HEY HOLLYWOOD ! HEY FLEA-BRAINED ACTORS ! --- Bite THIS!
image source: http://freedomkeys.com/hey-mf'n-msm.jpg
with ultimate credit going to: http://www.sacredcowburgers.com/fresh/showpics.cgi?phone_call_for_kerry
Posted on 11/05/2004 9:21:22 PM PST by alydar
Disappointment was thick and palpable, an ill-tempered fog at the United Talent Agency in Beverly Hills where - who could concentrate? - the business of Hollywood was interrupted by constant discussions of What Went Wrong.
The assistant to Jim Berkus, the agency's chairman, fielded an e-mail message from a colleague who apologized for voting for President Bush, while an administrator, preparing a podium for a company event, grumbled quietly about wedge issues.
"They demonized Hollywood," said the administrator, Michael Conway, referring to the Bush campaign. "We make the one product everyone wants, we make the best American-made product there is. What's going to happen, some kind of blacklist?"
In the best of times Hollywood and New York, liberal strongholds and the main engines of the country's entertainment and arts, are not closely connected to what people on the coasts call "the flyover states," that vast center of the country that voted its majority for Mr. Bush.
But in the wake of the election result, many producers, actors, writers and others in the culture business had to ask: are we seriously out of touch? What does the election result, felt so bitterly in Hollywood and New York, say about the divide between those who create popular culture and many of those who consume it?
"The majority of the American voting public is not comfortable with what's in the movies and on TV - it's what I have to assume," said Peter Benedek, a partner at the talent agency. "Hollywood is obsessed with 18- to 34-year-olds, and those people didn't come out and vote. My guess is most people who watch 'The Sopranos' voted for Kerry. Most people who saw 'The Grudge' didn't vote."
Of course, there were some in Hollywood and New York who voted for the president. By and large, though, the election left creative people in both places dumbstruck, anguished, even desperate. Dozens of celebrities had thrown their weight behind the Democratic candidate, Senator John Kerry, to little result. Sean Penn knocked on doors in New Mexico. Leonardo DiCaprio, Jon Bon Jovi, and Bruce Springsteen tirelessly stumped for Mr. Kerry.
"There's a mournfulness going on - people are talking about secession, and they're not completely joking," said Lawrence O'Donnell, a writer on "The West Wing" and a political commentator. "The intensity of disappointment is so enormous. I haven't experienced or witnessed anything like it since 1972," when George McGovern lost to Richard Nixon.
But others said they believed that the unusually broad swath of creative people who supported Mr. Kerry should not see the defeat as a repudiation of their efforts. "I think it's bad news for the left if we begin paying too much attention to all the noise people are making that this means the country has been completely remade into a conservative Christian nation," said the playwright Tony Kushner, who volunteered for Mr. Kerry in Broward County, Fla. Mr. Kushner said: "I don't believe that it will just go up in smoke, because the fears and anger and the patriotism that motivated people to do that will still have the same power."
John Cameron Mitchell, a director and actor, agreed. "Ultimately after a period of depression yesterday, today I feel even more energized," said Mr. Mitchell, talking via cellphone as he drove to New York from Ohio on Thursday. He was in Ohio to help with get-out-the-vote efforts and described how he found a "protect marriage" sign, along with some splattered pieces of pumpkin, left on his car by some children who had asked earlier if he was gay.
He added that, as an artist and actor, the election did not make him feel much more out of step with much of America than he had before. "I can always go back to the United States of New York and feel quite at home," he said.
But in Los Angeles, the mood seemed a little more ominous. On the Sony lot there were quiet remarks of commiseration in a marketing meeting and the impression one executive had of "an overwhelmingly dark cloud." The starkly divided country led him and others to speculate: how do we cater, as he called it, to "those people" - meaning, Bush voters?
Mr. O'Donnell said he could not imagine changing "The West Wing" to conform to the competing sensibility of more than half the electorate.
"I don't see any way to write 'The West Wing' for current Bush voters," he said. "I couldn't possibly write a heroic president who goes to war for an announced reason that turns out to be false and changes his story about how he went to war. There's nothing in the Bush presidency that holds up for a 'West Wing'-style presidency, which is a fundamentally honest and honorable administration. That's the notion of it. Tony Blair's administration would hold up much better."
There is plenty that Hollywood creates that caters to a solid, middle-American audience with solid, middle-of-the-road values, whether family friendly movies like "Finding Nemo" or regular-guy shows like "Everybody Loves Raymond."
But even Jon Stewart joked on "The Daily Show," on Wednesday night that the election result was the revenge of viewers who were offended by "Will & Grace."
"Obviously the country is really divided, and it's divided culturally, not just economically," said the writer and director Gary Ross, a Democrat whose movies, including "Seabiscuit" and "Dave," have embraced populist themes.
The screenwriter John Ridley, who wrote the story for "Three Kings" and now writes for television, disagreed, saying Hollywood is out of touch economically.
"When you have people who make this much money, it's simplistic to say they're all liberals," said Mr. Ridley, who added that he agonized before voting for Mr. Bush. "I think they're out of touch with mainstream America in the same way as people making seven figures are out of touch."
But Lawrence Bender, who produced "Kill Bill," Quentin Tarantino's blood-drenched revenge film, said he believed moviemakers were not seriously disconnected from what Americans wanted to watch, and that this was tested every week at the box office. "As soon as we're out of touch, our movies bomb," Mr. Bender said. "It's impossible. The studios wouldn't be standing."
" 'Kill Bill' did mass business," he said. "It was not just young people in cities." He added: "Personally, I'm more liberal. But what's my biggest concern? It's the same as the rest of the country - Iraq, health care, education."
Go have another latte, you Hollywood buggers.
Hollywood doesn't know what people in flyover country think if it bit them in the ass. No, to rephrase the lovely and talented Laura Ingraham, its time for them to "shut up and sing."
I'm guessing by the time the next election rolls around, the "then 18-34 year olds" may be tired of being blamed by the MSM for the results of this election. By then, they may just grow up and shoulder some responsibility in this world. Responsibility has a way of changing your outlook as to what the world should be.
Public funding for sex change operations are OK.
Public funding for the Boy Scouts of Amrica is offensive.
Houston, we've got a problem here.
Right. They demonized you!
Hollywood idiots had nothing at all negative or inflammatory to say about Bush.
Can they really believe this stuff?
"What's going to happen, some kind of blacklist?"
They still don't get it. This guy refuses to acknowledge the blacklist for rightwingers, yet he wrings his hands and cowers about the ridiculous idea of a blacklist for lefties. priceless.
Here's Larry O'Donnell laying the groundwork for his planned watergate style takedown of the president -
"The intensity of disappointment is so enormous. I haven't experienced or witnessed anything like it since 1972," when George McGovern lost to Richard Nixon"
I love it...they haevn't learned anything....most excellent :)
I heard they are giving Kerry the job of the next president on "The West Wing"!
They're so happy they're making so much money at the box office. They don't understand that they're making money off of liberal and that they could make so much more if they catered to both types of people.
The RATS put up the most liberal of all liberals. An elitist snob that has never had a "real life." And these idiots wonder why he didn't get elected?
Incredible! Enlightenment comes at long last to the Cultural Elite.
"Omigosh! Do you mean there really are people down there in Flyover Country? I mean I thought those were just ants down there! I mean that's what it looks like from up here, don't you think? I mean of course I heard that rumor about a jet full of people flying from SF to NYC who had engine trouble and had to put down somewhere there in the middle and there was actually an airport there and everything, but of course I thought it was just a made-up story. And someone actually lets these creatures VOTE?!?? Shouldn't there be a law or something to stop that? Or at least if we have to let them vote to keep them from rebelling or whatever then can't we count each of them as two-fifths of a vote? I don't like this! JUST WHO ARE THOSE PEOPLE ANYWAY? THIS IS SCARY, GUYS!!!"
OK all you cultural elites. Let me explain it to you clearly. Go and read H.G. Well's "The Time Machine" to see what's going to happen eventually in the future. Yes, you are the Beautiful People way up there above us - just like the Eloi. But don't forget that we are the Morlock! Heh heh!
Of course they are out of touch... they're just noticing??
You people have no idea what we want, what we believe, or who we are. Honestly, how do you EXPECT to craft something we like when you've long since decided we are stupid animals and you're just trying to divert us long enough to pick our pockets?
They should have had a clue last spring.
The people that flocked to The Passion of the Christ, also voted for Bush.
Didn't they get the message when the movie that was supposed to flop (according to Hollywood predictions) was a blockbuster?
Maybe you could write an episode about a drugged-out fairy who gets caught at Burbank airport with a bag of illegal psilocybin mushrooms, pot, and hits of Ecstasy and goes on to write scripts for TV's 'The West Wing'?
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