Living on SoCal in the early to late 60s, we ran across several celebs. George Goebel was a blind drunk. Sinatra was a mean drunk, but quite personable and giving when sober. Red Skeleton was a kind man, as was Roy Rogers. Who was just as he appeared on screen. A kind, decent man who, along with Dale, was a straight shooter. Ray Molland was also an alcoholic. Bob Denver could be quite mean in person. Tommy Kirk, Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon were friendly. The Beach Boys were finding their sound. Carlos Santana was nice to me when I accidentally bumped into him one time.
As for WWII, my uncle was a tank crewman from Operation Cobra through the wars end. Was the only survivor of his original tank crew and liberated Buchenwald. It haunted him for the rest of his life. I have never seen “Fury”, but it resembled my uncle’s experiences, from the sound of it.
As all of the regular readers here probably know from my recent incessant whining, I’ve been horrendously bogged down with work. Even on weekends, there is stuff I have to get done and it will only get worse for the next month or so.
Woe is me; woe is me!
But at the same time, I’ve been wanting to go see Matt Walsh’s movie “Am I Racist.” I asked Camera Girl if she wanted to go with me and she rolled her eyes and shook her head. So that complicated things because just abandoning her on a weekend to trek across state lines and eat up half a day seemed a little selfish to me. So, I was shocked when on Thursday she asked me if I wanted to go see the movie. Apparently, she figured it might cheer me up ahead of my marathon work schedule to go to this movie over the weekend. I guess she really does like me. So, I went on line to see what hours it was playing. Well, it wasn’t. The movie had gone from about a thousand theaters, down to something like four-hundred. And since Dunwich really is in the middle of nowhere, there wasn’t a single theater within a hundred miles of me.
Woe is me; woe is me!
When I stopped shaking my fist at the sky, I looked up the box office history for the movie. The movie was only banking twenty- or thirty-thousand dollars a day at that point but it had earned over twelve million dollars over the course of its run. And when you consider that the movie only cost a quarter of that to make, I was quite impressed by Walsh’s accomplishment.
Last year Walsh made a documentary called “What is a Woman” that was very effective at highlighting the insane and dangerous transgender movement that has convinced most of the medical establishment that it’s okay to treat children with puberty blockers and sex hormone therapy as a precursor to amputation of their genitalia. And this documentary was watched by many millions of people on-line. But this new movie was different.
This was something that people had to go to a movie theater to watch. They had to plunk down cold hard cash. And for that money they expected to be entertained. And they were! The reviews and rating by the people who actually went to the movie were extremely high. It was a hit with the people who went to see it. But the mainstream media boycotted reviewing it. And this was after it opened in the top four box office spot. And not against other documentaries. This was against all the movies in theaters. It was a financial success, but they refused to review it.
So, I didn’t get to see it. Well, eventually I’ll see it online. So that’s okay. But the bigger story here is that finally, finally, someone is making movies for our side of the street. And I hope the Daily Wire makes a ton of money doing it and I hope that gives ideas to a bunch of other “creative” people who want to make money but can’t seem to get people to go to the stuff Hollywood has been putting out lately. Who knows maybe it’ll inspire Disney to make the imaginative leap and think, “Didn’t we used to make money hand over fist with that traditional stuff back in the stone age? It looks like people still like that racist, sexist stuff. Maybe we could do that again and make money for a change.”
Well, calm down! Small steps, small steps. Okay, now I’ve got a grip again.
But I have to confess I am encouraged. This is the sort of stuff I’ve been waiting years for. With the entry cost for making professional-looking motion pictures at historic lows and good writers, directors, actors and other movie trades unemployed because of DEI it doesn’t seem that it should be that difficult to make a profit if you give people a good story and stick to entertainment instead of hectoring them.
Over the last decade or so it has become obvious that Hollywood and specifically, Disney is more interested in producing content that adheres to a social justice message than they care about making money. Examples of this are plentiful. Every recent installment of the Star Wars movies and their spin-off television series has suffered heavily from this policy. And recently the fans have reacted to this decision by abandoning the franchise. And to a greater or lesser degree similar results have been seen in the other Disney entertainment franchises; Indiana Jones, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and even things like the Toy Story movies. It’s gotten so bad that Disney has been forced to fire directors, cancel series and scale back earnings estimates. Which is something no CEO wants to do.
I have heard that Hollywood is claiming that they’ve heard the message and they will rededicate themselves to producing entertainment that is actually entertaining to regular people. Now if that happened, I would be ecstatic. Seeing Hollywood learn its lesson and focus its significant talents into putting out original and entertaining movies would be phenomenal.
But it won’t happen.
The people who run Hollywood are social justice extremists from the soles of their feet up to their eyebrows. They would rather see their companies go broke than give up their message. They will keep pumping out Star Wars movies that feature lesbian space witches of color as the main characters until Disney has to shut down the studio. The idea that the ticket buying public wanted to see Luke Skywalker rescue Princess Leia with the assistance of Han Solo and that all three were white, sexually normal characters is completely unacceptable to them. They have the same message as the Harris campaign, “We won’t go back.”
So that means the future of entertainment won’t be Hollywood. And we’re already seeing the alternatives. I’ve been informed by one of my grandsons that movies are being made based on the fiction produced by YouTube influencers who write stories based on video games. So, a space video game has an audience of tens of millions of boys and young men. And one guy writes a narrative story as an adventure in that game and millions of these gamers read the story and because of this immense popularity a movie studio (Amazon or Netflix) produces a movie from this story.
Well, there’s nothing wrong with that. Eventually that will replace Hollywood nicely. Someone said to me that this won’t avoid the social justice activists because all the studios are the same. But there are indications that isn’t true. A couple of years ago Netflix produced Dave Chappelle’s comedy series that was pretty strongly critical of the transgender agenda. When Netflix employees protested the series, they were told overtly by Netflix that if their consciences wouldn’t allow them to work for a company that produced the Chappelle series, they should work somewhere else. And that put an end to the protests. I suspect that a home will be found for content that has an enormous built-in audience even if there is an extreme shortage of lesbian space witches of color in the script. Maybe it’ll be Netflix that steps in or maybe it’ll be a new company that an entrepreneur like Musk founds. But at this point it’ll happen because people are still people and they want to be amused and message fiction isn’t entertaining. It’s boring so something will have to give way. Au revoir lesbian space witches of color.
A very good movie that somehow made it to the theaters is “Sound of freedom” – a bit heavy for kids though.
My local theater (which is often begging for viewers) was sold out almost every show.
The same theater now has:
“A quiet place: Day one” which is a remake of a terrible horror movie only this time with a POC in the lead. (Pass.)
“The Garfield movie” (Might be OK for kids, but I’ll pass).
“Inside out 2” (A sequel to a movie I did not see. Looks like Disney/Pixar – best to avoid.)
“Bad Boys Ride or Die” (Pass, I thought this property was paid out a decade ago. Pass.)
“The Bikeriders” (Looks like a throwback to 60s troubled teens on motorcycles. Pass.)
Horizon Chapter 1 (A Kevin Costner western – Maybe)
“If” A Ryan Reynolds comedy. I like RR. Free Guy was great! But I can wait for this to hit cable.
It’s Wednesday night and I’ve been watching some YouTube videos by right-wing Hollywood types; Nick Searcy, Andrew Klavan, Steve Deace. These guys have made the transition from Hollywood actors and writers to conservatives who want to create content that doesn’t outrage their convictions.
And listening to them talk about the blacklisting and the gatekeeping you can’t help but feel discouraged. And look at Disney where they’ve lost more than a billion dollars in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars series in the last year or two. Even the remakes of the legacy Disney fairy tales are scaring away the parents. Would these losses make them reconsider what they’re doing? Nope. Doubling down doesn’t even begin to describe their behavior. It’s pretty depressing.
But I think I detect a hint of desperation. It seems the strategy is to monopolize the entertainment choices utterly. It’s almost as if they’re afraid people will find out that movies that are entertaining can actually exist. And it makes sense. Even they must know that their stuff is for the most part unwatchable. So, all they can do is blockade anyone else trying to get funding and book theaters. And so far, that’s worked. But slowly, slowly, even glacially some stuff is leaking by. So far, it’s all been Christian movies. But the definition of what’s a Christian movie is being stretched. Last year a “Christian horror movie;” Nefarious made $12 million from box office and streaming off of a $1 million total cost. That’s a very nice return on investment. Compare that to Disney spending $3 billion and getting back $2 billion. Negative return on investment, not so great.
Then there was Netflix putting out the comedy specials by Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais. Netflix’s own employees attempted to block the showing of these specials. They saw these comedy routines as transphobic and hateful. But Netflix decided that they need money more than they needed virtue signaling to their employees. Another good sign.
Now conservative social media outlets are trying their hand at making movies. The Daily Wire has made a couple of forays into comedy. I don’t think they’ve succeeded yet but I give them full marks for trying. Eventually somebody is going to make a stab at it and hit pay dirt. And when that happens there will be a lot more. Netflix is already one foot in the door. All they’ll need is for a non-woke film maker to figure out the formula and they’ll be setting up shop and pumping stuff out. There hasn’t been a decent comedy in a decade and if one studio starts putting them out, they’ll end up printing money.
So, I think we will get some alternatives to Hollywood. And we’ll get it by supporting it ourselves. What was that stupid Obama mantra? “You are the change you’ve been waiting for?” It’s horrible to realize but it’s actually true for our side. We will have to stand up all these new platforms ourselves. We’ll have to buy the tickets and take out subscriptions and buy books and go to plays just to make sure there actually is a non-woke alternative to all this awful crap they keep pumping out.
But finally, one fine day, Disney and Time Warner and NBC-Universal and whatever other woke behemoths there are will wither away all together and we’ll look out over a landscape where girl-boss jedi and Captain Marvel have been relegated to senior living facilities with a maximum of three cats and one bottle of wine a night. And nobody declares their pronouns and spiderman is a man.
And on that day, I’ll bring my first great-grandson to the movies without wincing.
David Mamet famously declared he had ceased to be a “brain dead liberal” back around the time of the 9/11 attacks. And the Left has been attacking him ever since. And since he is a playwright and a movie script writer that has had an enormous impact on his career and life.
Here Andrew Klavan talks to him about what that’s been like and why it’s okay. I find it interesting to hear how those on the inside of the matrix describe the process of being attacked by the antibodies of the collective. It’s like an autoimmune disease or more closely it’s as if these people have become cancer cells and have now been detected by the immune system.
Toward the end Mamet speaks very enthusiastically about what will be happening while Hollywood is dying. “You don’t need a lot of money to make a movie. You need a phone and a good idea.” I find that very hopeful.
Makes perfect sense. Compare all the ways that Nevada is cheaper to work in than California. I can only imagine how the exodus of non-acting talent will rejoice to escape from the high cost of living and low quality of life in California.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if other studios follow suit. What also wouldn’t surprise me is if SONY begins dropping the ridiculous representation and inclusion standards for Oscars eligibility that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences requires for Oscars eligibility in the Best Picture category. After all, outside of California those standards might be considered racial discrimination.
But either way, whatever hastens the death of the Hollywood monopoly on cinema is a good thing in my book.
Now of course the hard-core Wokesters will bewail this abandonment of beloved Los Angeles but a lot of actors haven’t been getting those multimillion dollar paydays lately and secretly might consider moving to a cheaper locale a pretty good idea.
Here’s a well-written analysis of what the woke agenda has done to Hollywood. It’s funny how even those on the Left now recognize how awful the thing they’ve created is. Too bad it’s exactly what they said they wanted.
H/T to Arthur. But truly I hope they just keep pushing this stuff forever. When cast and crew are always selected based on protected status it’s more or less guaranteed that no one will pay to see that work. Then when someone finally provides actual entertainment the contrast will be startling.
High-profile exits spark fears that Hollywood diversity pledges are just 'PR' https://t.co/J9KFgSySWI
— ArthurinCali.substack.com (@ArthurinCali) July 11, 2023
And so it begins. When a film franchise is based on the likability and heroic stature of the main character and you go out of your way to mock and belittle that character you might be undercutting your fan base, just a little. https://t.co/Bcsi2PXVbb