Novelist Anne Rice loved the haunting 2010 film “The Stoning of Soraya M.” and asked her agent to see if he had seen the movie and, better yet, knew the filmmaker behind it – “the Path to 9/11” director Cyrus Nowrasteh.

Turns out her agent also represented Nowrasteh, and a connection was made. Nowrasteh told the agent he’d love to work with Rice some day, and soon the director had a copy of Rice’s 2005 book “Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt” in hand.

A few conversations later, and both sides decided to bring “Christ the Lord,” the diligently researched account of Jesus’ childhood, to the big screen.

What happened next is like the fast-forward version of modern movie making.

“The issue then became, ‘how can we set this up as a movie? Where can we take this?” he asks. “I had had worked with 1492 Pictures before. They looked at it and responded enthusiastically.”

Tensions can often flare between authors and filmmakers, but Nowrasteh reports a fluid give-and-take between his creative team, which includes his co-screenwriter and wife Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh. and Rice.

“Once we had a draft that everyone was excited about,  we kicked it back to her. We wanted her detailed input and participation,” he says.  “We felt a responsibility to her. We didn’t want to go out with the script until she put her stamp on it.”

It certainly helped that Rice is no stranger to films inspired by her texts.

“Anne understands the challenges inherent to adapting a novel to the screen,” he says, referring to Rice-inspired productions like “Interview with a Vampire” and “Queen of the Damned.”

“Christ the Lord,” is currently in pre-production, is what Nowrasteh calls a “work of informed fiction.”

“There’s a great chapter at the end of the book where she talks about her sources, what she worked from,” he says, including the New Testamanet, the Apocrypha and early legends pertaining to the life of Christ. “It’s not as if she sat down and made a story. She really did her research.”

This won’t be the first time Nowrasteh dealt with a religiously infused film. “Stoning” dealt with a cruel interpretation of faith in which an Iranian woman is condemned to death for defying the will of her husband.

“It was a small miracle that that movie got made,” the director recalls. “It was a territory where no one has gone before … something as barbaric and terrifying as stoning.”

The film earned its fair share of raves, but one critical reaction still wrankles Nowrasteh. The New York Times referred to the film’s grueling final act as “torture porn.”

“I found that really offensive,” he says, adding other critics contended the practice shown in the film is a thing of the past. Sadly, news of a fresh stoning case following the film’s U.K. release proved that to be a lie.

“If anything, our movie confirmed a lot of the things that were happening in Iran,” he says.

He expects “Christ the Lord” to get a far different reception, and he hopes the film won’t be pidgeonholed strictly as a “religious” film.

“This is a movie for religious poepe as well as for the masses,” he says. We want this movie to appeal to as abroad an audience as possible … it’s a beautiful story told with a great sort of understanding of the times and the period.”

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After learning of Ashtiani’s sentence, I re-watched the recent HBO documentary “For Neda” (which you can watch in the above clip) and was reminded that although it is not in the news that much anymore, we should not forget the plight of the people in Iran and their continued thirst for a better life for themselves.

Shohreh Aghdashloo (“The Stoning of Soraya M.”) narrated the film about the life of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman who was killed during an Iranian protest. “For Neda” begins with footage of Neda’s death. The devastating footage shows the young woman on the streets of Iran breathing her last after being shot. That footage earned the attention of millions who watched Neda’s last moments. Neda’s murder showed how cruel the Iranian regime could be and her death became a symbol of the fight for freedom in Iran.

One of the great things about the documentary is that the film shows how extraordinary Neda’s life actually was. In her death, Neda became a symbol to the international community but in life, she was a rebellious young woman who wanted and fought for a better future for her country.

The film introduces the audience to Neda’s heartbroken family, who continue to grieve her tragic death. The family tells personal details about Neda and they show the audience some of her belongings. Neda was passionate about books, clothes, music and the freedom to enjoy all of those comforts. Unfortunately, she was not able to fully enjoy many of those things as her life was ultimately cut short. The movie shows a beautiful dress that Neda bought shortly before her death, a dress she would  never wear.

The film also notes how little respect the government has for women, including Neda. A woman’s life, the narrator of the film notes, is worth half of a man’s life. A woman’s testimony is half as credible as a man’s. The narrator also states how the rules for stonings are different for men and women. Women are buried deeper into the ground and have less of a chance to escape when they are being stoned to death.

The brutality of the regime of Iran continues today with the death sentence of Ms. Ashtiani. Even though the stoning is on hold, a CNN.com story about the sentence being halted noted that her execution could still take place. The article noted that the Iranian regime seemed to “back away from an execution-by-stoning sentence, although it left open the possibility that Ashtiani could be executed by another method.”

The Iranian regime continues to be brutal even after receiving so much criticism last year in the wake of the controversial elections. We can only hope that Sakineh does not become a symbol of their brutality like Neda has become.

If you have not watched HBO’s documentary “For Neda,” it is definitely worth checking out. We can only hope that the Iranian regime stops the execution of Sakineh and ensures that “For Neda” merits no sequel.

 I recently had the opportunity to watch a new movie that focused on Iran entitled “Atomic Jihad: Ahmadinejad’s Coming War for Islamic Revival and Obama’s Politics of Defeat.” “Atomic Jihad” is a new documentary written and directed by Joel Gilbert. Because the movie often focuses on religion and the Middle East, it is bound to be a controversial film. The movie focuses on some extremists in the region including the current leader of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I am not as familiar with the region as Mr. Gilbert is so I cannot testify to the accuracy of everything in the movie but I can state that this film is worth watching for people who want to learn more about the history of the region.  

To me, the strongest part of the film focused on the disparity between the diplomatic rhetoric of President Obama and the harsh and demeaning rhetoric of President Ahmadinejad of Iran.

During the presidential campaign of 2008, President Obama received a lot of criticism for being open to talks with Iran and Mr. Ahmadinejad. According to a CNN.com article from late in that year, it was noted that “[t]he Obama-Biden Web site calls for ‘tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions.’” Since that time and Obama’s inauguration, Ahmadinejad has continued his angry rhetoric and made accusations against our nation including, according to CNN.com, his recent statement that the September 11th attacks were “a ‘big lie’ intended to pave the way for the invasion of a war-torn nation, according to Iranian state media.”

Gilbert’s film discusses the rhetoric of the two leaders and although Obama has seemingly become more forceful recently in talking about Iran’s leader, many would likely still argue that he has not been forceful enough especially after last year’s contentious election in Iran. In showing clips of the two leaders, Gilbert raises serious questions about our president’s diplomatic rhetoric. Although people on the left and right can disagree about the forcefulness of rhetoric that the president should use, both sides can likely agree that Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric throughout the past several years has been bitter and angry towards the United States and he continues to speak out against the U.S. and Israel, regardless of who the president of our nation is. Gilbert’s film is a small but important film about the region that raises serious questions about our president’s rhetoric concerning Iran. 

Gilbert’s film and the history depicted in it also raises a broader question about Iran at the movies. One wonders why more mainstream films have not been made about what is going on in that nation. Films about Iraq with major stars hadve received a lot of media attention.  However, many of the same mainstream celebrities depicted in movies about Iraq have not brought the same amount of attention to what is going on today in Iran.

Last year, I had the opportunity to interview Shohreh Aghdashloo for “Big Hollywood” about her movie “The Stoning of Soraya M.” Aghdashloo, who I noted in the article was the first Iranian to be nominated for an Academy Award for acting, has used her opportunities as an actress to tell important stories about Iran. Her most recent film doing that was “Soraya M.,” a movie that brought publicity to the cruel act of stoning people to death as punishment. Several years before that, she also appeared in the film “House of Sand and Fog,” a fictional story about an Iranian couple struggling to make a decent living in the United States.

It is disappointing that more mainstream actors, actresses and writers have not done more work to educate people about issues in Iran but it is great to see people like Mr. Gilbert and Ms. Aghdashloo try to bring attention to political issues surrounding that nation. There are many stories that should be told through films that have not been (including at least dozens of stories about the controversial elections last year and the protests afterwards). One hopes that with the box office failure of “The Green Zone” and other movies like it, celebrities will stop telling conspiracy stories about U.S. foreign policy and they start addressing real foreign policy issues (like the current situation in Iran) that are not getting the publicity they deserve.

The United Nations estimates as many as 5,000 Islamic women fall victim to so-called “honor killings” every year.  Whether reported or not, each instance is an appalling crime, utterly incompatible with any concept of honor.  It is the true nature of such honor killings Nowrasteh and his co-screenwriter (and wife) Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh graphically dramatize in the viscerally intense The Stoning of Soraya M., which richly deserves to be revisited now that it has been released on DVD. 

Freidoune Sahebjam was a French-Iranian journalist who exposed many of the Islamic Revolutionary regime’s human rights abuses.  When passing through a provincial town, a chance encounter with Zahra, a sophisticated older woman of the Shah’s secular era, leads to the biggest story of his career.  Just the day before, her niece Soraya was gruesomely executed for the crime of inconveniencing her husband.  As Sahebjam interviews Zahra, she bears witness to the terrible injustice that befell Soraya. 

Zahra explains the abusive Ali wanted a divorce, so he could marry the fourteen year old girl he lusted after.  However, he did not want to financially support Soraya or their two daughters.  Of course, none of this violates Islamic notions of honor according to the local mullah.  Rather than live up to his obligations, Ali conspired with the mullah to falsely accuse Soraya of adultery. In post-Revolutionary Iran, this was clearly the easiest (and cheapest) course of action for him.  After all, as the town’s mayor explicitly explains, if a husband accuses his wife of adultery, she must prove her innocence, but if a wife accuses her husband, she must prove his guilt. 

Given the film’s title and the framing device, it is no secret where Stoning will end.  It is not called the Narrow Escape of Soraya M., after all.  However, Nowrasteh (the Iranian-American writer and producer of The Path to 9/11) creates such a sense of mounting horror, it seems like the actual stoning will come as a relief.  And then it happens. 

Stoning is Soraya’s story, but it is Shohreh Aghdashloo’s film.  The Oscar-nominated Iranian-American actress gives a powerful, fearless performance as Zahra.  Not simply the film’s noble conscience, she is a nuanced, fully realized character—an intelligent, assertive, but ultimately vulnerable woman in a society which grants her no legal standing.  As Soraya, Mozhan Marnò avoids simply playing the innocent victim, investing her with surprising inner strength and resolution.  While only briefly seen during the wrap-around segments, Jim Caviezel is nearly unrecognizable but surprisingly effective as the intrepid Sahebjam. 

Re-watching Stoning on DVD, one is also struck by the work of David Diaan as Ebrahim, the town’s mayor, who reluctantly allows the stoning to proceed.  It is a quiet, perfectly pitched performance that conveys the all too human failings of cowardice, guilt, and resentment in a time of moral crisis. 

Filmed on location at an undisclosed Middle East locale, Stoning completely immerses the audience in its forbidding world.  It was not an easy shoot either, according to the more interesting than usual behind-the-scenes DVD extra featurette.  It is an uncompromising film, fueled by outrage, but also a truly moving human drama.  Aghdashloo deserved to be in Hollywood last weekend as an Oscar nominee (again), but alas . . .  At least Stoning now has a chance to reach on DVD.  Highly recommended, Stoning is a rare example of both genuinely bold filmmaking and compelling storytelling.

While the story itself is quite unnerving and will sit with you for days, what is most upsetting about the film is that it did not hit the mainstream in the way that it deserved. This is unfortunate because the story of Soraya should be heard all over the world.  

So often we hear of the injustices that occur in our world today, shake our heads and move on to our daily tasks not wholly understanding what we have just talked about.  This film doesn’t allow us to do that.  Instead, the film places a vivd and graphic picture of the suffering and torture that is occurring in our world at this very moment. This film is not about promoting political ideologies, or pushing religious dogma, but rather is about bringing awareness to a topic that is almost altogether ignored by our society, and does so with the highest of artistic integrity.  

As we seek to change the worldview of films that are made in Hollywood, it is incumbent upon us to support films like “The Stoning of Soraya M”, which simply tell a story, raise awareness, but do not preach.  If we, as viewers, want Hollywood to continue making films like this we must show the industry that these films are financially viable.  Therefore, I urge you to purchase a copy of “The Stoning of Soraya M.,” when was released yesterday on DVD.  If we are to help Hollywood to ever get back to a stage where it tells stories that are worth hearing, we can start by showing the way with a little cash.  In this town, that speaks louder than words.

But the drama, released today on DVD and Blu-ray, deserved a smattering of Oscar buzz all the same. What other movies bring the issue of Sharia law to light in such fashion? More importantly, why didn‘t Shohreh Aghdashloo’s blistering performance earn her a place in the Best Actress category?

“Stoning,” directed and co-written by “The Path to 9/11” screenwriter Cyrus Nowrasteh, takes us to a remote Iranian village under the thumb of Sharia law. Young, attractive Soraya (Mozhan Marno) is raising four children with little help from her husband, Ali (Navid Negahban). When Ali decides he’d rather be married to a 14-year-old Iranian girl, he tries to pressure Soraya into granting him a divorce.

When she refuses, Ali accuses her of sleeping with a villager for whom she provides housekeeping duties.

She’s clearly innocent, but Ali is able to muster enough manufactured evidence to reinforce his case. What follows is a harrowing march to the titular stoning, an unblinking vision of a culture which subjugates women and human decency.

What sets “Stoning” apart is the detail Nowrashteh brings to the narrative. The villagers aren’t caricatures save for the villainous Ali, and we get to see the smaller moments of the village come alive.

The stoning itself is a horror movie more frightening than “Saw” or “Hostel.” It’s difficult to watch, but the director clearly wants people to understand the ramifications of cultural rot.

The film’s framing device delivers some clunky exchanges, but the sheer power of “The Stoning of Soraya M.” cannot be denied.

The Blu-ray extras include a three-part documentary detailing how “Stoning” came to be. The featurette could use some editing, but it’s noteworthy for showing a film director lose his cool on the set. Most DVD extras are simply glib shout-outs to the product in question.

The extras also detail the balancing act the crew accomplished in dealing with untrained movie extras and physical hardships which made each day of shooting a struggle.

Nowrasteh, an Iranian-American himself, says he insisted on casting Iranian actors in the main roles as a way to honor the country.

The modestly budgeted film suffered from on-set language barriers, a remote location with limited transportation access and having to stop production five times a day to allow for prayers.

“The surrounding craziness helped the movie,” Nowrasteh says. “It gave an air of reality to everything. This was not make believe.”

Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh, the director’s wife and “Stoning’s” co-screenwriter, says the film was meant to honor real women, like Soraya, who suffer at the hands of cruel cultural traditions.

“We’re trying to illuminate something that isn’t talked about enough,“ she says.

The Stoning of Soraya M., from writer-director Cyrus Nowrasteh and Mpower Pictures, tells the true story of a woman in a remote Iranian village in the wake of the fundamentalist revolution of 1979, who is falsely accused of adultery and then stoned to death by a mob desperate to cleanse themselves of this rumored affront to their collective honor and to their religion. It’s not only a gripping story in its own right, but it also focuses a harsh spotlight on the shocking reality that stoning still exists in the Iranian penal code. The movie has been reviewed and written about many times on Big Hollywood, as well as listed among the site’s 10 best movies of 2009. (Look for it on DVD from Lion’s Gate in March)

Despite official condemnation of the film in Iran and a government clampdown on cell phone and Internet traffic as the country wrestles with revolution, word is getting out from sources close to the filmmakers that bootleg DVDs of The Stoning of Soraya M. are being shared secretly by Iranian citizens and shown in private homes in Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan, and elsewhere. These sources must be kept anonymous, of course, since arrested protesters there have an unfortunate tendency to be allegedly raped and allegedly tortured, if not allegedly killed. 

In one e-mail dated New Year’s Day, for example, a woman wrote that her “cousin was in a party last night and everybody was talking about [Nowrasteh’s] movie. They all liked it. The movie is all over.” Another woman’s message: “We send our greetings and we congratulate you on ‘Soraya.’ The word that we’re hearing is that if they find this film in anyone’s hands they will be jailed. People fear for their safety and are choked off from the outside world, telephone conversations are monitored…it’s bad.” And yet another source relates that “I was at the hairdresser yesterday and two women were talking about a movie called SANGSAR [Stoning] that they had seen and they like it a lot. I asked about it and they said the dvd is all over Tehran… It is a perfect time for the movie with the mess that is going on here.”

When the film was released in the States last summer, Iranian-American viewers in some communities stood at the end and proclaimed “Down with the regime! Death to the dictator!” Now viewers inside Iran are feeling a similar surge of defiance after watching it, and it has been stiffening their resolve as protesters clash with riot police and the paramilitary Basij on the streets in that “mess that is going on here.” Iranian citizens reportedly see Stoning as dramatic confirmation of why the demonstrations against apocalyptic madman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his cleric-in-crime, the Ayatollah Khamenei, are taking place – and why women are at the forefront of them, challenging the totalitarians in power just as Soraya’s fearless aunt Zahra confronted the village hypocrites in the film.

Audiences elsewhere have responded to the unforgettable movie’s impact since its premiere at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival, where Stoning won Runner-up for the Audience Choice Award. It also won Second Runner-up for the Cadillac People’s Choice Award, the Audience Award for Best Feature at the Los Angeles Film Festival, the Heartland Truly Moving Picture Award, the Broadcast Film Critics Association’s Critics’ Choice Award, and the Ghent Film Festival’s Canvas Audience Award. At the Satellite Awards, it was named one of 2009’s Top Ten Films and nominated for Best Drama, while its star Shohreh Aghdashloo won Best Actress in a Drama. 

(And yet the Film Independent Spirit Awards, created to celebrate “unique, provocative” films, entirely ignored the movie – one for which the cast and crew literally put their lives and those of their relatives at risk by working on it, and one for which viewers in Iran now put their lives at risk by merely watching it. A movie doesn’t get more provocative than that – but I suppose Film Independent had to make room among its nominees for truly edgy fare like, say, (500) Days of Summer.)

Now The Stoning of Soraya M. is a secret hit in Iran. At a time when many film critics and viewers are feeling a thrill up their collective leg over Cameron’s technical mastery, Stoning’s risky popularity is a reminder that the emotional core and storytelling power of such a film can embarrass the powers-that-be and embolden a brutalized populace to resist, even in the face of imprisonment and execution. Long after the vertigo – or depression, as the case may be – induced by the shiny spectacle of Avatar wears off, Stoning will likely be remembered for the part it is playing in history. 

The real Soraya’s tale has come full circle. Her execution may have been a gut-wrenching tragedy from Iran’s previous revolution, which ushered in a fundamentalist theocracy; but thanks to filmmakers who dared to revive her story, Soraya is helping to empower a new revolution that might just steer Iranians toward freedom.

Catholic Digest has a fascinating interview with Jim Caviezel, star of “The Stoning of Soraya M.” Here’s an excerpt:

This guy I know said, ‘You’re pro-life. Tell you what, if you really believe in what you speak, adopt a child — not any child, he’s got to have a serious deficiency,’ (and I will become pro-life). He never changed his (position), but it convicted me. I don’t think he thought I would step up to the plate.

I was listening to Johnny Mathis the other day and I said, “What an amazing voice.” I have yet to hear another person sound like Johnny Mathis. How are we so arrogant to think the 51.5 million babies who have died in this country… Look, I am for helping women. I just don’t see abortion as helping women. And I don’t love my career that much to say, “I’m going to remain silent on this.” I’m defending every single baby who has never been born. And every voice that would have been unique like Johnny Mathis’. How do we know that we didn’t kill the very child who could have created a particular type of medicine that saves other lives?

There’s much more about both “Soraya M.” and “The Passion of the Christ.”

Several weeks ago, I wrote an article for “Big Hollywood” about the importance of that new film and Aghdashloo’s work as an actress who speaks up for voiceless women. As a follow-up to that article, I had the opportunity to conduct a phone interview with the Oscar nominee who, one day before I spoke to her, was nominated for an Emmy award for her role in the miniseries “House of Saddam.” During the interview, Ms. Aghdashloo spoke about the current situation in Iran, her work in the film “The Stoning of Soraya M.”, and what attracts her to certain projects.

“Whatever happens, Iran will not be the same,” Ms. Aghdashloo said about the recent protests in that country. Although the media attention about the situation in Iran has faded recently, Aghdashloo saw the great potential that the rallies and the protests had a few weeks ago. She told me that the recent events in Iran changed that country and that now the genie was “out of the bottle.” Unfortunately, she also said that the “situation today is worse than a few weeks ago” because of the political prisoners now being held in that nation. Although she has not returned to Iran since the revolution happened thirty years ago, Aghdashloo continues to follow the situation there closely and she still has relatives in the country.  

Iran has not always recognized Aghdashloo’s work as an actress. As she recently told The Washington Post, “Up until the Oscar nomination, my name was banned. Nobody mentioned my name. They knew what I was doing but never mentioned it officially. But I’ll never forget: My mother called and said, ”Your name is in the newspapers.” And this time it was ‘our Shohreh Aghdashloo has been nominated.’”

In terms of her new movie “The Stoning of Soraya M.”, Aghdashloo spoke knowingly about the inhumane practice of stoning. Describing it as being “beyond humanity,” she told me about a video of a real-life stoning that she had watched on video two decades ago where two men were stoned to death for being homosexuals. After watching the video, Aghdashloo told me that she could not eat properly for several days. She then said that she had news for people who question the intensity of the brutal stoning scene near the end of “The Stoning of Soraya M.”– the real act is much, much worse. The video she watched of a real-life stoning was over an hour and a half, she said. As her character in the movie tells the story of the real Soraya M., whose story was told in a book of the same name, Aghdashloo said that, through the publicity for the movie, “I am telling the reporters now what happened.”

During the interview, Aghdashloo also spoke about the choices she makes in finding her newest projects. In looking at a new project, she noted that she looks for metaphors and symbols about the deeper meaning of the project. She also stated that she feels like she has a “duty to tell stories from Iran” and she described herself as “an actress with a mission.” It is no surprise then that Aghdashloo chooses projects like “The Stoning of Soraya M.” that has a clear mission of shedding light on the inhumane practice of stoning that still occurs  in some parts of the world today.

Five years after her Oscar nomination, Aghdashloo’s career continues to flourish. I spoke to her briefly about her recent Emmy nomination for “House of Saddam.” She said that the nomination was “incredible.” With an Oscar nomination, an Emmy nomination and a collection of projects that includes television roles on “Grey’s Anatomy,” “24” and “ER” and roles in such films as “House of Sand and Fog” and “The Stoning of Soraya M.,” many could use the same word to describe Aghdashloo’s career. I have no doubt that the thousands of women she felt accompanied her to the Academy Awards half a decade ago would be proud of the work she has done and look forward to what projects she chooses to pursue in the future.

[Ed. Note: "The Stoning of Soraya M." is now playing in select theatres. Please visit here for a list of locations.]

People, this is OUR Fortress Hollywood! This is OUR sanctuary! Since when the hell do we care about what demagogues like Keith Olbermann think or say? Or any other mental tinfoil hat Lefties like Garofalo for that matter? It’s like Churchill worrying about Hitler calling him a fat cigar-chomping drunk! Who won that fight, and why? And who was in the right, despite all the insipid name-calling?

Time to grow a pair, people. It’s also time to raise the stakes. Now, I’ve heard from some contributors here at BH that it is really bad in Hollywood in places. That people might even lose their jobs if they spoke up like I do here. If true, that’s McCarthyism at its worst. Fortunately, that’s not my experience. I still have great relationships with people in the biz who could care less about politics. All they care about is finding great scripts or literary works to adapt, and telling great stories on film.

And that is where the battle really needs to be fought: on their playing ground. An insurgency of ideas, if you will. Example. Just under the Big Hollywood sign today, I saw the banner “TNT’s ‘The Closer’ Thrives on Strong Moral Foundation.” That PJM-linked article describes how The Closer, a show that portrays the border, the illegals situation, and even the cops themselves in very gritty and realistic fashion, is the top-rated scripted show on ad-supported cable since its inception.

The Pajamas Media reviewer, Jim Kearney, finished off his glowing review with this statement:

Perhaps if we spent more time following positive stories about law enforcement professionals, it would elevate consciousness and support for crime fighters in our culture.

Bingo! Give that man a Kewpie doll! Because he just threw down the same gauntlet I’m about to throw down to all of you conservative creative types, and it extends far beyond just cop stories. Screw what Lefties think! No changing minds there. But we conservatives believe what we believe for good reasons. In fact, only 21% of Americans identify themselves as liberal, the majority conservative. That’s a lot of box office just waiting to be tapped.

We conservatives need to address our talents not only to making better films than Hollywood Lefties do, but better films than anyone. The foundations are already there. How we can succeed in Hollywood, and reel ‘em in at the box office, is by telling great compelling stories with universal themes that in and of themselves advance our values systems, like the aformentioned The Closer. In the end, Hollywood is a business. If You Write It, They Will Come. Box office talks and BS walks.

The story should always come first. It is great compelling stories that should drive a film’s politics, not the other way around. That is the big mistake Hollywood Lefties make, and why they bomb so badly with politically-motivated films. The best way we can succeed is with desperately compelling stories that demand to be told. Success is the best revenge. And with the best stories, the morality and politics are already embedded. Just like Geraldo Rivera in Iraq, remember?

Examples. Even today Ben Hur, which still ranks #13 all-time in adjusted dollars, retains wide and astonishing popularity fifty years on. The other Biblical Charlton Heston classic, the Demille-directed Ten Commandments, is holding steady at #5 all-time adjusted. It also remains a very popular film. The over-the-top success of Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, a film project every major studio in Hollywood turned its collective noses up at, is confirmation that there is still a huge religious market just waiting to spend their money on great moral Biblically-themed films.

If they’re done right. They must first and foremost be great compelling stories with universal themes.

The irony here is, I am not a religious person. But my Dad was a Baptist deacon, and I know vast swaths of the Bible inside out. And I LOVE Ben Hur! Who doesn’t? From purely business and film perspectives, I see great stories there just waiting to be told. But they have to be told in the right way. Ben Hur, despite its Biblical underpinnings, is perhaps the greatest epic revenge tale of all time. Who didn’t pump their fists when Massalah fell under his chariot and got trampled underfoot?

Ultimately, films should reveal their morality without being preachy. Ben Hur does not advocate conversion to Christianity. Nor does Passion of the Christ. But what both of those extraordinarily successful films share is great storytelling in a moral Biblical context. Story is all. In the framework of great marketable stories, we can advance our ideals of, say, true lifelong romance as opposed to freestyle sex. Huge market. Harlequin didn’t become the mega-empire it is today by promoting the zipless fuck. They did it by tapping into every woman’s deep inner yearning for True Romance.

In short, the best films don’t preach. They don’t even tell. They throw moral monkey wrenches at us during moments of extreme conflict. They make we, the audience, judge and jury. To me, the best dramatic films are morally ambiguous in the extreme. A Clockwork Orange, for example. Kubrick just threw it all in our faces and left us to ponder all the dark moral conundrums. The moral dividing line in film, as I see it, isn’t right and left. It’s right and wrong. Even between very wrong and evilly wrong.

Examples. What would you do differently as Denzel Washington’s John Creasey character in Man On Fire? Or Dirty Harry? Or Liam Neeson in Taken? Or Gene Hackman’s Popeye Doyle character in The French Connection, with New York about to be flooded with potentially fatal high-grade heroin? Would you push the envelope of the law as Popeye did? Perhaps most relevant to today, and which fellow BH contributor Matt Patterson so eloquently examined in his post The Dark Knight: Year One, what would you NOT do to stop Heath Ledger’s Satanic megalomaniac Joker?

Isn’t even American Gangster an epic American tale of good and evil? Super Cop vs. Superfly? Even Pulp Fiction, as decadent as all the characters in that brilliant film are, contains a gritty street morality we can all understand, as does The Shield. And what gritty gin-soaked smoke-clouded morality could possibly be higher than that of Casablanca? Yet I also believe that most of those films, not by design but by default, actually advocate the conservative position of imperfect people making tough, often distasteful decisions, and taking violent action with resolute determination when necessary.

All of those films and TV shows I’ve listed are populated with dark, troubled anti-heroes who make very unsavory choices, and aren’t necessarily people we’d want marrying our daughters. Yet in each case, varying degrees of evil are put side by side, and we are left to decide which is the lesser. If you are repulsed by, but deep-down agree with, the brutal actions of such outside-the-law characters as Vic Mackey, Dirty Harry and John Creasey, and what they do to enact vengeance and street justice on the slimiest of perps to either save or avenge their victims, you just might be a conservative.

By contrast, do you really think many Lefties, especially the ACLU, would have given Bruce Wayne the same slack on omniscient cellphone monitoring, no matter what the threat, as Lucius Fox gave Batman to take down the Joker, however personally unpleasant that choice was to Mr. Fox? Or given The Shield’s Vic Mackey the green light to pummel a sick child molester to find out where Dr. Perv had a young girl locked away and possibly dying?

Or given Man On Fire’s John Creasey carte blanche to jam a C-4 Easter egg up a corrupt Mexican cop’s ass in order to extract information on the kidnapping and presumed murder of Dakota Fanning’s Pita Ramos? Ya, as if! Yet in all those cases, those characters get right in our faces and demand of us, “what would YOU do in this situation?”

Sometimes the questions themselves are way more important than any answers. In fact, sometimes the questions ARE the point. The greatest, most compelling stories have moralities and politics all their own and tell us what they are, not by preaching or shoving the answers in our faces, but by raising troubling questions that force us to ask, “what would we do?”

Even in comedy, there is a deep morality in Leslie Nielsen’s Frank Drebin pounding the crap out of the Ayatollah Khomeini and wiping the birthmark off Gorbachev’s forehead in Naked Gun, or Stewie giving Osama bin Laden a Naked Gun-like beatdown in Family Guy. But that morality is just a side benefit of writing great comedy that everybody gets deep-down, like Team America: World Police. It’s the ultimate in vicarious fun. What Americans, besides Lefties, wouldn’t want to do all that?

The larger point here being, we should always strive to make the best movies and documentaries possible that expound on and examine closely our ideas and values as conservative Americans, without actually expounding on or examining them. Just present the story, the facts and the evidence, and all else follows. It’s the Art of Fighting Without Fighting, as Bruce Lee so eloquently put it.

A lot of great compelling stories for documentaries, too. The Iraqi national soccer team, once tortured, now heroes. Played their first home game in Iraq last week since the Saddam era. Was a smash hit. A great human interest story, with political overtones that go way beyond soccer. If they lose now, they’re still heroes. As opposed to Uday Hussein making them kick concrete soccer balls.

For much darker subjects, there is the ethnic cleansing of black Americans from LA neighborhoods by illegal racist Mexican gangs. Of how Los Zetas and the drug cartels now control and use our southern border like the Taliban and Al Qaeda use Pakistan’s. Or how Phoenix is now the second-ranking kidnapping capitol of the world, behind only Mexico City. Again, all you have to do is present the ugly stories on the ground and let the viewers decide. The human stories drive the politics, see?

Another great doc subject would be Iran’s Green Revolution and the regime’s iron-fisted response. I would include in such a documentary the fate of the dead and imprisoned protesters, the role of modern technology in fostering a democratic uprising in a fascist state, and how it all symbolizes the eternal struggle between those who seek freedom, and those who seek to crush it to remain in power. But it is the personal accounts and tragedies that should reveal its morality, not a narrator.

As to purely feature films, I am very much looking forward to the upcoming Lone Survivor hitting theaters. Peter Berg, who is slated to direct the project for Universal, seems a most capable director, and the producers can’t fail if they stick to what made Lone Survivor a huge bestseller. In other words, if they just tell the story and leave politics out of it. That said, I sure would have liked to have seen what Spielberg and Michael Bay could have done with that story on film.

Inglourious Basterds is also high on my must-see list this summer. Makes a nice bloody contrast to all that liberal Lefty nailbiting about CIA hit teams lately. What’s the big problem there, anyway? I LOVED the Dirty Dozen! Looked like a plan. Why shouldn’t we unleash all our condemned Maggotts on Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in exchange for a shot at freedom? Liberals are such pussies!

Lastly, being conservative doesn’t mean being a stuffed-shirt Polly Prim. I’m as rude and raunchy a bastard as they come, just like Mozart. Six years Navy, okay? My writing reflects that. For those of you out in BigHollywoodLand who took such offense at my taking the name of the Lord in vain, you’re in the wrong place. Now, I don’t curse just to offend. But like my idol Gen. George S. Patton Jr., when I want it to stick, I give it to ‘em loud and dirty. Just like my Baptist deacon Dad did behind the wheel.

But just as you can tell a very high moral tale by creating a landscape of pure evil and forcing characters to make desperate and irrevocable choices, you can also tell a story with a romantic or moral heart with the crudest humor and language imaginable. Wedding Crashers, anyone? By the way, Rotten Tomatoes favorably reviews Wedding Crashers as “both raunchy and sweet.”

I rest my case.

I am fully on the same page with one scribe who said, “I write extreme right-wing material with extremely raunchy language.” I could have been looking in a mirror when I read that. But in the end, it’s all about great films and great stories. Yet all the greats have contained within them important moral and political themes and parables, be it A Bugs’s Life or Taken.

By writing or adapting great stories that contain within them the core values we as conservatives believe, as do most Americans, we can take control of the fight. If we’re lucky, control of the box office, too. Far more Americans consider themselves conservative than liberal. We have a distinct advantage. We can wage our insurgency of ideas within the system. And we can do it with great stories in so subtle a way even Hollywood Lefties wouldn’t know they’re making a conservative-themed film. Best of all, they won’t even care if the story’s a total can’t-miss winner.

A lot of it starts with conservative writers like me, or like-minded producers and other Hollywood professionals choosing great stories to adapt from existing literary works or screenplays, and pushing hard until they’re made. The Stoning of Soraya M. is one good example. The Passion of the Christ is perhaps the gold standard. No major studio in Hollywood would touch it, but who was right? The studios or Mel Gibson? Whose minds were closed there?

Most important, who laughed all the way to the bank? Box office talks and BS walks, and I believe there is a ton of box office yet to be reaped from some great stories that are just dying to be made. So if I don’t show up here at Big Hollywood for awhile, y’all know what I’m doin’. Break a leg, All!

P.S. As an entertaining aside I’ve just discovered, it seems the founder of Air America is on the same page as Rush Limbaugh when it comes to the Orwellian Fairness Doctrine.

Hope Springs Eternal