Chief Chris Kyle was a Navy Seal for ten years. He served four combat tours in Iraq, earned numerous medals, saved countless lives and accomplished more than most men walking around in this great country ever will. He has now retold his experiences in the new autobiography “American Sniper,” which hits book shelves today.

Chief Kyle tells his story in what must be dubbed a “no bull” manner. He has little time for political correctness or even political incorrectness. He’s certainly not a writer. But that is what makes what is written so good and his story so compelling. Chief Kyle ignores irony and trying to push either a political agenda or an emotional one. He simply writes his story. The emotions and everything else come naturally through. You can feel Chief Kyle sitting in a chair allowing us the privilege of hearing his story, his story of bravery. Bravery is too clichéd a word, though. What Chief Kyle experienced is beyond bravery. His pureness in his patriotism, his Christianity, his need for battle, his love for family breathes a freshness into the words on each page. Chief Kyle gives himself to us for 379 pages despite already giving us so much.

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You have to see this to believe it. And yes, that’s a Palestinian flag Lupe Fiasco is proudly waving — which goes perfectly with the song lyrics posted below.

Big Journalism editor Dana Loesch, who watched the show, tells me that she found Erykah Badu performing in a “fashionable” burqa especially ironic when BET is the same network airing PSAs about black female empowerment.

As long as they look cool and are all multi-cultural, I guess symbols of female enslavement aren’t necessarily all bad.

“Words I Never Said” (lyrics)

It’s so loud Inside my head
With words that I should have said!
As I drown in my regrets
I can’t take back the words I never said
I can’t take back the words I never said

I really think the war on terror is a bunch of bullshit
Just a poor excuse for you to use up all your bullets
How much money does it take to really make a full clip
9/11 building 7 did they really pull it
Uhh, And a bunch of other cover ups
Your childs future was the first to go with budget cuts
If you think that hurts then, wait here comes the uppercut
The school was garbage in the first place, that’s on the up and up
Keep you at the bottom but tease you with the uppercrust
You get it then they move it so you never keeping up enough
If you turn on TV all you see’s a bunch of “what the fucks”
Dude is dating so and so blabbering bout such and such
And that ain’t Jersey Shore, homie that’s the news
And these the same people that supposed to be telling us the truth
Limbaugh is a racist, Glenn Beck is a racist
Gaza strip was getting bombed, Obama didn’t say shit
That’s why I ain’t vote for him, next one either
I’ma part of the problem, my problem is I’m peaceful
And I believe in the people.

(more…)

USA Today:

The team behind 24 has a new take on terrorism in Homeland, premiering Sunday on Showtime (10 ET/PT).

The show revolves around two damaged protagonists: Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis), a Marine sniper missing in Iraq since 2003 and presumed dead, then discovered as a prisoner of war; and CIA counterterrorism analyst Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), who had been warned by an informant a POW was “turned” into a traitor and now suspects Brody is tied to an imminent attack. 

He’s welcomed home to suburban Washington as a hero and treated as a “poster boy” for the war, but he’s having problems readjusting to society and his family. She’s bipolar — she calls it a “mood disorder” — and is obsessively tracking Brody after a misstep that derailed her career as a case officer.

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The Washington Times is wrong. Hollywood wasn’t AWOL in the War on Terror. In fact, just the opposite is true. Hollywood summoned every ounce of financial and star power at their disposal to fight this war.

Unfortunately, they chose to fight for the other side.

If our history is written by honest brokers, this generation of Hollywoodists will be remembered as those who openly enabled evil and spent hundreds of millions of dollars making bombs for the enemy — box office bombs. Over a dozen of them, specifically engineered with equal parts lies and hate and propaganda to undermine morale at home and on the battlefield in the hopes that we would lose this war.

Never forget the crime committed in New York, Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon on that terrible day.  And never forget  how Hollywood turned on your country.

There were some exceptions, however, and chief among them was Joel Surnow, the co-creator of “24.” Each week, for eight seasons, he gave this country a hero who openly loved America, did what was necessary to protect her, and who was willing to pay a terrible price for it. ”24″ also delivered the goods. Cathartic, exciting and righteous without being self-righteous, the addictive adventures of Jack Bauer became an oasis in a cesspool of Hollywood product delivering the exact opposite message.

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Novelist Andrew Klavan wanted a break after penning his 2010 thriller “Empire of Lies,“ a grueling expose on liberal media bias in the Age of Terror.

“I had to do something different. I needed a change,“ Klavan says.

What Klavan got instead was a phone call imploring him to get back to work.

“Have you ever thought of writing a young adult novel?“ his publisher asked during an out of the blue cell phone conversation. The only other time Klavan had dabbled in the genre was while living in England. He recalled coming home every day from that gig telling his wife, “it was the most fun I ever had [writing].”

“I instantly said, ‘yes,‘” Klavan told his publisher, and the Homelanders series was born.

“The Final Hour,” the fourth and final book in the series following “The Last Thing I Remember,“ “The Long Way Home” and “The Truth of the Matter,“ finds young Charlie West trying to halt an impending terrorist attack. He’ll have to escape from prison, risk his life reclaiming lost memories and find enough people to believe he holds the key to stopping a jihadist assault on a major city.

Writing for a youthful audience required a different approach, but Klavan says that helped him broaden his range as a writer.

“It changed the vocabulary I used, and a lot of my attitudes … it limited the number of tools I had,” he says. “It’s always an exhilarating experience as an artist. You have these limitations and you have to make them work.”

Klavan, who grew up in Great Neck, Long Island, says he wanted to write for as long as he can remember.

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Two of the best military documentaries since Jake Rademacher’s Brothers at War premiered at the G. I. Film festival last weekend to incredible audience enthusiasm.  David Scantling’s Patrol Base Jaker and Mitty Giffis Mirrer’s Gold Star Children captured viewers with two completely divergent looks at the War on Terror.  Patrol Base Jaker won the G. I. Film Festival’s coveted Best Documentary Feature Award telling the behind the scenes story of a successful counter insurgency mission that many in the liberal press don’t want to acknowledge.

This is NOT a propaganda piece – Jaker shows just how difficult the job of counterinsurgency is, and how successful and rewarding it can be. The 1st Battalion 5th Marine Regiment’s Regimental Combat Team 3, the 1st Combat Engineer Battalion, Combat Logistics Battalion 8 and the unit’s highly motivated civil affairs teams took over Patrol Base Jaker in the almost deserted Taliban controlled town of Nawa-l-Brakzayi in Helmand Province. The British unit that was relieved had been so under manned that they had to over depend on air support that sometimes killed and wounded local civilians.

Enter Jaker’s commanding officer Colonel William McCollough, a scholar-warrior of the best type who commands through example, intelligence and understanding. McCollough’s officers, NCO’s and enlisted personnel not only push back the Taliban from Nawa but implement a large number of successful civil affairs missions, ranging from rebuilding and resupplying local schools, clearing irrigation ditches and providing wheat seed to replace the poppies that help fund the Taliban. They also reinvigorate the abandoned market place, gradually getting the locals to bringing back almost 80 merchants and do their best to help reform the corrupt local governmental hierarchy and police. This is a film about gaining trust, one uneasy step at a time. (more…)

You’re not only able to understand people through their belief system but also through the priority of that belief system. With all the problems in the world right now, here you have an Oscar-winning, multi-millionaire film director who chooses to use his celebrity soapbox to defend … Osama bin Laden.

Excellent work from the Wrap:

The Oscar-winning director has been tweeting about his belief that Bin Laden should have received a trial, and his theory that Pakistan was keeping the Al Qaeda head under house arrest. TheWrap grilled Moore about his controversial views. 

Is Obama lying about how Bin Laden died?

Common sense tells you he was executed. That was the plan all along. Just tell us that and quit treating us like children.

I have a lot of faith in Obama, but we’ve received three different stories in three days. We heard, “There was a firefight.” “He used a woman as a shield.” Now it turns out none of these things were true. He wasn’t armed.

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It was Greek dramatist Aeschylus (525 BC – 456 BC) who wrote: “In war, truth is the first casualty.” Photographer, journalist and Academy Award-nominated filmmaker (for his documentary Restrepo) Tim Hetherington was the man who tried to prove otherwise.

War’s casualties have never felt more cruel.

Tim Hetherington, always a seeker of truth, was killed yesterday while covering the conflict in Misrata, Libya. Chris Hondros, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated photographer was also killed. Two other photographers, Guy Martin and Chris Brown, were injured. There is always an understanding of (and no way to prepare for) the possibility that those who follow their mission into the war zone may not make it back alive. Unfortunately it is a given that comes with the territory. There is even less inclination to prepare for the possibility that someone who is in that war zone not as a soldier, but as a journalist, will be among the fallen.

News of Tim’s death first came via Facebook. (It was an honor to be one of the 1,197 friends that stayed in touch with Tim and his work on Facebook, where he was sometimes known as ‘The Timinator.’) It was here that his friend and fellow photographer in Libya, André Liohn, posted the news that no one ever wants to read. As has become my habit with breaking news, I checked Twitter for the latest update. The last tweet on his Twitter account was posted on Tuesday and read “In besieged Libyan city of Misrata. Indiscriminate shelling by Qaddafi forces. No sign of NATO.”

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“When I finished writing Empire of Lies I looked into the mirror and said, ‘Son, you’re never going to win another writer’s award.” Successful novelist, screenwriter and political/cultural pundit Andrew Klavan grins at me over his coffee in a decidedly left-of-center “enemy camp” coffee house. Meeting with Klavan in a place like Studio City’s Aroma Café makes me feel like Patton’s Third Army has just shown up to support my tiny and outnumbered rifle squad.

Empire of Lies is Klavan’s fast-paced, gritty novel that features a conservative Christian protagonist who uncovers an extremist Muslin plot to kill hundreds, but can’t convince a duplicitous media of the terrible truth. Think of it as a kind of North by Northwest meets the War on Terror.  The 2008 political thriller was a daring poke in the eye to the elitist New York and Hollywood left. His flawed heroes are part of what sets his writing apart. They’re made of flesh and blood with their own personal failings. “That’s my nature, I can’t write them any other way.”

Klavan’s erudite style and gutsy prose in books and screenplays like True Crimes, Don’t Say a Word, The Animal Hour, Corruption, Dynamite Road and the recently released Identity Man have earned him dazzling reviews, incredible sales, prestigious writing awards and international acclaim. His popular and no-holds-barred young adult series The Homelander, deals with the exploits of a teenager who wakes up to find himself in a radical Muslim United States and fights back.     

“As a writer you’re artist and business man. You are your business, but you have to speak the truth, too.  In the past I’d get two-hundred reviews on any of my other books, all great. Empire of Lies got one major review, which accused me of being a right-wing crackpot. Can I prove that happened because the central character is a conservative Christian and the bad guys are the media and Islamic jihadists?  No, but it all seems pretty strange.” 

Last year Klavan caused more than a few Hollywood lefties to choke on their morning croissants when he published a Los Angeles Times opinion piece dealing with the liberal blacklisting of film industry conservatives. Several so-called Hollywood journalists attacked Klavan demanding proof with a snooty attitude of, “We all know that conservative writers and filmmakers are just not as creative as liberals.”  (more…)

Just two months after the murderous attacks of September 11th and on behalf of the Bush administration, Karl Rove went to left-wing Hollywood to meet with top entertainment executives in the hopes of enlisting them to help with America’s war effort. Though the politics of the situation were reversed, the same thing happened during WWII. Just after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, the left-leaning Roosevelt administration asked for help from a Hollywood mostly run by right-leaning studio execs who were, to say the least, neither fans of the New Deal or the president. 

The contrast in what resulted from these two cinematic call to arms is as stark as it is revealing.

Paul Haggis and Julie Christie wear orange ribbons to the 2008 Oscars on behalf of the terrorists held at Gitmo.

In 1941, Hollywood both figuratively and literally went to war. Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, Mickey Rooney and many of the biggest stars of the day would eventually serve in the military and do so with great distinction. With the help of others, Bette Davis and John Garfield worked tirelessly to organize and run the Hollywood Canteen to bring Hollywood directly to our servicemen. And when they weren’t selling hundreds of millions of dollars worth of war bonds here at home, too many movie stars to count went overseas to give our boys a firsthand taste of celebrity glamour and home. 

And then there were the films… literally hundreds of them meant to boost stateside morale, meant to remind us Why We Fight, meant to help America win the war.

In every sense of the word, this was Hollywood’s finest moment, where a community that was largely run by conservatives willingly set aside their political differences and united to rally around their commander-in-chief for the cause of America and the defeat of tyranny.  (more…)

Go ahead and file this in your “unlikely” drawer:

You may have heard that Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor, but that was just liberal media propaganda. This Robin is no socialist bandit practicing freelance wealth redistribution, but rather a manly libertarian rebel striking out against high taxes and a big government scheme to trample the ancient liberties of property owners and provincial nobles. Don’t tread on him!

So is “Robin Hood” one big medieval tea party? Kind of…

As you probably know, the Breitbart team frequents these Tea Party rallies, and we’ve yet to come across the “disillusioned war veteran just back from a distant, violent campaign against Muslims” tea-partier that Russell Crowe allegedly portrays in this year’s “Robin Hood.”  Scott neglects to mention this inconvenient theme in his review.

We’ll report back and let you know if Robin Hood more closely resembles a libertarian rebel, as Scott suggests, a forward-thinking, spread-the-wealth around type of revolutionary, or somewhere in between.  We have our suspicions what he will be, but according to Scott, the films does pick on the French. (more…)

The recent Daily Variety article “Hollywood calls ‘Truce’ on war films” described how the film industry is now sidelining any future war and espionage films because of recent box office disappointment like Green Zone. The $100 million to $130 million budgeted Matt Damon star vehicle brought in a paltry $14.5 million its first week, a major embarrassment to Universal. Virtually every recent Middle-Eastern war film with the exception of The Hurt Locker (which has a few problems of its own) and The Kingdom have trashed United States troops, security and intelligence personnel. The Hurt Locker cost less then $20 million to produce and swept the Academy Awards, so it should eventually make a tidy sum in DVD sales and some foreign sales, though it has yet to break the $15 million mark in domestic box office.

Hasn’t it occurred to the overpaid and over-educated studio execs that the rest of America, minus the liberal bastions of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco, would probably pay to see Americans be the good guys again? Jerry Bruckheimer has a great Afghanistan War project called Horse Soldiers based on Doug Stanton’s incredible non-fiction book about the first teams of US Special Forces who led the Northern Alliance to victory over the Taliban – on horseback. With Bruckheimer behind the project it will have high potential for box office success, if Disney lets it see the light of day.

Producer Chris Godsick has been trying to get the World War II version of Horse Soldiers about the last combat charge of horseback US Cavalry made for a number of years. Colonel Ed Ramsey who led that heroic charge of the 26th Cavalry against the Japanese is a good friend of Godsick’s and an acquaintance of mine. I’ve actually filmed several hours of in-depth interviews with Colonel Ramsey for a possible documentary, yet we can’t get The History Channel to bite, “We aren’t doing those kind of shows any more.” No kidding, Ice truckers, pawnbrokers and UFOs are The History Channel’s stock-in-trade now. Ramsey is 94, a still sharp and vital 94, but Chris and I both would like for him to see he and his men’s real life courage celebrated on film before he goes off to Fiddlers Green, the cavalrymen’s Valhalla in the sky. (more…)

The second high-profile name attached to HBO’s “The Pacific” was interviewed by CNSNews and would’ve distinguished himself with his classy approach to these questions even if his counterpart hadn’t defamed both the war in the Pacific and the War on Terror by defining them as “wars of racism and terror.”

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I especially like this: (more…)

UPDATE: I have corrected a misstatement of facts in this post. I wrote that the Japanese attacked us …”because they wanted to invade and eventually take over our country.”  This is in fact not true. Thank you to those who brought this to my attention. — Jack

“The World According to Tom” is an article that appears in the March 15 issue of “Time.”  It is all about Tom Hanks’ interest in American history.  It’s not a bad article until Mr. Hanks is quoted in the second to last paragraph. 

Referring to World War II he stated:

“From the outset, we wanted to make people wonder how our troops can re-enter society in the first place. How could they just pick up their lives and get on with the rest of us? Back in World War II we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods.  They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?” 

For some background I served as a medic with the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam, 1967-68.  I retired from the Army as a Physician Assistant and my son currently serves in Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne Division.  This does give me a bit more insight about our military and “how our troops can re-enter society”. 

It is not so hard to re-enter society when society is on the side of a war.  We have all seen the clips of victory parades after WW II soldiers were welcomed home as heroes. Many soldiers returning from Vietnam were actually spit on and called baby killers. I am sure this had an effect on every soldier who ever served in that war.  I am sure that it contributed to the high rate of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that occurred in our Vietnam Veterans.  (more…)

One of the things I think most about is national security. Oh sure, my posts here at Big Hollywood are usually snarky takes on the idiocy we witness daily from clueless Hollywoodites like James Cameron, but national security issues feature prominently in many of my writings elsewhere. I also belong to a group in New York City, whose members gather monthly to hear experts speak about the various threats we face, especially from Islamic jihad.

American Nick Berg, just before his beheading by jihadists in 2004

Yes, jihad. That’s what it is. Not “the war on terror,” not an “overseas contingency operation.” Jihad. Say it. It’s not that hard. I often wonder how the experts whose lectures I hear sleep at night, knowing what they know about an ideology whose adherents want to kill us all.

And I often wonder how serious President Barack Obama is about keeping Americans safe. Considering the results of his first year in office, I’m definitely not encouraged. (more…)

President George W. Bush left office a year ago today.  The occasion was marked for me, not so much as the grand event of inaugurating our first black President, as it was a societal harbinger of ominous times ahead.  Mr. Bush congratulated Mr. Obama warmly, embracing him with the camaraderie reserved for that elite membership of U.S. presidents.  The accompanying catcalls and boo’s cast a pall upon what was heretofore a somber, and joyous occasion; but now colored a sick patina as the true vitriol and hateful venom rose with cruel and vindictive openness.  The taunting jeers, the rude remarks, the derision of contempt.  Well…there goes the neighborhood, I thought to myself.

It seemed that occasion marked another milestone in America:   the death of class.

And long before the new politics of Chicago-style thuggery became evident in the new administration, I was appalled at the sheer intensity of hatred for President Bush.   Bush Derangement Syndrome became a pandemic.  I was expecting the CDC to announce immediate inoculation centers opening up to stem the outbreak.  Bush bashing became our new favorite national pastime, celebrated in the press and codified on college campuses everywhere. (more…)

President George W. Bush:

On the one-year anniversary of President George W. Bush leaving office, let us recall his words spoken in the National Cathedral, September 14, 2001 (please take a moment to watch the video):

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“This world He created is of moral design. Grief and tragedy and hatred are only for a time. Goodness, remembrance and love have no end, and the Lord of life holds all who die and all who mourn.

It is said that adversity introduces us to ourselves.

This is true of a nation as well… 

America is a nation full of good fortune, with so much to be grateful for, but we are not spared from suffering. In every generation, the world has produced enemies of human freedom. They have attacked America because we are freedom’s home and defender, and the commitment of our fathers is now the calling of our time.” (more…)

I’ve got to be honest, the first thing that comes to mind when I think of a man blowing up his johnson isn’t that of a “bona fide threat.” When I think of the damage that could have actually been carried out however, I get chills down my spine.  Then I realize that I shouldn’t be sitting on the office ice-bucket.  I still don’t really see how calling the “War on Terror” to an “Overseas Contingency Operation” will make us any safer from people hell-bent on our destruction but then again… I’m just silly like that!

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Let me see if I’ve got this straight.

Under the aegis of Rupert Murdoch’s Twentieth Century-Fox, a zillion dollar corporation with over a billion in annual box office, James Cameron makes a movie, Avatar, about an average, avaricious, American corporation backed-up by a Marine garrison which is out to exploit or destroy a forest full of “fly-bittin’ savages” who listen to voices from trees for precious “Unobtanium!”

Reality check: if you wish to assay the true value of “Unobtanium,” try getting a return call from James Cameron or a movie deal with 20th Century Fox!

Gee whiz! I grew up believing that Earth would be taken over by a Blob, or an “Invasion of Bodysnatchers,” or a “Brother from Another Planet!” Now, according to Cameron we, you and I, are the space menace! We’re the Romulans! Since when did the United States of America become a member of the Sci-Fi Axis of Evil? Where are Captian Kirk, Spock, and Bones? (more…)

So, Osama bin Laden must be giggling like a school girl in his soiled diapers. While we flounder over the basics of terror prevention, my guess is the turbaned turd has already moved on, thinking it’s hilarious we’re still taking baby steps against bombers. Turning B.V.D’s into I.E.D’s? That’s sooo last decade. If anything, radical Islam has already set their sights on far bigger fish – why kill a thousand, when you can kill hundreds of thousands? And even if it takes them another decade or two to get nukes – no matter. They’ve got an eternity. Meanwhile, I hung up on Time Warner Cable after being put on hold for five minutes.

Worse, how can our government acknowledge a larger, more apocalyptic threat, when they’re troubled acknowledging the current, manageable one?

Look at Flight 253. By ignoring basic principles of profiling, they let the guy through. And when he was caught, rather than call him a wartime combatant, he’s referred to as a lone extremist. And now he’s being lawyered up, to be tried as a basic criminal. (more…)