The fairness of Hollywood
Hollywood, like anywhere else, isn’t particularly fair. There’s always going to be a lot of things that play into success in the film and television industry, some of which are beyond anyone’s control.
Actors get chosen over others for a role because while some of the others might be better at their craft, the ones chosen have a better “look,” for example.
It’s not fair, and it’s not going to be.
But there’s unfairness, and there’s unfairness.
See, I get a certain degree of unfairness that is going to serve the artistic vision of the director or whoever. I can even understand some unfairness in business dealings, though I can’t condone it.
It’s when people get shunned simply because of their politics that I have a problem with.
Christian Toto talked about that at Hollywood in Toto recently.
Andrew Klavan’s screenwriting career took off in the 2000s.
The celebrated novelist enjoyed steady work, finding his name up on the big screen with films like “Don’t Say a Word” (2001), “One Missed Call” (2008) and Clint Eastwood’s “True Crime” (1999). He also got paid for other writing-related Hollywood gigs, even when a story didn’t reach the big screen.
And then he dared to speak his mind about politics from a right-leaning perspective.
“Of course my phone pretty much stopped ringing … It was a substantial hit to my income to lose,” he told the Leadership Program of the Rockies in 2017.
Klavan was canceled before “Cancel Culture” became part of the lexicon. Then again, Hollywood has been canceling conservatives for some time. The Hollywood Blacklist 2.0 is real, raw and unrelenting.
It’s one reason David Mamet’s name isn’t on movie theater screens these days, either.
Mamet, one of Broadway’s sharpest voices, took his talents to Hollywood with titles like “House of Games,” “The Untouchables,” “Heist,” “The Edge,” “Wag the Dog” and, most memorably, “Glengarry Glen Ross.” He collected two Oscar nominations for his screenplay work.
Mamet, however, came out as something other than a progressive, and his work dried up entirely.
Through the years, we’ve also seen conservative actors essentially shut out of Hollywood despite having worked a fair bit previously. They might still work, but nowhere nearly at the level they should have.
There are exceptions, of course. Adam Baldwin keeps working despite being an outspoken conservative, but he’s also an incredible talent who I think would be a superstar if he weren’t on the right.
Mamet, though, is different.
Mamet was an icon of the film industry. Look at those titles, for a moment. Those are amazing movies.
Klavan’s writing was good and doing well, but he didn’t hit that level. The actors shunned hadn’t, either.
But Mamet had, and he’s shut out entirely because he’s not on the right side of politics.
Remember this the next time some actor prattles on about fairness in this issue or that one. They say nothing about Mamet. They say nothing about their colleagues who are scraping for work because they didn’t stay silent.
Understand that in Hollywood, you can be as leftist as you like and you’ll keep working, but most of the conservatives or libertarians are forced to stay silent.
In fact, someone once said that if you don’t know what an actor’s politics are, they’re probably on the right. Leftists are encouraged to be leftists, but those on the right are told to stay silent if they want to keep their careers.
Nothing about that is right.
Hollywood loves to talk about the “bad old days” of McCarthyism and blacklists, but the problem is, as per usual, that it wasn’t their blacklists. They don’t have a problem with shutting people out of an industry because of their politics; it just has to be a case of them picking the politics worth shunning people over.
Yeah, I know that without double standards, they’d have no standards at all, but when they start prattling on about the unfairness of sending illegal immigrants back to their home countries, remember that unfairness isn’t really an issue for them.
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Madonna talked about blowing up the White House. Johnny Depp queried the last time an actor assassinated a president. Alec Baldwin and Robert DeNiro...well, nobody here has that much time to list their TDS-infused insanity. The woke nonsense and anti-Trump rhetoric has so infected movies, I've largely quit watching them. The only movies I do watch are the ones where I've either never heard of the actors or I've never had to listen to the actor's political musings. I used to crap on Tom Cruise, but now, I'll watch his movies simply because he chooses not to alienate half the country every time he opens his mouth. For that, he earns my video rental. Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman are the same. I suspect they're both liberals, but I haven't heard any insane statements from them that weren't obviously (and funny) jokes. It kills me that people dependent on America's largesse at the movie theater feel the urgent need to piss off most of the country on a regular basis. I'm starting to have hope Hollywood may be learning their time of influencing Americans at the ballot box is largely over. Despite dragging washed up actors last year and jerking their leashes until they were barking in the Democrat language of rage, the American public rejected their questionable advice on how great the economy was, how marvelous living next door to murdering, raping and robbing illegal aliens is and how we should listen to people who pretend to be other people for a living and vote as they tell us to. Ignoring the fact they're so rich they wouldn't notice if the economy collapsed, they'll never live next door to someone who wrote a bad check, much less raped a child and that we truly can think for ourselves, why do these bastions of bad decisions believe they have the ability to make the right choices for people they wouldn't bother to pee on if we spontaneously combusted next to their electric
Lamborghinis? It's heartening to me to see Hollywood beginning to understand they don't exist without us and not the other way around. If we keep that up for a few more elections, we may begin seeing actors rediscover humility and compassion that actually considers American citizens rather than the criminals who prey on us. Yes, I know it's unlikely, but a lady can dream, right?