Dear Hollywood: Get Over Yourselves

A repost

I posted this on my site, AwardsDaily, but I thought some of you might be interested in reading it.

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.