The Buzzmeter: Hollywood Has a Man Problem Too

I don’t have much hope left for the Democrats—none at all, in fact. They are lucky the Right is equally chaotic because it masks much of their failures. But Hollywood? Do I still have hope?

How to have hope for an industry that disallows a great talent like David Mamet because of politics? Imagine what they’d do with some of the greatest satirists of the past, like Tom Wolfe. I don’t even want to think about it. Hollywood seems to exist to serve a passionate base of ideologues who have become as strident and punitive as the Christian Right.

Two scandals unfolded this past week to illustrate the similarities and differences. The first was the dust-up with Patti LuPone, a story I still can’t believe actually occurred in 2025 and not 2017. For those who think cancel culture might be over, think again.

From Variety:

In the New Yorker piece, which was published on May 26, LuPone addressed issues that arose last fall when she was appearing on Broadway in “The Roommate.” The theater where the show performed shared a wall with the Alicia Keys musical “Hell’s Kitchen,” and LuPone complained to the head of the Shubert Organization about the noise coming from next door. She sent flowers to the cast and crew of “Hell’s Kitchen” when the volume was lowered. But she was later criticized on social media by Lewis, who said LuPone’s behavior was “bullying” and “racially microaggressive.” McDonald liked Lewis’ message.

When LuPone was asked by the New Yorker about Lewis’ post, she called the actress a “bitch” and questioned whether or not Lewis, who won a Tony for “Hell’s Kitchen,” was a Broadway veteran. In the same interview she dismissed McDonald as “not a friend” and shaded her performance in “Gypsy” (LuPone won a Tony appearing in an earlier revival of the musical.)

LuPone’s crime? She spoke “at ease.” She spoke honestly. Moreover, she dared to treat women of color as equals without deference to their elevated status inside utopia.

For her thought crimes, 500 Broadway professionals signed a letter urging the Tony Awards to disallow her from attending.

Variety quotes from the letter:

The open letter criticizes LuPone for her comments about Lewis, stating that “this language is not only degrading and misogynistic — it is a blatant act of racialized disrespect. It constitutes bullying. It constitutes harassment. It is emblematic of the microaggressions and abuse that people in this industry have endured for far too long, too often without consequence.”

You can read the Open Letter here.

Lol, as if in 2025 that would be true. This is a power flex, nothing more, nothing less. LuPone capitulated and apologized, groveling to the tyrants.

LuPone dared to treat her fellow actresses as her equals and that was where she went wrong. That is not allowed on the Left, which is why so many want to be in a protected group. The rules are so strident, criticism is not allowed of anyone in a designated marginalized group. And that makes for extremely boring and stagnate art because the same rules must apply on screen. Marginalized groups are not allowed to be fully flawed or complex human beings.

We instinctively know this when we sit down to watch any movie. The story is already told before the film even starts. We know who the good guys are and who the bad guys have to be (usually heterosexual white dudes).

Meanwhile, on the Christian Right, a sex tape of journalist Glenn Greenwald hit the internet. He was engaging in consensual BDSM sex – and it was lurid for the Right – fairly tame for what goes on in the world of BDSM. Some on the Christian Right reacted by calling Greenwald a “deviant” and pronouncing he showed poor judgment, all of the condemnations you’d expect, even going so far as to say his kids are in danger because of it, etc. It was exactly like what happens on the Left, with outrage building by the minute.

The difference? The Right has no power to destroy Glenn Greenwald or anyone else. He responded by doing what everyone should do when the mob comes for them: nothing.

By contrast, the Left has all of the power. Had LuPone not apologized, that would have been the end of her career. They would not have allowed her to attend the Tony Awards, and she would be branded “toxic” and a “racist.”  Whatever Hollywood is now, it is not a community that can survive this level of puritanism.

My interest in Hollywood comes from my interest in art — in artistic expression. My interest in art came from an endless sense of curiosity to make sense of things, which great art can do better than anything else. I was never religious, so that left me always asking questions. That is what art and movies used to do. Now, it doesn’t do that. We have these two opposing religions. Pick one. Or pick none.

But thankfully, a whole new counterculture is growing, shedding the old like a snake shedding its skin. It hasn’t entirely gotten to art yet, but we have freedom of voice on the outside, so I’ll take what I can get.

The problem is the denial of that reality on repeat. The same problem afflicts the Democrats (because there is no difference between them — Hollywood, like the legacy media, is merely another arm of the Democratic Party).

For example, this piece by River Page for The Free Press outlines exactly why the Democrats (mostly) lost the male vote:

The truth is, I can’t think of a single male friend who self-identifies as a Democrat. Perhaps this is because I’ve spent most of my adult life in the deep-red Florida Panhandle. Or maybe it’s because my friends didn’t go to elite colleges, if they went to college at all. Whatever the case may be, even the ones who still vote Democrat admit to doing so only with a bit of embarrassment in their voices, and all of them happen to be gay. None of my straight male friends, to my knowledge, have voted for a Democrat since Bernie. If they have, they are closeted about it.

So I was not surprised to learn recently that the Democratic Party plans to spend $20 million on a project called “Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan.” Like Margaret Mead observing the grass-skirted natives in Samoa, notebook in hand, Dems plan to study the “syntax, language, and content that gains attention and virality” in online male spaces, according to a plan obtained by The New York Times.

He continues:

It’s money well wasted. The Democrats have been losing the support of young men like me for years. Why? Let me tell you from my perspective as someone the Democratic Party once won and lost.

The first is the Democratic Party’s demonization of white men, ostensibly in the service of “social justice.” As Rod Dreher put it in The Free Press earlier this week, “Think what it must be like to be a white boy growing up in a culture that tells you that you are what’s wrong with the world. You are not only demonized by cultural elites and institutions—not because of anything you believe or have done—but because of who you are.”

And while they’re not exactly the same – the abundance of Queer output by Hollywood certainly hasn’t alienated gay men but heterosexual men have been demonized as the traditional male hero has been weakened and feminized as Hollywood shifted its narrative, much like the Democrats have, toward women and marginalized groups.

As if right on cue, we see Hollywood preparing to laud the Netflix show Adolescence — which reduces all problems of society to, you guessed it, young white boys – the catch-all for the Left. True, it was made in the UK but it’s the same basic mindset. It’s even worse over there because they’re preparing to use it to censor what boys can access online – as if that will solve the problem of stabbings.

So, while the Democrats are spending millions to try to figure out where it all went wrong, perhaps Hollywood can help them figure it out – and the two can solve the problem together. I guess I won’t hold my breath.

Sinners was a breath of fresh air, a throwback to a time when it was still okay to put masculine men on screen and have them engage sexually with women – something we do not see very often. The one kind of film character whose sexuality is never expressed now (Sinners notwithstanding) are heterosexual men. And guess what? We miss them.

Before they can be invited back, Hollywood (and the Left) have to loosen up a bit, stop punishing people for thought crimes. They have to start seeing everyone in this big country as someone they can at least talk to, even if they don’t agree with them. Maybe this is an impossible dream now, but it’s all I got.

The Buzzmeter is an occasional column I post on Awardsdaily’s newsletter, awardsdaily.substack.com