Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Is Drew Carey The Next Charleton Heston or Am I Just Getting Carried Away Here?

Just finished watching "The AMC Project: A profile of prominent conservatives in Hollywood" where one producer in Hollywood described the general attitude towards conservatives there as "They're conservatives in Hollywood? Really?" It reminded me of that time that I passed by Tower Records in THE WEST VILLAGE (!) and saw that on a poster of Barbra Streisand somebody had scribbled the words LIBERAL WHORE in huge black premanent marker. I was like, is that really possible? Did that really happen? I mean, even now, do you believe me? I used to have a pictures of that Babs incident but then my hard drive crashed...it's a sad story. As you can see, tons of SUPER IMPORTANT stuff was lost.

So conservatives in Hollywood...is it too good to be true? Is it true at all? Is it good at all?

Well, Drew Carey is a libertarian. I know...isn't he a Canadian or something? Doesn't that totally go against everybody's Canada = Best Country Ever attitude. Hm, all those people who think they are safe because they own a Canada pin that they wear all the time better watch out. Anyway Drew Carey owns a lot of guns...no surprise there. His definition of libertarianism falls a tad short of the right wing: "Libertarians are conservataives who still get high," ie. conservatives saved from the wrath of the catty Kitty Kelly (who looked awful in the Home and Garden section of the NY Times). I misted up a bit when he said "I've always felt outside the world...I now feel that [politically]."

After Carey there weren't too many surprise Republicans revealed in the program unless you think it's surprising that Vincent Gallo is a Republican which is sort of surprising but isn't actually a surprise since he talks about it all the time and in fact, any of you whatwouldphoebedo readers who've seen The Brown Bunny (and see it you should!) would realize how deeply conservative messages are embedded in his filmaking. The last five minutes are genuine After School Special material. Very very touching. The best part of the documentary comes from the people, like Gallo, who seemed to like being conservatives in Hollywood because hey, it's boring to be a liberal in Hollywood.

John Milius, director of Red Dawn said of himself "culturally I am uncool." Which made me think of how one can be cool other than culturally because to the best of my knowledge, coolness is cultural construct. Nevertheless he hasn't made a film in like forever (liberal conspiracy? ha) so I'm going to call him John "Cool" Milius whenever I refer to him from now on....which is all the time. Sort of. ( Incidentaly Milius was the co-screenwriter for "Apocolpyse Now" which is not just fairly anti-war but also...a very cool film).*

Perhaps he should take more cues from Gallo who is still sort of cool inspite of everything annoying he does and who is hard to believe when he says "I don't want the Republican party to be more like me...I want to be more like the Republican party" but is much easier to believe when he says "I'm an extremeley conservative radical." Which is in his case, sort of makes sense.

Sometimes it seems like that's the only kind of real radical left.

*I am now obsessed with Milius. He really is the coolest person ever. Maybe I will post about it later. Do yourself a favor and check his profile out at imdb.com. This is the man who wrote the best scene in one of the best movies ever, Jaws. He also was the inspiration for Walter in The Big Lebowski. He wrote for Miami Vice!!! I have to go rent Conan the Barbarian or something.

1 comment:

Phoebe Maltz Bovy said...

As Molly knows, I, too, saw the Barbara Streisand as "whore" graffiti. Britney Spears, though perhaps more whore-like than Ms. Streisand, leans right, and I've never seen pictures of her defaced in quite that same way. Go figure.