Samuel Goldwyn had the following famed advice for filmmakers: “Pictures are for entertainment. Messages should be delivered by Western Union.”
Today’s Hollywood is apparently choosing to ignore the renowned studio mogul’s words and are instead opting to keep the election campaign going, just as the celebrity-in-chief continues to do.
The truth is that for decades liberals in Hollywood have been shoehorning distinctively radical messaging into various forms of entertainment product.
Left-wing messages were embedded in a blacklist subplot of the movie “The Way We Were” (1973), which featured Barbra Streisand as the local communist.
Streisand, who has now been paired with actor Seth Rogen in the upcoming comedy “The Guilt Trip,” recently opined in an Internet column that Sen. John McCain was “fueling the flames of a supposed cover-up by the White House, Secretary of State, and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice.”
Streisand stated that “there is no evidence to support that a cover-up occurred” and further suggested that “all Senator McCain wants to talk about is Benghazi and he is relentless in his questioning of ‘what the President knew and when did he know it.’”
Concerning the Benghazi scandal, in Streisand’s assessment “the Obama Administration is being transparent and forthcoming.”
It seems as though the singer was making reference to the website declaration that immediately followed President Obama’s initial inauguration, which indicated that his administration would be “the most open and transparent in history.”
However, in reality the Obama administration has stonewalled with regard to the “Fast and Furious” investigation, stalled with relation to proposals from the chief Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) ombudsman’s office to reform FOIA operations, mounted unprecedented resistance against FOIA requests at both the agency level and in court, taken prosecutorial action against whistleblowers and alleged leakers, and placed obstacles in the way of those seeking records.
Streisand’s fellow actress Ashley Judd is still pushing the campaign meme that the GOP is waging a “war on women.” Judd spoke at an event for Indiana Planned Parenthood in which she praised the organization for “delivering a product and service that is really needed” and for “doing it really well.” She has been mentioned as a possible challenger to Sen. Mitch McConnell for the U.S. senate seat in Kentucky.
While appearing on media outlets in the weeks leading up to the release of his new film, “Killing Them Softly,” Brad Pitt got into a public feud with his mother over the president’s policies and the definition of marriage.
Pitt's latest film, in which he plays a mob operative who is probing a robbery that took place at a crime syndicate-sponsored poker game, had a poor box-office performance, with a nationwide opening of $7 million and a No. 7 weekend ranking. The movie also received a very rare CinemaScore grade of “F” from moviegoers.
Pitt's Plan B production company produced the $15 million movie, which is only the eighth in history to receive the “F” score. It could be that the liberal subtext Pitt as producer and Andrew Dominik as writer-director artificially inserted into the script may have contributed to the film’s box-office failure.
The audience is force-fed the notion that the mob, a.k.a. organized crime, was somehow connected to the financial meltdown that occurred in 2008, and additionally that U.S. business is the true villain in the brutal crime drama. Ultimately, what could have been a compelling story is inappropriately interrupted with Occupy Wall Street-style missives.
It appears as though Samuel Goldwyn’s words have fallen on contemporary Hollywood’s deaf ears.
James Hirsen, J.D., M.A., in media psychology, is a New York Times best-selling author, media analyst, and law professor. Visit Newsmax.TV Hollywood. Read more reports from James Hirsen — Click Here Now.
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