Hollywood Conservatives: The Not-So-Gentle Post

Courtesy Pandagon, this bit of business from The Hollywood Reporter:

One "Big Hollywood" blogger is Andrew Klavan, an accomplished novelist-screenwriter who made a splash with a Wall Street Journal article comparing Batman and the "The Dark Knight" to President Bush and the war on terror.

"It's not easy being different," he said. "The liberals aren't all that liberal. We think they're wrong, but they think we're evil, and they behave like it."

Klavan said a producer, worried that Klavan's political reputation had become common knowledge, asked recently whether he could pitch something Klavan wrote but under an assumed name. Klavan declined.

"I don't want to be the Dalton Trumbo of the right," he said.

Quick history lesson for you kids fresh off the film school boat -- back in the late 40's the United States Congress hauled screenwriters in front of nationally broadcast hearings where they were essentially accused of treason. There, in front of flashing cameras and some very angry Congressmen, you were given a choice: finger a Commie to prove you weren't a Commie, or ... well, that was pretty much it. Some of the people who refused to rat out friends as members of the non-existent Hollywood Communist Conspiracy, like Dalton Trumbo, served time in federal penitentiaries. Over 300 were blacklisted by studios eager to kiss a little government ass. Their reputations, lives, and careers were publicly and permanently destroyed. Trumbo wound up writing under a pseudonym, and some fifteen odd years later found himself one of the few to be rehabilitated, primarily because he was a helluva writer.

Let me reiterate the bullet points:

• nationally broadcast interrogation in front of the House of Representatives.
• Implied treason.
• Federal prison time.
• Career and reputation permanently and utterly destroyed.

You know, folks, maybe your Hollywood friends seem to treat you a bit rudely not because they're illiberal, narrow-minded and judgmental, but perhaps -- just perhaps -- because you are such a self-pitying self-indulgent narcissist with your head so far up your ass that you equate "occasional discomfort during cocktail party conversations" with "BEING ON THE FUCKING BLACKLIST".

There. Glad to clear that up.

Hollywood Conservatives: The Gentle Post

Shorter Hollywood Conservatives: Hollywood society is so liberal, mean and narrow-minded we are made to feel uncomfortable expressing our support for the policies of George Bush, unlike out in mainstream America where he enjoys widespread support.

The Giant Pool of Money

It behooves you as a citizen --

-- stop giggling, I'm goddam serious. Citizenship comes with responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is to take time and learn about complicated Very Bad Things we need to deal with as a nation. The financial complicated Bad Thing is the current financial crisis. In an entertaining and marvelously clarifying podcast, Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson explain how this all came to be with the NPR show "The Giant Pool of Money."

Stream it over lunch, or go buy it for a buck on iTunes, dump it in the mp3 player. Get some knowledge while you're commuting to work, or instead of zoning out and surfing for Russian gun girl porn. You'll understand what happened, and even more importantly a.) be able to communicate what happened to your friends and b.) understand when a politician is full of crap when he talks about this particular Very Bad Thing.*


The same guys did a podcast about the recent stock market crash and Credit Default Swaps -- Another Frightening Show About the Economy. It's not up for purchase yet, but you can stream it.

Good citizenship in under an hour. How can you beat that?

Links:

The Giant Pool of Money

Another Frightening Show About the Economy

Their weekly podcast.









* One candidate is, indeed, full of crap, by the way. Blaming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the financial meltdown is like blaming the dead canary for the mine explosion. They were leading symptoms, not causes.

Air Quotes Are Dangerous Things

Gut reacton: Dude, those are actual living people you're talking about.

Setting aside the atypically far-right stance on abortion he took last night (he usually hedges his bets a bit better) what's kind of interesting here is that odds are, Senator McCain is blind to the emotional connotation of the air quotes. He wanted to highlight the word "health" -- like I just did right there -- banged out the air quotes and those combined with his really, really angry tone last night pushed the delivery into outright scorn.

You can see it happening, too. McCain think he has Obama, (based on a lie, but we'll let that ghost on by) but then Obama's giving one of his grown-up nuanced answers, which in McCain's head is "That sonuvabitch is trying to weasel out of the question like he always does and no one's going to notice-why-doesn't-anyone-notice-GAAARRGHHHH".

McCain monomaniacally goes after what he feels is the "weasel" part of Obama's argument, completely ignoring what the "weasel" part of the means to people in the sense of the larger argument.

Unfortunately, that part of the argument is the one that keeps a woman from dying in the delivery room against her will. Whoops.

And -- as is often ignored -- from a man's point of view: that part of the argument is the one that keeps your wife from dying in the delivery room because some asshole said she had to. Big fucking whoops.

According to a Time poll, "Health of the mother" along with exceptions for rape or incest victims jumps support for abortion rights from 46% to 86%. "Health of the mother" is one of the few terms which punches an empathic hole right through the walls of the abortion factions, because, well, see above.

Again, I don't actually believe McCain is openly scornful of the "health of the mother" in this issue, but his anger towards Obama made him seem so. It's fascinating -- in fiction we often create characters undone by a single, glaring flaw, for illustrative purposes. But here in the real world, we can see that every problem John McCain had in his presidential campaign was created by his lack of impulse control. A life, a character literally unravelled by his own anger.

I Only Learned One Thing From That Debate ...

... man, do I want to play poker against Senator McCain.

He's got a poker face like Mummenschanz.






(Mandatory bit credit: "Poker face like Mummenschanz" originated by DJ McCarthey, in reference to Ricky Bronson's gambling skills)

THIS is Why I'm Not Answering Your Goddam Phone Calls

The script for Episode #113 was completed this morning at roughly 8 am. Two episodes written in two weeks, without a staff.

And yes, that is Scotch. And no, I don't have a problem. I waited until 10 am.

Truth Invaders Web Game

A friend of mine, Jeremy Bernstein, is a writer/game designer living in LA; he's done some work in political games in the past with the aptly, if unimaginatively, named Redistricting Game (www.redistrictinggame.org). Now he's put together a game targeting all the dirty, dirty lies being spewed out of the presidential campaigns.

I'm fascinated by this stuff, because I'm always a little puzzled why we don't use the addictive nature of gaming more as part of an educational technique.

The game is called Truth Invaders, www.truthinvaders.com. If you enjoy it, let people know, 'cause this kind of thing is all the publicity it's gonna get.

And so we keep it participatory -- in the Comments, favorite computer/console game of the moment. Bonus points for obscurity or age.

QUARANTINE

Oh, so thaaaaat's what Cloverfield was trying to do.

It's been a damn long time since I've been in a packed theater where people screamed their asses off and cheered/fist-pumped/went NUTS when the survivors fought back. There was a moment, before the film began, when I dreaded the pack of teenage girls in front of me, and how they would destroy my moviegoing experience. The texting, the chatting ...

They maybe stopped crying in the parking lot. Maybe.

Pure pulp, and wonderfully made. You actually gave a damn what happened to these characters. Pipe was laid quite effectively, and there's a moment near the end where you think they're going to use the hoariest of movie tropes to get some information across, and they utterly subvert it.

Nice job, Dowdle Bothers.

Movie homepage here.

IP Piracy Economics

Via Ezra Klein, an interesting bit of research on the numbers behind the economic damage created by IP piracy. Or lack of same.

"The plural of anecdote is not ..."

Anime Bleg

A buddy's 15 year old niece has had her interest piqued by anime, and he's dinged me as a source. Although I have a few recommendations, I open the floor to recommendations of age-appropriate anime. Apparently, fantasy genre elements are a plus.

I am doing this on my blog, because walking into my local video store and saying "I'd like to buy some anime for a fifteen year old girl," is just not going to end well.