Liberals Katzenberg and Geffen blacklist Gibson

Frontpage Magazine ^ | 2/26/04 | N/A

[unspun]

The problem with The Passion, Weinreb says in the video, is that Jewish audience members may identify with Jesus, "disidentify with their own God-given identity as a Jewish people," and develop "inner doubts."

[philosofy123]

All Christians who have balls should boycott Katzenberg, Geffen, and DreamWorks.

[moonman]

True. Besides, Mel's movie isn't 'Hollywood'. So who cares what those two think anyway? It's just the media trying to make sure Hollywood understands that they are still their kind of people.

[PISANO]

I haven't seen The Passion, but what is the difference between Schindler's List and Mel's movie? Why is Spielberg's a work of ART but Mel's deserving of blacklisting? Hollywood reeks of LEFTIST, SECULAR BIAS!!

[betty boop]

May our bravehearted Mel make enough money from this movie to have the biggest production company out there.

I'll second that, Brother Arlen!

[philosofy123]

There is more chance to having snow balls in hell, than a Christian movie getting nominated. How many Christian Hollywood acters or actresses stood up, and declared their support for Mel Gibson. You can see that all reporting on this movie must never mention the name of the movie without prefacing it with the word CONTROVERTIAL! Now if Jews are 3% of our population, and paranoid Jews are one tenth of that number, how in hell do the opposition of such a few makes compulory for the reporters to have to say MEL GIBSON CONTROVERCIAL MOVIE, the Passion?

[oyez]

In the early days of the Church, Christians weren't tolerated in Rome, the then perceived center of the universe. In the later days of the Church, Christians aren't tolerated in Hollywood. the now perceived center of the universe.

[N. Theknow]

Hell hath no fury like a Hollywood bigwig scorned.

[marron]

Personally, I find it interesting that these two guys are threatening to "cut off" Mel Gibson from Hollywood

That is funny. Mel has already shifted into movie making with his last several movies, if I remember correctly, so he's not really dependent on the establishment's permission to do anything as long as he can crank them out and make money.

And every one of his films made money. Some less, some more, but every one in the black.

You are right, the culture war is on. It been on for some time, but the folks on our side of the line are more confident than I have seen them in a long time. More at ease with their faith and principles, in an un-self-conscious way, more at ease with being out of step with the trendsetters, and the trendies for their part are spazzing, a sure sign that they are losing confidence. It sometimes looks as if the battle is already lost and over, but I see it in a different way. There is something new in the air.

[DoughtyOne]

Fair enough. I key off McCarthy because he's the big bad boogey man to the left. They sure don't mind going after someone on ideology when it isn't their own though.

[RayChuang88]

I bet that the real reason behind their anger is that Mel circumvented the traditional bootlicking channels to get his film made and distributed. Now that it's on its way to an $80-100 million first weekend, and maybe $200million or more total domestic, it just burns them up.

And now the Hollywood executives are doing this because they suddenly realized they just missed out on a huge payday! It couldn't have happened to a nicer group of people.

[kcvl]

The Last Temptation of Christ




Jesus Christ: Willem Dafoe
Judas Iscariot: Harvey Keitel
Mary Magdalene: Barbara Hershey
Saul/Paul: Harry Dean Stanton
Pontius Pilate: David Bowie
Mary, Mother of Jesus: Verna Bloom
John the Baptist: Andre Gregory
Girl Angel: Juliette Caton
Aged Master: Roberts Blossom
Zebedee: Irvin Kershner

Directed by Martin Scorsese and produced by Barbara De Fina. Screenplay by Paul Schrader. Photographed by Michael Ballhaus. Edited by Thelma Schoonmaker. Music by Peter Gabriel. 1988. Running time: 164 minutes. Classified R.

BY ROGER EBERT


Christianity teaches that Jesus was both God and man. That he could be both at once is the central mystery of the Christian faith, and the subject of "The Last Temptation of Christ." To be fully man, Jesus would have had to possess all of the weakness of man, to be prey to all of the temptations--for as man, he would have possessed God's most troublesome gift, free will. As the son of God, he would of course have inspired the most desperate wiles of Satan, and this is a film about how he experienced temptation and conquered it.


That, in itself, makes "The Last Temptation of Christ" sound like a serious and devout film, which it is. The astonishing controversy that has raged around this film is primarily the work of fundamentalists who have their own view of Christ and are offended by a film that they feel questions his divinity. But in the father's house are many mansions, and there is more than one way to consider the story of Christ--why else are there four Gospels? Among those who do not already have rigid views on the subject, this film is likely to inspire more serious thought on the nature of Jesus than any other ever made.


That is the irony about the attempts to suppress this film; it is a sincere, thoughtful investigation of the subject, made as a collaboration between the two American filmmakers who have been personally most attracted to serious films about sin, guilt and redemption. Martin Scorsese, the director, has made more than half of his films about battles in the souls of his characters between grace and sin. Paul Schrader, the screenwriter, has written Scorsese's best films ("Taxi Driver," "Raging Bull") and directed his own films about men torn between their beliefs and their passions ("Hard Core," with George C. Scott as a fundamentalist whose daughter plunges into the carnal underworld, and "Mishima," about the Japanese writer who killed himself as a demonstration of his fanatic belief in tradition).


Scorsese and Schrader have not made a film that panders to the audience--as almost all Hollywood religious epics traditionally have. They have paid Christ the compliment of taking him and his message seriously, and they have made a film that does not turn him into a garish, emasculated image from a religious postcard. Here he is flesh and blood, struggling, questioning, asking himself and his father which is the right way, and finally, after great suffering, earning the right to say, on the cross, "It is accomplished."


The critics of this film, many of whom have not seen it, have raised a sensational hue and cry about the final passages, in which Christ on the cross, in great pain, begins to hallucinate and imagines what his life would have been like if he had been free to live as an ordinary man. In his reverie, he marries Mary Magdelene, has children, grows old. But it is clear in the film that this hallucination is sent to him by Satan, at the time of his greatest weakness, to tempt him. And in the hallucination itself, in the film's most absorbing scene, an elderly Jesus is reproached by his aging Apostles for having abandoned his mission. Through this imaginary conversation, Jesus finds the strength to shake off his temptation and return to consciousness to accept his suffering, death and resurrection.


During the hallucination, there is a very brief moment when he is seen making love with Magdelene. This scene is shot with such restraint and tact that it does not qualify in any way as a "sex scene," but instead is simply an illustration of marriage and the creation of children. Those offended by the film object to the very notion that Jesus could have, or even imagine having, sexual intercourse. But of course Christianity teaches that the union of man and wife is one of the fundamental reasons God created human beings, and to imagine that the son of God, as a man, could not encompass such thoughts within his intelligence is itself a kind of insult. Was he less than the rest of us? Was he not fully man?


There is biblical precedent for such temptations. We read of the 40 days and nights during which Satan tempted Christ in the desert with visions of the joys that could be his if he renounced his father. In the film, which is clearly introduced as a fiction and not as an account based on the Bible, Satan tries yet once again at the moment of Christ's greatest weakness. I do not understand why this is offensive, especially since it is not presented in a sensational way.


I see that this entire review has been preoccupied with replying to the attacks of the film's critics, with discussing the issues, rather than with reviewing "The Last Temptation of Christ" as a motion picture. Perhaps that is an interesting proof of the film's worth. Here is a film that engaged me on the subject of Christ's dual nature, that caused me to think about the mystery of a being who could be both God and man. I cannot think of another film on a religious subject that has challenged me more fully. The film has offended those whose ideas about God and man it does not reflect. But then, so did Jesus.

[kcvl]

One of the most brilliant dealmakers ever to work in Hollywood, he became a billionaire shortly after selling Geffen Records in 1990, and he made movie history when he founded, with friends Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, DreamWorks SKG, the first new Hollywood studio in fifty-five years. And Geffen's influence has extended far beyond show business and into the worlds of Wall Street, art, real estate, and politics.Geffen's personal journey is as compelling as his business machinations. Although he knew from an early age that he was gay, he hid his true sexual urges and for years attempted to lead a heterosexual life ... Geffen learned from his earliest days in the William Morris mailroom that he could cheat and lie his way to the top, and he has ever after lived unconstrained by traditional notions of right and wrong."


Velvet Mafia, by Taki Le Maitre. [Review of The Operator, by Tom King]

New York Press, Vol. 13, Issue 10, 2001

"I’m not at all surprised to read that Hollywood is dominated by a Velvet Mafia of rich homosexuals who demand sexual favors in return for work in the movies. In fact I would have been surprised if it were the other way round. Those old Mittel-Europa Jews who ran Tinseltown in its heyday established the casting-couch practice long ago; but, as they say, at least they did it with style and with the opposite sex.

The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood is the title of an upcoming book by Tom King, a respected Wall Street Journal reporter who it seems has hit pay dirt–and it’s dirt, all right–with his exposé of the unspeakable [David] Geffen. Actually it’s poetic justice. Geffen invited King to write a book about his amazing rise to the top, and allegedly named dozens of former boyfriends, many of them now famous stars. Indiscretion aside, Geffen is a lowlife sans pareil ... Geffen, of course, denies there is such a thing as a homosexual cabal, and, typically, charges anti-Semitism.

According to King’s book, friends like Barry Diller, Sandy Gallin and Calvin Klein [all Jewish], among many others, keep a lower profile but apparently indulge in the sexual bacchanals that go with the territory. Alleged weekend-long orgies fueled by drugs at which Geffen and his powerful buddies run a 'meat market' selecting young men for sex are apparently described in detail in King’s opus. Here is one of Bill Clinton’s close supporters, one who had a free run of the Lincoln bedroom, and was, I believe, once even called an adviser to the Draft Dodger, pushing a gay agenda of promoting stars and directors who make movies and records sympathetic to the gay lifestyle. Geffen is a natural for the Clinton White House. Sleaze is the operative word."

[kcvl]

The Operator
David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood

Written by Thomas R. King

Tom King has been a reporter at The Wall Street Journal since 1989 and has reported on the entertainment industry from the paper's Los Angeles bureau since 1991.

Complex, contentious, and blessed with the perfect-pitch ability to find the next big talent, David Geffen has shaped American popular culture for the last three decades. His dazzling career has included the roles of power agent, record-industry mogul, Broadway producer, and billionaire Hollywood studio founder. From the beginning, though, Geffen's many accomplishments have been shadowed by the ruthless single-mindedness with which he has pursued fame, power, and money. In The Operator, Tom King--the first writer to have been granted full access to Geffen and his circle of intimates--captures the real David Geffen and tells a great American story about success and the bargains made for it.

The extent of Geffen's accomplishments is extraordinary. As a manager in the 1960s, he made the deal for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young to appear at Woodstock. He discovered 1970s superstars Jackson Browne and the Eagles and masterminded Bob Dylan's famed 1974 tour; Joni Mitchell, Geffen's roommate for a time, memorialized him in her song "Free Man in Paris." He produced Risky Business, the movie that made Tom Cruise a star, and was the moneyman behind Cats, the longest-running musical in Broadway history. One of the most brilliant dealmakers ever to work in Hollywood, he became a billionaire shortly after selling Geffen Records in 1990, and he made movie history when he founded, with friends Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, DreamWorks SKG, the first new Hollywood studio in fifty-five years. And Geffen's influence has extended far beyond show business and into the worlds of Wall Street, art, real estate, and politics.

Geffen's personal journey is as compelling as his business machinations. Although he knew from an early age that he was gay, he hid his true sexual urges and for years attempted to lead a heterosexual life. In the mid-1970s, he dated--and almost married--Cher. Not until 1992, when being honored for his extraordinary financial contributions to the fight against AIDS, did he open the closet door. His coming-out was national news.

Beneath this phenomenal life story has always been a ferocious drive to succeed, a blind ambition that has left onlookers astounded. Geffen learned from his earliest days in the William Morris mailroom that he could cheat and lie his way to the top, and he has ever after lived unconstrained by traditional notions of right and wrong. Geffen has demonstrated time and again that he is willing to sabotage any relationship, business or personal, to get what he wants.

At his best, David Geffen is a fiercely devoted friend and a bountifully generous man, both privately and publicly. At his worst, he is a vindictive bully who lashes out at loved ones and colleagues with irrational screaming fits that leave his victims shaking and sweating. And though he has periodically attempted to better himself through psychotherapy and self-help programs like est and Lifespring, he seems always able to find new enemies to rage against.

For years, David Geffen has managed his own life story and rewritten history. But in The Operator, Tom King has set the record straight. Written with Geffen's cooperation--though not his authorization--The Operator is an explosive, illusion-shattering story that details the mogul's indisputable contributions to entertainment history while also baring the man behind the legend.


From The Operator

Geffen told Cher about the sexual encounters he had had with men and how he was struggling with his sexual identity. He hastily added that his relationships with men had been about sex and nothing more. He was afraid of the opposite sex, he told her, but said that he believed a relationship with a woman would offer him the best chance to find true love. Cher had been surrounded by gay men her entire professional life, and Geffen's confessions left her unfazed.

"What is it that you do?" Cher finally asked Geffen.
"I am the chairman of Elektra/Asylum Records," he told her.
"Oh, well, you don't look like it," she said. "You look just like a little schlepper."

Geffen was charming, offsetting his usual braggadocio with vulnerability. The two stayed up well into the night, exchanging the stories of their lives. Geffen told her he had become a millionaire more than five years earlier. He told her that he thought he had accomplished everything he wanted to achieve, but that somehow the fame and the money was unfulfilling.

"I'm not alone anymore," Cher thought to herself. She had never known anyone in her life who made her feel so comfortable.

During his therapy session the next day, Geffen made a startling admission to Dr. Grotjahn. "I think I'm in love with Cher," he said.





http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:wuvku5lrVIUJ:www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl%3Fisbn%3D0-375-50503-2+The+Operator,+tom+king&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

[betty boop]

You can see that all reporting on this movie must never mention the name of the movie without prefacing it with the word CONTROVERTIAL!

Well I guess this is just another case of the (self-elected) "elite intelligentsia" tail wagging the entire sociocultural dog, philosofy123. And they've been doing it for some eight or so decades by my reckoning, steadily perfecting the craft. The amazing thing is they usually get away with this sort of thing. Either nobody notices, or nobody cares enough, to challenge such enormities against reason and nature.

There's an excellent article in the March 8th edition of National Review, called "What 'Republican' Should Mean," by David Gelernter. An excerpt, on point:

"In a democracy, the people and not the courts are meant to lay out the moral and social boundaries of society.... Jews and Christians have let bullies take over the commons [i.e., the public discourse], and we ought to be ashamed of ourselves.... For courts to ordain homosexual marriage is the textbook definition of tyranny."

Lots of stuff to think over here. Yet if it were true the people no longer care about escaping the clutches of tyranny, then how would you rate the future prospects of liberty and democracy?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your excellent post and referral to the article!

Yet if it were true the people no longer care about escaping the clutches of tyranny, then how would you rate the future prospects of liberty and democracy?

Dismal...

[philosofy123]

Geffen is a natural for the Clinton White House. Sleaze is the operative word."

If the Lincoln bedroom can talk, Geffen's fisting and other fag behaviors would make you throw up.

With 100 TV channels and practically no decent programs, you would think that an investigative reporter can dig into the homosexual mafia story.

With all the thousands of churches organizations, you would imagine that they would have the funds to provide us with a list of deviants anti-Christian cabal to boycott their work. The cabal are very capable to target people and destroy them, yet we don't even know who to target back.

[Publius6961]

Hate speech!
Heterophobia!
McCarthyism!

Blah blah blah

[hope]

Well, seems to me Mel Giblson has been able to do just fine without them...