Oscars, no less! My gay rights heroes.

Somebody give ‘em an Oscar! For what it’s worth nowadays. Sean Penn getting an Oscar for playing a gay rights hero with his sorry track record on the subject is like Yasser Arafat, Jimmy Carter and Al Gore getting Nobel Prizes. They just ain’t worth what they used to be these days.

But I digress. On With The Show Biz Trial.

For ten days and uncounted humiliating punkings in early March, Team Oscar was a national embarrassment and a disgrace to this country and people, and an affront to the innocent Iranians suffering under a yoke of oppression not seen since Hitler’s Third Reich. A yoke which they are desperately and bravely fighting and even dying to cast off even as we speak.

And now, despite all that transpired back then, and all that is happening now in Iran, AMPAS is looking to whitewash the whole affair as a Bob Hope and Bing Crosby Road trip! Not on my watch! Fat fucking chance! Can you imagine how Iranian gays felt, watching the same people who facilitated tearful speeches on “gay rights for everyone” socializing and galivanting around town with the very monsters who were hunting them down, torturing and killing them?

If that alone isn’t a stoning offense, then nothing is.

Some may consider my charges harsh, even unreasonably so. So be it. Brutal Injustice and rank hypocrisy bring out the Zarqawi in me. But I will present to you, Dear Hollywood non-Academy Readers and Fine Fellow Americans everywhere, the foul evidence at hand in toto.

When charges have been read, and sentence is to be passed, I will leave it to the rest of you stoners as to which direction your rocks should fly. But first, to put the matter into Supreme Court-like perspective, look at the precedent law upon which I base my charges and my case.

THE WORLD v. SOUTH AFRICA

In 1985, during the oppressive Apartheid era of South Africa’s all-white fascist regime, actors, artists, producers and many fine musicians like Little Stevie van Zandt and The Boss, Bruce Springsteen, united to make a statement against that racist government, which held Nelson Mandela behind bars unjustly for 29 years, and murdered noted anti-apartheid activist Steven Biko while in police custody. That murder was memorialized in the Peter Gabriel song of the same name.

In conjunction with worldwide sanctions and divestment of business from South Africa at the time, the musical statement made by that group of most talented artists, better know as Artists United Against Apartheid, was immortalized in the song Sun City, which became a smash hit worldwide. We all know the rest of the story. The white South African government eventually folded, and Nelson Mandela was freed and then elected to the presidency.

What were South Africa’s crimes besides just Mandela’s imprisonment and Biko’s murder? Officially enforced racial segregation and subjugation, violent repression and the banning of opposition political parties. Certainly more than enough justification for international outrage, and both official and unofficial sanctions.

Yet compared to the current theocratic Hitlerite thugocracy running the Islamic Republic of Iran, which the world is also widely sanctioning today, South Africa’s Apartheid government was operating an island paradise fit for Chinese Uighurs. In Iran, political empowerment is nonexistent, and has been since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

All the power is in the hands of Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei and the Mad Mullah Guardian Council. Reform was impossible. Any measure passed by Iran’s Parliament, the Majlis, deemed ‘un-Islamic’ by the Mad Mullahs could be overturned on review. The Church is the State in Iran. Like a nationwide Westboro Baptist Church from Hell. Only worse. Much worse.

Examples. Children are routinely executed, gays are hunted down, tortured and brutally exterminated, and women and young girls are stoned and hanged, even for the crime of being raped. Until international outrage interceded, as happened vis-a-vis Roxana Saberi, seventeen-year-old Nazanin Fatehi was awaiting a death sentence for the crime of stabbing and killing one of the three God-fearing Islamists who attempted to rape her and her niece in a West Tehran park.

Here is a 27-minute documentary that re-enacts the attempted rape and the unbelievably misogynist injustice which followed. Had the world not screamed so loud in outrage, Nazanin would have suffered the same fate as that of twenty-year-old Delara Derabi, who was hanged by the Islamic Republic only six weeks ago. Iran has held mass hangings as recently as May 14th. And given the official death penalty announcement for Mousavi protesters, many more may follow depending on the outcome of current events.

This doesn’t even take into account the fact that many in Iran’s terror-sponsoring Islamist extremist leadership, including ‘moderate’ Hashemi Rafsanjani and recent presidential candidate Mohsen Rezai, former head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and former ‘diplomat’ to Argentina, are wanted by Interpol for their involvement in the worst terror attacks in Argentina’s history back in 1994. An Interpol warrant was issued for Rezai as recently as May 22nd.

Here is a piece I wrote back in early March, branding the regime as today’s Third Reich. Look at all the horrific and barbaric evidence of crimes against humanity committed both at home and abroad, and you tell me if I’m overstating the case. Keep also in mind that Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists are now in the streets of Iran, beating and killing the same Iranians who have supported and patronized the Islamist groups for decades.

Taking time out from killing innocent Jews to killing innocent Iranians. No surprise there, since the regime already kills its own people on an assembly line basis. Even bloggers. Given all this brutal evidence of the Iranian thugocracy’s bloody track record which spans the globe, I ask you, Dear Readers of jurisprudence and humble advocates of human rights for all, how was the Islamic Republic of Iran worthy of cultural diplomatic exchange, and South Africa not?

They should be forming Artists United Against Insanity to oppose Iran’s theocratic thugocracy, not flying over for tea, fingers cookies, and film seminars! Disgraceful!

Charges as follows. Bear with me. It’s a longer list than you think.

1. THE FIRST PUNKING OF FAR TOO MANY

Even though AMPAS was promised no politics would be involved in the visit, Team Hollywood was no sooner off the tarmac at Khomeini Airport in Tehran than they were totally punked by the best punks in the world, with harsh demands for apologies and submission by Iranian leaders over the films 300 and The Wrestler, or they wouldn’t get to meet their Iranian film buds. Curiously, Team Oscar was allowed to meet with their Iranian counterparts shortly thereafter. My question to the Academy is this: did they apologize or not?

Iif you recall, what so outraged Iranian government stooges over The Wrestler was Mickey Rourke breaking an Iranian flag and tossing it into the crowd. Deliciously ironic, considering the desecration of our flag is a national sport with the regime. There was also a declaration by Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hassan Qashqavi, that thirty films currently in production in Hollywood were ‘anti-Iranian.’

Civilized governments don’t act like that. Yet I broke the punking story in America to Drudge and Nikki Finke because I knew something like that was going to happen. I was looking for it. Hell, the regime has been punking us for thirty years! Ahmadinejad had even said Hollywood was devoid of all culture and art. Something’s Gotta Give. I must admit, however, that maybe Ahmie was onto something with that comment. Never thought I’d agree with anything the Little Hitler said.

Academy politics makes strange bedfellows, I reckon.

That infamous Punking Heard ‘Round the World should have proved to all concerned that President Obama’s attempt at diplomacy through Team Oscar was a horrendous failure, as all other efforts since have been. Like the Khamenei-led Death to America rallies in response to Obama’s peace video. Yet Team Oscar suffered that humiliation and degradation only to suffer many more. And the rest of us, since Team Oscar represented us over there as a nation as well.

Some were even worse, if you can believe it. In short, if somebody wrote a script like this, no one would ever believe it. But I already read the book. Been reading it since 1979.

2. TEAM OSCAR’S STOOGES TRAIN IRAN’S PROPAGANDA STOOGES

Iran ‘film industry’ experts, many of whom Stooge Team Oscar no doubt gave seminars to, gave their own previous film seminars on Iran TV on the Ziono-Hollywoodist conspirators for making such anti-Iranian celluloid slanders as Harry Potter, Chicken Run and Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. And let’s not forget the Jew Disney’s cartoon conspiracy, Tom and Jerry. Also deliciously ironic, considering Iran exports child martyrdom cartoons across the Middle East, a business so thriving the BBC called it, in blackly comic Joker-like fashion, ‘booming.’

I can understand the cultural aspect Team Hollywood pursued. I even respect it. But in my opinion, given the circumstances, it was the equivalent of sending a cultural team to Hitler’s Berlin during the Holocaust. The real great Iranian filmmakers were all heel-ground. The ones who aren’t languish in Evin prison or are awaiting kangaroo court religious tribunals, like Iranian-American Esha Momeni, for the celluloid slander of interviewing Iranian women for a womens rights documentary for her master’s degree.

Filmmaker Tehmineh Milani was sentenced to death for her celluloid slander. Again, only international and, in Ms. Milani’s case, even domestic outrage saved her neck from the rope. Another filmmaker, the French-Iranian Mernousche Solouki, was thrown into Evin prison for the crime of stumbling across a mass grave.

Here’s Ms. Solouki’s recounting of the event. She still suffers nightmares from her experience in Evin. I read that, and other horror stories of the Gestapo-like Evin prison when Roxana Saberi was still there. Horrified me. I know her father must have known of that. He’s from Iran. He must know. They all do. I can’t even imagine how he felt with Roxana there. Again, the South Africa analogy.

Yet despite all those goings-on, Annette Bening took time out to tell the world how great women’s rights were in Iran. Which brings us straight to Team Oscar’s next great offense.

3. ROXANA SABERI AND THE SOUND OF SILENCE

Throughout Roxana’s unlawful detention, i.e. hostage status as a political pawn, and bogus conviction on trumped-up espionage charges, Team Oscar couldn’t have been more silent or unheard from than Roxana herself. Not one public message of support for either Roxana or the Academy during her unlawful detention in Evin, never mind anyone else in Hollywood except us right-wing extremists. In fact, the whole human rights-championing left-wing PRAVDA-like MSM and government pulled a complete disappearing act on Roxana right after Hillary demanded her release, like she was bad press for the Obamamessiah to be swept under the rug.

At the time, my linked article above generated twenty times more Google hits than the entire media coverage combined. It’s at over 7300 hits now, more than 100 times the number of hits generated on Google vis-a-vis coverage of Roxana in late March.  I’m still getting hits on it. I don’t think people can believe what they’re seeing still. But I digress. You get the point.

No public statement of support from Team Oscar for Roxana that I can find. Team Oscar member William Horberg’s Iran blog made no mention whatsoever of Roxana’s unlawful captivity, or any plea they might have made on Roxana’s behalf to Iranian authorities. I have to assume none was made. Perhaps the Academy could clear up that matter, too. Inquiring Minds Want To Know.

Knowing the King of Hearts-like unreality that resides in the La La Land of AMPAS HQ, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to hear any of them claim credit for Roxana’s release in the future, or even for the green revolution going on in Iran today. If they do, just remember Annette praising the regime’s great women’s rights record while Roxana was still in Evin. For starters.

That should clear things up.

What was really depressing to me throughout Roxana’s Hostage Crisis was how few in Hollywood spoke up on her behalf, when no one knew whether she would live or die. That will forever be a black stain on those who profess to be the greatest human rights champs in the world.

4. OF STOOGES FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC

Perhaps the most vocal filmmaker during Team Oscar’s prolonged humiliation in Iran was domestic thugocracy stooge and new Team Oscar BFF Alireza Davudnejad, who wrote an open letter to President Obama claiming that the only road to peace, freedom and justice in this world was for the President to destroy all of America’s nuclear weapons and give up its UN veto.

Mr. Davudnejad also requested a schedule as to when those world-shaking peace, freedom and justice-inducing landmarks would be carried out. This, from a regime that foments war, writes injustice into its penal codes, crushes freedom with an iron boot, and races to build nuclear weapons they swear to Allah and their own people they’ll use on Israel just as soon as they’re built.

Now THAT’S Comedy! Fortunately, the President didn’t fall for it. If he had, it would have been the Punking Of All Time. No punking for Mr. Ali-Duh, but a gold star on the forehead for effort. Mr. Davudnejad did, however, manage to give a closing backhand to his new BFF, Team Oscar:

“My last recommendation is not to follow your previous cultural policies and avoid your Hollywood friends from playing any tricks to dominate the cinemas of Iran. The United States once removed Iranian cinema from the Iranian life with the help of the former dictatorship; and sacrificed our industry with the import of foreign films.

The fallen cinema of Iran has once again regained its footing with the Islamic Revolution and has been fighting to survive for thirty years. We will not forgive the enemies of this cinema wherever they are. By the way, which is harder, to relinquish the veto right, or to forbear the domination of Iran’s cinema again? You have a hard path ahead. I pray for you. Only the right path has no deviation.”

How about neither, Ali-DUH? Over my freakin’ dead body! Go sit on a projector!

By the way, you got all that, Sid, Annette, and the rest of you Ziono-Hollywoodist conspirators? No more tricks! Or they won’t even let you apologize next time!

Q. What was the difference between Team Oscar and Ali-Duh in Iran?

A. He’s a domestic film industry stooge.

Yet another degrading episode Team Oscar let slide. I guess they’re more on the M side of S&M. Seeing as they represented all of us in a diplomatic capacity, so were we. How does it feel? Mr. Ganis also stood by for yet another punking by the Director of Iran’s House of Cinema, one of many he seemed unfazed by. Some people are just gluttons for punishment, I guess.

As a comic relief sidebar, the culture ministers who approved Team Oscar’s trip were summoned before an angry Majlis, Iran’s parliament, to explain who let the Great Satan into their pure Islamist paradise. But that’s how it goes. Nobody is safe in Punkedville. Even the punks! No word on if the ministers apologized, but it was rumored Mr. Ganis couldn’t find his ministerial escort anywhere.

Hell, they’re the liberals in Iran! Fuggeddaboutit!

5. THE BURQA BABES OF BABYLON

It would seem that, as Team Oscar was reeling from their hot-off-the-tarmac punking, the Mad Mullahs used the opportunity to wrap up the goils like mummies in burqas. They may call it a fashion statement or cultural sensitivity, but why didn’t they make a bold statement by wearing Western dress the whole time, instead of looking like every other oppressed woman in Iran?

6. THE GENOCIDE PRIDE PARADES, or BOY, CAN THESE GUYS THROW AN O-BASH!

On March 6th, the same day Iranian authorities promised to release Roxana Saberi ’soon’ after SOS Clinton’s demand the day before, news broke of the ICC warrant issued for Sudan’s genocidal leader, General Omar Bashir. It was an insult, an offense and a crime against humanity (Majlis Speaker Lari Alijani’s words, not mine) against the Iranian regime’s BFF O-Bash.

In response, the entire upper leadership of Iran’s thugocracy, along with their Islamist Gestapo Blackshirt stooges from Hamas and Hezbollah (the same ones beating and killing Mousavi protesters this week), took to the streets of Tehran AND Khartoum, the very streets where the genocide was and is being committed to this day, to throw genocide parades for human vampire and Dear Leader Bashir.

Now, what should you do if you know your host country is officially celebrating the most abominable crime known to man in the streets below your gilded cages? Do you a. speak up in outrage? Do you b. hightail it out of Dodge as fast as you can? My answers are a and b. Team Oscar’s appears to have been c. keep the tea and finger cookies coming, Ahmie! Now I don’t know the law in that situation, so maybe some fine Hollywood lawyer could tell me. Is that being silent accomplices?

See, I believe genocide parades are a crime in themselves, as though other nations were celebrating Hitler in the streets of Berlin and their own streets, had Hitler been charged by the League of Nations for genocide during the Holocaust. But that’s just me.

SUBPLOT: I just read that O-Bash flew to Zimbabwe on June 10th. He’s wanted for genocide. Why is he being allowed to fly all over Africa and the Middle East with impunity? What, we don’t have aircraft carriers out there that could send up a couple fighter jets to escort Blacula to justice?

7. AHMADINEJAD’S WILLIE HORTONS

As a bonus, highlighted by Ahmadinejad’s condemnation of Hollywood as devoid of culture and art, and followed up by the summoning of ministers to the Majlis over Team Oscar’s invite, both Ahmadinejad and Supreme Asswipe Khamenei used Team Oscar as their Willie Horton in the recent elections. You know. Who let the Great Satan in?

So rather than fostering a liberalization of Iran, as they no doubt naively thought, they instead served as a political tool with which hardliners could beat moderates over the head with. Considering the extreme Islamist nature of Iranian politics (as least last week), they made the situation for moderates even worse. The only thing they didn’t appear to do was make the political ads themselves. But they did train the propaganda stooges who no doubt made any, if any were made.

Damage done either way. Hooray For Hollywood!

THAT’S A WRAP!

I suppose I could rummage for even more egregious offenses, and glaring or willfully blind oversights. But I have far more than enough to convict. If you seek more for purely historical reference, feel free to check all my linked articles above. You’ll find ‘em. My problem was trying to choose which offenses and oversights to pick from.

WILLIAM HORBERG FOR THE DEFENSE

Currently posted at the Academy website is the following prosaic account by William Horberg of Team Oscar’s late-term abortion of a trip to Iran: The Road To Isfahan. Let’s hear what he has to say in Team Oscar’s defense before we stone them. That may seem predicative of the outcome, but remember, these offenses took place in Iran. Islamist extremist rules apply. Got it now?

Actually, just check the link above. We’ll stone ‘em now and rule ‘em guilty later. I mean, come on people. Given the evidence, they may as well have been jumping up and down and screaming “Jehovah!” Time to get stoned. And if you’ve misplaced yours, here’s another one.

IN CLOSING

Now, I fully condemn the shooting of Dr. Tiller by lone madman Scott Roeder in Kansas, as all right-minded human beings should. But I would fully endorse the shooting of whatever single-digit IQ Academy PR doctors were behind this afterbirth. They Shoot Horses’ Asses In Hollywood, Don’t They? If anyone at the Academy had any brains, they’d be stocking up on ammunition like a right-wing extremist Timothy McVeigh-like Montana militia for that very purpose right now!

QUALIFIER: Yes, I’m kidding. No need to call DHS just yet, thank you very much. Besides, you’re as likely to find a gun at Academy HQ as you are a hymen on Heidi Fleiss.

Despite the current brain-dead off-the cliff lemming leadership at AMPAS today, I love film. I love Hollywood I even love the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences. Always have. Broke my heart to declare war on them. I even told them so. But all the above is Casus Belli. Gloves are off.

The blackest irony of all? I was in the middle of writing a loving screwball comedy tribute to Oscar when the news of their trip broke! By the way, I even warned them that if they tried giving all this Iran shite the Red Carpet treatment, I’d pull the rug out from under them. And I know and they know I’ve caused a lot of PR damage already over their Iran trip, both here at Big Hollywood and elsewhere.

My Iran opeds since the PUNK’D piece on Nikki Finke February 28th are pushing 30,000 hits at one blog alone. Can’t anyone in this business keep their mouth shut? How stupid can you be? Are they total masochistic gluttons for punishment? Oh yeah, I already covered that. Drop that last one off at the Department of Redundancy Department, LOL! In the meantime, I’ll do my best to have the Nine Stooges ejected off the Academy board and into the Pacific.

Now, I’ve had some very juicy tastes of Tinseltown. The Red Carpet A-List circuit in Beverly Hills and Los Angeles. I’m not a Guild Member, but my first screenplay got a number of finalist nods from some of the toughest Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated contest judges in Hollywood. And I got an option with it. I got some chops. And I’ve only gotten better over the years through hard work, practice and learning. I know that because industry pros doing my coverage told me so.

But you know what? As much as I wanted to trash that story and never write another word in screenplay format again, I love that script. Put a lot of love and time into it. Think it’s my best work so far. So does my writing partner. In fact, I’m going to finish that script very shortly. And I’m going to finish it in the spirit in which I started: with love, tenderness and affection, even towards Academy members I wrote into the script with boundless love that I totally detest now.

How? I call it professional detachment. Like sniping Nazis as I lovingly listen to Mozart. Best of, worst of. I don’t let politics poison my scripts. I’ll leave the Lefties to do that. I’d rather not bomb at the box office. And I’ll have coverage done by someone I know and trust networked into the industry like a spiderweb. If I get a nearly impossible grade of RECOMMEND and it doesn’t move, I know my self-inflicted film industry Hiroshima is complete.

But you know what, people? I’ll take as many of them with me as I can, just like the wounded Mickey Rooney in Ambush Bay offering Japanese soldiers pineapples. He had plenty for everybody. Point being, I won’t stand for this crap and let it slide just to sell a script. This matter goes way beyond film to me. Look at it this way. AMPAS spends four hours championing gay rights at the last Oscars, then flies off to Iran to give that gay-butchering regime its gold-plated PR kiss, even praising women’s rights in the most violently misogynist regime on earth? STUFF IT!

God, how I wished I lived in the era of the Hollywood of an earlier day, when the top stars flocked to the service of their country, instead of the service of thuggish and violent dictators like Chavez, Castro and Ahmadinejad. By the way, Sean Penn holds the Trifecta of Shame on that one.

Let me be explicitly clear that I believe extreme left-wing morons like Sean Penn, Danny Glover and Harry “Bananas” Belafonte are the minority in Hollywood. Squeaky left-wing wheels get all the grease. I know a lot of great people in the industry personally. And I can’t praise highly enough Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Mia Farrow, Jim Carrey, Gary Sinise, Robert Davi and so many great USO supporters like Saddam million dollar bounty-offering Bruce Willis, Scarlett Johansson, Jack Black and Ben Stiller.

There are really too many to name. But you know who they are. As to the distinct minority, I will quote my former Obama-like governor and liberal tank commander Michael Dukakis for the first time in my life: “A fish rots from the head down.”

Tom Hanks dares to call gay marriage opponents un-American? Well, if President Obama, most Americans and 52% of Californians are un-American for not supporting gay marriage, what is Tom Hanks and the rest of the Motion Picture Asylum guilty of for signing off on a trip to a regime that hunts gays online, raids gay parties, tortures them horribly and then hangs them from crane wires to die agonizing deaths that can take up to an hour, as they did with two gay teenage boys?

There’s too much blanket idiocy in Hollywood. Megan Fox, jokingly telling the Transformers to take out all the white trash to save the earth, the irony totally lost on her. The Twitter crowd at afterellen.com. Like Adrianne Curry, who calls Prop 8 a human rights offense, but remains dead silent on the holocausts against LGBTs in Iran and Iraq. Why isn’t Dustin Lance Black screaming to the skies about this stuff? I couldn’t find any evidence of him opposing the AMPAS Iran trip on purely humanitarian grounds. WHY NOT?

No. I, a straight conservative Republican screenwriter, offended to my very core by the savagery of Shiite extremist gay death squads in Iran and Iraq, have to be the one screaming to the skies about LGBT terrorists who engage in atrocities even the Nazis can’t compare to. Like super-gluing gay men’s anuses shut and pumping them full of diarrhea cocktails so the gay killers, some on our tax dime, can catch a few pious laughs as their victims endure unimaginable agony before dying.

No. I am left with the dirty jobs and lonely tasks of networking REAL gay advocates like Michael Petrelis and the Gay Patriot blog over these inhuman gay horrorshows. I am the one who has to research and dispatch gruesome reports to sites like BestGayBlogs.com, and LGBT orgs all over the globe like LGBT Network EU. I am the one left to scrape around for signatures on petitions at Iranian Queer Railroad and Iraqi LGBT to save the lives of Iranian and Iraqi LGBTs, who live in fear of torture and unimaginable horrors the incredibly spoiled toddler-like Hollywood Leftie morons and unmarried gays of California will never know.

As a screenwriter, I now know what it feels like to work under an offensive and idiotic oligarchy that is totally brain-dead and out of touch with the realities of the world at large, and those whom they profess to lead. In that respect, though I do not agree with them, I now understand the passionate outrage Lefties felt during the reign of the Bushitler. Like Michael Moore’s and Al Franken’s bloviations during that dark time, I do not expect my heated rants to impact my Golden Bubble-insulated industry oligarchy one whit.

In fact, I fully expect it to to earn me black marks and disfavor, the full McCarthy treatment they so profess to detest, yet practice every goddamn day. Ron Silver, anyone? But like the aforementioned Twin Towers of Leftie-ism, I care not one whit what the ruling establishment thinks. My anger is righteous and justified. In fact, it could not be moreso. What’s happening in Iran and Iraq are de facto gay genocides. What cause could be more righteous than trying to stop those?

Screw sexual conduct! They’re innocent human beings targeted for extermination. They don’t deserve that barbaric treatment. No one does, except the blood-drinking Islamist Gestapo stooges that are doing it all! If that revolution in Iran goes through and the people win, somebody Tweet them to hang on to all the crane wires. They’re gonna need a lot. For the Hamas and Hezbollah Blackshirts, too.

If my harsh words mean my film career is dead, so be it. In fact, if I came to Hollywood for no other reason than to address the horrific hypocrisy of so-called gay and human rights champs who are anything but (some like Bening and Penn even extremely damaging to those they don the mantle of Human Rights Champs for), or to champion the cause of Iraqi and Iranian LGBTs unlike any cause I’ve ever championed based on purely humanistic outrage, then I will feel that my life will have had meaning.

If I have helped to save the life of only one Iraqi or Iranian gay, I have saved the world entire. I can go to my grave totally at peace with myself. If I must bury my screenwriting career ahead of me, this is a small price to pay. So many others, like those now on the streets of Iran fighting and dying for the freedoms that are as natural to us as breathing, or risk brutal torture and horrific death merely for sexual conduct or being raped, are paying far higher prices than we most likely ever will.

In closing, I am resigning from Big Hollywood. I came here on a mission nearly four months ago to bring attention to all I have highlighted above. All the in-between was a bonus. And I do have a comedy piece in the hopper, which is rare for me. Haven’t had much to laugh about lately. Which is why I want to return full-time to screenwriting as well. There’s enough tragedy on Planet Earth. If I can use my award-nominated humor to inspire laughter and comic relief, then that is my main mission now. The rest I leave to the card deck of fate.

If I return, it will be in the cause of those who cannot speak for themselves. There is no shortage of hacks and pundits flame-throwing politics these days, and there are far too many not flame-throwing at all on issues that should enrage them beyond measure. As I am enraged today. Certainly beyond politics.

I do not need anger management. Like Johnny Rotten sang with Public Image Limited, Anger is an Energy. Righteous anger is what freed South Africa. Righteous anger fills the streets of Tehran as we speak. Righteous anger is why we Americans no longer say to each other, “G’day, Mate! ‘Ow about a pint and some bangers and mash? Got some up in me lorry! God Bless the Queen!”

In closing, God Bless The Queen anyway. And God Bless America. I say that as an agnostic secularist, okay? It’s good luck! And may God look down a lot more kindly on the poor LGBTs in Iran and Iraq. Perhaps, if there is a God, and I’m hedging my bets here, I hope his hand is in events in Iran. Maybe with a youth-driven revolution, LGBTs, filmmakers. students, dissidents, bloggers, and raped women need not fear for their lives anymore, or offered the choice of castration or death if they wish to remain gay.

What? Did you think Ahmadinejad was kidding when he said there were no gays in Iran? He said it with the same certainty Hitler said there were no Jews in Germany. The discussion is moot. I really hope to God that changes, as Iran itself seems to be right now.

We do, however, have a most powerful hand in Iraq. The gay killings must stop. The gay death squads must be disbanded with an iron fist. Just like Al Qaeda. Or, to tell the truth, I don’t care if Al Qaeda takes the place over. I would feel the same way if I were in West Berlin in 1947 and the locals were still hunting down and killing Jews. Let the Red Army move in.

Uncle Joe, they’re all yours! Bin Laden, they’re all yours! Let them ALL share in the terror they love with a religious fervor! OR, they can wise up and join the human race. If not, screw ‘em. Let ‘em go back to Al Qaeda torture houses and eating bombs for breakfast. I may not be gay myself. No, really. But must one be Jewish to be totally repulsed by Auschwitz?

Good Luck and Good Night, all. Peace. I hope

It’s in the walk.

Think of Mae West, hands caressing her Rubenesque hips, head tilted, not just sauntering, but oozing forward, the exaggerated female.

Elbows cocked and angled at his hips, moving with concentrated energy, Jimmy Cagney looks like a coiled spring about to explode.

Joan Crawford, leading with her linebacker shoulders, like a tank on the battlefield, determined, dangerous, unstoppable.

Spine rigid, arms glued to his side, plum straight steps—no motion in the hips or shoulders—eyes nailed to the distant horizon, Henry Fonda’s walk is a combination of cool reserve and righteous indignation.

Bette Davis, nervously wringing her hands—William Wyler once threatened to chain them down—as she paces back and forth in her pathologically unstable world.

Rapid fire mincing steps, hips and shoulders swaying, Marilyn Monroe is the archetype of the sexually charged woman, and yet simultaneously a little girl who is innocent of her immense power.

And then there is John Wayne.

His walk is odd.

Distinctive, but odd.

It’s a complex, disorienting, and ultimately elegant forward propulsion: long manly strides, elbows bent and poised—like a boxer locked into position—a distinctly feminine swooshing of the hips, and a pronounced case of pigeon toe.

Was Duke’s walk natural?

Or was it part of the John Wayne image, a carefully constructed bit of acting business?

Harry Carey, Jr., in his fascinating memoir, Company of Heroes: My Life as an Actor in the John Ford Stock Company, provides invaluable and deeply private insights into the famous John Wayne walk.

First, Harry Carey, Jr. sketches in some background on John Wayne’s intimate relationship with the great character actor Paul Fix (1901–1983) Carey’s father-in-law:

…Paul Fix had almost as much to do with Duke’s success as a screen actor as did John Ford. Paul Fix literally taught John Wayne what John Wayne knew about acting. He was the man who gave Duke his first insight into forming the mold which was to be his persona. Most people give Uncle Jack [John Ford] the credit for this, but the first man to put the John Wayne image into John Wayne’s head was Paul Fix.

Carey, Jr. discusses the early days, the B westerns, and journeyman actor John Wayne’s stage appearance that turned disastrous:

Paul first worked as an actor with Duke in those early westerns. In those days, Paul had a sort of slinky, haunted look about him, like a man who might steal or lie, so of course he was usually cast as a heavy; not the head honcho, though, the sly henchman. He played a lot of gangsters, along with Sheldon Leonard or Barton MacLane. Paul was very serious about acting, and he wrote many plays. He was always putting them on in the little theaters around Hollywood. He cast Duke in one of them, but Duke was so frightened of live theater that he overdosed on booze and made a total ass out of himself. His wife, Josephine [Alicia Saenz], was so furious she screamed from the audience, “You’re a bum—a drunken bum!” What a night in the theater! Little did they know that they were looking at the man who was to become the biggest movie star of all time.

Harry Carey, Jr. reveals how Paul Fix worked behind the scenes as an acting coach to John Wayne during the most important film of Duke’s career.

Duke used to tell Paul that he felt awkward in front of the camera. He said he didn’t know what to do with his hands; that he didn’t feel natural. Not too many years later, Duke got his big break when John Ford cast him as “The Ringo Kid” in Stagecoach. Duke was overwhelmed by this good news but paralyzed with fear that he wouldn’t be able to carry it off. He went to Paul for help. Without John Ford’s knowledge. Duke went to Paul’s house every night to go over the next day’s work while they were shooting in town.

Private and not so private acting coaches are not unusual in Hollywood. Montgomery Clift was so dependent on his acting coach Mira Rostova, that he put her on salary while shooting some of his most famous films. And much to the chagrin of his directors and co-stars, Clift, after every take, would anxiously look to Rostova—not the director—for approval or disapproval of his line readings.

“Not unlike Marilyn Monroe’s walk.”

And now Carey fills us in on the birth of the legendary John Wayne walk:

Because Duke was kind of heavy-footed and used to trudge more than walk, Paul told Duke to point his toes when he walked, and the “John Wayne walk” was born. Try it yourself. Take a step and point your toe, like you’re stabbing it into the ground—left foot, right foot. Your shoulders automatically move back and forth, and the hips follow, not unlike Marilyn Monroe’s walk. When Duke first did it, it was ballsey as hell. As the Wayne legend began to form, the walk became more pronounced. Rio Bravo or any of the “Rios” are good examples.

Hollywood stardom is a mysterious thing. In the days when the studio system dominated, the moguls consciously searched for the key to a players potential image. And then, once identified, the studio system—at its best, an incredible make-over machine—created, polished and ruthlessly exploited that star’s specific persona.

No wonder L.B. Mayer alternately broke down in rage and tears when he discovered that Andy Hardy/Mickey Rooney ran off in the middle of the night and married the young and sexy Ava Gardner. Mayer was terrified that the public would reject the incredibly profitable Andy Rooney series—innocence and apple pie—when they realized that small town, all American Andy/Mickey was actually something of a dog, hooking up with a hot 17-year old actress—not to mention a host of chorus girls, hookers and vulnerable starlets.

With Clark Gable it gradually became clear to the executives at MGM that he was a man’s man, possessed of a humorous glint in his eye that turned women to jelly. For Jean Arthur it was her sandpaper voice and hesitant delivery that conveyed a woman desperate for control, but on the edge of a melt down. Jean Harlow was perfect as the sexy, vulnerable, wise-cracking tootsie who didn’t take herself too seriously.

But since the demise of the studio system, Hollywood stardom has morphed into an eerie kind of tabloid celebrity. Movie stars no longer have an identifiable movie persona, in fact most work hard at subverting a fixed image. They take pride in grabbing movie roles that go against type. Contemporary actors want to prove that they have range, that they are versatile. Hence, absent a fixed address, the post-modern actor is, with rare exceptions, fated to be excluded from the pantheon of Hollywood immortals.

For John Wayne, after a long Hollywood apprenticeship, his stardom was defined and exquisitely refined as a particular kind of rugged American individual; a man, no matter how conflicted, who recognized the difference between good and evil—and strode across the silver screen like a colossus.

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech

This clip is from the finale of “Babes In Arms,” the first of four extremely entertaining, black and white, “Let’s put on a show” musicals Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland made over just a few years.

The context of the clip is what’s fascinating. The year is 1939, two years before Pearl Harbor, so this is not a studio humorously and affectionately saluting a wartime president. In fact, FDR’s New Deal was well into its fifth year but still the Depression raged. Even more interesting is that MGM studio head, Louis B. Mayer, was a staunch and active Republican who opposed FDR and loathed his Big Government solutions.

After five years and no end in sight to the Depression you would think Mayer, who ruled MGM with an iron fist, might use his power over the most effective propaganda tool ever created to undermine Roosevelt, but he didn’t. Certainly, some of his motives were business based, but Mayer also put the interest of the American people above his own. FDR might not have been Mayer’s man and FDR’s policies might not have been Mayer’s policies, but for the good of the people, Mayer understood the nation had to be unified and that we had to believe in ourselves if we were to find our way out of bad times.

Louis B. Mayer was no situational patriot.

Stars coming out in support of their country and president are nothing new. What’s changed is how they do it. The contrast between Mickey and Judy’s rousing number, and this, which only roused the contents of my stomach, is more than just the obvious … like talent.

The success of this seventy year-old musical number is mainly due to its lack of ambition. It knows its place. No one’s trying to change the world on that giant sound-stage. The cast, crew and equipment have all been brought together for the singular purpose of helping Depression-weary audiences forget their troubles for 90 minutes. The agenda is to boost morale. The humble talking point is, “We’re all in this together and we’ll get through it because we are Americans.”

And there’s no “me” coming from Mickey and Judy, which is in stark contrast to the Kutcher video which is pure “me.”

The biggest difference between the two clips, however, can be found in intent. God help “children battling serious illnesses” and victims of “21st Century slavery” if their only hope is that Ashton and Company must move even a half-degree out of their cult of personality to do some real good. Look for checks made payable to “Publicity” and parties disguised as fundraisers. A stark contrast to what the likes of Mickey Rooney (and many stars from that era) were prepared to do.

In 1944, after one deferment to finish a picture and at the height of his fame, Mickey Rooney pulled no strings to get out of the draft and entered the U.S. Army. 21 months later he was honorably discharged.

His career never recovered.