I was pretty sure K-Lo completely covered this subject back in July with her “Coming Attractions with Substance” piece in Townhall. (Who can forget her pitch for the riveting biopic, Cheney!…)
He was White House chief of staff. He was secretary of defense. They thought his career was over. And then he became one of the most hated and feared politicians in the land, one heartbeat away from the presidency. But that was only the beginning. After months of the politicos’ eyeing the field, Dick Cheney surprised them all by storming in late in the race and taking the Republican nomination for president in 2008.
…at gunpoint.
But while K-Lo’s piece was in deadly — if not actually mass-murdering — earnest, screenwriter and novelist Andrew Klavan brings a puckish sense of whimsy to Hollywood’s upcoming anschluss with the liberal-run Reichsfilmkammer. In a commentary in today’s Los Angeles Times (my hometown paper, and the reason I recently bought a Hyacinth Macaw — mightiest of the parrot family, weighing in at nearly four pounds — because I wanted something that could crap on the Op-Ed page with authority) entitled “The Right Kind of Oscars, he takes us down a crazy rabbit hole where up is down and black is not allowed to vote:
Well, the writers strike is over, the Oscars will go on and, by golly, we conservatives just can’t wait to watch Hollywood pat itself on the back for another year of anti-American, anti-military, anti-traditionalist filmmaking.
“Traditionalist filmmakers,” for you rubes in Flyover Land, are those who reject the authenticity of any newfangled movie not made using William Lincoln’s patented zoopraxiscope method.
And while red-carpet anticipation is giving me the shivers, I can’t help but imagine an alternative Oscar ceremony in a different kind of Hollywood with this list of exciting best picture nominees:
“Oono.” Hilarity ensues when a 16-year-old girl finds herself pregnant and gives the baby away to a similarly unmarried neurotic so that the infant grows up to become a drug-addicted loser and dies of an overdose at 23, whereupon the hilarity abruptly stops. What struck me about this film was that Hollywood filmmakers finally ended their attempts to sanitize and glamorize the irresponsible lifestyles that are destroying their own children before the paparazzi’s very eyes. A production of Don’t Hold Your Breath Films in association with Not in This Lifetime Pictures.
Finally! Someone else who agrees with me that Juno should really just have gotten that parasite vacuumed out, rather than leaving her child to be raised by Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck, which when you think about it is really just a slow motion, time-release abortion.
“From the Jaws of Defeat.” A hard-charging general races against time to win an unpopular war before self-serving politicians can engineer a surrender. This film became a front-runner after a moving Time magazine interview in which impassioned studio head Bernie Wattle declares, “Look, I’m just a fat little man in a suit making movies, but these soldiers are out there risking their lives to fight some of the worst enemies this country has ever faced. What kind of people would we be if we made films attacking our soldiers and their mission?”
So does Al-Qaeda have a battleship? I’m just curious about where we’re going to sign this surrender. But I have to say, the Occupation of America couldn’t be better timed. Like the Japanese after World War II, we need a conqueror to dictate us a new Constitution, since the one we’ve got now is clearly as porous as a picket fence (I mean, we can’t even tell if our Vice President is part of the Executive or the Judicial Branch — for all we know, he’s in Accounting, or IT), and like all the Axis nations, we could use a Marshall Plan to lift our war-shattered economy out of the doldrums.
“All the Prosecutor’s Men.” Journalistic heroics based on a true story. Intrepid radio talk show host Sean Hannity…
Oh, so it’s a Dali/Bunuel film, like Un Chien Andalou, or L’Age d’or…
…fights for justice when the mainstream media attempt to railroad four innocent white students who’ve been falsely charged with the rape of a black woman. It’s the dialogue that wins the day here. Take the scene in which fanatical news weekly editor Chet Shallow (played by two-time Oscar nominee Phil Shallow)
…it’s little touches like this that remind you that Andrew is a highly paid professional writer!
…snarls, “This narrative is about race and gender. The facts don’t matter.” To which our square-jawed hero snaps back, “This is journalism, chucklehead. The facts are supposed to shape the narrative, not the other way around.” I mean, this stuff just crackles.
So does bubblewrap, but I’m not sure I can watch someone sit there and pop the stuff for two hours.
“Clayton Michaels.” A chemical corporation that employs thousands of people, enhances agriculture and protects millions from disease is nearly destroyed by money-grubbing lawyers who smack it with a bogus billion-dollar lawsuit. Most interesting here was the statement by the filmmakers that they “committed to this project because we were tired of feeding our families with corporate paychecks while making movies about how evil corporations are. This more honest depiction of the benefits of capitalism seemed to restore some of our integrity.”
“Also, Union Carbide slipped us a cool mil to finish the film after everyone who had ever walked by their plant in Jaffna, Sri Lanka spontaneously combusted.”
“The Hours and Hours and Hours.” An apparently committed lesbian reveals her true yearning to become a wife and mother.
I don’t see where the drama comes in. All she needs is a turkey baster and a trip to Vermont…
She gets married, devotes herself to her husband and two kids and looks back at 80 to find she’s lived a happy and fulfilling life. OK, this one was a bit slow for me, but I did enjoy the scene in which the heroine’s executive sister returns from yet another business trip and declares, “I feel so empowered!” before bursting into hysterical sobs.
Again, I don’t see the tragic potential here — hysterical sobs are common enough. For instance, if everyone who read the above paragraph and decided that Andrew needed a good cock-punching actually bothered to deliver it, he’d be feeling as empowered as all heck right now.
“Good Night, Uncle Joe.”
Oh you’re not really gonna go there, are you? Jesus Christ on a Sybian…
In the 1950s, a dogged congressional investigator hunts down a screenwriter who’s been propagandizing and organizing in support of a Soviet regime that has murdered millions of people.
Screenwriters were The Most Dangerous Game back then, and tracking them down often involved exhausting trips into the wilds of Ciro’s, the Trocadero, and the Coconut Grove before finally running your prey to ground at the bar in the Mocambo.
In this groundbreaking work, Hollywood finally takes responsibility for the many filmmakers who gave propaganda and financial and organizational support to one of the most repressive and homicidal governments in history.
Cyrus Nowrasteh, of The Path to 9/11 is the first up against the wall…Lionel Chetwynd, of DC 9/11: Time of Crisis is in the on-deck circle…
The ad line, “Ideas Matter,” says it all.
“If It’s Mattel, It’s Swell,” says just a bit more, however…
Of course, we’ll have to wait until Oscar night to find out who the winner is — or until hell freezes over, whichever takes longest.
Remember folks, these are the kinds of jokes that only a professional conservative writer can provide. For a complete transcript of this column and its many humorous japes, write to “The U.S. Government Guide to Mummery, Tomfoolery, and Monkeyshines, Pueblo, CO, 81001.
. . .Accounting, or IT . . . I figure him for HR (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
Left by Monkay on February 17th, 2008