Posted on 03/06/2006 10:35:45 PM PST by goldstategop
Here's a speech we would like to hear from an Academy Award winner:
I thank you for this wonderful award. Receiving an Academy Award gives the recipient an almost unique opportunity to speak to hundreds of millions people around the world, so I would like take this once-in-a-lifetime moment to say this:
First, I want to thank my country, the United States of America. Every one of us here has this country to thank for enabling us to live lives of unprecedented freedom and unimaginable affluence. Too many of us forget that no other country in history has offered such opportunities to people in our profession or in any other profession, for that matter.
Second, I want to thank the men and women of the armed forces of the United States. While we bask in freedom and spend a good part of our lives going from party to party and award show to award show, tens of thousands of my fellow Americans are confronting a menace to our world as great as that fought by previous generations fighting Nazism and communism.
At the same time, I also want to apologize to these troops for my profession not having made even one motion picture about any of the heroic American fighters in Afghanistan and Iraq. This country is fighting a war, Hollywood. You may think this war is unwise, waged under mistaken, or even false, pretenses. And as an actor in Hollywood, you are overwhelmingly likely to hate this commander in chief. But even the men and women of Hollywood must recognize that America is fighting the worst people of our time, people who hurt every group Hollywood claims to care about -- minorities, women, gays -- people who engage in the sins Hollywood most professes to oppose -- intolerance and violence -- far more than anyone else on the planet.
In another era, when what many have labeled "the greatest generation" fought the German Nazis and the Japanese fascists, Hollywood made movie after movie depicting that great war and our great warriors. And Hollywood showed freedom's enemies as the cruel and vicious people they were. We have not produced one film yet depicting this war in positive terms or one depicting this generation's enemies of freedom as the cruel and vicious people they are.
In fact, the only nominated film about people who slaughter children at discos, blow up weddings, and bomb pizzerias and buses filled with men, women and children is one that attempts to show these murderers in God's name as complex human beings. Just imagine how the Academy would have reacted 60 years ago to a film depicting Nazi murderers as complex human beings. We have descended far.
We in Hollywood walk around thinking we are very important. That is why this year's nominated films for best picture are largely pictures with messages, pictures that relatively few people actually see. But although Hollywood was always concerned with politics, we have let ourselves be taken over by those for whom their message is more significant than the primary purposes of film -- to illuminate life and to entertain. Yes, entertain.
You know, entertainment is actually a noble pursuit. Life is difficult for almost every human being on earth. And if we can offer people an elevated way to divert their attention for a couple of hours from their troubled child, their marital tensions, their ill parent, their financial woes, we have rendered the world a greater service than by making another message-film against racism in America, the least racist country in the world.
My fellow actors, we walk around feeling that we are very important. But we do so only because we confuse fame with significance. We do have more fame than any other human beings in history. Far more people have heard of any actor here tonight than of any of the discoverers of any medication saving billions of lives, of any teacher of the disabled, of any nurse tending the aged, of almost any national leader.
But the truth is that, as noble a calling as acting can be, all we do is make-believe: We portray other people, and we speak words written by other people. Everyone knows our names, but almost no one knows us. All they know are the characters we play.
Thank you again. I hope I haven't ruined your evening.
What is the "great cause?"
I could point out that Hollywood and the entertainment industry in general produce one of America's last great exports. The money flowing back from films, music, television etc. is far more than that flowing back from America's heavy industries, like steel.
Also, they're not fading fast, despite what some say. They've adapted and are in the process of adapting again by reconfiguring their industries.
I remember seeing one of those fancy dog shows on TV. A trophy was presented to the winner, who promptly picked up his leg and did his business on the trophy. You can't blame a dog for doing what comes naturally, but then you don't invite him to eat at your table either.
The Oscars events aren't much different.
Actually, this may shock you, but Warren Beatty, when he accepted the Oscar for "Reds," said something very similar to Praeger's opening lines, like "It is only in America where a movie like this could ever be made."
The Reed story is an interesting piece of history and somehow Beatty managed to make it into one of the dullest lengths of film in cinema history
Prager hits another one out of the yard!
Too bad his piece won't be found on the op-ed page of the Los Angeles Times.
Amen. But I was stunned when he actually, almost, "celebrated" American values for a tenth of a second.
Many, many actors are very patriotic. Where do you suppose they come from? The vast majority of them are from Red States.
But really, honestly and truly, who really cares what actors think...I'd like to see a movie about that pre- World War I generation who had witnessed all of the promoise of marvels of the 20th century without yet seeing the horror...that would be a cool movie.
But you can't hardly find anyone who didn't serve, and most actually fought. Karl Maulden won six bronze stars as a crewman in a B-17; Lee Marvin was badly wounded; and so on.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1595230211/qid=1139189351/sr=1-6/ref=sr_1_6/102-2150248-3964123?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
John Wayne avoided service and took heat for it from John Ford (his father figure) in particularly cruel ways...
America is now in a particularly divisive phase that didn't exist during World War II. Some people avoid discussing politics with family members around the holidays. Imagine getting up in front of a nearly a billion people...
Wayne had an exemption because he had a large family. But he did make pro-war propaganda movies.
What I've heard from old Hollywood types is that the studio pulled strings. Ford wanted him to join Oh So Social with him and Wayne chose his career.
If you want to write a fascinating book, check out the relationship between Ford and Wayne. Some of the guys who knew them both are still around, but probably not for much longer.
Check this out!
http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq81-8b.htm
I like what Leno called it the ocsars a gay super bowl.
Actually, Prager's imagined speech is not really politically conservative -- it's mostly a condemnation of Hollywood's self-important elitism and preachiness, and how that gets in the *way* of quality film-making. Any honest liberal could make the same observations. Seems appropriate enough for me.
Prager has one of the best radio shows because he's conservative, intelligent, and NOT repetitious.
The last bio I read of John Wayne, "John Wayne, American," did not come down conclusively on whether he "ducked" service. The authors concluded that he, indeed, had legit exemptions, but that like many others he could have lied about them or concealed them if he wanted.
The reasons keep changing according to what you read. Family, football injury, horseback riding injury, etc. Old guys that I met told me it was at the beginning of his career and he wasn't willing to risk losing ground. But all the facts can't be known. A lot of guys were enlisting. The studios might have compelled him to stay home, etc. In the end, it doesn't matter.
Don't know if it's true, but I had heard (from a former Marine - not that there's any such thing as a "former" Marine) that John Wayne, as a young man, had joined the U. S. Marines, but had washed out in boot camp.
As I say, these guys are professional historians, and they did a pretty good job rooting out the truth, so for them to say it's unclear says a lot. The book is great.
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