Simply put, if you are a Conservative, you are at the very least derided and, in some cases, prevented from being hired. I’ve heard and seen enough stories in my time to know this blacklist exists. The trouble with Hollywood, however, is that it does not do business the way the rest of the world does. It is much easier to prove discrimination in the real world because various employment protocols must be followed. In Hollywood, however, business is done in loosey-goosey fashion for a simple reason: nobody wants to be held accountable. If you are held accountable, you may lose your job, and you may never work again.

With Hollywood discrimination, it’s easy to avoid being held to account. You just say, “He was fired because he was unprofessional”. You say, “Her writing wasn’t good enough for the show”. You say, “He didn’t mesh with the other writers”. You say, “She was a disruptive presence on the set.” Because there are no codified standards, the reason for one’s employment or lack thereof are simply left to the whims of those in charge.

And those in charge are Liberals. And Liberals, as we know, despise Conservatives.

That is why Conservatives in Hollywood live in even greater fear than any other employee. In Hollywood, anyone can perform their job perfectly and still get fired. However, if one Liberal and one Conservative each performs their job perfectly, and one must be fired, the Conservative is the one who will be shown the door.

It’s time to expose the discrimination that exists in Hollywood, and shine the cold light of reality on the Liberals who pay lip service to tolerating all points of view.

If you believe you have experienced or witnessed discrimination towards Conservative individuals, their morals or ethics or beliefs, we’d like to hear from you. Send your story to primetimepropaganda@gmail.com. You may submit your story anonymously or use your own name (though we prefer you use your own name — is it not “I’m Spartacus” time?). You may change whatever details you wish to protect your identity.

One thing we ask for, however, is that you NAME NAMES. The goal of this series is to expose those who discriminate. We want their faces to be known to every American who believes in true equality in the workplace.

This one goes out to New Blacklist-denier Patrick Goldstein of the L.A. Times….

PopEater:

Known around left-leaning Hollywood for her conservative stances on weighty issues like abortion and stem cells, ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ star Patricia Heaton is happy to explain how important her Christian faith is to her and how it shapes her views and career choices. …

Telling me that she has many gay friends and doesn’t oppose gay marriage, Patricia gets frustrated being automatically lumped together with other conservatives, a characterization she says has cost her possible work.

“We know for a fact there are some people who have said they wouldn’t want to work with us because of our politics,” she said, with her husband David Hunt adding, “We get lumped in with lunatics.”

Who but the worst kind of ideological bigot wouldn’t want to work with Patricia Heaton, one of the most talented actresses to ever star in a sitcom? If an iconic Emmy winner is losing work over her perfectly reasonable right-of-center political positions, what’s life like for those just trying to break in or the 99.7% who live hand-to-mouth in this business of show.

To fully appreciate the absurdity of this, you have to flip the situation on its head. A Hollywood conservative in a position to hire who blacklisted Alec Baldwin would obviously be wrong but also crazy. In the right role, you can’t do any better than Alec Baldwin and you owe it to your project to hire the very best. Same with Patricia Heaton.

And yet….

Our friends at NewsBusters have more.

But this time he ratcheted things up a few notches. His first column immediately following the most recent Oscars telecast was not just another pooh-poohing of the liberal bias stereotype, but an assertion that the Oscars actually proves the reverse.

Patrick Goldstein

Witness his eyebrow-raising title: “‘The King’s Speech’: The Triumph of Hollywood Conservative Values.” Wow. Not only is conservative griping about Hollywood unjustified, but we have in fact triumphed. Culture war over, people. In your face, Matt Damon! Don’t let the screen door hit you on your way out, Sean Penn!

The article begins, “[I]t’s become an article of faith in Conservative America that Hollywood is a ‘collection of hopeless la-la-land liberals — or worse, an elitist gaggle of heartland-bashing snobs.’” Notice how Goldstein refers to it as an “article of faith,” as if this perception of Hollywood is not based on evidence but is as insubstantial and unprovable as the existence of God. After all, how else could Conservative America possibly have ever gotten such an impression?

He continues: “Conservatives have routinely ridiculed Oscar movies for attacking the military (Avatar), promoting homosexuality (Milk and Brokeback Mountain) and depicting corporate executives as evil villains (The Constant Gardener and Syriana).”

Good start, Mr. Goldstein, but don’t stop there; Conservative disappointment and frustration with Hollywood don’t stem only from a handful of Oscar nominees. They derive also from Hollywood’s general proclivity for rewriting history, burying inconvenient historical truths, attacking the Bush administration’s response to the war on terror, sucker-punching heartland audiences, cravenly appeasing our enemies, tearing down conservative heroes while embracing dictators, and whitewashing Islam while denigrating Christianity.

Oddly affirming what Big Hollywood has been pointing out all along, Goldstein proceeds to admit that this conservative “article of faith” actually is grounded in reality: “Since the arrival of the Easy Rider generation in the late 1960s, Hollywood has been a bastion of liberalism.” Thank you. “It may be a town full of liberals” – thanks again – “but when it comes to its most prestigious awards show, the most exalted statuettes went to films that espouse conservative values.”

Really? The winners were pro-family films that promote limited government, fiscal restraint, adherence to the Constitution, and a strong national defense? I must have nodded off when those elements had walk-on roles in, say, The Social Network. Meanwhile, it certainly could be argued that the one film conservatives were most rooting for was Waiting for Superman, a documentary that was tellingly excluded from consideration.

As evidence that the Oscars was a “triumph of Hollywood conservative values,” Goldstein notes that “all the la-la-liberals” spent the night “honoring their elders and celebrating tradition.” Sorry, but I fail to see how a clip from Gone With the Wind and extended screen time for Kirk Douglas and Bob Hope constituted a conservative coup. True, it could have been worse: a tribute to Howard Zinn, for example.

As further proof, he notes that this year’s Best Adapted Screenplay winner The Social Network “is far from a liberal critique of capitalistic excess. It’s a thoroughly pro-business film.” I’m not buying this simplistic, disingenuous analysis; I’m more inclined to agree with iconoclastic critic Armond White that The Social Network glamorizes “moral confusion, social decline and empire building — although leaving out… the moral consequences of all that glorified disconnection.”

The supposed knockout punch of Goldstein’s argument is that The King’s Speech won Best Film, a movie that was “brought into the world by a host of ardent liberals” and yet “is a profoundly conservative film,” “a fable of egalitarianism,” “resolutely Old School… Could a movie be any more richly conservative in its values than that?”

Besides the fact that “egalitarianism” – at least in the crushingly anti-individualistic sense in which the totalitarian Left reveres it – is not an especially conservative ideal, I’m not certain how “Old School,” whatever that is, represents the apex of “richly conservative” values. Perhaps he thinks that nothing is more satisfying to all us stuffy old white conservatives than a big-budget Masterpiece Theater.

“If you study Oscar history,” Goldstein lectures, “you see liberal Hollywood has often rewarded films promoting conservative values”: Patton beat out MASH, for example, The Deer Hunter won over the openly antiwar Coming Home, etc., all the way up to last year’s The Hurt Locker and now The King’s Speech. Of course, it’s more likely that those films won for a variety of reasons, including because they were better than the competition, not because the Academy appreciated and identified with any conservative values that might have been present.  But even granting Goldstein his point, one could point to liberal Oscar winners as well – American Beauty, anyone? Crash?

How does Goldstein explain his claim of the paradox of liberal Hollywood honoring supposedly conservative films? “[P]eople are making movies, not trying to send a message. Artists, as well as the studio executives who finance their movies, are not ideologues. They are storytellers whose work is propelled by emotion, relationships and the dramatic sweep of a script, not its political content.”

I’ll go make myself a sandwich to give Big Hollywood readers time to recover from hysterical laughter… So, contrary to that conservative “article of faith,” Hollywood is not infested with left-leaning ideologues pushing a political message. Tell that to the makers of (just off the top of my head) The Green Zone, Syriana, Lions for Lambs, Reds, Bulworth, The American President, Dead Man Walking, The Contender, and countless others one could list.

Patrick Goldstein points to conservative disgust with Hollywood and insists that “Hollywood isn’t so easily stereotyped” – and had he stopped there, I might have agreed. After all, most films are mere money-making entertainments without an overtly political theme. Some films do embody conservative values. No one ever said that every single Hollywood product is as ragingly leftist as the recent Fair Game, Sean Penn’s shameless, Bush-bashing snoozefest.

But the stereotype is a fair one, and Goldstein’s insistence otherwise, his claim that Hollywood has no leftist political agenda or ideologues among its artists and execs… Now that’s an Oscar-worthy fiction.

The irony of this, of course, is that the situation is now reversed. The only thing today’s Hollywood Left learned from the original blacklist was how to blacklist better. They leave no fingerprints today. There’s nothing official, there’s no list, so there’s no way for anyone to get caught. At the very least, The Hollywood Ten understood what had happened to them. There was a list, they were on it, and so they could work around it with the use of pseudonyms until the storm passed. Today’s Hollywood Blacklisters are shrewder and much more insidious. Their blacklist is an unspoken social one. There’s nothing official to tell you why the phone stops ringing.

The worst part is that those on this awful list aren’t even looked at as victims (not that they want to be). As we’ve documented ad nauseum, the entertainment media is a willing participant in the blacklisting of those who don’t conform to their political beliefs. Anyone who dares mention that it might not be the best career move to take the other side of a Global Warming debate in a production meeting or by the craft services table, is immediately pounced upon as a talentless, hasbeen, paranoid whiner by no less than Patrick Goldstein at the L.A. Times, among others.

A best, a news media that is normally desperate to root out and report on all forms of discrimination, wilfully ignores testimony after testimony coming from those who claim a new blacklist has formed in Hollywood. At worst, the same media plays whack-a-mole on behalf of their Hollywood Masters by making whistleblowers pay a price for daring to speak out. They’re met with ridicule, derision, and calculated, pre-written hoots of disbelief. Except….

Over the weekend, there was a notable exception. Writing for the Hollywood Reporter, Paul Bond let two respected, veterans — Clint Howard and Morgan Brittany– have their unflitered say:

It ain’t easy being a Republican in Hollywood, even if your brother is an A-list director and producer. That’s what actor Clint Howard told attendees at a California GOP convention over the weekend.

Howard, an actor since 1961 and the younger brother of filmmaker Ron Howard, said that while he is comfortable speaking publicly about his conservatism, his advice to Republicans looking to break into the industry is to keep their political opinions to themselves, even though Hollywood liberals seldom do.

About five years ago “I came out of the closet. In Hollywood. I certainly understand that’s dangerous,” he said.

“If the entertainment industry should turn on me, I’d say, ‘well fine.’ But for young conservatives, you may hear me speak out but let me tell you: Be careful,” he said.

Howard was joined by Morgan Brittany, one of the stars of the 1980s nighttime soap opera Dallas. The pair have more than 100 years of acting experience between them (Brittany’s first job was as a child in the late 1950s), and they’ve noted a leftward slide in the industry and an intolerance for political dissent over the decades.

“I’d go out on location with the Dallas crew,” she told members of the California Congress of Republicans in Valencia on Saturday. “Everybody in the van was bashing (President Reagan). I never said anything because I thought I’d lose my job. And I probably would have lost my job. I got to a point later on, after Dallas was over and I had my two children, that I said, ‘enough is enough. I’m not going to be silent any longer’,” she said.

“If I’m silent then I’m enabling these people and I’m letting them win. They need to know that we’re out there. That we’re strong and that we have ideas and solutions.

The reaction to her newfound political courage back then wasn’t pretty.

“Oh man, the flack I took from the people, the agencies — ‘oh, you can’t say that. You can’t do that. Casting people might see you. And directors!’”

You’re going to want to read the whole thing, especially the part about how warm and cuddly Ed Asner isn’t.

Kudos to Bond and THR for telling the story, but most especially to Howard and Brittany for speaking out. Hardcore Hollywood Leftists will never change but good-hearted liberals need to hear these stories and Hollywood conservatives need to know they’re not alone. This reign of ideological totalitarianism in Hollywood is and will come to an end. More and more, you have the likes of Clint Howard and Morgan Brittany exposing what’s happening and setting the example that the answer is to fight this intolerance, not to roll over and wait for reparations.

Let the Left play the victim. As Paul Haggis showed us, that’s what they do best, even when they hold all the cards.

P.S. My challenge to those in the media who pride themselves as moral crusaders against prejudice and injustice still stands. For those of you more interested in actual reporting as opposed to protecting the Leftist narrative, take it away.

“Are things in our country so bad that it might actually be time for a revolution? The answer is obviously ‘yes.’”

That’s not a Ted Rall statement, that’s MSNBC anchor Dylan Ratigan. As you watch the video below, imagine the (justifiable) uproar had those words come from a Hannity or Beck in the same context as this — an interview with a right-wing extremist calling for violence against his political opponents:

—–

For those of you not familiar with Rall, he’s a witless, radical left-wing editorial cartoonist who’s probably most famous for his inability to draw, but thanks to the venomous left-wing viewpoints he holds, he’s enjoyed an incredible amount of mainstream success. According to his own site, the same cartoonist who called Condi Rice a “house nigga” and is now calling for organized violence in order to “bully” his insidious left-wing worldview on the rest of us, “now appear[s] in more than 100 publications around the United States, including the Los Angeles Times, Tucson Weekly, Willamette Week, Newark Star-Ledger, Village Voice and New York Times.”

Here’s an excerpt from his new book, “The Anti-American Manifesto”:

Christian fundamentalists, the millennial end-of-theworlders obsessed with the Left Behind series about the End Times, neo-Nazi racists, rural black-helicopter Michigan Militia types cut from the same inbred cloth as Timothy McVeigh, allied with “mainstream” gun nuts and right-wing Republicans, have been planning, preparing, and praying for the destruction of the “Godless,” “secular” United States for decades. In the past, they formed groups like the John Birch Society and the Aryan Nations. Now the hard Right has a postmodern, decentralized non-organization organization called the Tea Party.

Right-wing organizational names change, but they amount to the same thing: the reactionary sociopolitical force—the sole force—poised to fill the vacuum when collapse occurs. The scenario outlined by Margaret Atwood’s prescient novel The Handmaid’s Tale—rednecks in the trenches, hard military men running things, minorities and liberals taken away and massacred, setting the stage for an even more extreme form of laissez-faire corporate capitalism than we’re suffering under today—is a fair guess of how a post-U.S. scenario will play out unless we prepare to turn it in another direction…

A war is coming. At stake: our lives, the planet, freedom, living. The government, the corporations, and the extreme right are prepared to coalesce into an Axis of Evil. Are you going to fight back? Will you do whatever it takes, including taking up arms?…

Later he writes:

Part of the revolution may be fought virtually by hackers. Those individuals are every bit as valauable as people who blow things up.

Rall is obviously nothing more than a pre-Oklahoma Timothy McVeigh, and that his kind are out there should surprise no one. The world is full of racist crazies seeking validation through violence. But because he’s considered an artiste – and most especially a left-wing artiste – irresponsible networks such as NBC and irresponsible newspapers like those listed above help to mainstream the same radical views that if they were held on the right would probably (and rightly) result in a visit from Homeland Security.

If you want to understand just how devious and unhinged the once-mainstream left is increasingly becoming, rewind the news cycle back a few weeks to when the whole meme over anti-gay bullying ginned itself up. A wanna be-fascist like Patrick Goldstein over at the L.A. Times is willing to call for an end to all jokes that make fun of gay people, “dangerous” jokes such as ”Electric cars are gay,” but he doesn’t seem to have a problem sharing the same pages with a racist cartoonist. Now that Rall is openly calling for violence – for the ”bullying” of millions of Americans, will that change?

Of course not. After all, “Electric cars are gay” is so much more dangerous than “Will you do whatever it takes, including taking up arms?”

Patrick Goldstein of the L.A. Times proclaims, Ignorance should be a punch line. Identity should not:

 Ignorance should be a punch line. Identity should not. Humor can be a tricky thing to analyze and can be easily (and lazily) defended against criticism by saying “it’s just a joke.” Vaughn himself, when defending this line in his film, said “Comedy and joking about our differences breaks tension and brings us together.” And while Vaughn is wrong about the joke in his movie accomplishing this end, “The Office” is a perfect example of humor getting it right.

“The Dilemma” is hardly the first movie to use the word “gay” in this way, but it has come along at a watershed moment in our culture. Hearing one’s very identity regularly used as a synonym for “inadequate” or “undesirable” on a daily basis does more than just hurt feelings. Recent events have made it abundantly and tragically clear the effect that anti-gay language and attitudes can have on young people who are gay or are perceived to be gay AND on the bullies who target them.

Would it change hearts and minds if Howard had made the decision to pull this line from the film? Would bullies suddenly realize the harm their behavior was causing and stop tormenting their victims? Would spontaneous hugging break out in the hallways of America’s schools? Of course not. But it would create a tiny space in our culture -– a window in which people could draw their own conclusions about what it means to be gay, without being told it’s something negative.

Both Goldstein and Howard asked if “comedy will be neutered” if Vince Vaughn’s character didn’t use the word “gay” to mean something to be made fun of. The answer is no. Acceptance of ridiculing gay people under the guise of “humor” would be neutered. And honestly, comedy might be better off if writers found more creative ways to make us laugh. Maybe a pie in the face?

Will we see a similar defense from Patrick Goldstein of Tea Partiers, conservatives, Christians, right-wingers, and Sarah Palin when pop culture rips their identities?

Rhetorical question… Rhetorical question…

Below you’ll find a few choice snips from Mike Appelstein’s terrific interview with The Velvet Underground’s Maureen “Moe” Tucker, who disappointed aging left-wing hipsters everywhere when she dared step off the artistic thought-plantation to take a controversial stand against socialism. Prepare to fall in love. Like all the tough, smart women on our side, Tucker is informed, outspoken, articulate, and puts the awe in awesome.

I’m going to take things a little out of order to allow Tucker to address her despondent ”fans” first:

What are your feelings about the online reactions [to you being a Tea Partier]? Many people seem upset or outraged.

I’m stunned that so many people who call themselves liberal yet are completely intolerant. I thought liberals loved everyone: the poor, the immigrant, the gays, the handicapped, the minorities, dogs, cats, all eye colors, all hair colors! Peace, love, bull! Curious they have no tolerance whatsoever for anyone who doesn’t think exactly as they do. You disagree and you’re immediately called a fool, a Nazi, a racist. That’s pretty f’d up!! I would never judge someone based on their political views. Their honesty, integrity, kindness to others, generosity? Yes. Politics? No!

Musician or not, one of the first things you learn when you cross over into the light from the darkside is that conservatives were much nicer to you when you were a liberal than liberals are to you when you’re a conservative.

Anyway, before I turn you over to Moe, let’s all take a moment to wish Patrick Goldstein – the blacklisting bully of the L.A. Times – best of luck when it comes to diminishing  this resume…

The Riverfront Times:

Mike Appelstein: In the now-infamous videotape, you indicated that you’re furious about the way we’re being led toward socialism and “incredible waste of money” being spent. Could you elaborate a bit on these sentiments?

Moe Tucker: No country can provide all things for all citizens. There comes a point where it just isn’t possible, and it’s proven to be a failure everywhere it’s been tried. I am not oblivious to the plight of the poor, but I don’t see any reason/sense to the idea that everyone has to have everything, especially when the economy is so bad. I see that philosophy as merely a ploy to control. ….

I am also against the government taking over the student loan program, car companies, bailouts and the White House taking control of the census (what the hell is that all about?); [about] any First Lady telling (I know, I know, “suggesting to”) us what to eat, the mayor of New York City declaring “no salt” (screw you, pal!), the mayor/city commissioners of Anytown, U.S.A. declaring you can’t fly a flag, can’t say the Pledge of Allegiance and can’t sing the National Anthem. …

I am against the government now thinking about bailing out unions. The unions made the contracts which include insane pensions; the U.S. government didn’t. I’m against the government closing down offshore drilling in the Gulf with one hand and with the other giving (lending?) Brazil money to help them do way deeper offshore drilling — rather curious. I’m against a government that will not defend our borders; and on and on and on.

MA: What specifically about the current administration do you disagree with?

MT: I disagree with spending / borrowing / printing — damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!  I disagree with the “we won” attitude, which is the cowardly way of saying fuck you! I disagree with an administration that for twenty months blames Bush. If the President and his minions are so damn smart, why didn’t they know the severity of the situation? The president has actually said (and I saw it on video) that they didn’t know!

MA: What would you like to see change?

MT: The current administration! …

MA: What are some misconceptions that people have about Tea Parties (and their attendants) in general?

MT: That they’re all racists, they’re all religious nuts, they’re all uninformed, they’re all stupid, they want no taxes at all and no regulations whatsoever. Those “arguments” are presented by the Dems in order to keep their base of uninformed voters on their side. In my opinion, as soon as you start name-calling, your opinion is immediately deemed invalid! …

MA: And yet there is also a minority that agrees with you.

MT: There are a lot more than you think who agree with me. 

There’s much, much more. You’ll definitely want to read the whole thing.

So what’s left for those of us looking for things like stirring heroism, rousing action, and solid family-friendly entertainment? If you had to pick five films appearing between now and the end of the year that look decent enough to take a chance on, what would they be? Here’s my shortlist, sorted by release date:

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Red (October 15)

A blissfully silly, cartoonishly hyper-violent trailer. A formidable array of talent seeming to have the time of their lives as they chew up the scenery, with normally stately and self-serious Oscar-winners like Helen Mirren and Morgan Freeman hamming it up next to Bruce Willis and John Malkovich. A premise that sounds something like Spy Kids for adults. Sounds good to me.

Word has it that this movie took pains to make itself more comedic than its DC comic source material, and after a year filled with worries about unemployment and the economy, with audiences looking for some mental relief and escape, that might be just what the doctor ordered. I hope the film lives up to the promise and tone of the trailer.

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Unstoppable (November 12)

Speed on a train, and the trailer makes it look as if they’ve pulled it off. With slick action maestro Tony Scott handling the directorial duties, this might do for the action/disaster genre what The Expendables recently did for 1980s he-man action fare.

Denzel is arguably our greatest surviving star, with John Wayne’s talent for holding up pictures with the sheer weight of his presence and gravitas. Chris Pine has emerged as the best of a younger generation of pretty boys trying to make the leap upward to Real Man status. Hot concept, good chemistry — let’s just pray that the dreaded Shaky Cam doesn’t ruin things.

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Faster (November 26)

The Rock abandons his tooth-fairy phase and dives into the sort of gritty revenge flick that used to be powered by guys like Charles Bronson. Hope springs eternal that Hollywood can still occasionally produce a satisfying movie for men as counterprogramming to (in this case) Disney’s Tangled, Christina Aguilera’s Burlesque, and Edward Zwick’s Love and Other Drugs.

Incidentally, I went to school with George Tillman Jr., the director of the film. He’s a good guy who’s helmed life-affirming pictures such as Soul Food (1997) and Men of Honor (2000), and it’s nice to see him recently back in the directorial saddle after a break of some nine years (in which he, among other things, produced the Barbershop series). In an interview a few years back, Tillman stated the clichéd opinion that, “We as filmmakers need to focus less on blow-em-up action flicks and focus more on personal films that can both entertain and educate.” Here’s hoping that Faster is big on the former and mercifully unpretentious about the latter.

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The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (December 10)

I liked the first Narnia film very much, but found the second so unwatchably bad and painfully episodic that I turned it off in disgust halfway through. It was strange to see Disney dump Narnia like a hot potato after that debacle — Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times, one of Big Hollywood’s favorite whipping boys, gives a good rundown of what happened here.

But with Fox picking it up and giving it a nice Christmas push (and with a true, humane artist like Michael Apted directing), prospects look good for the third film to resemble the first more than the second. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is also widely considered to be the finest book in the series, so it has that going for it.

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Tron: Legacy (December 17)

The trailer for this one had all of the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end, as memories came roaring back of watching the original Tron (1982) endlessly on cable as a kid in between bouts of writing crude programs on a Commodore 64. Along with other early 1980s movies like WarGames (1983), this film instilled a fascination for computers into a whole generation of teen boys, and all around us today we’re still seeing the results of that early mass exposure.

The previews promise the return of both Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner, the portrayal of a sincere and healthy father-son relationship, plenty of eye candy (both of the techno and hot-babe varieties), and lots of action scenes powered by state-of-the-art effects, clever compositions, and NO SHAKY CAM! Man, I hope they knock this one out of the park. (As an aside, Bruce Boxleitner is a huge Robert E. Howard fan, always a sign of discernment.)

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So c’mon all of you Saturday morning, For Conservative Movie Lover blowhards: give us your own Top 5 must-see Fall-Winter 2010 pictures in the comments section below (if you need a master list of possibilities to work from, go here and scroll through the upcoming releases for October, November, and December).

Author’s Note: After fifty straight weeks of For Conservative Movie Lovers appearing every Saturday, a combination of real-life obligations and general burnout has me needing to relax the pace a bit. Going forward, expect gaps of one or more Saturdays in between each batch of FCML essays, with me filling in those gaps with lighter (and hopefully less research intensive) posts on other subjects.

Like the Anti-Defamation League, Saban is far from satisfied with Stone’s “clumsy association with the Holocaust” apology, calling it “sooooo transparently fake.” And as a money-where-his-mouth-is supporter of Israel, my guess is that Saban’s taking issue with all this crazy talk coming from Stone about how his January miniseries will prove Hitler was a “scapegoat” who deserves to be put in “context.”

A furious Haim Saban has mounted a campaign to get Showtime to cancel its planned airing of Oliver Stone’s 10-part series, “A Secret History of America,” in the wake of anti-Jewish remarks by the outspoken director.

Stone’s apology “is transparently fake,” Saban said in an interview with TheWrap. “He has been consistent in his anti-American and anti-Semitic remarks. I respect his First Amendment rights. I hope he respects mine.”

The billionaire and outspoken media mogul told TheWrap he had contacted CBS chief Leslie Moonves to urge him to pull the series.

He said that WME chairman Ari Emanuel had also called CBS privately to urge the series be pulled.

Stone has previously said the 10-part “Secret History” series would put Hitler and Stalin “in context,” and offer an alternative crash course to the “grossly inadequate history” taught by American schools and proffered by mass media. 

CBS, Moonves and Emanuel did not respond to emails seeking comment.

Saban is also pressuring Stone’s agent, CAA partner Bryan Lourd, to drop the director just like Ari Emanuel did to Mel Gibson after the Braveheart star’s 2006 drunken, anti-Semitic tirade.

Saban says in no uncertain terms of Stone, “clearly [he's] an anti-Semite and an anti-American.” Which might be the first time in years a Hollywood insider used the term “anti-American” as though it were a bad thing.

This is America and Mr. Saban has every right to demand Showtime kill Stone’s miniseries and to call for his agent to let him go. That’s how the First Amendment works in this country that Stone hates so much.

I understand Stone has a close buddy who controls a few television stations. Why doesn’t he ask Uncle Hugo to broadcast all that Hitler context for him?

Gone with the Wind (1939), Star Wars (1977), The Sound of Music (1965), E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), The Ten Commandments (1956), Titanic (1997), Jaws (1975), Doctor Zhivago (1965), The Exorcist (1973), Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1939), 101 Dalmatians (1961), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Ben-Hur (1959), Avatar (2009), Return of the Jedi (1983), The Sting (1973), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Jurassic Park (1993), The Graduate (1967), Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace (1999), Fantasia (1941), The Godfather (1972), Forrest Gump (1994), Mary Poppins (1964), The Lion King (1994)

If you said they all made scads of money, bravo — they are the top twenty-five domestic box-office champions of all time (adjusted for inflation, of course).

But consider another similarity: surprisingly few of them relied on established A-list movie stars — the most famous, the highest paid — for their moneymaking prospects. Gone with the Wind had Gable, yes. The Sting had Newman and Redford. The Godfather, Brando.

As for most of the rest, they either featured no A-listers at all, or used them before they became bonafide movie stars. In fact, many of those pictures can take credit for sending now-famous actors into the celestial Hollywood firmament in the first place. Gone with the Wind made Vivian Leigh known to the world. The Ten Commandments did it for Charlton Heston. The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman. The Godfather, Al Pacino. Star Wars, Harrison Ford. Mary Poppins, Julie Andrews.

Meanwhile, I note that Will Smith, the current top A-lister, is nowhere to be found on this rarefied roll call. Nor is Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington, Jim Carrey, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Julia Roberts, or many others whose compensation has, at various times, made gasp-worthy headlines. Of the modern crop of top-salaried men, only Harrison Ford, Tom Hanks, and wee Leonardo DiCaprio are up there, and only for movies where it can be argued that genuinely astonishing special effects and epic spectacle, brought to life by proven audience-pleasing directors, served as the real stars.

(It’s telling that four of those behind-the-scenes men — Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, James Cameron, and Walt Disney — are responsible for over half of the list all by themselves.)

Is this being too dismissive of the contributions of highly-paid thespians to a movie’s bottom line? I don’t think so. Do you honestly think that Jurassic Park suffered at the box office because Harrison Ford turned it down and was replaced by Sam Neill? Or let’s go straight to the very heights of heresy: if you took Gable’s indelible, iconic performance out of Gone with the Wind, or Brando’s out of The Godfather, and replaced them with other well-regarded actors, would the movies still have made that Top 25 list? If the presence of these vaunted personalities is so magical in and of itself, how does one explain all the flops starring these very same actors?

There are other considerations that trump the movie-star effect in terms of improved profits. Consider that eight of the top twenty-five films were rated G, and eleven PG (four others had a PG-13 rating, and a paltry two were rated R). It’s clear common sense: make a movie suitable for the whole family, and you’ve just doubled or tripled your ticket tally, not to mention all the extra popcorn, soda, and candy getting sluiced through the digestive tracts of America’s moppets in direct violation of nanny-state health doctrine. That’s not to say that there’s no place for R-movies, just that a film’s potential for profit should always remain a healthy multiple of its budget.

Given all this, it’s high time that the stumpy tail of A-list Hollywood stops wagging the studio dog. Ten or twenty million guaranteed, up-front dollars to an actor for any movie (much less an R-rated one) is fiscal insanity. It’s the quality and appeal of the movie as a whole that counts. Once one comes to grips with this, paying a huge salary to a well-known celebrity begins to seem like a far poorer use of a studio’s money than spending the same amount of dough on better special effects, larger advertising buys, a great script, and/or a quality crew of cinematographers, editors, sound designers, and musicians.

Patrick Goldstein, who gets a lot of criticism round these parts, wrote an excellent article last year about the trend towards reduced star salaries. Music to my ears. Movie stars will always be with us, and at their best they add a great deal to a film’s artistry. But perhaps they will once again assume their proper economic place in the hierarchy of moviemaking (less money, less creative control), allowing Hollywood’s much maligned product to get better as a result.