I’ve been a professional actor for 40 years and, when asked, an open conservative for at least 43 years. Frequently I’m asked to explain why Hollywood is so liberal, a question which I hate because I’m not really qualified to explain the pack mentality or mental illness. My response is always something like, “Ask Spielberg or Oliver Stone why they love that stinking bastard Castro. They’re the ones who can answer your question.”

The second most frequent query is two pronged and relates to a conservative blacklist in Hollywood and what minority status is like on a day to day basis. This I can comment on. I believe Hollywood is now a liberal Bastille. This was not always so, but it is the reality now.  The atmosphere is intimidating and oppressive, but that’s not an official blacklist.  It’s more like viral note taken on wet cocktail napkins secretly passed between smug lib execs describing a young actor as a redneck loving Nazi simply because he said he supported President Bush. It’s a social network where you might have no advocates, but then again you might if you just happened to pull in $35 million over the weekend. I don’t want to borrow a phrase from Don Rumsfeld , but I only know what I know.  I don’t know what I don’t know and well, you know the rest; so I’ll rely only on my actual  experiences during my daily Hollywood business, and encounters of the first kind with two famous and now deceased liberal  Hollywood game players, Bruce Paltrow and Paul Newman. (more…)

March 16 will mark the 40th anniversary of the Broadway opening of “1776.”  Written by Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone, it went on to run for 1,217 performances.  It’s hard to believe that forty years ago it was still popular to write an unabashedly patriotic musical that openly celebrated American Exceptionalism and painted the founding fathers not just as humans but as the intellectual and moral giants that they were.  Because the 1972 film version is tantamount to a filmed version of the play rather than a Hollywood re-interpretation, its original intent and form is easily accessible to today’s audience.  It deserves a good look and therefore, is this week’s Sunday Matineé.  (more…)