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Never Trust Hollywood With History
Townhall.com ^ | January 3, 2020 | Brent Bozell and Tim Graham

Posted on 01/03/2020 4:51:15 AM PST by Kaslin

Hollywood loves taking apart conservatives. So when presented with the idea of men in the highest reaches of the conservative media sexually harassing women at the office, it was manna from heaven.

You'll not find a TV dramatization of Harvey Weinstein's predations ripped from the headlines. There's no movie on the alleged sexual misconduct by Matt Lauer at his hellish NBC offices, or Charlie Rose's at CBS. There is only "Bombshell," a fictionalized account of the hostile, sexist atmosphere at Fox News.

The filmmaker on this one is Jay Roach, who has made a series of comically leftist movies for HBO, such as one on Al Gore being denied the presidency ("Recount") and one on Sarah Palin's losing turn as vice presidential nominee ("Game Change"). Roach's idea of a hero movie was "Trumbo," based on screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who, in the '40s, slavishly plopped Stalinist talking points into movies and belonged to the Communist Party USA, for which he was blacklisted.

Woe is anyone who goes to these movies expecting a faithful recounting of history. What you get instead is rampant editorializing and fiction. Characters are made up out of whole cloth and placed into real events. In "Bombshell," Fake Megyn Kelly and Fake Gretchen Carlson are digitized into actual Fox News footage. Two other central characters in this anti-Fox hit job -- an evangelical Christian beauty and a snarky, Hillary Clinton-loving lesbian Fox staffer -- are pure inventions.

The lesbian staffer describes the Fox ethos in this way: "You have to adopt the mentality of an Irish street cop. The world is a bad place. People are lazy morons. Minorities are criminals. Sex is sick but interesting. ... Ask yourself, 'What would scare my grandmother or piss off my grandfather?' And that's a Fox story."

Virtually everyone, and this includes Fox employees, has no idea what here is actually true and what is entirely made up. The media suggest the details aren't that important. What's important is "starting a conversation."

So long as that conversation isn't about liberal predators.

To his credit, CNN's Brian Stelter asked Roach: "I'm thinking myself, where's the -- where's the Matt Lauer movie? Where's the Les Moonves? Are those coming? I'm serious." Roach insisted there's a Harvey Weinstein documentary coming, and that someone will make a film about Ronan Farrow's struggles with NBC News in reporting on Weinstein's abuses.

"I would happily make that movie," he claimed. Don't bet a nickel on it.

Oh, how they objected to the concept of composite characters in movies based on real events when the subject was Clint Eastwood's "Richard Jewell," where it's implied that an actual Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter (now deceased) offered sex for information from a fictional FBI agent. But these voices are silent when it comes to the Fox News-bashing movie.

The same thing is happening with "The Two Popes," a Netflix film spinning a tale about the relationship between crusty, traditionalist Pope Benedict XVI and his forward-looking successor, Pope Francis. Entire conversations are manufactured to dramatize the differences between conservative and liberal takes on the Catholic Church.

Catholic journalist Raymond Arroyo was poignant in saying: "It's a nicely acted fantasia, unmoored from fact, that misses the true character of both men. It is slanderous toward 1 Pope and overly fawning toward the other, serving neither the audience nor history."

If you're looking for historical truth in Hollywood, you're looking in the wrong spot.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: hollywood; mattlauer; mediabias; megynkelly

1 posted on 01/03/2020 4:51:15 AM PST by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin
Don't trust them with history. Or morals. Or values. Or ethics. Or common sense. Or decency.

Pretty much, ignore them on everything except maybe landscaping. They can produce pretty flowers.

2 posted on 01/03/2020 4:58:28 AM PST by LouAvul
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To: Kaslin

Or the MSM with truth.


3 posted on 01/03/2020 5:11:03 AM PST by SkyDancer ( ~ Just Consider Me A Random Fact Generator ~ Eat Sleep Fly Repeat ~)
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To: Kaslin

Hollywood can’t recount, properly replay, what it doesn’t know

Hollywood is ignorant. That’s why it is Hollywood

All there are dredged from near the bottom of the barrel


4 posted on 01/03/2020 5:16:07 AM PST by bert ( (KE. NP. N.C. +12) Progressives are existential American enemies)
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To: Kaslin

I’ll say Clint Eastwood’s film Richard Jewell appears to be the exception that proves the rule.


5 posted on 01/03/2020 5:18:52 AM PST by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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To: Kaslin

No starlet would want to play an MSNBC anchor. They are all too ugly.


6 posted on 01/03/2020 5:28:00 AM PST by MattMusson (Sometimes the wind blows too much)
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To: Kaslin

There is only “Bombshell,” a fictionalized account of the hostile, sexist atmosphere at Fox News


I’ll bet my next paycheck you’ll never (ever) see the same treatment given to Les Moonves at CBS. Or Matt Lauer at NBC (who was probably the creepiest of all).


7 posted on 01/03/2020 5:37:46 AM PST by rbg81 (Truth is stranger than fiction)
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To: Kaslin
HELLywood bitches are very brave behind their twitter accounts calling us very bad names etc,...WELL EFFERS get out of your protected mansions and security guards and tell us to our faces you effing cowards!!!! I dare you I double dare you to come and tell me to my face what you are posting on Facebook and on Twitter! Effing cowards hiding behind words and a screen come and tell me to my face come on I dare you you filthy scum of the earth demonic Hollywood from the pit of hell! Come on BITCHES!! Sorry freepers but I've had it with these EFFIN bastards!! I DESPISE LIBERALS DEMONIC DEMONKKKRATS SOCIALIST do as I say not as I do EFFIN HELLywood fake actors!! Had it!😡😡😡😡
8 posted on 01/03/2020 6:32:20 AM PST by RoseofTexas
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To: Kaslin

...or anything else.


9 posted on 01/03/2020 7:05:04 AM PST by Savage Beast (The curse of intelligence is having to watch the morons try everything you know won't work.)
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To: Kaslin

Never get your history from a movie script.

Too many people still think Custer woke up one morning, looked out the window and said..”It’s such a beautiful day I think I will go out and kill me a bunch of Indians!”

LITTLE BIG MAN is one of the funniest and historically inaccurate movies I have ever seen, same for many others such as 1965’s BATTLE OF THE BULGE.


10 posted on 01/03/2020 7:30:17 AM PST by Ruy Dias de Bivar
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To: bert
My friend was a cinematography major and had an interesting remark.

The earliest films were produced by people who's education and experiences involved access TO and a thorough familiarity WITH basic, original ‘sources’

They were people who were educated. They had actually read books. THEIR information and ideas came from what they knew in their first-hand exposure to authors and their works.

Now days, we have ‘film makers’ who's only ACTUAL knowledge and frame-of-reference is, ‘other films’. THEIR sources is -someone one else’s idea... and someone else’s understanding. They know what they ‘know’ ONLY by their experience with what they saw previously, in some OTHER film. They know NOTHING directly and individually, as a result of their own research, effort and personal interest

11 posted on 01/03/2020 7:39:26 AM PST by SMARTY ("Nobility is defined by the demands it makes on us - by obligations, not by rights".)
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To: Kaslin

Here’s a clue, when evaluating “historical” or “based on a true story” movies made in Hollywood:

There are ACTORS playing these “real-life” figures.

They are MOVIES.

Not HISTORY.


12 posted on 01/03/2020 8:11:33 AM PST by karnage
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