Producing a Hollywood flop

[Matt]

By Stephanie Mansfield
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20041104-121432-2713r.htm
Published November 4, 2004

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Sherry Lansing, the soon-to-be-retired Paramount studio honcho and friend of Sen. John Kerry, is said to be "depressed."
Actress Sharon Stone, who stumped for Mr. Kerry in Wisconsin, reportedly was "traveling" yesterday. It wasn't clear whether the "Basic Instinct" star had fled the country, as she had hinted that she might do if the Democratic nominee lost.
There were tears and tribulations. Long sighs and short tempers. Shock and bawl.
For a rich and powerful demographic used to getting its way, Hollywood was downbeat yesterday as President Bush -- more heinous than a mid-February release date to so many celebrities and other bold-faced names -- made his gracious victory speech.
Not only entertainers were said to be dispirited. The literary crowd in New York was crying into its Evian.
"Sure, I feel terrible," said New Yorker editor David Remnick, whose published endorsement of Mr. Kerry was a first for the magazine. "There are a lot of long faces today."
And "Fahrenheit 9/11" propagandist Michael Moore's Web site actually went silent.
That's the same Mr. Moore who only a couple of weeks ago had paused in his anti-Bush road trip to opine: "I have a feeling that slackers are going to rise up in this election. The slacker motto is: Sleep till noon, drink beer, vote Kerry."
George Soros, the Hungarian-born billionaire who went on his own 12-city speaking tour and spent an estimated $17 million on ads and get-out-the-vote drives to defeat the president, posted a message on his Web site describing himself as "distressed."
"I'll be back," he wrote.
Buoyed by early exit polls that put their candidate ahead, many in Beverly Hills dined together and waited out the night. Slowly, their leading man faded from the political screen.
"There's a lot of disappointment out here. A lot of apprehension," said Robert Dowling, editor in chief of the Hollywood Reporter. "People are comatose."
It was the right coast versus the left coast, and the morning-after mood was described by Mr. Dowling as "somber." It left many Kerry supporters reaching for their Prozac vials.
"Mine is already empty," joked a high-level publicist who counts A-list celebrities as his clients. "Everyone's so down. All the studio execs are bummed. I have to tell you, when gay marriage becomes a bigger issue than the Iraq war, we're missing something."
Long decried as out of touch with "the real America," Hollywood woke up to its worst nightmare on Main Street.
"This is definitely Kerry country," said Gabriel Snyder, senior writer for Variety, the industry bible.
One can only imagine the despair of the Hollywood stars over the specter of glittery state dinners and policy lunches that could have been: Barbra and Moby,, Uma Thurman and Viggo Mortensen, Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro, Bette Midler and George Clooney. Directed, perhaps, by Rob Reiner and Steven Spielberg.
Who knew "moral values" voters could triumph over production values?
Asked whether outspoken stars might regret their more vitriolic sentiments about the president, Mr. Snyder said he doesn't think there is a risk of backlash.
"My prediction is the political tenor will come down for a little while," the Variety scribe said. "I don't think anyone will say anything wild. Next week, of course, might be different."
Among the most shrill in past months: Jennifer Aniston, the "Friends" actress who called Mr. Bush "a [expletive] idiot." Actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who stumped for Mr. Kerry in Oregon and Florida and appeared in an ad for the Democrat on the Internet. Singer John Mellencamp, who described Mr. Bush as "a cheap thug."
Cher also threw her wig in the ring, calling Mr. Bush "stupid and lazy" during a sparsely attended rally at a Miami Beach disco in Florida.
Al Franken is also a loser today; Dennis Miller a winner.
Sean Penn, Whoopi Goldberg and Meg Ryan: losers. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ron Silver and Angie Harmon: winners.
Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi lost their full-throated bids to play at an inaugural ball. Larry Gatlin and Brooks & Dunn, call your agents.
Rap impresario Sean "P. Diddy" Combs made his preferences known, without using the names "Bush" or "Kerry," in urging the hip-hop nation to "Vote or Die." Fellow rapper Eminem put in a belated appearance with the animated video for his venomous anti-Bush single "Mosh," in which his "army" appears to veer from violence in the streets to voting at the polls.
What proved to be a tonic: Building 429 and other Christian rockers who urged prayerful consideration of the stakes on their "Redeem the Vote" tour.
"It was a very gradual thing," the Hollywood Reporter's Mr. Dowling recalled. "First it was Puff Diddy, then Bruce Springsteen came along, then Ben Affleck came out and the bandwagon rolled. It was slow to engage, and I'm not sure if Kerry wasn't just a surrogate for anti-Bush feelings."
"Celebrity testimonials may help [sell] erectile-dysfunction products," Marty Kaplan, communications professor at the University of South Carolina, told Agence France-Presse, "but in politics, they're mainly eye candy for the media."
Mr. Dowling agreed.
"It didn't work," he said of the Democrats' star-studded support.
Asked whether Mr. Affleck, who wasn't available for comment, would suffer any repercussions, Mr. Dowling laughed and alluded to the actor's latest box-office flop "Surviving Christmas."
"Ben Affleck," the Hollywood journalist said, "has more career problems at the moment than his political beliefs."

[Rspaight]

Rev. Moon likes to bash Hollywood.

Ryan

[Matt]

Or Stephanie Mansfield does.

[Rspaight]

If it's in the Washington Times, it's what Rev. Moon wants.

Ryan

[Matt]

Funny how newspapers skew things to their own perspective, isn't it?

[czeskleba]

The emerging spin seems to be that Bush has a mandate. Articles like this are selling the idea that only left wing kooks and Hollywood "elites" opposed him, and they are so far out of the mainstream they should just be mocked. We should all remember that 48% of the country was against Bush... that's no mandate.

[Rspaight]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Times

Several critics have claimed that the Times is little better than a mouthpiece for the Unification Church, noting that the paper's op-ed pages are often sympathetic to Unification movement concerns. The paper's first publisher, James Whelan, resigned rather than knuckling under to what he saw as church interference with his operation of the paper. "I have blood on my hands," he declared. The paper's current editor says Whelan was fired because he was difficult to work with and other staffers were threatening to quit because of this.

While Times reporters have prided themselves on their independence from the church's position, this has occasionally put them at odds with the founder's claims of having direct influence on the Republican Party via his extravagant funding of the newspaper. And during a recent anniversary party for the Times, Moon declared: "The Washington Times will become the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world" (and this, the rival Post reported, sent many reporters to the bar for a drink).

Ryan

[lukpac]

I'd like to know how Minnesota and Wisconsin keep going for Democrats if "the heartland" likes Bush. We're not part of "the heartland"?

Not that I'd cry if we weren't, but...

[Dob]

Al Franken is also a loser today; Dennis Miller a winner.

I've been a Dennis Miller fan for a long time (Al Franken too) and I guess I was aware that he was defending the Iraq war, but I thought he was more anti-Saddam than pro-Bush. I recall him bashing Bush pretty severely once upon a time.

A google search turned up this 2003rant from The Tonight Show. I had no idea he had gone this far...boy, was this painful to read.

[Rspaight]

Yeah, he's drunk of the Kool-Aid. Long and deep.

Ryan

[Ess Ay Cee Dee]

Don't you guys know it's oh-so-cool and hip to be a Bush-adoring comedian these days? If anyone saw "Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn" on Comedy Central last night, they'll know what I'm talking about.

I've always considered Dennis Miller a douchebag, so I'm not surprised by what he has to say in that Tonight Show transcript. Fuck him.

For those masochists who'd like more, here you go:

Dennis Miller Takes on Peter Arnett and Michael Moore

Another round of pro-American patriotism, pro-President Bush and anti-liberal jibes, jests, zingers and slams from actor/comedian Dennis Miller on Thursday's Tonight Show with Jay Leno, including a nice shot at Peter Arnett: “How am I supposed to trust the honesty of a reporter that has that bad of a comb-over on top of his head?...Hey guess what Pete? We know you're bald, okay? The outside of your skull is as empty as the inside.”

From the April 3 Tonight Show on NBC, most of Miller's cutting observations about the present situation:

-- Pride in conduct of the war:
“I cannot tell you how proud watching that war coverage makes me. I know a lot of people are saying that they think that it's, that you know what we're doing is imperialistic. I watch the way we handle ourselves over there and I've never felt more patriotic in my life.”

-- Denouncing anti-war protesters, Miller described how he puts them into four categories, the second one made up of those who call everyone but Hussein a Hitler:
“The second type you have at these parades seems to be the people who want to mislabel Hitler. Everybody in the world is Hitler. Bush is Hitler, Ashcroft is Hitler, Rumsfeld is Hitler. The only guy who isn't Hitler is the foreign guy with a mustache dropping people who disagree with him into the wood chipper. He's not Hitler.”

-- On the up side of war protesters:
“I'll say this about the war protesters: At least most of them are only putting duct tape across their mouths so I can still tell the rest of them to blow it out their ass.”

-- On the Dixie Chicks:
“Surprisingly, making fun of the President on foreign land in a time of war doesn't seem to play with the NASCAR crowd!”

-- On Peter Arnett:
“How am I supposed to trust the honesty of a reporter that has that bad of a comb-over on top of his head? He's got four hairs left and he's swirling them around...This guy is dangerously close to pulling hair over from another guy's head. Hey guess what Pete? We know you're bald, okay? The outside of your skull is as empty as the inside.”

-- On Michael Moore:
“He's going to wake up every day for the rest of his life, and he's going to tell us how he hates everything about this country except his right to hate it. And then we say that we love it and he's going to tell us what naive sheep we are and that he's the true patriot because he hates it and he sees all the problems in it. Yeah, right, Mike. You know something, if my yawn got any bigger they'd have to assign it a hurricane name, okay?
“Michael Moore simultaneously represents everything I detest in a human being and everything I feel obligated to defend in an American. Quite simply, it is that stupid moron's right to be that utterly, completely wrong.”

-- On justification for the war:
“It is stupid for anybody in the world to say they're for war. But I am for this war because, you know, we've got to protect ourselves now. And we've got to remind the world that there is a point that we will not be pushed past before the [bleep]hammer comes down. Now, the simple fact is, do I think Saddam Hussein can bury the nuclear jumper from the top of the key? No, I don't. He's a putz. But I do think he can distribute the ball going down the lane and I think we've got to smack him around. It's time to circle the SUVs!
“The simple fact is, you've got to view this war like we've been on a long family car ride. Bush is the father and he's been screaming [gestures with arm as if a driver scolding kids in back seat] 'don't make me come back there!' for around 200 miles now and it just reached the point where we had to pull the car over and the bad kid is going to get the spanking of his life.”

-- On those whining about the length of the war:
“And now we've got people whining about how long the war is taking. For God's sakes it's been two weeks. You know, it took Joe Millionaire eight weeks to pick Zora (sp?).”

-- On global warming:
“There's a lot of differing data, but as far as I can gather, over the last hundred years the temperature on this planet has gone up 1.8 degrees. Am I the only one who finds that amazingly stable? I could go back to my hotel room tonight and futz with the thermostat for three to four hours. I could not detect that difference.”

-- Advise to soldiers in Iraq:
“I would encourage the boys though not to rip down all those big wall portraits of Hussein because you got to remember, pretty soon we're going to need a headstone for my main man's grave and you might want to save one for him.”

-- Praising the troops:
“God knows that we've got things we've got to perfect in this country. But there's enough people downplaying it right now. I want to go so far against that. I want to thank the President. I want to thank the troops and say God bless you for doing the tough job which allows us to sit here and do the easy jobs, like be on the Tonight Show.”

[lukpac]

“There's a lot of differing data, but as far as I can gather, over the last hundred years the temperature on this planet has gone up 1.8 degrees. Am I the only one who finds that amazingly stable? I could go back to my hotel room tonight and futz with the thermostat for three to four hours. I could not detect that difference.”

I just love it when people take on science and have no fucking idea what they are talking about.

[Rspaight]

I call it the "Holiday Inn Express syndrome." In the age of information overload, everyone thinks they're a genius expert on everything.

I, of course, *am* a genius expert on everything, so I can say things like that.

Ryan