Hollywood revs up in effort to beat Bush (Hollyweirdo Alert)

Turned off by political attack ads? Get your news from late-night comedy shows? Try this:

A comely cartoon stewardess, voiced by Scarlett Johansson, lights the cigar of a nervous businessman, read by Kevin Bacon. "How's the reconstruction going?" he's asked. "Great," he replies, "I mean profitable. Very profitable."

As a plane full of businessmen strap on parachutes, grabbing their briefcases and guns, the announcer asks: "What if the same men who profited from the war had to fight it?"

How about a television ad written by satirist Al Franken, in which a $25,000-a-year waitress (Ione Skye) explains Bush's tax cuts to a wealthy lawyer (Illeana Douglas).

Recognizing how eyes glaze over when confronted with traditional appeals, Democrats are turning to Hollywood messengers in their quest to uproot President Bush this fall.

At least 10 such ads are being readied to run before the November election - all funded by MoveOn.org, a liberal advocacy group largely backed by billionaire George Soros.

It's signed up director Rob Reiner (When Harry Met Sally . . ., The American President) and writer Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing. Woody Harrelson (Cheers, Natural Born Killers) and Richard Linklater (School of Rock, Dazed and Confused) will also direct ads.

Movies with political ambition will be playing on the big screen, too: Michael Moore's Cannes-conquering Fahrenheit 9/11; John Sayles' Silver City, in which Chris Cooper plays an inarticulate president from a right-wing dynasty; at least two Kerry-celebrating documentaries; and an environmental horror flick already playing the red states, The Day After Tomorrow.

Does any of these have a chance of changing minds? There's little precedent, says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Many predicted The Right Stuff would guarantee the presidency for former astronaut John Glenn in 1984, she notes.

But in a tight election, anything might tip the balance, says Rob Richie, executive director of the Center for Voting and Democracy.

New York Times columnist Frank Rich says watch out for Fahrenheit 9/11, which charges that Bush has bungled the terror war and sent U.S. troops to Iraq for specious reasons.

The film feasted on free publicity when Disney blocked its subsidiary Miramax from distributing it. Miramax's co-chiefs, the Weinstein brothers, since have bought the film on their own and are teaming with Lions Gate and IFC Films for a June 25 release.

"The more fighting there is about the film before its release, the more publicity, the more it becomes that kind of show-business phenomenon where people just feel they have to see it to have an opinion, even if it's to hate it . . .," Rich says.

Should that happen and some pro-Bush audiences end up in the theater, "they may find themselves moved by the more emotional and less polemical parts of Moore's account of a family that loses a son in the Iraq war," Rich says.

The film's distributors have signed on some veteran political hands to massage the media for Fahrenheit 9/11, including Clinton White House advisers Chris Lehane and Mark Fabiani, said a Miramax official.

Conservative author and former New Left activist David Horowitz doubts Hollywood can turn an election.

"I'm not really shaking in my boots as a Republican when extremist radical leftists in Hollywood - people out of touch with any semblance of political reality - go about making campaign spots," says Horowitz, editor of the frontpagemag.com Web site.

". . . In my view, Hollywood has become an asset to Republicans because it is so lunatic."

Still, no one doubts the power of pictures or the ability of comedy to go where screed is uninvited.

The Day After Tomorrow may make people think about global warming, but if it doesn't have a tipping effect, it won't be for lack of trying by MoveOn. The group held a rally last month at the New York premiere, where 500 members heard speakers including former Vice President Al Gore, who lit into the Bush record on the environment.

Last weekend, MoveOn dispatched 8,000 volunteers to leaflet moviegoers leaving theaters across the country.

Richie predicts that the film will preach to the converted: "What it will tend to do is harden beliefs of those who think it is important to do more - like MoveOn."

Horowitz doubts global warming will be high on voters' minds: "The election is going to be decided on the war," he says. "And that is it. It's not going to be decided on the silver screen or a couple TV ads."

The timing of the John Sayles film is a mix of commerce and politics. "Whenever there's a lot of attention on politics, it's a good time to put a political movie out," Sayles told Entertainment Weekly.

Steve Rosenbaum, director of Inside the Bubble, a documentary about the Kerry campaign's brain trust, is still debating the right release date, recognizing it's good business to release the film before the election, while interest is highest. But that would leave the film without the best ending.

Rosenbaum says his goal is to show people "that there is a side to John Kerry that hasn't been able to see the light of day." He says he is not making a 90-minute ad: "We don't think people are going to pay $9 to see a political commercial."

Another documentary aims to show off Kerry. George Butler, whose Pumping Iron lifted Arnold Schwarzenegger, turns his lens on Kerry's Vietnam experience in Tour of Duty, from Douglas Brinkley's book. The film is scheduled for September.

The messages with the most potential to reach undecideds may be the MoveOn commercials, aimed at the heart of the undecideds - a group that Adam Clymer, political director of the National Annenberg Election Survey, describes this way: "They pay less attention to politics. They read less news. They are younger, they are a little more negative than everyone else about the war and the economy."

Swing-state undecideds make up about 11 percent of voters, according to an Annenberg survey released Friday.

The idea for the Hollywood ads grew from the Bush in 30 Seconds grassroots campaign that MoveOn launched in the fall, a competition to create the best political ad.

But MoveOn ran into a problem getting on the air. CBS refused to run its contest-winning ad about the budget deficit during the Super Bowl, saying it didn't run advocacy ads. Eli Pariser, MoveOn's campaign director, is aiming the ads at cable and key local affiliates: "They won't keep us from getting these ads out there."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contact staff writer Daniel Rubin at 215-854-5958 or dan.rubin@phillynews.com.

More stuff from Hollyweird. One good thing about "The Day After Tomorrow" is that I heard Hollywood gets destroyed. It shows just how bankrupt the MorOn.org crowd is when they wax enthusiastic about a make-believe disaster movie which clearly is not intended to be grounded in reality.

I've just never seen anything like this all-out assault in an election year (Yeah..CFR really seems to be working). When you throw in the media's overt bias, of late...and the anti-Bush books being released at a record pace, Bush is under assault from all sides.

". . . In my view, Hollywood has become an asset to Republicans because it is so lunatic."

Is this what the Hollywierd producers had in mind when they volunteered to try to help America's image in the world after 9/11?

They are self-flagellating blowhards living in a bubble where everyone around them tells them how right they are all day about everything.

The entertainment biz does more to DAMAGE our country everyday than any war could do.

Sick movies, sicker moviemakers, ugh.

Moores movie will be as successful as AirAmerica at influencing the unwashed masses, IOW infinitesimal.

That entertainers such as Jack Black, Tony Shalhoub, Hector Elizondo and Gus Van Sant stepped forward to judge the entries suggested to Laura Dawn, MoveOn's event director, that high-profile people no longer feared being called unpatriotic for questioning policy.

Disappointed in all of these yahoos but particularly Hector Elizondo....... I think that the sum of this effort is simply 'preaching to the choir' but it is extremely upsetting to see these Hollywood yahoos lining up in lockstep behind Skerry.

"CBS refused to run" moveon's "contest-winning ad about ..."

Funny way to phrase it, as if moveon's ad had won some sort of independent contest. Wasn't it moveon's contest? This would be like me touting my "contest-winning" FR posts -- decided in a contest of me voting for my own posts.

Hey, all of a sudden I'm brilliant! And for my next trick, my "contest-winning" replies.

It's also being hammered by every critic who has seen it. Had a conversation with my co-workers at lunchtime on Friday about this movie. One girl said it was going to be a flop at the box-office, a guy asked "Why do you say that?". I chimed in with "Al Gore endorsed it"...had most of 'em rolling in the aisles. The few that did not understand finally laughed when I explained how Gore's endorsement of Howard Dean was the "kiss of death" to his campaign then followed up with..."Why do you think he hasn't endorsed Kerry yet...Kerry is begging him not to".

Screw these Hollywood Jackals. Every single one of 'em.

They really must think Americans are idiots who'll swallow their vile swill. Americans aren't...and they're wasting their money.

I saw that trailer and it actually made me more proud of Bush. They put some of his funniest jokes in there. Made him look more likable.

In the end, I think this is all preaching to the choir. Nobody makes up their mind about an election based on hollywood. The only people who would be persuaded are still too lazy to make it in to the polls.

My Sister-in-Law went to see it (I'd characterize her as moderate-to-liberal. Southern Dem, but pretty smart about it.) She said that the movie stunk. It was hilarious, but did not mean to be.

I'm waiting for a poor showing at the box-office to be blamed on a vast-right wing conspiracy.

I think that the reason why people don't like it is because the movie and its hype (of which Algore was a part) takes itself so seriously. I mean, after the director's last movie (Independence Day) there weren't newspaper articles screaming "ALIEN INVASION: COULD IT HAPPEN?".

"That entertainers such as Jack Black, Tony Shalhoub, Hector Elizondo and Gus Van Sant stepped forward to judge the entries suggested to Laura Dawn, MoveOn's event director, that high-profile people no longer feared being called unpatriotic for questioning policy. "

These are what the left believes are high profile? Thats a reach.

As a plane full of businessmen strap on parachutes, grabbing their briefcases and guns, the announcer asks: "What if the same men who profited from the war had to fight it?"

Under the heading "What if the celebrities that oppose the war had to live under Saddam or al-Queda?":

Cut to scenes of Actresses being executed in soccer stadiums, Michael Moore being thrown off of a building and various Jewish celebrities being tortured and beheaded.

If films were being made by Frank Capra or King Vidor, I'd be worried. But, today, about all hollywood is good for is simulating sexual intercourse. When Jennifer Lopez announces she is engaged to the president, I'll be concerned.

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