Any high school graduating class would be lucky to hear a speech by Gerald Molen.
He’s the Oscar-winning producer behind “Schindler’s List,” “Minority Report” and “Jurassic Park,” and earlier in his life he served his country as a Marine. He’s a sought-after speaker who generally does not accept fees for his appearances, but if pressed he donates them to the Shoah Foundation, a group which strives to overcome intolerance, bigotry and prejudice in memory of The Holocaust.
Molen claims he encountered a modern brand of bigotry recently when he was invited – and then blocked – from giving a commencement speech at a Montana high school 90 minutes from his home, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Molen is one of those rare conservatives in Hollywood (he’s even making a documentary based on the Dinesh D’Souza book The Roots of Obama’s Rage) and because of that, he says, Ronan High School principal Tom Stack decided to disinvite him — and he didn’t tell him so until after Molen made the 90-minute drive from his home in Bigfork, Mont.
Unlike Hollywood, Ronan isn’t exactly a hotbed of liberalism (its state representative is a Republican), still, Molen says that Stack told him straight up that he wouldn’t be allowed to address the students because he was “a right-wing conservative.”
“He said some callers didn’t want the kids exposed to that, despite not knowing what my message would be,” Molen told The Hollywood Reporter.
Stack did not return several calls seeking comment, nor did representatives from the Ronan School District.
Read the full story at The Hollywood Reporter.