Movie and Television Reviews

I attended the Heritage "First Principles" conference yesterday. It was a wonderful event- choc full of smart, nice conservatives (although the ritual sacrifice wasn't at their usual high standard). Govindini Murty, co-founder of the Liberty Film Festival and a woman as personally gracious and articulate as she is stunningly beautiful, spoke on the history and present state of conservatism in Hollywood. "What?" you ask, "That's like talking about the funk scene in seventies Salt Lake City." Well, no, apparently.

According to Murty, Hollywood was once a pretty conservative place. Not as ideologically pure as today's movie industry, but still, a city in which a guy could park his Coolidge-stickered 1924 Pierce Arrow in front of the Brown Derby and ask for a caramel macchiato (or, whatever they drank) without fear of vandalism.

Ford, Capra, Ginger Rogers, Mayer, Heston, Jimmy Stewart, and various other studio heads and talent were conservatives. It wasn't until the sixties when conservatives became the Dungeons and Dragons geeks at Daytona Beach spring break.

In an interesting anecdote, Murty said that Communists would take the children of studio heads and other cultural leaders to the Soviet Union for indoctrination (I replied that modern-day conservatives should take studio brats to Irvine or South Carolina.).

One can summarize her wonderful presentation thusly: The current state of Hollywood isn't necessarily the norm and conservatives shouldn't be satisfied with it. Conservatives have tales to tell, and since we can't rely on the uniformly liberal movie industry to tell them, conservatives have to do it independently. She gave, as evidence, success stories with which she's been involved- Border War, Obsession, and some others. She talked about alternative distribution like the internet and its facilitating technology.

Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West by Perri Knize

Border War: The Battle over Illegal Immigration

Other interesting stories:

1. In the movie Charlie Wilson's War, Andrew Sorkin was determined to show that the CIA supported Osama bin Laden, a ridiculous proposition (The United States supported what would become the Taliban's main enemy, The Northern Alliance.). He only removed the offending scene after Joanne Herring, the Julia Roberts character, threatened to sue. Sorkin also admitted that Charlie Wilson's War implicitly supported the Iraq War.

Charlie Wilson's War (Widescreen)

2. 24 has never been a "conservative" show. Joel Surnow often tussled with co-producer Robert Cochran over the political direction of the show. If they showed Muslim terrorists, for example, they'd have to show government corruption, etc. Sadly for conservatives, Joel Surnow will not be producing season eight of the show.

3. Bruce Willis couldn't get a movie made about the soldiers in Mosul.

24 - Season Six

Asymmetric particpation:

When Murty brought up the fact that Hollywood wouldn't produce a "pro"-Iraq war movie, I wondered if nobody sees Iraq movies from either perspective because such controversial movies remind people of the unpleasant argument they had at their last family reunion, and that people might prefer to find pro-Iraq war messages through proxy movies like Lord of the Rings. She correctly pointed out that if that were the case, none of the left ones like the execrable Redacted, Stop Loss, Lions for Lambs, etc. would have been produced.

The Lord of the Rings - The Motion Picture Trilogy (Platinum Series Special Extended Edition)

Redacted (2007)

Lions For Lambs (Widescreen Edition)

Stop-Loss

I also openly theorized that since people usually root for the "underdog," most movies will naturally be more liberal (That's why, for example, you'll never see a movie with an illegal alien as a bad guy or why a corporate lawyer will never be a hero.). She replied that Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and many other movies in which people with strong values overcome difficulty prove that audiences can sympathize with conservative values (Another good, explicitly conservative movie, is Sergeant York.).

Sergeant York (Two-Disc Special Edition)

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Tags: conservative movies