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Every time I turn around, another famous person is speaking out about how much they hate the other half of the country. They hate them because they voted for Trump, and if you vote for Trump, you are to be shunned, hated, destroyed. That’s why Kim Masters is the latest in a long string of “children spies” posing as journalists to ferret out the thought criminals. Her latest is a take-down of Ron Howard’s producing partner, Brian Grazer, for committing the high crime of voting for Trump.
I’m not a paying customer at Puck anymore — a wee bit too one-sided and insular for my taste — so here is the headline:
Sneering, snooty, elitist journalism that most people, except those inside the bubble, look upon with equal disdain. For an industry that relies on readers, viewers, and ticket buyers, it is amusing (or, rather, depressing) to watch them continuously alienate them with their “you’re with us or you’re against us” approach. That might have been semi-acceptable in Resistance 2.0, but now, after Trump won the popular vote, too, it looks at best like sour grapes, at worst, like a fundamentalist cult that can’t afford to trust those scary people outside the door of our doomsday bunker.
I voted for Trump because I can’t stand what the Left has become. For me, it was very specific and covered two areas. I won’t go into them because it would just start a war, but suffice it to say, I don’t agree with everything the Trump administration is doing. However, I still would vote for him today, given what we’re facing on the other side. That Hollywood has now become “the other side” is a shame. It means everything they do must be aimed at a shrinking minority of people. They’ve lost everyone else’s interest.
Most of us have been forced to find our excitement from YouTube or TikTok, where a wide array of content is available. Hollywood closed ranks and became corporate monopolies, as Richard Nixon called them, “do-gooders and eggheads.” Those monopolies care more about their status inside the Royal Court than they do the people — the masses. They are also mandated because most companies operate under the stringent rules of the new Woketopia. We keep hoping they’ll ease up, and they never do.
Brian Grazer is brave to come out from among them and be he separate. He’s got enough fuck-you money that they can’t really touch him financially. Oh, but they can sneer, and they will sneer. And in so doing, send a message to any other truth-teller that they better not, or look what will happen to YOU.
The message Hollywood — and journalists like Kim Masters — send out is this: “You don’t belong up here in the rarified air of the special people.” They justify their manufactured superiority by virtue signaling — they are the good people doing things, and you are the bad people; therefore, their treatment of you is justified. No, it isn’t. That’s the lesson I’ve learned from watching all the great movies Hollywood has produced over the decades. The Hollywood of today would be cast as the James Spader character in a 1980s high school drama.
Meanwhile, Jason Bateman has humiliated himself on a talk show in a clip that has now gone viral.
Let me answer that question for you, Jason. Yes. Most of Trump voters — MAGA, if you prefer — hate Fox News. They don’t watch it. They feel Fox News is against Trump. To think that’s where people are getting their information is about ten years out of date. There is a massive independent lane — that this podcast is desperately trying to break into — where most people get their information. Why? Because the legacy media failed them. They failed them for the same reason Hollywood has failed them: because they took a side. Like Hollywood, they began to tell people what they should think, and stopped being reporters.
That’s why we stopped reading The New York Times, watching CNN, and MSNBC (though clearly, you’re a fan — step one: stop watching MSNBC). The Democrats lost to Trump all on their own. Like Hollywood and the legacy media, they abandoned the working class. They stopped listening to the people to cling to power. Getting rid of Trump was as easy as clicking their heels together three times. All they ever had to do was offer the people something better, but they never did. Why? Because Trump was a convenient enemy at a time of extreme intolerance. Blame him, dump it all on him. He’s the bad guy, not us. We’re GOOD.
And that would be fine if every movie weren’t also about this mindset, and they almost all are. So I am glad at least one of them voted for Trump. Maybe they can help pull Hollywood out of this nauseating, unbearable mindset.
Do yourself a favor, Jason, read what your sister writes. Listen to her. She’s running circles around you.
Finally, Charlize Theron joined the choir, shaming all of the celebrities who attended the Jeff Bezos wedding because — GASP — some of them voted for Trump. How Theron expects any of us to pay to see her movies is a mystery. Why, Charlize, why? Why do you think that it’s your job to pass judgment on other people like that? It is a disease in Hollywood, with no known cure. You are not better. You are a person. We are all people with things we care about and things we don’t care about.
I apologize for posting a video from Occupy Democrats, which reflects the same ignorance of Jason Bateman in his sneering, condescending view of Trump and his supporters — oligarchs this, billionaires that. Brother, you’re the party of money now. That’s why you lost. You can’t connect to the working class, and you’re alienating viewers who are fleeing like rats of a sinking ship.
What’s it going to take, Hollywood? Is this really it? A little orb cut off from the rest of humanity, like Biosphere 2? That’s what it looks like to me.
Isn’t the idea to attract more people, not alienate them? Wouldn’t that also be the aim of the Democrats? Don’t you guys NEED voters? Doesn’t Hollywood need ticket buyers? In Biosphere 2, it was all fun and games until they ran out of oxygen, began starving to death, formed tribes, and turned on each other. That is what Hollywood looks like to me now.
And it’s up to people like me to talk about it because no one else will. If you want people to vote for you, watch your movies, pay attention to your “journalism,” it’s time to get over yourselves. You’re not better than the other half of the country. You’re not.
At the moment, most of us out here dread every movie Hollywood puts out. We dread every time someone shoves a microphone in front of some self-important celebrity like George Clooney. We’re so over it by now, you have no idea—even people who vote blue no matter who are over it. The only reason you don’t hear about it is that everyone who covers Hollywood is either too insulated to see what’s really happening or too afraid to report the truth.
A Movie For Everybody
F1: The Movie has become one of the big hits of the Summer because it’s a movie for everybody, and because Brad Pitt isn’t out there screeching about how much better he is than half of the country. Thank god for that.
I don’t know how far F1 will go, or how expansive its reach will be, but it’s nice to see that there are a small handful of movies for everyone. How to Train Your Dragon, Lilo & Stitch, and Mission: Impossible are all doing fairly well. The same can’t be said for The Life of Chuck, Materialists (decent, not great), and poor Elio, who has taken a hard fall.
Elio Was Doomed from the Start
The Hollywood Reporter has written about how Elio was meant to be a coming-of-age story about a gay 11-year-old from Mexico.
It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around this — that anyone would greenlight it as a Pixar movie. I do not know what planet they’re living on that they thought families would be, in any way, eager to sit their kids down in front of it, but that’s apparently the disaster that almost unfolded.
From @RiseFallNickBck on Twitter:
Per THR, multiple Pixar staffers have released a scathing report on Elio’s development. Here are the key highlights:
– Pixar massively changed Elio after the original cut was test screened, and not a single person raised their hand when asked if they’d pay to see the film in a movie theater.
– A Pixar staffer says, “The Elio that is in theaters right now is far worse than Adrian’s best version of the original.”. “Suddenly, you remove this big, key piece, which is all about identity, and Elio just becomes about totally nothing,”
– The budget was “well north of 200 million”, while other reports suggest the film was 150 Million.
– Originally, Elio was written and presented to be much more queer-coded, a reflection of Adrian Molina himself and his upbringing, but this notion was cut entirely, along with scenes like photo’s in Elio’s room involving a male crush.
– Pixar employees say that studio executives themselves cut queer elements from ‘Elio’ and the decision did not come from Disney: “A lot of people like to blame Disney, but the call is coming from inside the house. A lot of it is obeying-in-advance behavior, coming from the higher execs at Pixar.”
– Former Pixar assistant editor Sarah Ligatich, who provided feedback during Elio production as a member of the company’s internal LGBTQ group PixPRIDE said that a number of creatives working on the film stepped down after the directors shared their first cut of the revised movie: “The exodus of talent after that cut was really indicative of how unhappy a lot of people were that they had changed and destroyed this beautiful work.”
A lot to unpack, and even more in the report itself. It’s a shame we might never actually see what the film was originally going to be or if it would’ve made the difference. As it stands, Elio’s heading towards being one of the biggest box office flops the studio’s ever had…
The Hollywood Reporter, and everyone who writes about Hollywood, can only criticize it in terms of its “erasure” of gay themes. But I can promise you, had they gone forward with it, showing an 11-year-old boy crushing on another boy — however cute that might seem to adults — it would have bombed even worse than it did. It is not the job of Hollywood, or public schools, or any adults to get into the minds of pre-pubescent children like that.
Elio cost between $120 and $200 million — you have to wonder, are they all on some mood-altering drug that disconnects them from reality? Are they not paying attention to what has happened to the Left? To Hollywood? The original Elio sounds like it could be an interesting movie — for adults, perhaps teens — on the festival circuit. Let the Gothams and Spirit Awards embrace it. It would have been nominated for an Oscar — it would have done fine, considering about a quarter of the budget.
To the Left, it sounds intolerant to criticize this movie — I know. I come from the Left. However, you must meet people where they are. You can’t decide for them what their kids should be exposed to. Pixar has built a trustworthy brand for itself, as has Disney. But both of them have now made parents — and audiences — wary of what kind of agenda they’re pushing this time.
