Make a Bigger Pie

Box-office attendance continues to trend lower and lower each year. It’s on such a downward trajectory you’d think it might be tied to the crashing Republican brand we keep hearing about. But I think the opposite is the case. From an ideology standpoint, the political mono-think of Tinseltown is failing over half the largest audience demographic, and they don’t care.

I hear the excuses from the can-don’ts. People get their entertainment from their phones and YouTubes now. But I sure as hell didn’t watch “Iron Man” on my phone, I have no interest in watching “Gran Torino” on my computer and I won’t be waiting three months for the BluRay to come out. My friends said I had to see those movies today! Yesterday! Do whatever it takes to go see it!

The fact that entertainment folks refuse to take personal responsibility for empty theater seats is more proof that they’re liberal. But I’m a “yes we can” kind of guy. It’s an ideal learned from the attitude of our great “yes we can” president…Ronald Reagan.

Why is it we get more laughs, see more amazing things and find more truth-telling on YouTube videos and reality programming than the average movie or TV series? Multiculturalism and rampant individualism have allowed for an ever growing divide between the content providers in Hollywood and the content consumers in Kansas. And it wasn’t the people in Kansas who walked away from stories of our soldiers achieving absolute victory against terrorists on screen. It’s the writers who took it upon themselves to campaign against the war in Iraq, the surge and any other value that Republicans endorsed.

Divisive political commentary was once approached with fear and trembling, generally buried deep within the mythos of a story. Today we have to get out the sledge hammer and hit everyone over the head with the message: Liberal-liberal-Bush-is-evil-Capitalism-is-bad-we’re-all-racist. After a while, we’re trained to wince when a new trailer is released that takes place during the Iraq War. I turn to my wife and whisper, “Don’t tell me; it’s about a gung-ho soldier who wants to fight for the good cause of America then sees enough friendly fire and slaughtered children to gain a conscience that the whole war is a lie for oil.” That shit was old when Oliver Stone was doing it twenty-something years ago. Stale, boring, reflexive, predictable.

The very best movies that transcend politics and draw the broadest audiences are movies like “Jaws” and “Star Wars.” For years they’ve been categorized as shallow, popcorn films. But I think they’re far deeper than the politics of their time. Thirty years later, families around the world still get together and watch these masterpieces made by liberal men. “Iron Man” attracted my lefty friends in L.A. and my righty friends in Kentucky.

The belief that all of America is in agreement about global warming is an example of a divisive political dogma shoved into mainstream movies by the myopic true believers. Keep pushing the Gore Manifesto and you’ll continue to soften a market skeptical of Hollywood’s agenda. Do you want to make money or push ideology? If you’re unclear, ask your stock holders about the mandate of your office.

I used to think entertainment was a mixture of art and commerce. Now I think it reluctantly operates as a business that enthusiastically spreads ideology. They’d rather be right than entertain most people and they aren’t willing to pay the price of admission to attract a conservative audience. That’s fifty percent of an audience generally despised, condescended to and not served by television, magazines and movies. All dominated by left leaning writers and executives.

There’s fat money to be had. In the age where other newspapers fail, the Wall Street Journal soared. Cable news was a tiny pie until it was inflated and bloated by Fox News…the most hated product in Hollywood is the most profitable cable news network in the world. Does anyone want to make box office off of Rush’s giant audience? Hollywood hates them too much to tell them stories. These aren’t fly-over states, they’re fly-over values.

I’m not proposing we slap together a bunch of conservative propaganda films, though there’s room for that. I’d rather see us emphasize the American values we agree upon while de-emphasizing the values that split the broadest market.

We all love our spouses, our children, and cry when Old Yeller dies. We cheer when three-hundred Spartans gut the Persian hoards with big metal spears. We all love to see an underdog take down the Death Star. Before the Sith were politicized by a revisionist Lucas, we could all project our personal bad guy onto Vader. He’s like the leviathan government taxing us to death as much as he’s like the European expansionist Empire. Che and Buckley could sit side by side at the same movie and the box office became a bigger pie.

Content is everything, and if movies won’t tell the truth then a savvy public will find it elsewhere… and the truth appears to be everywhere but in big media as far as half of us are concerned.