I could not believe this tweet by Variety. I can’t believe there are really people this unaware of reality walking around now. The idea that “creativity might be stifled” under Ellison is the most hilarious thing I have seen coming from the film industry, probably ever.

Have they not been paying attention to the last ten years and even longer? Why do they think Warner Bros. has to be sold in the first place? It isn’t just competition from streaming. It’s a creative bottleneck, and it’s been that way a long time. I’ve been writing about it for a long time. Talk to almost anyone, and they will tell you the same thing: movies aren’t as good as they used to be.

Don’t get me wrong, the films up for Best Picture this year are good movies. They had to pull from the international pile, of course, as they routinely do now, which should tell you a lot. That is, if you have the awareness and the intelligence to listen, which sadly, most people locked inside the bubble of the Left do not.

That this is the take tells you everything you need to know about what happened to Hollywood. You don’t have to look far. Just look at this website, one of the only honest websites that cover film, the Oscars, and Hollywood. Why is it honest? Because I refused to lie when I knew I was mandated to do so. I refused to be ideologically compliant when I knew I was mandated to do so. And you’ll never believe what happened to me. It’s quite astonishing.

The blacklists are on the Left, though you only hear about those who are punished for speaking out against Israel. You never hear about the majority of people who are punished just for voting for Donald Trump or even being friends with people who voted for Donald Trump. But it’s not only politics. It’s everything. If you said a word against ‘Gender Affirming Care’ for minors, out you go.

Everyone knows the madness we just lived through, and yet, no one will talk about it, not at Variety, not at Deadline, not at Indiewire. They won’t talk about how Jeff Wells was also blacklisted, and it had nothing to do with Trump. They just interpreted one of his posts and convicted him in the court of public opinion. He was kicked out of the Critics Choice and is persona non grata to the studios. They decide who you are. They convict and condemn you, and trust me, it would only have gotten worse if Netflix had bought Warner bros. Netflix behaves like a monopoly already. They pulled their ads from this site after being faithful advertisers for years and stopped inviting me to screen their films. I was shut out, all over politics.

The same thing happened with Disney and Fox. Disney had already decided not to advertise, so when they bought Fox, which had been one of my most reliable advertisers, they too had to slam that door shut. The ONLY studio that has thus far refused to play that game has been Focus Features. This is not about me and the money I make. I do fine over at Substack, and in fact, it’s a blessing in disguise. It is about how the business is run now. They don’t care about the people anymore. They only care about Woketopia.

The plan apparently seems to have been to exclude the half of America that voted for Trump, most male audiences, and people just looking for good old-fashioned movies and not dogma-infused junk, then to send it all to streaming, where no one will ever notice. The only hope we have is the free market. And just as Elon Musk had to buy Twitter to free the bird and speech, so too do I hope Paramount buys Warner Bros. As with X, it won’t be perfect, but it will be better than the alternative.

Ideological freedom does not exist in Hollywood. You are invited to tell one story one way, and the list of what you can’t say and stories you can’t tell is much longer. There is only one way a person can think and express themselves, and that is not the side that just won the election in 2024. It is the side that claimed culture for itself and locked out half the country in the meantime. It is a side that has absolutely no awareness of how they come off to the rest of the country and even much of the world.

Just look at how they punished Wim Wenders for daring to suggest politics should be left out of the Berlinale. That’s the tip of the iceberg when it comes to mandated ideological compliance. The movies Hollywood makes now -- with very few notable exceptions -- must follow the strict “woke” code. All of them must if they want to be included in the Oscars. Some do it effortlessly. Others do it embarrassingly, but they all have to do it. Creative expression? Not for a very long time.

And after all of that madness we’ve just lived through, to arrive here in 2026 with One Battle After Another winning Best Picture - sweeping the season - as a film about racism by a white man versus a Sinners, one of the most successful films by Black artists in Hollywood history, it feels as though nothing has really changed anyway. It’s still the flea circus.

They don’t fear a stifling of creativity - that’s a fantasy that exists in their heads. The truth? They fear losing the power to control thought and speech. They’re afraid of more creative expression, of the wrong kinds of movies being made for the wrong kinds of people, selling the wrong message.

But if the New York Times won’t write about that, and the trades won’t write about that, and no one on social media will talk about it, lest they too be banished to the virtual gulags with the rest of us exiles, how can any of these people ever hear the truth?

They call ICE officers Nazis. They protest the ouster of brutal (real) dictators while LARPing that they live under an oppressive dictatorship. How can they not even see how ridiculous they look to the people who aren’t sucked into their insulated, isolated utopia? When thousands of Iranian citizens were slaughtered just for standing there, it was crickets from Hollywood. CRICKETS.

It Was Just an Accident, made by Jafar Panahi, was supposed to sweep the season. He would have faced jail time -- except that Trump bombed the fuck out of Iran and now, Panahi is free. THAT is the thing these idiots in Hollywood pretend to be going through. And why didn’t It Was Just An Accident sweep the season? Because it’s uncool to criticize Iran, because it’s cool to criticize Israel. It’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever seen, and there are no artists in Hollywood aware enough, or brave enough, to tell that story.

The creative oppression, the silencing of dissent, and the obliteration of freedom of thought and speech happened a long time ago. Hollywood did this to themselves because they’re cowards. They are not afraid of the Trump side. All they do is screech loudly about him being a dictator. There is nothing he has done that comes anywhere close to what they have done. It isn’t even those who have been unfairly shut out of utopia, like me. It’s also the stories that haven’t been told and may never be told. They lie resting in a graveyard because of cowardice, because of fear.

Hollywood and the Left have become 1984. They just don’t realize it. They cosplay the opposite. The side with the power and control is the 1984 side. The side with the blacklists, the climate of fear, the culture of silence is the 1984 side. All Trump is to them is Two Minutes of Hate every second of every day.

So don’t worry, Hollywood. Nothing bad will happen to you that you haven’t brought upon yourselves already. You decided your own image and status mattered more than your audience, and that has collapsed the empire. No one will tell this to you, but I will. As Bob Dylan would say, when you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.

So please, spare me.

This has been an ongoing debate about Jonathan Demme’s masterpiece, as activists attempt to destroy its legacy by saying it has done harm to transgender people. You’d only think that if A) you had not seen the film for yourself, or B) you are irretrievably stupid.

The film goes out of its way to say that Buffalo Bill is not a transsexual. As in this scene, where Clarice Starling says, “There is no correlation in the literature between transsexualism and violence. Transsexuals are very passive…”

Hannibal answers with, “Billy is not a real transsexual. He thinks he is. He tries to be.”

Now that we’re seeing a rise in violence from men who are likewise dabbling in transgender ideology, it’s a good time to look back at Buffalo Bill and what it says about men who don’t know where they fit in society. These lovely children were just shot by one such person in Canada.

The shooter wasn’t transgender, though the legacy media bent over backwards to use the proper gender, that "she” shot up a school. No, she did not. This was the work of a violent psychopath who is a man, or perhaps a boy on the brink of manhood, but most certainly not a woman. Women can be psychopaths, but this shooter fit the demographic, and the female shooter in Tennessee was trying to be the demographic - angry, young male, usually white.

So what in The Silence of the Lambs would be offensive to transgender people? Maybe the scene where Buffalo Bill is putting on makeup and fashioning himself female, otherwise known as this iconic scene:

Just like that, a meme was born. Any time anyone hears the first few notes of that song, there is no other way to interpret it. Even Gen-Z probably knows it.

Whatever is happening now in this country with a sect of men becoming both violent and transgender, or dabbling in that kind of identity in the dark corners of the internet, proves The Silence of the Lambs was not just ahead of its time, but an example of Hollywood before it became a strident, micro-managed Woketopia.

I remember when they first came for The Silence of the Lambs. It was just a taste of what was to come. Back then, it was just about the sensitive feelings of some readers on my website, though it did seem odd to me that they were saying this film was offensive. To whom? And why? We weren’t quite at the level of trans activists showing up to screech violently at Kimberly Pierce for casting a non-trans actor in Boys Don’t Cry (Hilary Swank, who then won the Oscar), but we were getting there.

The woke tyranny arrived slowly at first, then all at once. Tasting power for various marginalized groups had the predictable effect power always does — it felt good. Their tyranny spread far and wide throughout the industry, culminating in the Great Awokening, a real revolution on the streets as unhinged white Liberals lost their minds to a fanatic cult. At least that’s how it looked to those of us who ran screaming from the room.

I defended The Silence of the Lambs, though I felt awkwardly doing so, because when I came of age, we did not attack the art. That was what conservatives did, so we protected art and free expression. Well, all of that changed as the Left got religion, and not just any religion, a strident, fundamentalist religion that would ultimately swallow up all aspects of American culture, including film.

Weird stuff was already happening before 2020, like how everyone called La La Land “racist” because Ryan Gosling “explained Jazz” and how everyone called Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri racist because it redeemed a racist cop. Then came the Green Book Apocalypse, where a kindly, warm-hearted film about a bigot befriending a Black gay man was like Trump winning all over again. They lost their minds in a fever dream. That was only the beginning.

Parasite won Best Picture in 2019 because if it hadn’t, all of the Oscar winners in the major categories would have been white. A great movie though it is, Parasite gave the ruling elites in Hollywood a way out of the headlines that would have trashed them for being “racist.” Now, they were treated to glowing ones instead. “The first International Feature not in the English Language to Win!” Yes, all of those words just to replace the “offensive” term “foreign language.”

I should have realized that was the beginning of the end. I attended the Oscars that year. It was early 2020, one month before COVID hit, and the world changed. The film industry would never recover. They’d try, but they’d never get there.

The solution to dealing with the Woke Tyranny was to “fix” films to make them scold-proof. That meant casting had to be inclusive. Most relationships had to be interracial, and no people of color or LGBTQIA+ people could ever be cast as the bad guys. And they had to make an appearance somewhere.

You notice it because in some random TV series or movie, there would be a gay character or a trans character, all bubbly and happy, because this is utopia, after all, and we’ve all of the problems of oppressor/oppressed. It’s just that it stopped reflecting real life in any meaningful way. It reflected this imaginary vision of our Shining Woketopia on the Hill - where everyone gets a seat at the table.

It began to resemble the Lower East Side of Manhattan more than it did anywhere else. Or maybe it just started to look like the internet. Every size, color, and gender had to be present or else. What a mess.

Even if it never fully made sense to me that Jame Gumb or Buffalo Bill would kill women only for their skin, it made for an intriguing movie which has very little to do with transgender ideology at all, except that it was one thing this psychopathic killer wanted to be but couldn’t.

What makes The Silence of the Lambs great is the writing, the acting, and above all, the directing. It’s such a great movie; it’s hard to believe there was ever a time when Hollywood made films this good.

The day it opened, I went to see it three times in the theater, bringing a different group of friends each time. To date, it’s the only film I’ve ever paid to see three times in one day as an adult. As a kid, I did that all of the time with movies like Jaws and Star Wars. I feel quite sure there will never be a time when I will even watch a movie three times, let alone pay to see it in the theater.

For the first time ever, the Golden Globes have announced podcast nominees. You could have predicted how it would go — their only reality is Blue America. They don’t really care who listens to what, who drives the narrative, and makes news. They care about what resonates deep inside their SOMA bubble.

Since I’ve been covering film awards for 26 years, I already knew how it would go. It’s not surprising, but it is kind of funny:

Best Podcast
Armchair Expert With Dax Shepard (Wondery)
Call Her Daddy (Siriusxm)
Good Hang With Amy Poehler (Spotify)
The Mel Robbins Podcast (Siriusxm)
Smartless (Siriusxm)
Up First (NPR (National Public Radio))

No Joe Rogan, no Megyn Kelly, no Ben Shapiro, no Theo Von.

I mean, you have to laugh. Or cry. Or both.

The Thing holds its place in cinema history because it is heavy on mood and suspense, driven by the ominous music, some composed by John Carpenter and the rest by Ennio Morricone. It’s also the suffocating atmosphere of men trapped in a compound surrounded by nothing but snow.

And then, a dog shows up.

It isn’t really a dog, of course, it’s one of those things. But who could resist a dog? Not these men. And so they let it in and, in so doing, write their own death sentences. Yes, every single one of them will die by the end of the movie. But it is how paranoid they become, how tricky the monster is in hiding inside of them, that makes this movie still so watchable.

And of course, there’s the star of the show, Kurt Russell as MacReady, who must outwit, outlast, and outplay the thing. Russell is surrounded by a talented ensemble, with no weak links in the bunch. David Clennon as Palmer, Wilford Brimley as Blair, Keith David as Childs, Richard Masur as Clark, and one of my personal favorites, Donald Moffat as Garry.

I remember when it came out and how everyone was comparing it to 1979’s Alien, which was also about letting a monster into an enclosed space as it becomes something that can’t be killed, peeling them off one by one until only Ripley and Jonesy remain.

But The Thing doesn’t offer any such salvation for its characters; they all have to die because one of them might be The Thing, even when there are only two remaining characters left. We never find out if either of them is The Thing. But killing them all off was a daring choice back then, when audiences wanted uplifting conclusions.

The Thing made just $19 million, which was nothing compared to E.T.'s $350 million. On such a low budget, the visual effects are still legendary, crafted by Rob Bottin, then just 22 years old.

Carpenter builds suspense in The Thing by making us uncertain where anyone is at any given time. Like Alien, the computer is also a big warning sign for these doomed men. It tells them the bad news that this Thing could wipe out the entire human race. They know they can’t save themselves because they have to sacrifice their lives to save humanity.

Like all movies and horror movies especially, they had to be for everyone. They had to depict a time and place we all knew. They didn’t take a side politically most of the time. You didn’t have to belong to a certain group of people to get the movie. You were immersed in the story because they actually wanted people to come see their movies. They weren’t made for critics or for awards. They were made for audiences.

Every time I watch The Thing, it feels like the first time I’ve ever seen it. Since I already know how it will end, I enjoy the getting there, how Carpenter sets up the story and makes us get involved with the characters - even if we don’t always know who the good guys are and who might be one of those things.

The Thing is top-tier Carpenter, though he’s made some great ones, like They Live, Christine, Escape from New York, and The Fog - but around Halloween, there is only one movie one that everyone has to watch. And it is THE movie.

Halloween is not a complicated story. It’s guided by the mood of the place, of the spooky nature of Halloween itself, and the masked villain who can’t be killed. So immortal is he that he would be the subject of 12 more movies, though none coming anywhere near as good as the original.

What is Halloween about? It’s about cinematic horror and the power of the image, but Carpenter also clearly sees it as a film about fate that brings together Michel Myers and Laurie because she, as played by Jamie Lee Curtis, is the embodiment of innocence. She’s a good girl. She does her homework. She babysits and isn't a frivolous, easy, good-time gal like her friends.

Michael Myers is pure evil. He was born bad. How great is the film’s opening, when we see Michael stalking his sister and witness his first kill? Who is this killer, we wonder, and when the mask is ripped off, we’re shocked to see the face of a confused little boy.

From then on, we’re to fear this supernatural, evil entity that has returned to Haddonfield, which is supposed to be in New Jersey but is also rumored to have been filmed in South Pasadena.

All the characters in Halloween are pretty great, but what stands out to me most is John Carpenter’s score and Dean Cundey’s hand-held Panaglide cinematography, which makes us feel like we are right there in the town. We can almost smell the coming of fall and feel the leaves crunching under our feet, the cool night breeze of late October.

It’s this Carpenter movie that best captures the mystery of Halloween. There is a guy roaming around in a mask on a day when lots of people are wearing them. He is the ultimate evil, but how could they know that in this sleepy town? All Jamie Lee Curtis can do is survive.

As with The Thing, there is no need to belong to a specific class, gender, or ethnic group. It is a story set in a town somewhere in Illinois. The only thing that matters is that we believe it. We don’t watch the characters wondering about power dynamics or representation. We watch the characters because we are invested in the story.

Halloween proves that great movies can be made as long as everyone on board is committed to the story. The budget was around $1 million, with Carpenter earning just $10,000. It went on to make roughly $50 million, which was a lot back in 1978.

The film is extremely violent as Michael Myers goes on a killing rampage, and for many in today’s fragile America, it might not have even gotten made, especially since serial killers were on the rise in the 1970s. Sooner or later, someone would complain about violence in the movies, but audiences couldn’t get enough.

Of course, it’s common knowledge by now that scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis made her cinematic debut as a nod to Carpenter’s idol, Alfred Hitchcock, who depicted Curtis’ mother, Janet Leigh, being likewise hacked with a big knife in Psycho. Carpenter shows more, of course, than Hitchcock did, but nowhere near as much as filmmakers show in film and television today. But the best horror movies don’t rely on graphic violence but on mood, suspense, and time and place.

Time and place are what Hollywood is missing now. Everything looks like this mythic land they built inside utopia, where everyone is equal and everyone is represented. They depict the America they wanted to exist, and do so out of fear. It is pure dogma made for the religious and the devout.

Maybe Hollywood always depicted an America that wasn’t real, but it should at least be one we recognize —one that feels rooted in some kind of truth, even if that means it doesn’t reflect an ideal utopian vision of society. All that matters is that we believe what we’re seeing on screen.

And this time and place are ones I remember from growing up in the 1970s, before all Halloween costumes were known brands, and when people still handed out homemade treats. You don’t want to be always looking back at the past and remembering the good old days, but that gets harder and harder to do now, because movies don’t seem to be getting better, and it’s doubtful there will ever be any as good as Halloween.

In 1980, just the trailer for Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining scared us. Everyone was talking about it. I was just 15. What did I know about movies? I didn’t know the name Stanley Kubrick, let alone Jack Nicholson. I don’t remember when I first saw The Shining, but it was probably not that year.

By the time I did see it, I was already fully immersed in the lore as everyone was going around bending their finger and pretending to talk like Danny talking to Tony. They were repeating Redrum, Redrum, Redrum. And of course, “Here’s Johnny.” What stood out to me when watching the movie finally was how smart Danny was to backtrack in a snowy maze to throw his father off track.

All these decades later, The Shining remains one of my favorite movies, and I watch it at least once a year, usually in October. The film has not lost a step in 45 years. Those who love it, obsess on it. Every detail is picked apart and dissected. How did he do that? How has it held its shape and magnetic force decade after decade?

What is it about this movie set in this particular place in this hotel that so fascinates us? It isn’t the book so much. It isn’t Stephen King’s imagination that we love. It’s how Stanley Kubrick brought it to life and the unusual, hammy, unforgettable performance of its star.

Do we see ourselves in Wendy? Do we imagine what if? Do we secretly desire to be trapped in that hotel all winter with all of that food in the freezer, the giant can of fruit cocktail, and no one around for miles? Does it sound like a dream or a nightmare? Would an only child want a whole hotel to himself to roam the hallways and dig into the mysteries?

Or is it that other layer, with the “shining” itself, the magical power the boy has, the one that Hallorann has?

I always knew the author of the book, Stephen King, wasn’t a fan of the movie. He said he liked some of it, but he felt Kubrick turned it into something else. He’s right. None of what most people remember about the movie, from Redrum to Here’s Johnny to the twins, “Come play with us, Danny…” is in the book.

The book is good in its own way and probably scarier and less funny than the movie. Stephen King has always been what we now call “woke.” He has always been aware of social justice and injustice, and he has woven it through his stories. His wife, Tabitha, was famously a feminist who has been schooling him ever since. That’s why the lead in his book, The Shining, is such a strong — albeit slightly annoying — female protagonist.

There is more to the story of the hotel itself in the book, including why it’s haunted and why it wants Danny due to his special powers. It’s also, I think, a scarier book because at the end, Hallorann (who isn’t murdered by Jack, as in the movie) is almost seduced by the evil of the hotel to kill Wendy and Danny, but he fights it off. I think that’s how it ends, though it’s been a while since I’ve read it.

Rewatching movies from the past is a reminder that movies didn’t use to judge or categorize characters in terms of their identity. Scatman Crothers is Halloran, and he is just Halloran.

Wendy is just a mom. Danny is just her son (with a supernatural ability). Jack, a stand-in for Stephen King in the book, is played by Jack Nicholson almost for laughs. That was Kubrick’s gift as a director - he could introduce absurd humor even if none existed in the source material.

The film isn’t a feminist screed, as there are evil forces in the hotel that take the shape of women, like the old lady in the bathtub and the twins. They don’t have to say anything about women or society. They can just exist as characters in a story.

Watching frail and scrawny Shelley Duvall crack her husband over the head with a bat is spectacular. Had they cast her with a stronger, more formidable actress to match the character in the book, they would have lost the character’s seemingly helpless quality. She is so small and the hotel is so big. That alone tells the story of this movie. We don’t think she can defeat her husband, and yet she does.

Everything about the movie is about showing the audience what it would be like to be stuck there, with all of the great things and the terrible things about it: you go stir crazy and try to murder your wife and child. Could you escape? If so, how?

Once you decide that everyone in the movie must make a grand statement about an entire population or gender, everything else the movie offers vanishes. When they tell you how to think and what to think, you don’t wonder. You stop asking questions. You don’t go deeper into the film.

There is no denying that it was a story conceived in the 1970s and released during a time when the country was changing and the pendulum was swinging. That might also be why so many of us ‘70s kids had the nightmare dad image stuck in our heads, since so many of our families had broken apart, marriages split up, and mothers were left to fend for the kids without them.

Whatever the dynamic at play, it has never alienated any generation over time because it wasn’t trapped in time. Kubrick was not trying to convey any message beyond the story of these three people trapped in a haunted hotel and how the mother and child barely escaped.

The Shining is pure cinema, from the saturated color of red, to the way the camera glides across the soundstage, to the hotel being surrounded by acres of white snow, to the fact that no one can get to them, and no one can get out. It is the imagery of Kubrick’s masterpiece that stays with us. He created an atmosphere that never feels artificial and yet, in its own way, feels entirely artificial.

He wasn’t the easiest director to work with, according to Shelley Duvall. But he was the kind of director that Hollywood no longer produces. They’ve become too fragile to function. Everything must go down easily. Their horror is increasingly grotesque and graphic, but their messaging must always be on point.

Much of what makes The Shining effective is how sound and music merge, allowing the dialogue to be minimal and much of the story to be absorbed through the senses. He wanted the viewer to feel the movie, to sense it, to taste it, to hear it — wheels on carpet, the distant sound of long-dead party goers, the hard hammer on the typewriter, and Jack pounds out All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy, also not in the book.

So, when we rewatch The Shining, we aren’t so much watching to relive the story as to experience the movie with all our senses fully engaged. In that way. We feel like we’re a part of it, too. We are Wendy and Jack. We are Danny. We are Hallorann. And maybe we are the hotel. Maybe we are taking human behavior and turning it into our own entertainment for our own purposes.

The Shining is a great movie because Stanley Kubrick was a genius. He was fearless in what he sought to show us about human nature, as all great directors are. We don’t have films like this because we don’t have audiences like this. The Shining is a great way to remember some of the best Hollywood has ever produced, and a great way to kick off the month of October and the Halloween season.

Warner Bros. has almost single-handedly rescued the movie business this year by making original films that people turned out to see, and they made money. F1, Sinners, and Weapons are all in the top 20 highest-grossing films of the year. Now, Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, with a hefty price tag of $140 million, just hit theaters. Can it make back its money? Probably not.

Even if it does fail at the box office, it won’t be allowed to fail. It will be lauded with film awards, maybe even Oscars. Is it a good movie? It’s well-made. Is it funny? At times, yes. Some of the action sequences are great. The cinematography, the acting, and the directing are all top-notch. But as one of the audience reviewers put it on Rotten Tomatoes:

One Battle After Another is a film for a very specific type of person, and that type of person just happens to be our elite ruling class, who somehow see themselves as oppressed because they borrow oppression of marginalized groups that they speak for in their films, their TV shows, their books, their late-night comedy, and their media.

PTA is a great director, but he’s never been my cup of tea. I don’t think I’ve seen any of his movies more than once. He has a cult-like following of film fans who adore everything he does, and this movie is no exception.

Shot in large format Vistavision, the film looks great. It mostly keeps things rolling, so that the lengthy runtime, over two hours, speeds by. That’s if you like the movie. If you don’t, you’ll be bored by the one-hour mark.

The best thing about it is Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance as Bob, the ne’er-do-well ex-revolutionary raising his daughter Willa (Chase Infinity).

The plot is more or less about a group of radicals (think: ANTIFA) who shoot up an ICE detention facility before going on the run after shooting a cop. The main radical is Perfidia Beverly Hills (an excellent Teyana Taylor), who is sleeping with both the racist ICE agent, Lockjaw, played by Sean Penn, and Bob. She gets pregnant and assumes Bob is the father.

But when the revolution calls to Perfidia, she abandons her baby, leaving Bob to raise Willa. All of this would have made for a much better movie had they stuck to it, but instead, we have to follow Lockjaw, who now wants to join an elitist group of white supremacists, and because he once slept with a Black woman, he has to find out if Willa is his biological daughter and, if so, wipe her off the map.

Meanwhile, loser Bob is in a race against time to find his daughter and save her now that the underground has taken her off to a hiding place. Yes, that’s the plot, for better or worse. Mostly worse.

The Bad

It may be that what we call “woke” storytelling is now here to stay, and that there will never be a return to the way things were before. Those rules mean only white people are allowed to be evil or bad guys. All people of color and LGBT individuals must be portrayed in a positive light, for instance.

Teyana Taylor in this film seems to be headed in a complex or negative direction, or at least someone who is not admirable. But if you know the rules of Woketopia in movies, you know how her character will turn out in the end. There is no way they will allow her to be seen as bad.

That means, at least for me, I already know what the story will be about and how the movie will end just based on the casting alone. One Battle After Another checks every box, up to and including Leonard DiCaprio de-centering himself from the narrative, as all white men must. They’re not allowed to save women anymore.

In the Left’s America, and in the film and television shows they produce, each of us is judged by our identity group - skin color, gender, or how well the film panders to the marginalized groups. That is what seems to decide good and bad now. And I don’t know if that will ever change.

It must be present in every movie. It’s in F1 and in Weapons. Every time you see a sampling of intersectional characters, you know they are only there because they are mandated to be there, not necessarily because it fits with the story.

That is why the critics are so over the moon.

To them, it is everything they are and everything they believe, a validation of their mass delusion that Trump didn’t win a fair election in 2024 but rather he and his Nazi army stormed DC, and they’re all trying to survive in a racist/fascist nation. They really do believe this because they have locked themselves away from the rest of America, and no one in the media will ever tell them the truth.

What would be funny is if someone made a movie about that, their collective delusion about being oppressed as the side with still so much wealth and power. They just don’t like sharing this country with people who do not agree with them. Coming the closest is Ari Aster, who made the film Eddington that satirizes the awful year that was 2020, and does so by pointing out how different real life was from virtual life, where a Civil War rages on.

One Battle After Another aims to be satire, but it mocks the Left with the lightest of touches. There is one scene where one of the progressive activists is mocked by saying he doesn’t feel “safe,” and we sympathize with Bob’s frustration as he screams at him. He just wants to save his daughter. He doesn’t care about the rest of it. But the movie cares.

The Ugly

One Battle After Another reminds me of the agitprop B-movie Billy Jack, which was released in 1971, the same year as Dirty Harry.

One Battle is better made, for sure, but it’s the same idea.

We don’t have a Hollywood that would catch the wave of the way America was changing in 1971. Dirty Harry was popular because America was tired of the hippies. They were tired of crime. They were ready to move in a different direction.

There’s a reason Dirty Harry has stayed with us all of these years, and Billy Jack has faded. That’s probably because Clint Eastwood became a formidable force in American film. But there might be something to the idea that Dirty Harry was a Trump-like figure back then, someone who didn’t exactly fit in the progressive Left culture but who somehow found a way to resonate, though people today would call it “racist.”

Either way, I wish we had a Hollywood now that would make movies for audiences rather than movies for critics. The critics don’t seem like they assess movies so much as they use film and writing about film to push their social justice agenda outward. There aren’t many areas on the Left anymore that don’t.

It’s one thing to abandon half the country and make culture and art only for themselves. It’s another thing to turn normie America into The Enemy, which One Battle After Another does in its one-sided view of the border crisis, in its obedience to portraying the white people as bad (except Stoner Bob) and the marginalized people as good.

For ten long years, the Left has been demonizing and dehumanizing not only the Right but the silent majority as “racists,” which has distorted their worldview and wrecked their ability to tell good stories for everyone. But it’s even worse than that. If half of America is their enemy, how can they possibly expect them to buy tickets to see their movies?

If you are a working-class American who is worried about the border and so you voted for Trump, this movie will tell you that you are a “racist” going along with crimes against humanity with mass deportations. If you are an ICE agent, a cop, or a soldier, you are the Gestapo in this movie.

Here is a good rundown by Chris Gore and Alan Ng for Film Threat.

This isn’t a movie that will incite more violence against ICE officers, but it is a movie that celebrates those who do as heroes, and it affirms the mass delusions of the Left better than probably any movie ever made. No wonder they are euphoric. This is their Ben-Hur.

Ultimately, I have to wonder about the collective sanity of the Left. Is it that they will only feel safe if they somehow cancel half the country? Do what with all of those people they see as their biggest threat? You know, their fellow Americans? Throw them into gulags?

Perhaps worst of all, the way critics and the media responded to the film made me realize that movies, like everything else, are weapons in our ongoing Civil War. This one would count as a “win” for the Left because they know it will hurt and anger the Right. If the movie bombs, which it might, it counts as a win for the Right, and the cycle continues.

Just as Billy Jack reflected a part of America in 1971 that America would ultimately leave behind, while Dirty Harry became a part of its future, with Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, One Battle After Another could end up being the definitive portrait of the Hollywood Woketopia that so many have already left behind.

That makes it an odd legacy for Paul Thomas Anderson, who will forever be seen less as the auteur he once was, and more as someone who spoke for a generation trapped inside a Doomsday Cult.

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Kimmel’s days were numbered. The ratings were terrible, as with Stephen Colbert. I imagine this is an excuse that helps them get rid of him while allowing him to become a martyr for the Left. Like Colbert, he will fail upwards. He won’t face the same kind of punishment that those canceled by the left have. Going out this way gives him a good story and sends him out into the world of standing ovations and pats on the back.

Honestly, the best thing for America. Why would anyone have him be a late-night host when all he did was dump on the other half of the country that voted for Trump? He is among those who spin delusions and illusions that have helped destroy American culture, from comedy to movies to books to journalism. Maybe now they’ll consider that there is another half of this country that they not only abandon but that they continue to demonize every second of every day.

Meanwhile, Amanda Seyfried, who has a major film coming out at the end of this year called The Housemaid, decided she’d weigh in on the Charlie Kirk assassination:

Of course, after being called out, she offered a justification and an apology.

Amanda Seyfried is not familiar with Charlie Kirk. She could not know that he never advocated for violence. Quite the opposite. He never incited it. He was never cruel or rude. She won’t be canceled or punished. She reflects the status quo on the Left. None of them has any idea of the moment we just lived through. I guess they’re starting to figure it out.

The comments are even worse than the post. They’re all high-fiving her.

They believe everyone should think exactly like they do, and there are, in fact, thought crimes that, if punished, no one should be sad about it. That makes them fascists.

It started with cancel culture. Since no one really punished them for it, they just kept going, and now, here we are with an assassination that is just one step further: disappearing a thought criminal.

You might think, Wow, America just saw its first assassination, a public execution. That might be shocking to some, even traumatic. This man was there to witness it.

But to the fascists, if you do not believe what they believe, it was one more battle against their oppressors won. They freely call Trump supporters fascists and Nazis to justify all of this. But look closer, and you can see who the real fascists are.

Not all who made statements are fascists, at least they didn’t come right out and admit it like Ricci did. Jimmy Kimmel’s statement was borderline, but it was still within the realm of human decency:

Shockingly, Stephen Colbert also held his tongue and forced out some kind of message that wasn’t fascist:

And more from Newsweek:

People are apparently losing their jobs for celebrating Charlie Kirk’s death. On the one hand, I am opposed to cancel culture. I don’t think they should lose their jobs for having an opinion. On the other hand, I would not want someone like that working for me, so I kind of understand.

I was canceled because I made a joke about “White Dudes for Harris,” saying “white power” was back in style. For that, my entire career was wiped out because they thought I meant it. They misread what I was saying. If I’d made a serious comment that “white power was back,” then sure, I would deserve it. In the case of these monsters celebrating, they do mean it.

Fascism is everywhere now on the Left. It has overtaken Hollywood, which has mostly destroyed movies, but for every once in a while. No one can break the rules, or else. Christina Ricci fits right in.

With Weapons, we have much to be grateful for, starting with the best thing about it: it’s not “woke.” People always say that, and movies almost always are, but not this one. It is cast and told in such a way that it isn’t ideology-driven. It doesn’t virtue signal. There is no MESSAGE.

Written and directed by Zach Cregger, Weapons is in some ways a companion piece to his last movie, Barbarian, which put him on the map. Both films are set up more or less in the realm of the normal and then open another dimension of reality and introduce the supernatural and the grotesque.

I was hoping for something a little deeper in terms of the characters. There are loose ends and dangling plot holes, and things that don’t make complete sense. It doesn’t have a message anywhere in it about suburban American life or school shootings, or identity. It’s more about structure, pacing, and rhythm than it is about story.

And that’s the film’s only real problem — the writing. He wants it to be along the lines of Psycho and Don’t Look Now, or Rosemary’s Baby but, at least to me, it doesn’t quite get there. But I feel a little silly complaining when we have an original movie that might not be perfect but it is headed in the right direction for Hollywood.

The best part of Weapons is the first 2/3rds where we are introduced to various characters’ points of view as they navigate a mystery in the town. A classroom full of students disappears into the night. No one can find them, but they begin to suspect the teacher, played by Julia Garner.

We follow her story for a while as she intersects with other characters in the movie. Then the story shifts to a different character, and we watch their perspective. Slowly, the mystery unravels, or so we think. There is a way of seeing the movie through the eyes of an unreliable narrator. Maybe what we saw is the true story, maybe it isn’t. We don’t have a resolution by the end, and it’s unclear if we are meant to see it as open-ended.

If it is told by an unreliable narrator and what we see at the end isn’t everything that it seems, then it is probably a much better movie than it seemed like it was to me on first viewing. I’ll leave open that possibility before making a final assessment. Perhaps there were clues I missed, and I got it wrong. I’m willing to accept that as a possibility.

Either way, the movie is either about a creepy kid or it’s about the kid’s creepy aunt. I won’t spoil it here, but just to say, it might be one of those movies where it’s open to interpretation and people will debate about it for years, or at least until the sequel comes out.

It’s not easy getting out to the movie theaters now, especially when we know that most movies are agonizingly woke — with Hollywood’s eternal message being, “we’re the good guys and all of you lowly ticket buyers are the bad guys — and the cost of ticket prices equal one month of content on streaming.

It can also be annoying seeing movies with a lot of people. Cell phones go off. People talk. One guy got up and had his conversation outside in the hallway without realizing we could all still hear him. And then there is the audience reaction which can make or break a film experience. Did they love it and clap at the end? Or did they groan?

I arrived at the movie theater at showtime but the show didn’t actually start until 30 minutes later. Before that are trailers, which I don’t mind, and ads that I do mind. Knowing this, I will likely show up 15 minutes later than the designated time.

Weapons is good Summer fun and well worth the price of a movie ticket, just make sure you lower your expectations and you will come out of it satisfied. If you expect too much from it, as I did going in, you’ll probably think at the end, “Is that all there is?”

Just for reference, check out this ad also on the American Eagle YouTube channel:

And this:

And this:

Now look at what the TikTok users are saying about the Sydney Sweeney ad:

I put together this compilation to bookmark it as a moment in time that perfectly illustrates how we have polluted the minds of the young for the past 15 years with Critical Race and Gender Theory, not to mention whatever they’ve taught them at universities. I can’t imagine what it would be like to come of age with this kind of mindset and have to interface with a world where we are all separated into designated categories, separating everyone.

They are the ones obsessed with race and skin color. The truth about the Sydney Sweeney ad is that it is about her most famous assets — her boobs. As someone who grew up with a rather impressive rack, I can attest that it was the only thing people — men — ever noticed about me, and I didn't mind. Sweeney is leaning into it - and why not?

We’ve lived through this era where sexuality is stripped from men and women. In their place are these overly intellectual, sanitized, “correct” versions of what we’re supposed to be. I can’t stand it.

“Good jeans/genes” in her case means she’s got great boobs. She can’t say that, but it is the subtext. Leave it to the poor, sad cult members to think it means “whiteness” and Trump. It makes me sad for them. I can hardly imagine how limited their lives will be from this point forward.

It also reveals what Hollywood is up against, with people like this likely working with and alongside them. If you are wondering why everything is presented in a certain way, it is to ensure that no marginalized individuals are left behind —this is why: they are terrified of these puritanical scolds. To avoid it, they have to signal their wokeness. American Eagle did just that throughout the past five years. Now, they’ll take the heat they do not deserve.

Then again, it is also a signal that wokeness is waning. The jeans will become the anti-woke symbol, and thus, women will want to wear them and be associated with them. It’s good advertising. It’s forward-thinking.

A similar backlash also occurred after the feminist movement of the 1970s, when films like Kramer vs. Kramer, Network, and Manhattan emerged, all of which were critical of the feminist movement. By the 1980s, women like me coming of age wouldn’t dare call ourselves feminists.

This is marking a similar pendulum shift, I think. If it spills over into movies, I will be overjoyed. I won’t hold my breath.

Sure, acting figures into it. We can appreciate a great performance. But in general, even if it’s Dustin Hoffman, it comes down to charisma. With women, the sex card is the most powerful card in the deck, hands down, no question.

It isn’t sex so much as beauty. If you are beautiful, chances are you will find your way to some kind of fame. True before TikTok and YouTube, still true after. We like to look at beautiful people. Scarlett Johansson would never have become famous were it not for how she transformed from a geeky childhood actor into one of the hottest women in the world.

I saw her once in person, and she was even more beautiful. That is true of every actress - and some actors - I’ve seen in real life. Beauty can be in the eye of the beholder. That’s how to rise to the top of the pile, at least in an honest industry that cares about giving its audiences what they want. That no longer describes Hollywood.

They are comfortable with every kind of sexual expression except heterosexual males, who, for a long time, made up the bulk of their audience. This is great. Give it a watch.

Hollywood used to be a mighty empire. The public used to love celebrities. And while there is still some vague interest in some of them, they do not have the same power as they used to. They must know it. It isn't just the box office. Their appearances on talk shows and their interviews don't go viral unless they say something that gets them in trouble. Not to mention, celebrities are being minted every hour of every day on YouTube and TikTok.

Celebrities should feel good that they once worked in an industry when celebrities mattered more. They all got rich, or many of them did. They delivered for the people. They gave us something without demanding anything, except our money and attention. Some of them, even now, can command a crowd or a platform, especially if they are extraordinarily beautiful. Though that part of the capitalist model in Hollywood is having a moment. Of guilt? Shame? Collectivist madness?

Things are changing fast. To quote Top Gun Maverick, the future is here, and you're not in it. The free market is at work, just not where executives and millionaires are concerned. They must continue to protect themselves, especially the richest and most powerful among us. Somewhere along the way, it seems they've lost the plot. Entertainment, by Hollywood standards, is now under the control of a new code, like the Hays Code.

It isn't just "woke," although that is a big part of it. It is the idea that Hollywood is some sort of empire of virtue that seeks to perfect utopia with correctness. We are good people doing good things is the idea. You can see this in their contracts - if you ever sign one - in their casting choices and in their mission statements. It was an ask for a while, now it is a demand and it has completely and utterly killed their brand.

I have been cursed with the need to tell people the truth in an industry where almost no one does. They are all afraid, and with reason. They say the authoritarianism is on the Right, but it's the side that has the power to decide who can speak and who can't, who can work and who can't, who is acceptable and who isn't that is the real authoritarian force in our culture now, especially Hollywood. If you have no power, you just scream into the void.

The relationship between Hollywood and the Demcoratic Party is laid bare in Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's new book, Original Sin, about how the press covered up Joe Biden cognitive decline until it was exposed on debate night, after which George Clooney - yes, George Clooney - wrote an infamous op-ed in the New York Times saying "we need a new nominee." We? Who is "we"? Why does George Clooney get to decide for the voters? Well, because of the alignment of power between Hollywood and the Democrats, which has never been stronger, even in the 1940s and 1950s during the Commie purges.

In Original Sin, we find out that the Chairman and co-founder of Netflix, Reed Hastings, threatened to withhold any donations unless Joe Biden stepped down (Democracy!), and Jeffrey Katzenberg worked with Steven Spielberg to add movie lighting and sound, along with acting coaching, for Biden (they did something similar with Kamala Harris). Rob Reiner, Jane Fonda and other figures in Hollywood are depicted in the book as watching debate night with Doug Emhoff, Kamala Harris' husband and losing their shit when Biden spoke.

I'm sorry for them that they only pay attention to the legacy media on the Left. I learned that lesson back in 2020 when the New York Times buckled under pressure from Twitter to apologize for an essay by Senator Tom Cotton. It was putting Black bodies at risk, so they said. Yes, the essay. Words.

The legacy press stopped telling the whole truth in 2016, after Trump won. The "resistance" (which never was, was always The Empire) meant that all things in American life and culture must support the Democrats and go at war with the duly elected POTUS by any means necessary. By the end of it, Trump would be impeached twice, indicted four times, convicted of a felony, his home in Mar-a-Lago raided, almost shot in the head on live television, and almost assassinated again while playing golf.

And the Democrats still could not win. Not only that, but Trump gained among all demographic groups except older white boomers. He even gained with Gen-Z. Why? Because no one can stand what has become of the totalitarian, authoritarian Left. There are still very powerful people who somehow believe they can protest their way out of being hated by millions of people. Burn enough Teslas, and hey, maybe people will say Yeah, we'll vote for you. But wait, weren't we supposed to support electric cars?

Either way, Hollywood continues to showcase its elitist isolationist victimhood on social media. The latest is Kyra Sedgwick, whose fever dream includes fear that Trump will take away her vote.

And then a hilarious response by philosophy teacher Gad Saad who escaped near-death from Lebanon:

There is nothing wrong with being politically engaged. There is something wrong with taking it to such an extreme level, it leaves no room for real emergencies. This is actually how democracy works. A candidate presents ideas. People vote. The one who wins the most votes wins. I could spend a lot of time explaining why the Democrats lost to Trump. They think demonizing him, his supporters, and his voters will somehow put them back in power. It doesn't work like that. You can't just caterwaul, scream, throw fits, and protest and expect anything to change. A second loss like this should be a time to figure out what is wrong with you, with your side, that so many people would vote against you.

The same lesson goes for Hollywood. Isn't it time you stopped asking what the American people can do for you and started asking what you can do for them?

Bruce Springsteen sits on a pile of money because of the people who voted for Trump. He made his living as a working-class hero, so-called. That demographic, which he apparently hates now because they voted for Trump, is why he is a rich man in a poor man's suit who lives in a Mansion on the Hill. I loved Bruce Springsteen growing up. I went down to the river, hid on the backstreets, and came for you. I came for you, but you did not need my urgency. So I am, or at least I was, a fan. It isn't that politics ruined Bruce Springsteen. It's just that it's unseemly to listen to someone that rich and that famous continue to scream about tyranny and oppression, all because he vacations with the Obamas and hates Trump.

Now, I am not foolish enough to think any of this matters. It doesn't. The awards race I am a part of will fawn all over Bruce, so mission accomplished. If Kyra Sedgwick ever gets work again, I'm sure the audience will applaud and treat her like a hero. But at this point, when you had what looked like a working-class revolution to oust the party of the elites, perhaps it's time to ask, Do you hear yourselves?

Michael Tracy wrote about watching George Clooney's theater performance of Good Night and Good Luck:

During the play I found myself bemusedly tracking when the audience chose to cheer or gasp. There’s a scene in which Don Hollenbeck, a Murrow associate, laments that it sure feels like all the reasonable people in America (circa 1953) have up and left for Europe. The actor had to take a beat, because the theater full of middle-aged libs burst out into rapturous applause. Of course, the applause was not for the wit of the writing, or the majesty of the delivery, but for the implicit present-day parallel — implied with the subtlety of a ton of bricks — that the audience specifically came to have validated. Any challenge to their assumptions or biases, or any allowance for moral or historical ambiguity, was not on the menu.

Clooney’s apparent belief that these timeless moral instructions are neatly recyclable from Bush to Trump 2.0, with no creative update required, would seem to suggest that the McCarthy parallel has become a handy default rebuttal to any disfavored (Republican) administration. While there are certainly some continuities to be discerned between the Bush and Trump governments, there are also plenty of departures to be explored by anyone motivated to do so. But in the Clooney-world of megadonor liberalism, no departure is significant enough that it can’t be flattened into the same old melodramatized McCarthy parallel.

To recap the last decade, the blacklists have been on the Left -- I am someone who has been blacklisted by Hollywood for the most part, though thankfully not by all, simply for my own outspoken tweets. Literally that. The Hollywood now, or of the past ten years, is like the Hollywood during Murrow's time, with a strict code of conduct, thought, speech and yes, blacklists. The fear of speaking out, of telling the truth, is on the Left, not on the Right. True, Trump took back the White House, but that was because they all failed. They failed because they are insulated and isolated from the rest of America.

But how does Clooney perform that play and pretend oppression at the same time when there was a media cover-up that Jake Tapper himself says is worse than Watergate—that Clooney was very much a part of? Do they listen to themselves at all? Do they genuinely believe they are so important that they can decide not only our democracy but also what information we're allowed to know?

After pushing Joe Biden out, the Democrats installed Harris, without even a single vote. They did that because they knew no one could leapfrog over the first woman of color Veep of the United States. So why bother with the foreplay? All of this is rich material for a long-form series or a movie, though Hollywood would not tell it truthfully. They can't. They're part of "the same hypocrisy," to quote The Godfather.

If Original Sin is ever made for Netflix or HBO, all it will be is yet another "Trump is bad" missive to protect the people at the top and support the Democrats. But as I said long ago, if you align power all on one side, and you build an empire, if one falls, all fall.

Biden is at fault for many things, but he earned the nomination, which gave him the right to run. They lost anyway. The bottom line is that Hollywood was running the show, and the show must go on. If they think the majority in this country is rooting for them, the celebrities, the movie people, Hollywood, and the Democrats, they're wrong.

Sure, those inside the bubble might - the kinds of people who still watch Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and Rachel Maddow. They hang on every word written in The Atlantic and the New Yorker. They hate people like me. They hate anyone who isn't like them. For Hollywood and the Democrats, that's a problem.

Right now, the Democrats are planning to spend millions to find the "Left's Joe Rogan." The only reason Rogan exists is because free thought and free speech have been verboten on the Left for a long time, not to mention all masculinity. They've tried to cancel Rogan many times, but he prevails because in this climate, it is refreshing to hear someone just say what they really think.

There can't be a Joe Rogan for the Left because they do not speak at ease, ever, not even among friends, not on social media, not at parties. Most must always stick to the strident code. They live in fear of one wrong mistake. The Left dominates nearly all media. They lost their audience because no one can stand it anymore. The mind wants to be free.

Hollywood is now under threat from AI. AI can write screenplays, make movies, and replace all of the craftspeople on a movie set. This is not the time to remain in a totalitarian state. This is the time to show the machines what the human mind can do. But if Hollywood remains under its current code and the blacklists remain a threat, AI can wipe the floor with them.

The industry would remain as alienating as ever if it were not for one man—Tom Cruise—who remains a class act because he understands his role as a movie star. He knows how lucky he is, and he shows his gratitude every time he releases a movie.

It isn't just for show. My sister once worked with him on publicity for a movie, and afterwards, he sent her a giant bouquet with a thank-you note. Here is his thank-you note for the success of Mission: Impossible Final Reckoning:

Tom Cruise and Ryan Coogler can't save Hollywood, and they shouldn't have to. It's time to grow a pair and rejoin the rest of the country and the world by understanding we're all in this together, at least, if we're Capitalists, we must be.

This is another terrible weekend for Hollywood at the box office. They have shrunk their audience dramatically. They can’t fix the problem because they can’t even name it. As I look around at the trades, I still see the same thing:

On X, they think Hollywood is to blame for sending movies to streaming too quickly and for ticket prices being too high.

Nope. That’s not the reason. People will crawl across cut glass to see something they want to see. If you build it, they will come. Look at how expensive Disneyland is. Do you think their amusement parks aren’t selling tickets? No, people pay because they know the experience will be worth it. The problem is that Hollywood doesn’t want to build it. They want to build utopia, or woketopia, just like the Democrats, and therein lies their problem.

If the Democrats are less popular now than ever, that goes double for Hollywood. They are one and the same.

Hollywood, like our government, is no longer working for the people. At the very least, they should respond to the market. But that hasn’t been true for a very long time. No one really talks about the elephant in the room - how Hollywood lost its audience and why no one goes to the movies anymore, or at least not enough to keep the industry thriving. But every weekend, it’s more bad news.

Says Deadline’s Anthony D’Alessandro:

If Snow White pulls off a $50 million-plus opening, that’s a respectable bump for what is a barren desert of a business right now. Current estimates show that this weekend is in fact the lowest grossing at the domestic box office year-to-date with around $54.7M for all films, lower than Super Bowl Weekend ($55.8M). How is that possible during a spring break with kids off?

How is it possible? Hollywood doesn’t know how to tell stories for a country it no longer knows or understands. That’s the best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario is that Hollywood, like the Democrats, despises the majority of the American people. How can they tell stories for people they can’t stand? And why would they expect those Americans even to want to see their movies?

They tell stories for themselves. They use Hollywood as yet another propaganda arm for their singular ideology. And to absolve themselves of their sins of wealth and privilege. The same people in power now have always been in power, and those are mostly white men. The only people who have paid a price for what Hollywood has become are all of us, the ticket buyers.

Hollywood has become creatively constipated. None of it seems to resonate broadly. They don’t tell universal stories because they have no idea what to say. It is a town crippled by fear and ruled by hysteria. Art can’t survive that. What we get is bland, boring, conflict-free movies that tell us the same thing over and over again.

You find conflict and unpredictability everywhere else but Hollywood. TikTok, X, YouTube, and even the Trump Show, not to mention podcasts, true crime, and real-life dramas, are all more interesting than this safe, boring, WOKE, predictable storytelling Hollywood feels compelled to foist upon us. Did they think we would not notice?

Back in the old days of Hollywood, someone would get fired if a $300 million dollar movie bombed. But not today. No one will lose their jobs because in Hollywood, to quote Bob Dylan, there is no success like failure, and failure is no success at all. They love to fail because it proves they are still the good people with good intentions, and it’s their audience that is bad, their audience who wants all of the wrong things. It’s not Hollywood’s fault.

Yes, it is. When a movie bombs, heads should roll. People should get fired. New people hired. Those with one goal in mind: putting butts in seats. If they can’t do it, out they go. The more exciting the movies, the more people will turn out. It isn’t complicated. Hollywood knows how to do this. They just can’t because they are buried under layers and layers of activism, corruption, and bloat.

Look at these movie stars who still command ridiculously high salaries, only for those movies to bomb because the public can’t stand the movie stars either, and why should they? Every time someone sticks a mic in their face, they start whining about fascism and Trump. SHUT UP.

They shouldn’t be hiring eager beaver-woke academics. They should hire people from all different walks of life who can give them a crash course in REALITY. There are so many great stories to tell. It would not be hard to fill seats. Make a satire of a “woke” movie. Audiences would turn out in droves. Tell the story of the Joe Biden coup. Make a movie about the fight for women to play in sports without having to compete against biological men.

Hollywood won’t tell the stories people are really interested in because they have to tell only one story, the story the Democrats want them to tell, their Woketopia origin story, and how mean old Trump knocked it all down. How many George Clooney movies do we have to sit through that beg us to pat them on the back and say GOOD JOB! YAWN. You’re putting your audience to sleep. NO ONE CARES.

Hollywood needs someone like Elon Musk to take a chainsaw to the place. Clean it out—fire everyone. Then, re-hire only those people who can do the job well. Hire the best directors, writers, and actors who prioritize audiences, not themselves. We don’t need directors who are wealthy and famous to tell us what good people they are. WE DON’T CARE. We don’t need Kathleen Kennedy and Disney to virtue-signal how good they are when they have become a corporate monopoly. WE AREN’T BUYING IT.

Take Snow White. It was a slow-rolling disaster for the studios because of the star, Rachel Zegler, who is quite outspoken online. Zegler’s criticisms of Snow White as being old-fashioned and “rapey” rubbed people the wrong way — you know, your ticket buyers? All of us who love Snow White and think it’s a perfect movie because it is the embodiment of beauty and love? Just because she has “skin as white as snow” doesn’t make that dirty or racist or wrong. It just is the story. So what?

Zegler was so outspoken and unfiltered, she became a favorite target of the YouTubers, Critical Drinker especially. And just look at how many people have viewed these videos:

2.1 million views:

3 million views:

1.9 million views:

3.6 million views:

Snow White might not bomb. It is for families and not YouTubers. But still, it is an agenda movie, and everyone knows it.

Here is Breitbart’s John Nolte telling it like it is:

Rachel Zegler herself isn’t the problem. The whole ecosystem is the problem. They just don’t care anymore about the people who made them all rich, those who work hard jobs every day, who are living on the margins, and who have practical problems, not existential dread. They need the escape and the fantasy movies used to provide until they turned into a scolding schoolmarm to punish all of us for what we actually want to see on screen.

We like the handsome prince. We like the princess. We like true love’s kiss. We like the magic of a movie that dares to tell the truth about female vanity. We don’t need Snow White to be empowered. Why would we need that? Why would we need MORE of that? Can we have something else, please?

We’ve had enough existential dread to last a lifetime. How about doing what all the greats used to do - Frank Capra, John Ford, Coppola, Scorsese, the Coens back in the day? Hollywood knows how to make good movies, even great movies. All they have to do is tell stories for everyone. Or at least try.

It shouldn’t be on the public to turn out to see Hollywood movies to save movie theaters. It should be on Hollywood to make better movies to save itself.

Bring in DOGE. Fire everyone. Start over. It can’t possibly get any worse.

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Why? Because they have shut out not just half the country, but the masculine energy that has driven so much of human civilization forever. This kind of energy:

Donald Trump broke the Left. He broke the Democratic Party and he broke Hollywood. I lived through all of it, first as a Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton Democrat and then leaving the party to becoming an independent to then being one of the 76 million Americans who saw Trump as the only way out of the mess we were in at the hands of the Left.

Through it all I have been hoping that Hollywood could somehow come back. Can they un-coddle the American mind by telling good stories again? Can they revive the box office so that movie theaters will survive? Can they win back the millions they’ve alienated for almost ten years? I don’t know. I remain skeptical.

There was a time when Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Harrison Ford, Meryl Streep, Barbra Streisand, Jennifer Lawrence, Demi Moore, and every big-name celebrity mattered in American politics. Those days are long gone. Celebrities have very little value to most people and yet, they don’t seem to realize it.

The rejection against Hollywood stars has motivated some of them to leave the country, or at least X. What must it feel like to have all of that go away? Does it feel like getting canceled, like so many of us have by them? If so, they have it coming.

But still, it’s hard to watch a once-thriving industry completely collapse, even if I predicted it. I’m not sure who they are making movies for anymore.

I have been covering Hollywood for over 25 years. I built my website, Oscarwatch.com, to track the Oscar race and become a good predictor. Over time, it became less about the competition of the awards and more about “fixing society.” I could see way back in 2001 that the internet had changed things dramatically. It was like someone flicked on the lights in a room full of people and could see things more clearly for the first time.

That meant it wouldn’t be long before people began to notice just how white, heterosexual and male Hollywood and the Oscars really were. I could sense the shift way before it happened and I was one of the first people to become a “woke” blogger, meaning, I prioritized identity over merit.

But I never thought, in a million years, that identity politics would swallow up Hollowyood. I always figured there would be room for both. But the hysteria and outrage over Trump’s win meant Hollywood felt obligated en masse to draw a line between them and anyone who was not fully on board with the Left.

Politics and wokeness aren’t the only thing that destroyed the business. Adopting the fast food model for franchise movies helped. They churned them out, lowered expectations, gave people fewer and fewer options and they made unimaginable amounts of money.

In their height, Hollywood was generating $10 billion per year. Now, they’ll be lucky to come away with $7 billion. They can’t be both fixers for society and a profitable industry. They should pick one. If it’s to entertain, then entertain and stop trying to lecture the rest of us about how we should live our lives.

This past election was a complete and total rejection of Hollywood and its elite ruling class. There they were, on the campaign trail with Kamala Harris telling voters that they should worry about Julia Roberts being embarrassed to travel to other countries and admit she’s from America (as if anyone didn’t already know that). Meryl Streep fretting over “democracy.” George Clooney blabbering about saving the country from a fascist.

As usual, the YouTubers are on top of it and have delivered some powerful essays that would serve as wake-up calls to Hollywood if anyone of them paid any attention.

And Nerdrotic:

I don’t see how Hollywood can possibly dig itself out of the hole it’s in. Maybe they won’t. Maybe it’s just all over.

Maybe we’ll have to put our faith in outsiders who will build a new industry filled with filmmakers and actors who aren’t elitist snobs and really do want to entertain. I can only hope.

It’s also the film's concept—a softening of a character or an apology for the complaints against the first Joker movie. It’s a musical. It’s about love, supposedly. It’s about how all we need is love and how we can’t get love, and that’s why we turn to violence. I might check it out once it drops on streaming, but life is short.

To quote Comicbookmovie.com:

The entirety of this sequel is clearly meant as a commentary on the fans who idolise Joker and who filmmaker Todd Phillips rallied against when the first movie was accused of being a rallying call for incels. The problem there, of course, is that the number of people who view Arthur as a "hero" is a tiny minority, and Joker: Folie à Deux's message rings hollow, as a result.

Joker Folie a Deux should have been a cakewalk for Todd Phillips if the bottom of Hollywood hadn’t dropped out. But alas, it has. To find yet more evidence of an empire in collapse, look no further than Joker Folie a Deux, a movie no one seems to have wanted to make, and now it’s a movie no one will want to see.

Phillips has foisted his apologia on his fans, it seems. Why? To punish them for loving the first film too much, and maybe because both Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix wanted to murder the entire idea of the movie, the character, and the film’s lasting legacy. If that was the goal, it appears they have succeeded.

Joker came out in 2019, which seems to have been the last great year for movies, before the Great Awokening and the collapse of Hollywood. Joker was funny and weird. It was dark and had a cynical message, where the Joker shoots Robert De Niro in the face after saying, “you get what you deserve.”

The media did what it always does. It took things way too seriously, and before long, the film was treated like a Donald Trump tweet. The world comes to a grinding halt so everyone can cluck their tongues at how “dangerous” this art might be.

And:

I remember 2019 when Phoenix felt demonized by the accusations coming out about the movie and how it inspires violence. I remember his attempt to do damage control when he won the Oscar and began talking about animal rights.

I remember how strange it was that tensions were already so high in February of 2020, just before COVID hit that Joaquin Phoenix was visibly nervous. The film, like the others it was nominated alongside Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Irishman, and 1917 were films that the old Hollywood would have made but films they wouldn’t dare make today.

Just after Phoenix won the Oscar in February of 2020, COVID hit, then the Great Awokening, then January 6th. We’d come out of it as a completely different country, and the film industry would never be the same. So how does one even make a Joker movie in today’s climate? By not making a Joker movie, I guess.

I can’t help but think the Trump factor is at play here, with Phillips and Phoenix wanting to not be like what they think Trump and MAGA are like. Maybe they saw it all as “toxic masculinity,” or maybe Hollywood will never know how to tell good stories ever again.

Between the first Joker and now, Joaquin Phoenix has married Rooney Mara and had two children with her. Maybe having kids changed how he saw the world, and maybe that’s why he felt the need to destroy the Joker in every way imaginable.

The movie will likely bomb and go down as one of the biggest disappointments in modern film history.

It cost $200 million.

Movies don’t have to be that good to make money now. They just have to meet the baseline of expectations, especially a comic book movie like Joker. But it was precisely those expectations that Phillips wanted to deny. But why? All that means is your movie bombs.

There is too much of a focus on status and self-image in Hollywood now. They’ve abandoned their audience across the board. They don’t care about the majority of Americans who used to love going to movies. This year has been one of the worst in all of the years I’ve been covering Hollywood, not just from a box office standpoint, but the movies themselves are bad.

The bombs this year so far have been:

Furiosa - cost: $168 million, box office $67 million
The Fall Guy - cost: $125 million, box office $92 million

Francis Ford Coppola spent over $100 million on Megalopolis, which hasn’t made a dime. Kevin Costner also self-financed the epic western, Horizon, which made just $29 million.

I’m not the target audience for Joker, but it is a bummer to see how fear of the mob, or fear of being judged by the “woke scolds,” has successfully intimidated nearly all of Hollywood to sell its audiences down the river in hopes of some absolution of their collective sins.

Now, only Ridley Scott’s Gladiator sequel can save Hollywood. Let’s hope that one is good. I’ll be seeing it on the 18th of October.

Now, the Daily Wire can count itself as a force to be reckoned with. They’re a real studio now. They will be harder for the bubble that is Hollywood to ignore. This is the beginning of a thriving counterculture, and not a moment too soon.

In the weeks leading up to the release of The Daily Wire’s first major theatrical feature, Am I Racist, Ben Shapiro and everyone else at the company were on the publicity trail. The trailer played before every podcast from the Daily Wire.

We saw Matt Walsh appearing on various Conservative talk shows. But, as with the film Reagan and Sound of Freedom, it had to remain on the other side of the Blue Wall. They do everything they can to not help these outsider productions because they are not politically aligned with the insulated, isolated bubble that now defines Hollywood.

The film critic aggregate site, Rotten Tomatoes, did not showcase the few reviews the film did have. In the beginning, there were just four. Now, the reviews have grown a bit, giving the film both a film critic score and an audience score:

Matt Walsh took to X to call out the film critics for being too cowardly to watch the film or mention it. (Read the full thread here).

That seemed to generate some viral heat on the app, and before long, it became a trending topic. Why were no critics reviewing the film?

And then, a film critic named Jeremy Jahns, with 2 million YouTube subscribers, reviewed the film:

Matt Walsh thanked him on X, and before long, Jahns was getting trashed, too, just for reviewing it. X users were calling him a racist and a bad critic. After that, Critical Drinker, who is even more popular than Jahns, called everyone out for criticizing Jahns and reviewed the film himself:

By now, Am I Racist was generating far more publicity than it ever would have had it gone the traditional route, which it could not have because, needless to say, Walsh - like every other Conservative - is blacklisted.

Finally, Walsh appeared on the Joe Rogan show. If there is a happy ending to be had, this would be it. Now, millions of Rogan listeners will know about the movie and maybe they’ll go see it. At the moment, the box office is around $6 million but I’ll be watching it to see how high it goes.

One of the most impressive things I’ve seen Matt Walsh do, however, is explain on his show why he made the movie and why he believes Conservatives have to start making movies. And not just any movies — good movies that can compete in the mainstream. He offered the best explanation I’ve heard as to why we so desperately need a counterculture:

Because Hollywood's power has been concentrated into fewer hands, we have giant monopolies. ABC News is connected to Disney. Amazon sells groceries and makes movies. Apple sells tech products and makes movies. The large corporations decide they will only advertise with ideologically aligned sites or fund ideologically aligned films. This has created a creative bottleneck, one that is suffocating and boring.

But if you escape the bubble and dare to dissent, a universe of possibilities is available to you. No, you won’t be invited to a party at the Ross House where you can rub elbows with Steven Spielberg. But you can start to build something in what is now a mostly vacant lot full of possibilities.

The first thing to know about the movie is that it’s funny. It’s funnier than Lady Ballers, though only those who have seen that movie will recognize the character Matt Walsh plays in the film — the man-bun guru type from Lady Ballers:

Despite the fact that he’s often the target of online rage mobs — he’s hated for his views on everything from marriage to transgender ideology to every other thing that drives the Left insane. But he’s funny. They can’t say he’s not funny. I have listened to Matt Walsh’s show off and on and it never fails to make me laugh in some way.

Am I Racist begins with Matt Walsh using a fake name and infiltrating a group therapy session for white people to purge their guilt. Here is a clip from the opening scene:

But what this clip doesn’t show is everything that comes before the moment they discover he’s actually Matt Walsh and not a man there to purge his white guilt. Believe it or not, those people sitting in the circle are real people. The filmmakers told them they were filming a movie about “social justice,” so they had no idea that the camera crew was part of Walsh’s production.

It’s funny to watch them observing Matt Walsh’s strange behavior. They want to be polite because he’s presumably one of them. They seem to think there might be something wrong with him. But of course, he was found out in the above clip.

That leads him to change the way he looks, to wear a disguise, and become the man-bun guy we saw in Lady Ballers. Then, he was able to pretend better.

He infiltrates the famous “Race to Dinner” group and films that too but this time is disguised as a waiter:

And he manages to get the White Fragility author, Robin DiAngelo, to sit for an interview for $15,000.

After the movie, DiAngelo released a statement:

Am I Racist is a rumination on the idea that all of us white people are racists and that America is a “white supremacist” country and that pushing back against any of it means you are a racist.

He trolls people in Washington DC about replacing the Washington Monument with the George Floyd monument. He re-enacts the Jussie Smollett, “This is MAGA country” episode. And eventually, he becomes an “antiracist” grifter himself and manages to attract a classroom full of people looking to purge themselves of their “internalaized racism.”

Walsh is not someone out to destroy the lives of ordinary people. He has compassion for almost everyone in the film and ultimately arrives at a useful conclusion and that is - can’t we just see each other as human beings again? Everyone should see this movie and decide for themselves what they think about it. And, in fact, they should play it high schools. They won’t but they should.

The benefit of this movie is to offer up an alternative viewpoint, something Hollywood used to do without fear but now would never do. It’s important for our younger generations to have someone, anyone offer them some critical thinking about the doctrine they’re forcing upon us. That is what art can do and what comedy can do.

As of today, the film has come in fourth at the box office (but third if you count per-theater average). That looks like they can now call themselves a legit movie studio, not that Hollywood or the mainstream critics will allow them “into the club.” We’ve seen what they’ve done to elbow out any competition, like Sound of Freedom. But if The Daily Wire can keep making movies that make money they won’t be ignored for long.

What did Robert De Niro think when he heard the news that a loser on the fringe shot President Trump? Did he think, “Good. I’m glad someone finally did.” Did he pause and contemplate the near-death of a former president? Did he, like so many others on the Left, wish the shooter had better aim?

It didn’t matter to Thomas Matthew Crooks whether the target was Joe Biden or Donald Trump. He probably never watched Taxi Driver, and the only thing he knows about Robert De Niro is the anti-Trump memes that flood the MAGA zone, making fun of the aging actor. Everybody sees those. No, all that mattered to him was that people remembered his name.

But still, you have to wonder, in the moments immediately following the shooting, what De Niro must have thought, considering he once played Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, a guy a lot like Crooks— a lonely invisible man who would be written off as an incel today—the very definition. Not many people go to the trouble of assassination attempts of political figures. Thomas Matthew Crooks now joins that very short list.

What made the Trump assassination attempt so jarring was that we all watched it on live television. We saw something that should have shocked us all out of our partisan stupor. It should have meant the end of our Cold Civil War, fought mostly on Twitter for control of the media narrative.

But it was a test and I’m afraid we failed. We moved on too quickly. We didn’t even talk about what it meant for our national unity. With Reagan, it was big news. Any political assassination was. But what’s happened to us now? The media machine was back to feeding the hungry beast of rage against this one man.

It was a grim reminder that we’re not only living Orwell’s 1984, but we’re living Sydney Lumet’s Network too. When they were done with Howard Beale, they were done.

Taxi Driver is one of the greatest films ever made. There is no question about that. Hollywood doesn’t make movies like that anymore. They can’t. There is no room for them. Hollywood is so closely married to the Democratic Party that the Obamas have a deal with Netflix. George Clooney was one of the most influential people in pushing Joe Biden aside to install the younger woman of color, Kamala Harris.

That means everything is not only politics but politics that support one political party, a party that has control of almost everything, a party that must always project a utopian vision for society, a Woketopia.

Orwell knew. Paddy Chayefsky knew.

So much of what we watch now has been scrubbed clean of any perceived offense against any one group. The result is a bland homogenization of art. Everything looks exactly the same—types of people represent different groups so as not to leave one marginalized person behind.

It has a disorienting effect because we’re never sure what we’re watching or where we are in time. History has been erased and modulated to be less offensive, easier to accept, not confrontational. Is this a story, or is it propaganda?

Paul Schrader, Martin Scorsese, and so many of the best filmmakers of the 1970s were part of the counterculture revolution. It was a renaissance of creativity born out of a society rooted in traditional religion.

All of these years later, the Boomers are preparing to go gently into that good night. They don’t want to move fast and break things. They want to make sure their time on this planet was useful. So they’ve tinkered with their utopian diorama via Hollywood. Have we achieved perfection? Is everyone now equal? One more step to go, the first female of color president.

What stands in their way? The guy who just got shot three weeks ago.

Whatever Hollywood has become, it has fused with the government, leaving very little room for dissent or subversive thought. That’s why a Taxi Driver could not be made today. It isn’t just that Taxi Driver is full of scenes that would be considered overtly racist.

Black men are depicted as thugs and gangsters. The film is filled with politically incorrect slurs. Jodie Foster plays a 12-year-old prostitute who dresses provocatively and sleeps with her pimp, played by Harvey Keitel.

One scene is disturbing and would be too upsetting for today’s audiences. Travis Bickle shoots an armed robber in a liquor store. But it’s after Travis leaves that it gets really bad as the shopkeeper begins hitting the limp, dead body with a baseball bat.

And if you talk about those scenes as being essential to the film, you’ll be called a racist. Somehow it always gets back to nervous white people afraid of being called out and losing everything.

But it’s also that Taxi Driver is such a beautiful reveal of the hypocrisy on the Left. Paul Schrader or director Martin Scorsese wouldn't see it that way, but looking back on the film from the lens of today, we see what Travis calls “filth and scum” all around him. Nothing is solved, and in fact, it’s not even seen.

Only Travis sees what life in New York is really like.

Taxi Driver’s moral compass points in the right direction. Travis Bickle is an early prototype for the exact kind of shooter that tried to take out Donald Trump. He’s a loner, addicted to porn, a nobody who thinks getting a gun and doing something big will make him a somebody.

It doesn’t play out as Travis wants it to. He wants to assassinate presidential candidate Palentine. He wants to be a bad guy to get revenge not just on the woman who spurned him but on all of society. Palentine was a politician—a Democrat, by the looks of it—and politicians sent Travis Bickle to Vietnam—politicians who exist in another world, far away from the reality of the streets of New York City.

He sees the crime, the hookers, the poverty, the violence. He sees the world left behind by politicians. Scorsese contrasts this with the idealized world of Betsy, played by Cybil Shephard. Palentine’s office and Betsy’s world are one cool remove from what Travis sees. That’s probably why she catches his eye.

But Travis doesn’t belong in that world, though he tries for a time. He takes her on a date, which is awkward and strange. She seems drawn to him like good girls were drawn to dark and dangerous men back then —think: the Manson family. He takes her “to the movies,” but Travis doesn’t live the way normal people do, so he takes her to a porn flick. That freaks her out, and her “walk on the wild side” over.

Today, Hollywood is Palentine’s office. It is a world away from the reality of everyday life, and they somehow believe they can solve the problems for the rest of us. Today, Travis Bickle would get no sympathy from viewers. He would be judged and placed in a specific category, in the unseen world.

Taxi Driver is a riveting film from the first second. We are fascinated by this guy, not just because his performance is one of the best ever by an actor, but because we wonder what he will do next. He seems pulled in two different directions, good and evil. That’s textbook Paul Schrader, of course, but we didn’t necessarily know that back then.

Travis practices becoming a badass. He buys a stockpile of weapons, arms himself, and prepares for battle—against whom or what he doesn’t yet know. He knows he’s done being a lonely, awkward nobody, and it’s time to take steps to remedy that.

He shaves his head into a mohawk (probably would be considered cultural appropriation today) and prepares to assassinate Palentine. But he’s already alerted the Secret Service, thanks to a bizarre conversation with one of them earlier in the film. Once he’s spotted, they chase him off, but they lose sight of him.

It’s hard not to see shades of the failed Trump assassination here, as Crooks was spotted by the Secret Service long before he humped up the roof of a barn and tried to kill Trump.

Had Travis shot Palentine, in his mind, Betsy would have seen him and regretted dumping him. Or maybe he just wanted to wipe the real scum off the streets, not the lowlifes but the liars who promised everything and delivered nothing. Or maybe he just wanted to commit suicide, like Crooks and so many others. Go out in a blaze of glory so we all remember their names.

Travis decides that he can’t touch someone like Betsy, but he can save little Iris, the 12 year-old prostitute played by Jodie Foster. He goes on a murder rampage, first killing “Sport,” the pimp, then rousting out all of the pedophiles and enablers. They don’t kill Travis at the end, though he imagines killing himself.

Next comes a somewhat controversial part of the film, a “happy ending” of sorts. The press turns Travis into a hero. Iris is sent home, and her parents are so grateful to Travis. Even Betsy notices and is impressed. Travis goes on to live a normal life. The question is, did that really happen? Or was it a fantasy? We already know Travis has invented a fantasy life he sells his parents, pretending to be dating Betsy.

Who knows? Filmmakers did not have the job of patching the blind spots or telling us what to think back then. They just told the story and scratched off the layers of pretense to get to the truth.

I remember the John Hinkley shooting of Ronald Reagan, just as I remember the debate in the wake of it as to whether the film Taxi Driver, its director Martin Scorsese, its writer Paul Schrader, or its star Robert De Niro should feel any guilt for having influenced a susceptible crazy person to go to such extreme lengths?

Hinkley famously obsessed on Jodie Foster, so much so that Paul Schrader received a letter from Hinkley that begged for a meeting with Foster but also revealed how right Schrader had gotten him specifically. Do you know me, he said. But he wasn’t the only one. There were “Taxi Driver” kids, lost men who slipped through the cracks and found their way to Travis Bickle as he wrestled with good and evil.

Hinkley clearly missed the point and headed in the opposite direction - choosing the path of evil rather than the path of good. When the FBI visited Schrader, he lied about the Hinkley letter. He didn’t want to be rousted by the FBI, but I also think he was running from the idea that the movie had anything whatsoever to do with the attempted assassination of a president.

Scorsese made a follow-up of sorts several years after the Hinkley shooting, called The King of Comedy, with another brilliant performance by De Niro. This time, he was Rupert Pupkin, the flipside of Travis Bickle. He was a sad sack loner who wanted to be a comedian and be invited on the Jerry Langford show.

The King of Comedy nods to Taxi Driver, but it heads in the direction of celebrity stalkers, dumping it all on Hinkley’s lap for his obsession with Foster. But it nods to Travis Bickle, too, in its own way, as Pupkin envisions himself as part of Jerry’s world, a world he will never be able to access.

Pupkin envisions himself becoming a somebody — better King for a day than schmuck for a lifetime. He also turns to violence out of desperation, although it’s funnier than Taxi Driver, needless to say.

For one thing, the gun isn’t loaded. For another, Jerry Langford is held hostage by a crazed fan, Sandra Bernhardt. Some of the best scenes in this film are those that De Niro and Bernhardt reportedly improvised.

We don’t find out until the very end that he might have been talking to a mother that was no longer alive — a nod to Psycho, perhaps. By the time we see Rupert’s full monologue it’s not half-bad. And just as with Travis we can’t help but think he could been somebody.

Scorsese gives us another would-be fantasy ending when Rupert Pupkin envisions himself becoming a bestseller and now, worthy in his own right to appear on talk shows. Probably, it’s all in his head, but as with Taxi Driver, we never really know for sure.

Thomas Matthew Crooks was researching Lee Harvey Oswald. Maybe he knew he was going to kill himself, so why not do something big, something no one would ever forget? He even looked up how far Oswald was from Kennedy at the time of the shooting so he could mimic the distance.

I still wonder if Robert De Niro took a breath and thought about how much violence and hate he directed at Trump for all of these years and if he wondered, even if just for a minute, whether he had anything to do with it.

A culture so fragile as ours could not handle a Taxi Driver today, not the reality of it. The underlying message would have to be the same thing it always is now: we are good people doing good things in Hollywood and every film will right the wrongs of society. Betsy and her boss, Palentine, would love the movies of today.

But almost no one else does. They’re boring because they’re not the truth. It seems as though Hollywood has become so disconnected from the truth that the only kind of drama we can get anymore is real life. Like the Trump assassination. Like the presidential election. Like the videos we see on TikTok and YouTube.

If Hollywood wants to rock our world again, they will have to do a lot better than they’ve been doing. They have decided that they can wall themselves off and say to the rest of the country who supported Trump, “You are not welcome here because he is not welcome here.” That is not something Hollywood can survive.

Taxi Driver might have inspired Hinkley to misinterpret the movie and shoot the president. But it inspired a generation of filmmakers who should be so lucky ever to make a movie that good, and he provided a safe space for lonely losers to see themselves as heroes.

As for Robert De Niro, he gifted the world with some of the most memorable characters in film history. That it, like so much of Hollywood now, has been reduced to “Trump hater” is one of the signs that the empire is in collapse. The Boomers are on their way out and it’s long past time to turn the page.

This is also on YouTube — I have a channel there too!

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“Film doesn’t occupy the pinnacle in the social, cultural hierarchy that it did for most of our lives. When a movie came out, if it was good, we all went to see it. We all discussed it. We quoted lines and scenes we liked. Now we’re walking through a fire hose of water, just trying to see.” - Jerry Seinfeld

Most people outside the bubble of the Left already know why movies are bombing. Not only has Hollywood alienated them in almost every way imaginable, from the “woke” content to their hatred of Trump, but the stories just aren’t that good anymore. TikTok and YouTube are far more entertaining because they rely on algorithms to give users what they want and the free market. What goes viral is what’s popular—end of story.

20 years ago today Gladiator opened to the public and I began my website writing about the Oscar race. That was the last time, up until Oppenheimer, that a Best Picture winner got anywhere near the top of the box office. It wasn’t number 1 but it was close enough at number 3. Oppenheimer was number 5.

The reason for this is complicated. But the story goes something like this. Right around 2003, with the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings franchise movies, Big Hollywood cracked the code on how to make lots and lots of money not just here but internationally.

For the next twenty years, there would be two Hollywoods. One that pushed out franchise movies—Marvel, Star Wars, animated films—mostly aimed at one reliable demographic: 13-year-old boys. Movies catered to that base, and they were rewarded handsomely for it—all over the world. Why? Because human beings, for whatever reason, respond to a central male protagonist. Women like men, and men like men.

The numbers were staggering for Hollywood up until 2020, when it the box office collapsed.

They modeled the movies after fast food: fewer choices, familiar brands, and expectations met. But in the Obama era, many who cover movies (like me), started to look at things differently, from the point of view of being “good people” rather than entertaining audiences. That meant things had to be equal - why was every movie about “one special boy,” and why was everything so white?

That’s like asking why McDonald’s french fries are unhealthy for society or the planet. McDonald’s isn’t stupid enough to try to make its fries healthier or its Big Macs less fattening just for the betterment of society. Instead, it offers salads as a healthy option (probably no one eats when they go to McDonald’s).

Hollywood did just that with the films that hit the independent circuit and were aimed at the Oscar race. There was a “specialty market” for the sophisticated tastes of the elites. We didn’t realize that was happening because we were coming out of the Bush era and saw ourselves as the New Puritans, building a new world in the Obama presidency.

This played in the first year of Obama’s first term, 2009 when The Hurt Locker beat Avatar. Sure, they liked it better, but it won because Kathryn Bigelow was about to make history as the first woman to win the top prize, just as Obama was the first Black man to win the presidency. We were chasing the high of “firsts” until last year when the first blockbuster written, directed by, and starring a white man won Best Picture.

After Trump won, and mass hysteria overtook the Oscars, where La La Land was “racist,” Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was “racist,” and Green Book was racist, the Oscars and Hollywood decided that big changes had to be made. They invited thousands of voters of color, most of them international. Now, the Oscar membership was close to 10,000.

Trump’s win didn’t just dramatically transform the Oscars as they scrambled to be seen as Good Puritans in our new world; it hit every part of the industry. Trump’s win meant everyone had to pay, but especially males, especially white males. Now, it was time to take away their power by removing the male protagonist or white male protagonist from movies and either replacing them with women or adding a woman.

It went on and on as they tinkered with their utopian diorama, swapping out entertaining for “educational” to transform it into dogma, a new way for people to think. We all came out of 2016 thinking that America was broken and it was time to fix it.

They cut their audience in half when they took a side against Trump and MAGA. They reduced their reach even further when they “wokeified” their movies. When they married the Democratic Party, everything they did had to reflect the worldview of the Obama/Clinton/Biden coalition. There is no dividing line between the two. They are the same organism. If the Democrats are going down, so is Hollywood.

They rely on news from inside the bubble, where journalists and major news media outlets also reflect the worldview of the Democratic Party. The problem is that this country and this world are much bigger than that. They have a class of film critics who parrot the party line and never push back. They have journalists who are as out of touch with the rest of America as they are. Anyone who loudly dissents is purged.

Jerry Seinfeld did just that. He said movies are over, and comedy isn’t funny anymore because of the “far left” crazies. He wasn’t wrong, but film critics on Twitter almost instantly threw him under the bus.

When I want to read an honest take, I do not read film critics. Not anymore. Instead, I go to YouTube or TikTok to hear opinions that the hive mind hasn’t been cleansed for maximum purity. I can’t stand the collective fear of these people. Give me some truth.

The Fall Guy is the latest movie to bomb. No one has heard of it, no one wants to see it, and in a tough economy, why would they spend that much money on a movie they can see on streaming in a couple of weeks? Sounds logical enough. But the real problem is that Hollywood is that Hollywood is out of touch with the real world that surrounds the insular bubble. They can’t give the people what they want because they don’t know the people anymore.

Could the aristocracy before the French Revolution tell good stories for the people of France? No. Could they make movies that reflect their point of view? Not a chance because that puts them at risk. The Trump delusion has hurt Hollywood is so many ways, but the biggest has been the “us vs. them” dividing line.

Audiences have mostly lost interest in what Hollywood puts out because the storytelling doesn’t reflect what is actually going on. Instead, it must adhere to the “good behavior” of the Woketopia.

We all know what kinds of stories are out there that no one in Hollywood tell. Imagine making a movie about a man wrongly accused of sexual harassment, and it snowballs into an episode of mass hysteria at the company.

Imagine telling a story of a corrupt government that weaponizes the Justice System to take down a political opponent but telling it from the point of view of the Trump side.

Imagine making a parody of Hollywood called The Woke Movie. It would be hilarious. They’d never do it. They are married to the Democratic Party, which means they have to spout the same nonsensical virtue signaling that is turning everyone off.

A counterculture movement springing out of this moment is an easy call because we’ve reached that moment where Hollywood has run out of good stories to tell and must rely instead of brands and franchises.

Since they’ve alienated so many people, getting them back won’t be easy. The movies this summer will probably do decently at the box office, like the Mad Max sequel.

Kevin Costner’s western, Horizon, is exactly the kind of thing people will feel motivated to spend money to see ( think):

Todd Phillips’ sequel to Joker should do pretty well, considering he’s cast himself as an outsider as Costner has, so maybe it will draw a crowd.

These are what I would call must-see movies by directors who still have the juice to do good work and aren’t particularly political activists (they probably are but aren’t that obvious about it).

But overall, Holywood should divorce itself from the Democratic Party. They should open the gates to the castle and let the people back inside. They should get over their Trump Derangement Syndrome, which is destroying them. They should do these things, but they probably won’t. To quote one of the great movies from days gone by, “The ship is made of iron, and it will sink.”

The two things killing Hollywood and comedy are “wokeness” and Trump Derangement Syndrome. The former is their new religion and won’t be easy to eradicate. The latter, well, TDS is also a disease with no known cure except getting to know the real Trump and seeing him for what he is - a flawed but gifted human being, and not what he isn’t, The Devil Himself.

The mass delusion over the Trump the Left has invented has meant a complete disconnect from reality. And that’s not funny. Well, it would be if they made fun of themselves over it, which they would never do, especially not in an election year.

Wokeness has meant fear of insulting or offending any marginalized groups, which has sanitized comedy and writing across the board.

Comedy has to be universal and “wokeness” is anything but. It’s the thing Ryan Gosling himself once mocked to a hilarious degree many years ago - before it became the mandated ideology in Hollywood. Here was Woke Jeans from six years ago.

Humor is rooted in universal truth. But to be really funny and truthful, you will be offensive to the “woke.” Quite the conundrum, eh? It really isn’t new. Imagine what kinds of things could be funny inside Scientology, for instance, or inside an Amish community. The rules are rigid, and the ideology is locked in.

But they did manage to find some funny in SNL last night. I can’t watch the show itself anymore, especially not Weekend Update, which is straight up propaganda for the Democratic Party. But if I know it will be 1) funny and 2) not Trump-obsessed, I will catch it on Youtube.

They even managed to make a joke about the viral clip of Ryan Gosling breaking character because Kate McKinnon made him laugh. Here is the original:

And here they are, revisiting it six years later:

Gosling is better able to control his laughter, though he breaks character throughout last night’s episode, too. But that only makes it all funnier.

It’s not easy to be funnier than the average TikTok, but thanks to Gosling, they did a pretty good job, also from last night:

And this:

Here was his opening monologue:

Yes, they are promoting the new movie, Fall Guy, which opens May 3rd. But still. This was top shelf. Bravo. Hope springs eternal.