This week I had the pleasure of attending the Grand Opening of Millennium Studios in Shreveport, Louisiana.  As some of you know, I have a “first look” deal with Millennium.  I have enjoyed working with Avi Lerner, Trevor Short, and Danny Dimbort in various capacities since 1992.  This week was the culmination of the company’s growth and it came in a small city in Northwestern Louisiana with a Democratic Mayor.

Mayor Cedric Glover may be a Democrat, but he is a great conservative when it comes to business.  He helped us in many ways when we were building the studio including helping us in the land acquisition and facilitating a loan from the city when the economy collapsed and we needed a little extra cash to make sure the project did not fall apart.

This whole project started as an idea when I was in Shreveport shooting “Mad Money” in the Spring of 2007.   During that time I became acquainted with Cedric Glover and his city council.  My colleague and I, Michael Flannigan, spent a good deal of time working with the city during the production of “Mad Money” and Mayor Glover started talking about how he wanted to support the film industry and help it grow in Shreveport.  At that time, Louisiana had a 40% entertainment industry infrastructure tax credit in place.  We decided that if the City had land that was not being used, maybe we could lease it and take advantage of the tax credit to develop and build a movie studio. (more…)

Super Bowl ads have become a competition themselves and are often better than the game. At a reported cost of over $3 million for a thirty-second spot it would be hard for me to imagine that any of the ads are cost effective but it’s not my money, so roll the tape!  Judging from some ads there are either a lot of advertisers who don’t want conservatives to buy their products or a there are a lot of liberals making television advertisements.

Qualcomm’s combined leftist ideology and male bashing in its two ads featuring a guy who is “spineless” and a heavy political video montage by Obama idolater Will.i.am. I guess his stage name is supposed to be clever but it makes me think he was just raised on a little too much Dr. Seuss. Can you imagine the flack a company would get if it let Ann Coulter or Glenn Beck produce a video montage for its Super Bowl commercial? Watch the above clip for visuals of everything from Castro to Al Gore “winning” Florida.

(more…)

I have been presented the opportunity to reach out and communicate my views about politics and entertainment to a wider audience over the coming weeks.  Given these exciting opportunities it is clear that it would be inappropriate to have to be identified as “Stage Right” on nationally syndicated radio and other outlets.

So, tomorrow, here on the pages of Big Hollywood, I will reveal my real name and my background.  I think it is only fitting to do this the day before Christmas Eve as it is in the true spirit of an Obama Administration “Friday Afternoon Document Dump.”  This way, if people in the industry or liberal friends of mine, eventually find out a few weeks from now I can just “Do a Gibbs” and say “That’s OLD news, the American people don’t care about that. Now let me get back to doing the business of the American people… no more questions, please.” (more…)

Images have power. Propaganda and marketing are based on the power of the image and the thoughts and feelings that the image conveys. A photo op pulled off well can make a politician’s career. A photo op done badly will torpedo it.

Michael Dukakis riding around in a tank destroyed his presidential run. So is the power of imagery.

When I was a teenager a street artist named Robbie Conal put up grotesque pictures around Los Angeles of Ronald Reagan and his cabinet members like James Watt and Ed Meese.

These images had power over the long term and many street posters by Conal, other artists, a left-wing media and academia all worked in aggregate to change West LA which was Reagan’s home district to the left-wing bastion of “people’s republics” communities it is today. I am not asserting that Conal alone had this affect, but in interviews from the mid-eighties, Conal clearly stated that it was his goal to change public perception and public opinion with his art. (more…)

**UPDATE 11/5** Obama drops painting, throws Alma Thomas under the bus.

Want to know the Obama Administration’s idea of what constitutes art?  There’s no better place to look than the newly-reconstituted White House art collection.  So what’s there?  How about this gem:

Yes, it is boring and banal.  It does look like your three-year-old’s recent construction paper cut-out from pre-school – the one she made with the rounded scissors.  It’s Watusi (Hard Edge), by black painter Alma Thomas.

Now here’s Henri Matisse’s The Snail (1953).

Notice any similarities?  How about now: (more…)

It was so much fun watching the ACORN people try and spin their way out of oblivion for the last couple of weeks.  After the first video was posted on Big Government.com they, of course, claimed it was an isolated incident and that the filmmakers were kicked out of numerous other ACORN offices.  When that proved to be false, they tried in vain to claim that the videos were faked and that their employees were the victims of CGI or something and not of their own stupidity and corruption.  When that didn’t work they claimed that the filmmakers, Andrew Breitbart and the entire Fox News network were racist.  Yawn.

NEA’s Yosi Sergant

Monday, we have the NEA under the microscope.  The Obama Administration was caught red-handed (is that “racist”?) funneling tax payer dollars into an official propaganda department.  I can’t wait to see what the excuse will be this time.

These people have mastered the art of defending the indefensible.

Let’s set aside the stupidity of this move.  Anyone familiar with the NEA knows that it pretty much exists to fund leftist propaganda disguised as art.  Officially coordinating it is a bit redundant. (more…)

“It may be the Devil, or it may be the Lord. But, you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” – Bob Dylan

“Rule #7: A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” – Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

For a presidential candidate to dispatch his agents of Change® to recruit artists & entertainers into his campaign is one thing. He understandably wished to avoid becoming old news. Heck, even radical activists get bored. So, to maintain their excitement and involvement, professional community organizers must constantly devise new tactics. And, as so many enjoy smugly reminding us all, “the ‘One’ won!”

Poli-end-zone-dances notwithstanding, for the President of the United States of America to use the power of his Office and the lure of his NEA’s favor, potential grant funds and the ideological “yes, we-can-change-the-world” Hope® & prestige for artists to create promotional propaganda for his Serve.gov & Corporation for National & Community Service partisan political agenda, produces an entirely different pattern and data set. (more…)

(more…)

I know the video isn’t as “funny” (i.e.: immature) as many of my previous installments, but when you get incredible dames like Ann Coulter to take part, it pays to not tarnish their good names with my shennanigans.

In all seriousness, I’d encourage all of you to take an active role.  Create a video response or leave a comment. We’re all in this together people… Gosh, even I thought that sounded cheesy. (more…)

I’m doing standup in Denver. Shelley is driving me from radio to radio to TV as I do the monkey dance at each station promoting the show, selling tickets. I don’t like this part of the job. I must answer the same 10 questions about Saturday Night Live and try to explain where I’ve been for the last fifteen years. All the DJ’s want are some juicy stories about celebrities. I don’t really have that many. I’m booked at two political talk stations, a rock station, a country station, and two local TV shows.  I guess that’s my demographic! Everyone! I ask Shelley why I’m booked on the political stations. She shrugs, “Well, we didn’t really know…isn’t that what you are doing now?” The first stop I’m told is a “just right of center” show, so I feel free to share my newest shocking information that the White House is asking us to “snitch’” on our friends and family. To report anything “fishy.” This news is so abhorrent to me that I could barely sleep the night before. I immediately emailed Andrew Breitbart to see if it was true. He said yes. I searched the hotel computer web to see if the big shots, the smart people have gotten on this. They were just starting to fight back. The news was so new. Well, at least this administration is entertaining…in a bad way. I’m watching a horror movie every day.

As I share the shocking information that our Freedom of Speech is being attacked, the radio host across from me, his face, it looks like he just ate a lemon. It’s all scrunched up like…he hates me. He abruptly cuts me off and ends my interview. I’m stupefied at the reaction of people who “just can’t handle the truth.” My driver Shelley is a liberal. She doesn’t say anything. As we get in the car I try to apologize, “Well, he asked me why I was a new political activist.  I guess I should just tell jokes.” I mean I have been hired basically to sell tickets to a bar where people will spend lots of money on alcohol. And, I do need to make some money. My husband is a cop. (more…)

As is sadly the case for all good things, the video website Hulu.com may well come under attack by the government, specifically in the form of antitrust action by the Obama administration.

Socialism’s great horde of media apologists has begun a strong drumbeat calling for the U.S. government to go after Hulu, the immensely and increasingly successful source of online streaming media content.

Cord Blomquist of the Competitive Enterprise Institute documents the socialists’ campaign for a government attack on Hulu in an excellent article at the Technology Liberation Front website. “Many media commentators are already using the kind of language we associate with past media antitrust cases,” Blomquist notes. (more…)

This week’s Washington Times column:

On April 15, I joined hundreds of thousands of everyday Americans across the nation at the tax day “tea party” protests. I wasn’t told to go there by Fox News or by billionaires or millionaires. But what if I had?

The mainstream media and the Democratic Party – one and the same these days – spent much of the last week furiously attacking the grass-roots tea party protest movement as somehow illegitimate – or worse.

Days before the uniformly peaceful and patriotic gatherings took place, Homeland Security czar Janet Napolitano conveniently issued a bizarre report slandering military veterans and assorted right-leaning groups as racist, homegrown terrorism threats.

News anchors resorted to prime-time “tea-bagging” jokes in frequent attempts to mock the participants’ grievances. On Keith Olbermann’s hate crime of a show on MSNBC, Janeane Garofalo fused two memes to declare tens of thousands of Americans as “tea-bagging rednecks.” (more…)

Copied below is the ACTUAL letter that I sent to and was signed for by Lorne Micheals (and assistant) today over at NBC. I know that the writing is a little less snippy than usual, but please take into account that this man could squash my nuts into oblivion. There’s plenty of room for suggestions, so I encourage you to chime in.  And bear in mind, Lorne may be stopping by here.

Dear Mr. Michaels

I write this letter not as a disgruntled fan, but as a true admirer of what SNL stands for (and as a fellow Canadian/American). We both know how popular it is to mutter things like “I liked SNL, back when it was good” or “SNL used to be cool, but now their writing sucks etc.” Trust me; I’m as annoyed by those folks as you are. I truly believe that you have one of the most talented casts ever assembled over there at NBC. (more…)