But there are several films worth revisiting that have gone largely unheralded. At a time when Reagan has earned high marks from historians and academics for his time in office, the caricature of him as just a B actor persists. But Reagan’s uncommon human touch and affable
personality are on full display in films that are worth revisiting.

Furthermore, his conversion from New Deal liberalism over to Goldwater conservatism is directly tied in with Reagan’s Hollywood years. And, as Gorbachev learned during their summit meetings, Reagan could be a tenacious, shrew negotiator; a skill that can be traced back to his time as head of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) union.

The steel behind the congenial smile was forged during some of the more intense altercations with Hollywood communists intent on taking over the union and organizing the film industry. “Thugs” attached to the “red-dominated” Conference of Studio Unions were significant players here, Kengor informs readers in his book. They went after Reagan personally and even threatened to throw acid on his face. Reagan began to carry a gun for his own personal safety and did not give any quarter.

Another forgotten film that captures some of the toughness that later found expression in the political arena is “Storm Warning” (1951). Here, Reagan plays the part of a district attorney investigating a murder involving the Klu Klux Klan in a small southern town called Rockpoint. The film co-stars Ginger Rogers and Doris Day as sisters. When the Rodgers character arrives in town, she observes hooded Klansmen break into a jail to apprehend and murder a journalist who was framed on trumped up charges after exposing the activities in town.

Rodgers later recognizes her sister’s husband as one of the Klansman. She is pressured to remain silent and declines to tell full truth in court. Eventually Rodgers decides to come clean and confess to Burt Rainey, the DA played by Reagan.

Rodgers and Day are both kidnapped by the Klan. The film ends with Reagan’s DA and the police breaking up a KKK rally. The culprits are arrested, but Day’s character dies after she is shot by her husband.

The 1951 trailer captures the overall storyline including a clip with the skeptical, hard-nosed DA Reagan played as he squares off against the Klan in a bowling alley.

Once again, Reagan turns in a strong performance as a supporting character that emerges in the middle of action and assumes a greater importance as the film moves toward its climax.

Day and Reagan would co-star together again in “The Winning Team” (1952). Reagan played the part of Grover Cleveland Alexander, a hall of fame major league pitcher who struggled against alcoholism, epilepsy and myopia (double-vision). Alexander pitched for the
Philadelphia Phillies, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs.

With the help and encouragement of his wife, played by Day, Reagan’s character perseveres through career setbacks and bouts of depression. There is a genuine chemistry between Reagan and Day on screen, and some important life lessons mixed in with the drama on the pitching mound.

The opening sequence of the film shows Reagan’s Alexander allowing his ambition for baseball to get the better of him when he had planned on meeting up with his future wife, Aimee. Despite their marital strains, Aimee develops an understanding for her husband’s condition and is instrumental in his recovery. In the end, Alexander leads the Cardinals to victory over the Yankees in the 1926 World Series.

Some of key themes explored in “The Winning Team” frequently find expression in the political arena. The most successful presidents are the ones who endured through great difficulty and absorbed political setbacks. The character’s namesake in the film, President Grover Cleveland Alexander is the only president who served two non-consecutive terms. Alexander lost his first re-election bid, despite winning the popular vote, but ran again and won.

Reagan lost the 1976 Republican nomination to incumbent President Gerald Ford, but came back four years later to the White House. Reagan also endured the “Iran-Contra” affair to bring closure to the Cold War. Like the pitcher he played on film, Reagan stepped out of public life in 1988 at the top his game. At the time he was first president since Dwight Eisenhower to successfully complete two terms.

The films provide insight into Reagan’s infectious personality that was key to his political success. They are worth revisiting as the Reagan Presidency passes into history with high marks from academics and scholars from across the political spectrum.

Some important Ronald Reagan links to consider his acting legacy:

Reagan’s Film Career

A Summary of his Finest Films

Reagan at PBS

Reagan and Hollywood

While it may be difficult to pinpoint a precise moment when Cold War tensions began to ease, it is evident that Gorbachev’s interest in Hollywood helped foster a human connection that advanced negotiations and solidified relations.

By all accounts, Reagan was proud of his Hollywood career, which began on April 20, 1937 the day he signed a contract with Warner Brothers. While political opponents and hostile media personalities have made a sport out of demeaning Reagan’s acting ability, he was actually quite accomplished in his own right and cultivated a strong following.

A good source here is Marc Eliot who authored “Reagan: The Hollywood Years,” a well-researched, highly readable yarn that highlights some of the former president’s best performances on screen and on television. Reagan co-starred alongside some of most talented stars of his era including Bette Davis, Ann Sheridan, Ginger Rogers, Humphrey Bogart and Errol Flynn.

While Reagan may not have achieved lasting fame as a leading man, he did carve out a strong niche as a supporting actor in films that attracted critical attention, as Eliot explained in an interview with Reason TV. He was widely viewed as the reliable “best friend” standing behind
the big names of that time, Eliot notes.

Reagan was very mindful of how supporting roles could enhance and amplify the storyline behind each film. This was most certainly the case in “Knute Rockne, All American” where Reagan played the part of Notre Dame Football great George Gipp.

“Now the Gipper only occupied one reel of the picture, but from an actor’s point of view it was a near perfect part,” Reagan once observed. “A great entrance, action in the middle and a deathbed scene in the grand tradition of Hollywood.”

The phrase “Go out and win one for the Gipper” later figured into Reagan’s political campaigns and is at least partly responsible for the film’s lasting appeal. But there are other noteworthy supporting roles that continue to get overlooked by historians and biographers.

This would include “Dark Victory” (1939) co-starring Davis, Geraldine Fitzgerald, George Brent and Bogart. Here, Reagan was cast as an aloof, but likeable playboy named Alec Hamm who adds levity and cheer to a film that is heavy on drama. The Davis character is a terminally ill woman who decides to live out her few remaining months to the fullest. Reagan does not get the girl; she instead gravitates over to the Bogart character.

Davis was nominated for Best Actress and the film for Best Picture. Even as the top prizes ultimately went to “Gone with the Wind,” “Dark Victory” was widely recognized as a critical success. Reagan’s ability to connect with audiences and co-stars did not go unrecognized as he proceeded to land high-profile roles.

Off screen, Bogart and Reagan developed a lasting friendship. They were ardent patriots who became interested in the political scene.

This is where Hollywood and Cold War politics come full circle. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Reagan and Bogart were both “committed liberals” susceptible to communist operatives, Paul Kengor, a political scientist and author, said in an interview.

Reagan was recruited for the speaking circuit by the “benignly named” American Veterans Committee (AVC), but came to see in his own words that he was “being steered more than a little bit” by a group with its own agenda. The AVC events included “hand-picked audiences and highly skewed speaking material,” Kengor said.

In retrospect, Gorbachev’s interest in Reagan’s films is more than a little ironic; it was the Hollywood experience that first opened Reagan’s eyes to the dangers of communism. Reagan eventually came to see that AVC was a front group for the communist cause as was another “innocent-sounding” organization called the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions (HICCASP).

By 1946, Reagan was a popular after-dinner speaker in Hollywood circles who intermixed politics with entertainment. Reagan also openly confronted communist sympathizers at HICCASP meetings.

Kengor’s book entitled: “Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century” describes some of the heated exchanges between Reagan and other leading Hollywood figures who identified with Soviet Union. By this time, Bogart also saw fit to distance himself from any unsavory ties, although he did not move to the right as decisively as Reagan did, Kengor notes.

Before he landed the lead part in “King’s Row,” it appears Reagan was briefly considered for the role of “Rick” in “Casablanca,” which eventually went to Bogart. How serious of a contender Reagan was for Casablanca is not entirely clear, Kengor said. In the end, the final casting worked out for both actors. Reagan considered “Kings Row” to be his best film, as did many critics, and Casablanca helped make Bogart a household name.

“Reagan and Bogart liked each other and respected each other and got along very well,” Kengor said. “Reagan went to Bogart’s funeral and Bogart was also a member of Reagan’s fan club.”

It was common practice for the studios to organize fan clubs and Bogart was one of 15 honorary members of the Ronald Reagan fan club. Bette Davis was also a member of the club.

On Reagan’s Birthday, Let’s Remember the Gipper’s Film Career – Part 2: More meaty roles overlooked by Reagan biographers.

—–

In these trying times, this story of one man’s unrelenting efforts to succeed can serve as an inspiration to many. I know “His Way” inspired me. After learning how Jerry cold-called Elvis Presley’s Manager, Colonel Tom Parker, every day for an entire year for the right to take Elvis on tour (for the first time in nearly a decade), I decided to roll the dice and take my own film out on the road to build an audience. Concluding our interview with Douglas McGrath, director of the documentary “His Way,” we talked about more of the film, including the amazing segments on Weintraub’s experiences with Elvis Presley and Colonel Tom Parker and Frank Sinatra.

KW: How did you go about choosing which stories or chapters to cover or not cover from the book?

DM: Well, I didn’t do it that way. I didn’t think of them in terms of chapters. I just thought of them in terms of stories. But, I knew we’d have ninety minutes, an hour and forty-five maybe at most and I just thought, there’s no way to go through everything. I just thought “I’m going to ask about all the stuff I liked the best and the things that were really the big tent poles of his life.” So, I thought I’d better go with the things that really tell us, without repeating it, what his magic was. And the Elvis story is emblematic of his whole career, you know, that tells you how he started with nothing, he persisted. He won the contract, so to speak, the right to take him. He almost blew it. When you think of 20th Century entertainment, particularly musical entertainment and particularly male musical entertainment — you know, you have Elvis and you have Sinatra. Those guys are the big tent poles in that story.

KW: Jerry’s relationship with Frank Sinatra seemed much more direct than it did with Elvis. His relationship really was with the Colonel (Elvis’s Manager). Did you have to approach the Elvis segment any differently than you did from the Sinatra segment or in trying to work a connection between the two as a bridge?

DM: Oh no, that is a very good question. I don’t remember consciously doing that. You know, we came to the Elvis story first, because in my memory of his life, I worked through it in order so he could kind of work it in order. Sometimes if you’re telling a story about your childhood or some early part of your life, certain feelings come along with these stories that can then add to the overall feeling of what you are talking about. But [with] the Elvis stuff, he was a different guy. Meaning when he came into Elvis’s life, he was “aspiring” at that point. He had some clients, he was successful, meaning he could pay his bills and he was married and had a nice life. But, he was not by any means, what he became and he knew that this was his way out. But when we came to Sinatra… which I knew is the next big seismic event in his professional life… he [Jerry] was then a different person.

He had chased Elvis, but Sinatra came to him. Now nobody was confused about anything in that situation. Sinatra was still tough, extremely powerful and I’m sure a fairly terrifying person to work for, because he had a temper and knew what he wanted and had been a huge star and a big success for, by that point, 30 years or something . And while he wanted Jerry’s help, he was hardly a helpless and frail creative person looking for tough guidance from Jerry. And the Madison Square Garden Concert (“The Main Event,” 1974), Jerry really had to talk him into it. Really had to talk him into it. I think the reason Jerry flew to Las Vegas so quickly when Frank called and sounded so upset [and depressed] was I think he (Jerry) thought, “Oh. I could lose him.” A smart manager will hear something like any kind of qualm in a client’s voice. A smart manager gets on it. A lot of them don’t. Which is why people change managers. But, Jerry knew that was “his guy” at that point.

KW: Does that come from growing up as he did [in the Bronx and Brooklyn] and being able to shake a guy’s hand and knowing if he is a good guy or a bad guy?

DM: I think you’re right. I think you’re right. He does have a very good sense of people and I remember Matt Damon saying this to me and I felt it as well… when he first meets you and shakes your hand, you can feel it for one second, he looks at you very intensely and you think, “I think he just X-rayed me.”

KW: Do you have a favorite Jerry Weintraub story yourself?

DM: Every time I try to pick one, I think of another one. There are so many that are so good. But that Elvis story is just amazing. The persistence to call the Colonel for a year, the hilarious business when the seats aren’t sold (at a Miami FL matinee) and he has to get the convicts to come take the chairs out… but I also love when the Colonel takes him into that electrician’s booth and with the suitcases of money. When he tells the story about the Colonel pouring the money on the table and whacking it with his cane. That’s yours, that’s mine… are we good? It just tells you that that it is a whole different part of show business that doesn’t exist anymore. It’s still got a foot in the “Carnie” world. That’s probably my favorite.

KW: Do you think there are more “Jerry”s out there or there’s still room for them?

DM: There must be because there’s no reason there shouldn’t be but I will say the business used to be comprised of more people like Jerry and now it isn’t. You know, that kind of renegade, non-corporate, non-business school, non-film school, come to it out of passion, bootstraps, hard work, gift-of gab, full force personality. I don’t run across many people like that. Maybe to be fair, maybe there were never a lot of people like that. I don’t know. But, there sure aren’t a lot of people like that now. There certainly a lot of people who approach it in a more systematic way with their foreign sales estimates and all their numbers that they run.

KW: The spreadsheets.

DM: Yeah, the spreadsheets and all the things that don’t connect to the thing that makes him so winning. Which is to say, a genuine passion for movies or music or the artists that he’s working with. That you don’t feel so much anymore. And I think we’re the worse off for it too. Look what he did with that passion.

KW: And what are the upcoming projects, if you can talk about anything?

DM: I am making a TV pilot with Nathan Lane. He was in my film “Nicholas Nickleby.” We’re casting now and we’re going to shoot in December (2011). It’s a funny and kind of touching half-hour single-camera comedy.

Our mission at BigDawg Music Mafia is to unite and encourage conservatives with creative abilities to get engaged in the culture revolution – to promote American exceptionalism through the arts.  While many of us are using our talents to draw attention to the destruction of liberty by the current administration and those on the far left, there are times when we can use our creativity to bridge that partisan divide, even if only in a light-hearted way. This was one of those times.

Taking a cue from Senators Harry Reid and Chris Dodd who recently visited the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s grave site to channel his bipartisan spirit by pouring whiskey on his grave and reciting a prayer in hopes the Super Committee would reach an agreement on the budget cuts, BigDawg Music Mafia decided to answer their call for bipartisanship in a mission we dubbed “Operation Jelly Bean.”

Having heard radio’s Rush Limbaugh talk about the Super Committee’s failed attempt to reach an agreement and how the two Senators contributed to the process by their visit with Kennedy; and having heard the challenge Limbaugh posed to one of his callers to visit Kennedy’s grave site on his behalf, BigDawg Music Mafia Co-Founder, Andrew (a.k.a. BigDawg) convinced me we needed to take that challenge since the caller indicated she was not local.  My friend Reese and I, however, are.

Here’s what Rush asked of one of his callers:

If you’re ever in Washington and you stay at a hotel, grab a bottle of scotch, one of those mini-bar bottles of scotch, and go to Ted Kennedy’s grave and pour it on the grave.

As both Andrew and I are retired military, and Reese’s husband is a vet, Arlington National Cemetery is sacred ground to us so we wanted to ensure we maintained proper decorum in what we did.

Instead of just pouring some scotch on Kennedy’s grave (respecting the fact that we were on hallowed ground) we decided to concoct a brand new “bipartisan” adult beverage.  We thought since Kennedy liked Chevis, and Reid and Dodd already poured some on his grave, why not answer their call for bipartisanship and mix some of that Chevis with something enjoyed by many of us on the right?  What better than Rush’s fabulous Two If By Tea … and what better garnish than President Ronald Reagan’s favorite sweet treat, Jelly Belly Jelly Beans?

Two If By Tea Manhattan
1 part Chevis
2 parts Raspberry Two if By Tea (regular or diet)
3 Jelly Belly jellybeans (garnish)

• Blue jelly bean representing the left
• Red jelly bean representing the right
• White jelly bean representing unity/bipartisanship

We brought the sealed bottle of Chevis and a small cooler of Two If By Tea with us … placed the bottle of Chevis and a bottle of Two if By Tea in front of Ted’s headstone … along with one of each color of the Jelly Belly jellybeans (that came with Rush’s Two if By Tea gift set as a tribute to President Ronald Reagan) to channel Ted’s “spirit” … or love of spirits as it were.

Since Virginia has an open container law and alcohol consumption is not allowed on the National Mall and surrounding federal park lands we made sure we kept the Chevis sealed until we got home.

So, in honor of our fallen brothers and sisters, we did not follow Rush’s challenge as posed to his caller. Instead, we waited until we got back to my house, then mixed the drink and offered the following toast – in honor of Mr. Kennedy:

We heard you were visited by Dodd and by Reid
In the spirit of bi-partisanship you’ll be pleased
Rush sends his regards but we’ve added a twist
Your Chevis, his Tea make a tasty new mix
A drink in your honor that’s smooth as satin
Reagan Jellybeans with a Two If By Tea Manhattan

Cheers to ‘The Lion of the Senate’, ‘The Doctor of Democracy’, and ‘The Gipper’.

Believe it or not, this is a very smooth, sweet and refreshing drink!

Mementos for Corporal Ira Hamilton Hayes

While at Arlington, Reese and I also paid a visit to the grave site of Corporal Ira Hamilton Hayes, one of the six men immortalized in the iconic photograph of the flag raising on Iwo Jima during World War II, and left a bottle of Two if By Tea, some Jelly Belly Jellybeans, and a copy of a CD from the  great new patriotic rock bands at our site, Madison Rising, who just hit the top 100 rock albums on Amazon, and will be doing a cover of “The Ballad of Ira Hayes” in the near future.  The story of Ira Hayes is one that needs to be told as it highlights the effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder which so many of our veterans are suffering from today.  Who better than a band whose lead singer, David Owen Bray, is a veteran himself?  Their debut CD, Madison Rising, has a song called “In The Days That Reagan Ruled” which ends with the following chorus:

Tearing down an iron wall
Acting in his greatest role
Made all his critics look like fools
‘Cause even jelly beans were cool!

We truly enjoyed executing this mission; the weather was gorgeous, the symbolism of what we were doing there was priceless, and we ended up with a great new cocktail to enjoy just in time for the holidays!

President Reagan would be proud.

Cheers!

Seems a future politician named Ronald Reagan made quite an impression on Philbin. The former “Live! With Regis and Kelly” star devotes 12 pages in his new book to the conservative icon.

Philbin was hosting a live post-news talk show at the time – 1962 – and he was hungry for guests. So when he learned that the star of “Knute Rockne All American” was available, the affable Philbin jumped at the chance to book him.

The two talked a little about life in general and sports in particular given Reagan’s background as both an athlete and sports broadcaster. They avoided politics all together.

“It was unthinkable back then that he would go on to become the governor of California and, eventually, the president of the United States!” Philbin writes in his typically breathless style.

The talk show host recalls the reaction Reagan had on not just him but the studio audience.

“I could tell the audience was becoming mesmerized by his optimism. He just made you feel better, gave you hope, made you want to strive even harder to achieve your own goals,” he recalls.

That television appearance marked the first of several on-air chats the two would have in subsequent years. Philbin wraps his chapter on Reagan by including some of the president’s 1981 commencement speech at Notre Dame University. The event came shortly after the assassination attempt on Reagan’s life, but a recovered Commander in Chief delivered one heckuva speech all the same, according to Philbin.

“Yes, the ‘Gipper’ – now the leader of the free world – came back that day to give these graduates a rousing send-off that I’m sure each of them will remember forever,” he writes.

—–

At FreedomFest this July, Reason’s Matt Welch spoke with Marc Eliot, author of Reagan: The Hollywood Years. The book chronicles Ronald Reagan’s journey from sportscaster to actor to union president to politician.

Unlike critics who make sport of Reagan’s Hollywood output (Bedtime for Bonzo, anyone?), Eliot documents how backlot politics helped transform the once-proud “New Deal Democrat” into the embodiment of Goldwater conservatism. His tenure as head of the Screen Actors Guild was punctuated by episodes such as the time when he received death threats by one of Al Capone’s henchmen over a union dispute and his starring role in the negotiations that led to actors receiving residuals. And while Reagan’s film career ultimately petered out, he was for a time among the highest-paid contract actors of his day.

Shot by Jim Epstein and Zach Weissmueller. Edited by Anthony L. Fisher. About 9.15 minutes.

Held each July in Las Vegas, FreedomFest is attended by around 2,000 limited-government enthusiasts and libertarians a year. Reason.tv spoke with over two dozen speakers and attendees and will be releasing interviews over the coming weeks.

Go to http://Reason.tv for downloadable versions, and subscribe to our YouTube Channel to receive notifications when new content goes live.

Generation Y’s great filmmakers have not yet arrived. And don’t expect too many of them.

William Strauss and Neil Howe argue in their fourth book of generational theory, Millennials Rising, that the babies born from 1982 through 2003 are part of a “Civic” generation. This is the same as the GI Generation (the accurately named “Greatest Generation”) born from 1901-1924 who went through World War II as young adults.

The Greatest provided us with many cinematic giants but none made a deeper footprint on the 20^th century than Walt Disney. The Disney Effect came not just in the artistry of his films but his technological innovations and capitalist ventures. He constructed a billion-dollar corporation which has changed our lives. That’s what leaders of Civic generations do: build transformative institutions.

The Millennial Generation has already seen our Walt Disney emerge and release his equivalent of “Steamboat Willie.” It’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Facebook is only the primitive beginning of what he’ll build in the coming decades. Today because of our saturation in cartoons we fail to appreciate how groundbreaking “Steamboat Willie” and “Snow White” were to a world that had never seen such creatures. And so it shall go with Facebook in a few decades’ time.

Narrative films and television programs were America’s unifying, transformative cultural experience of the 20^th century. Computers, the internet, and technology are their equivalent for the 21^st.

If there was one key disagreement that I had with my friend Ben Shapiro over Primetime Propaganda it was how little he considered the implications of exponential technological growth in the political war with the Hollywood Left. Shapiro acknowledges in the book that a merging of television with the internet will happen someday but still argues that the primary goal of Hollywood conservatives should be to develop careers within the existing entertainment infrastructure.

It’s a worthwhile thought in spirit but such advice fails to consider the success of the blogosphere and Andrew Breitbart’s victories. It’s akin to urging conservative journalists in 2011 to try and get jobs at newspapers and magazines instead of just starting their own online publications.

Hollywood conservatives should be more concerned with developing their own technological, media, and entertainment properties in the world of the internet. They should be thinking not about the technological world as it is now, but rather as it will be 5, 10, 15, and 20 years down the road. (This is where the Silent Generation Doubt comes in – we must doubt that the cultural institutions we have had our whole lives will never become obsolete.)

Consider Transcendent Man, the recent documentary about inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil. The film is based on his 2005 book The Singularity is Near and builds on his past 20 years of accurate predictions of technological growth. This is the reality we forget: technology is constantly getting twice as powerful, half as expensive, and much smaller. And the speed of this doubling is accelerating. (Kurzweil has pretty startling predictions about how powerful computers will be by 2020, 2029 and 2050.) By anticipating the future technology we can position ourselves to dominate its use once it’s widely adopted.

Through Kurzweil we can see that the merging of TV with the internet is likely to happen much sooner (certainly within the decade) than most realize.

Movies and television are not always going to have the place in our lives that they did during the last 60 years. Not only will it continue to become cheaper and easier for the whole population to produce their own TV shows and movies, but the mediums themselves will become passé, like theatre and painting today. Roger Simon acknowledges as much in one of the sadder passages of Turning Right at Hollywood and Vine:

The dramatic film is, more than we admit, a superficial form and, in an odd way, dependent on its superficiality for its success. It is at its essence a quick emotional hit, a feeling that we are all engulfed with as we identify with the life on the screen, throwing ourselves into it. At its best (Casablanca, The Seven Samurai, Nights of Cabiria) this can be an inspiring experience with overtones of Aristotle’s catharsis, but it is not necessarily deep or complex. Nor is it engaging to the audience, except in a passive way. The interactive computer arts of the future may reach the mind and the emotions on far more significant levels.

This means that the Hollywood Left as we understand it is losing its powerbase. Just as the Left’s comfy home in the mainstream media is crumbling, so too with entertainment.

This was the great failure of Antonio Gramsci and the Frankfurt School (see chapter 6 in Righteous Indignation.) They thought that by persuading leftists to invest decades of time in seizing the “means of cultural production” – the media, arts, and universities – that Marxism could actually destroy the country. But they failed to understand how cultural institutions are just reactions to the technology of the period.

As technology transforms the way we live our lives the old institutions crumble. This is the opportunity facing Hollywood conservatives today. The three components of the previous generations – Silent Doubt, Boomer Aggression, and Gen-X Independence – require one final ingredient to unify them together: Gen-Y Optimism.

That was the key for Civic Generation President Ronald Reagan, and here’s what it looks like on film for those so beaten down in the age of Barack Obama that they have forgotten:

In many popular narratives of the period, it was the Baby Boomers (born 1943-1960) who “ruined” the movies. Here’s the pretentious film snob summary of the death of Hollywood’s alleged second Golden Age, as popularized by Peter Biskind. The seventies were filled with bold, dark art and transgressive intellectualism. Then the greedy Baby Boomers – like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas – made “Jaws,” “Star Wars,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and “E.T.” All of a sudden Hollywood did not want to make serious, grown-up pictures. Now it was the age of blockbusters so simple that 3-year-olds can summarize them.

It was the 1980s when Boomer Blockbuster filmmaking would arrive in the event pictures of Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson. We see this tendency further in the films of arch-Boomers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. For a definition of Boomer cinema just look at the output of their company Imagine Entertainment. These aren’t the New Wave-influenced pictures of Roger L. Simon’s generation.

It was the Boomers who also gave us our most strident and simpleminded cinematic leftists: Spike Lee, Oliver Stone, and Michael Moore. Think about these three careers. Over the past 30 years have any of them shifted an inch in their political thinking? Of course not and neither have most Boomers who are still arguing over sex, race, and the Vietnam War as though it were still 1975.

If I speak with some hostility about the Boomers’ failings and excesses it’s partially because that’s my nature as a Millennial/Gen Yer. According to William Strauss and Neil Howe’s books each generation acts as a check on the excesses of its parent generation. As young adults in the ‘60s and ‘70s the Baby Boomers declared war on the cultural institutions of their GI Generation parents. The GIs (born 1900-1924) are what Howe and Strauss describe as a “civic” generation; they were driven toward creating social harmony. The Boomers (an “idealist” generation) were a check on that, fomenting greater individualism in the 1970s and culture wars in the 1990s. That our electoral maps are so split today is their fault. When the Civic GI President Ronald Reagan won in 1984 it was almost a solid red map. My generation – also a Civic generation – is a reaction against Baby Boomer extremes and will seek to create greater social harmony. This will become much more apparent as the younger Gen Yers in junior high and high school now start to make waves in 10 years.

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet (born 1957) has been emblematic of the divisive Boomer paradigm for his whole career. His plays and films are famous for the “Mamet style” of short bursts of memorable dialogue and the mainstreaming of casual profanity.

And so in his book detailing his rightward shift away from a “Brain-Dead” Hollywood leftist, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture, the reader finds this same mindset applied to the political essay. The need to divide the world into clear cut categories of Liberalism and Conservatism pervades the text. Mamet even capitalizes them to Emphasize the Great Importance of the Political War between Boomer Liberalism and Boomer Conservatism. Gone is Simon’s sense of skepticism in Turning Right at Hollywood and Vine.

The Secret Knowledge is a collection of 39 short essays. Mamet has crafted an experience like the signature Boomer film “Forrest Gump.” Life is like a box of chocolates – and devouring the delicious morsels of Mamet’s book is an addictive treat, filled with surprises. Who cares if it’s just a political sugar rush? Most conservatives are familiar with the bibliography Mamet cribs his ideas from: Sowell, Hayek, VDH, Friedman, etc. Thus they won’t learn anything life-changing but will still enjoy the thrill of Mr. Mamet’s Wild Ride. And if that sentiment doesn’t summarize the Boomer cinema of Lucas-Spielberg-Bruckheimer-Moore-Stone then what does?

The endowment of the Baby Boomer Hollywood Apostates is the call to fight, the drive to confront with big special effects, and the need to divide ourselves from the intolerable. This makes for satisfying blockbuster popcorn films and effective (James Carville-Karl Rove style) political warfare. While there is plenty to critique in the failings of the Boomer presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush credit must be given: the Boomer political strategists were masters. Too bad they wasted their brains on winning the electoral fights while ignoring (and sometimes exacerbating) the more vital policy fights.

In Part 4 of the Hollywood Revolt, we’ll see how the Gen X leader Andrew Breitbart is reinventing this confrontational spirit – what he calls Righteous Indignation — and redirecting it in a more pragmatic, effective way than the Boomers ever could.

—–

As with the majority of the conservative artists in the Tea Party movement, Jeremy has been traveling around the country performing on his own dime and as many fellow musicians know, studio time costs a pretty penny.  Jeremy has set up a project page where fans can participate in the production of his new songs by helping defray some of his costs, getting a few “thank you” goodies in return, and even a shout-out in his video.

Here’s what Jeremy has to say about how he got started in music and how he ended up using his talents to wake his fellow Americans up:

That’s why every failed attack on her is simply followed by another more direct and more ruthless one, all of which are aimed at accomplishing what none has yet been able to accomplish: eliminating Palin as a viable political force.

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The latest attack is an anti-Palin propaganda film by British filmmaker Nick Broomfield. It’s a film that “promises to deliver the goods by FINALLY revealing the ‘truth’ about Sarah Palin.” (Broomfield’s plan to deliver “the goods” resides at least partially in the fact that former Alaska politicians and aides, who worked with and/or for Gov. Palin, are interviewed in the film.)

For example, John Bitney, Gov. Palin’s Legislative Director, shows up on camera to talk about how he spent so much time making excuses for the way Palin would sit at the table but remain “very unengaged in the conversation” with lawmakers. Said Bitney, “I would have to go around [after the meeting] and, you know, [say,] ‘there, there, she was really listening.’”

Is that it? Is that Broomfield’s dirt? People said the exact same things about President Ronald Reagan and he went on to defeat the Soviet Union and win the Cold War.

Of course, Broomfield doesn’t bother telling his audience that Palin noticed things about Bitney when he worked for her: like the fact he – a grown man – had trouble eating without getting his clothes in his food. (But I guess I wouldn’t mention that either if I were making an attack film built around Bitney’s testimony.)

Broomfield also relies on the testimony of another winner from Alaska’s political past: former Senate president Lyda Green.

Green is the politician who tried to block Gov. Palin from once committing the ghastly deed of moving a senate meeting from 7 pm to 6 pm: a move which Palin sought in order to have time to fly out following the meeting and see her son graduate basic training at Fort Benning, GA.

Green would have none of it because meetings were traditionally at 7 pm and that’s a tradition that shouldn’t be changed. (Somebody sounds like they might be wound a little too tight to me.)

Not surprisingly, Broomfield doesn’t bother telling viewers about Green’s attempted sabotage of Palin’s plans to see her son, but he does let Green tell us about how she “never felt that [Palin] was…connected to the business in the…Capital.” In fact, the way Green remembers things, Palin’s attendance in the Capital was “rather cursory.”

What’s strange about all this is that Palin had an 88% approval rating from the people of Alaska during the very time Bitney and Green claim she was aloof and not listening. (Again, it’s somewhat reminiscent of that “dumb cowboy” the left told us about – a.k.a. Ronald Reagan – who was never engaged in meetings yet managed to win every state but one in the electoral college on his way to re-election in 1984.)

Therefore, concerning the Broomfield propaganda film, I guess we’re left with the choice of either believing a left-leaning filmmaker who’s out to “deliver the goods” on Palin or the people of Alaska, who gave her a thumbs-up on job performance at ratio of almost 9 to 1.

For me, that’s not a hard choice at all.