My wife — the smartest, wisest person I know — has a saying: “Since nothing will make you happy, I’m done trying.” Her point, and it’s a good one, is that there’s no reason to try and satisfy those who refuse to be, those who are more interested in complaining than anything else. This is something I’ve always tried to avoid when it comes to what I have to say about Hollywood. Yes, we most certainly are engaged in a political and cultural war with the entertainment industry — a war they started — but “Hollywood” isn’t a single person or thing or studio. Like the terms “Big Business” and “Big Labor,” “Hollywood” is a kind of shorthand both sides use to identify a political adversary.
But there is a nuance to Hollywood that can be found among the many right-of-center types and reasonable liberals who really do want to do the best work they can and make a butt-load of money in the process. And it’s for their sake (and ours) that we have acknowledge and appreciate when Hollywood does right by us. We simply have to prove to those watching and wondering that it is profitable to satisfy our complaints — that’ we’re not going to move the goalposts.
Thus far, right-of-center America has done an absolutely marvelous job in this respect. While anti-American junk has flopped at a forever-pleasing 100% rate, well-made films that speak to our values and beliefs have been almost universally embraced. “300,” “Gran Torino,” “Taken,” “The Dark Knight,” Fireproof,” “Blind Side,” “Battle: Los Angeles,” and “The Book of Eli,” have not only done well at the box office, but in some cases much, much better than expected because word spread throughout Middle America that this one’s for us. With social media, especially the miracle that is Twitter, a fire can start that completely circumvents the corrupt MSM and has an immediate effect at the box office.
There’s probably no better example of this than the Christian film “Soul Surfer,” which came out of nowhere this weekend to become a sleeper hit. In fact, had it opened on more screens it might have beaten “Arthur.” Wouldn’t that have been something.
While we have a long way to go, there is momentum on our side and this bodes very well for “Atlas Shrugged,” which hits theatres this Friday. For starters, the timing couldn’t be better. Led by President Obama, the federal government is spending us into bankruptcy and declaring war on the American Dream. You can’t say Obama’s declaring war on business, though, because when it comes to picking and choosing who will win and who will lose, Obama’s a corporatist of the first order. You think General Electric considers Obama anti-business? But those entrepreneurs who don’t own a cable network Palace Guarding for the Left like MSNBC and don’t toady up to Big Labor, are under fire and that’s the theme “Atlas Shrugged” speaks to.
Best of all, the production of the movie itself is faithful to its own themes: Risk and independence mixed with a touch of bravado. Yesterday’s L.A. Times tells the incredible story of how, after two decades of trying, someone bucked the Hollywood system and just did it — just made the damn movie. The opening sentence of the article sums it up best:
A capitalist taken with Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel spends almost 20 years and $20 million of his own money to get the first third of it filmed.
You’ll want to read the whole thing. It’s an inspiring story of the kind of filmmakers we’ve been waiting for — the ones we’ve been calling out to for years: We love movies, Hollywood. And if you build them for us, we will come.
Believe it or not, there’s a whole “conservative” subculture out there that doesn’t want our nation’s problems solved. They’re a selfish, cynical bunch more interested in themselves than what’s best for America. They know the moment the issues they fund-raise off of are actually solved is the moment they’re no longer able to raise funds off of them. They don’t fight, they talk. They don’t want to win, they want to fire off letters ginning up the kind of outrage that pushes people to write the checks that keep them in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. You call them The Establishment. I call them many things, usually under my breath.
Our political enemies in Hollywood will be watching how well “Atlas Shrugged” does over the weekend. There’s nothing they want more than to have another excuse in another story meeting to shoot down an ideal appealing to us based on actual box office numbers.
But because we’re the Tea Party and not the Republican Establishment, I’m thinking they’re going to be pretty disappointed.
Here’s how you can find a theatre near you. Here’s how you can request it be shown in your town.