The Screengrab : david zucker

Dennis Hopper Beats Joe The Plumber To Death With Pipe

Andrew Osborne — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Okay...I'll admit that headline is a tad negative and misleading. But isn't that what campaign season's all about?

Besides, according to the terrorist-and-fact-loving elitists at The New York Times, Joe isn't really a plumber and he isn't actually named Joe. In fact, based on photographic evidence, he may even be Michael Chiklis.

And Dennis Hopper, despite a history of crazy behavior like almost but not quite blowing himself up with dynamite, doesn't really go around like Frank Booth randomly bludgeoning people he doesn't agree with (or even people who symbolize people he doesn't agree with)...

...but, surprisingly, the annoying hippie nutjob turned annoying neo-conservative also won't be voting for McCain this Election Day, no matter how many folksy plumber stories the Republican candidate pulls out of his funny Maverick hat.

In other words: Dennis Hopper's turning Blue, and we don't mean Velvet.

Yes, despite his recent turn in David Zucker's alleged comedy, the liberal-bashing An American Carol, and despite voting "Bush" not once, not twice, but four times in as many presidential elections, Hopper recently told reporters, "I pray God Barack Obama is elected."

Regarding his reasons for the change of political heart, the one-time easy rider cited the many lies of the current administration...

...but since he made the statement while he was in France(!) receiving that nation's Order of Commander of Arts and Letters, it's entirely possible he was lying.

(Hey, when in Rome...)

Related Stories:
Screengrab Review: An American Carol
Will Barack Obama Be America's Next Great Black President?

Screengrab Review: "An American Carol"

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:45:00 GMT

This week, as the election nears, I decided to treat myself to two movies that I ordinarily wouldn't see under any circumstance. Not just because they looked terrible -- although they did -- but also because they were movies that, in a very literal sense, were not made for me. These movies are less artistic endeavors than they are salvos in the culture war, and if they were aimed at me, it was not as a consumer, but as a target.

But hey, so what? I go see a lot of movies that aren't really meant for me. I've reviewed Tyler Perry movies, which aren't meant for me. I've reviewed Disney animated movies, which aren't meant for me. I'm a big fan of Stan Brakhage, and his movies weren't really made for anyone. I'm a professional, damn it, and as a professional, I can take whatever to the other side in the culture wars dish out. The first tasty bowl of arsenic: David Zucker's An American Carol.

The film, as you may know from Phil Nugent's earlier piece on it, is a high-dudgeoned but low-minded spoof in which a stand-in for Michael Moore (portrayed by a stand-in for Chris Farley) is interrupted in his quest to ban the Fourth of July by a visitation by three ghosts, who attempt to dissuade him from his wicked anti-American ways. Why wasn't his movie released at Christmastime? Why would anyone want to ban a calendar day? Why would you send John F. Kennedy to attack a prominent liberal? I figured if I started asking myself questions like that, I would just go insane. Instead, I focused on whether or not the movie was actually funny. I hope I will be believe when I say that, all ideological considerations aside, it wasn't. It's not that you can't be funny from a specific political point of view; in fact, satire (which, really, An American Carol is too dumb to qualify as, but still) depends on a moral standing ground from which to attack. It's that these jokes lack any kind of universality, humanity or relatability: the only way you can think it's funny is if you agree with where it's coming from. Or, to put it another way: the new, right-wing David Zucker believes it's funny to have Michael Moore slapped around by Bill O'Reilly. If you happen to agree, you might be modestly amused; if you don't, the joke will fall even flatter than it actually does. The old, non-political David Zucker knew better: he just thought it was funny when people get slapped.

Above and beyond the question of its partisan demands, though, is the fact that An American Carol just isn't very funny, even if you're a conservative. Its jokes are lazy, obvious, and predictable even by the subzero standards of modern farce, and while moviegoing audiences have proven time and time again that they'll go to a movie that critics don't like because they genuinely enjoy it themselves, there's very few people who will go to a movie out of spite, which is really the only reason to see An American Carol. This is evidenced by the fact that with half the country or more still self-identifying as conservative, the movie completely tanked at the box office; as Phil reported, though, Zucker and a few of his far-right pals are claiming that its disastrous performance is due to some kind of liberal conspiracy. If I can be allowed one moment of ideology, that's the great strength of the paranoid right: if you succeed, it's because America loves your values; if you fail, it's because liberals sabotaged you. All I can say is, they did a hell of a screw job on this one.

Hollywood Conservatives Face 'New McCarthyism', Goblins, Unicorns

Trailer Review: An American Carol

Paul Clark — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 16:00:00 GMT

I’ve heard some conservatives speaking of “the humorless left,” but if this trailer tells me anything, it’s that humorlessness can be found on both sides of the aisle. How else to explain this laugh-free, broad-as-a-barndoor jeremiad against America-hating liberals, embodied here in the person of a Michael Moore surrogate played by Chris Farley’s little brother Kevin? Granted, Moore kind of brings this upon himself, but I think that’s part of the problem- Moore’s tactics have become pretty embarrassing even to those who agree with his politics, so not only is it all too easy to single him out as a symbol of left-wing America, but it’s fairly inaccurate as well. But then, cheap shots are this trailer’s stock in trade- liberals hate America and deserve to be repeatedly socked in the face on for ideological reasons, while only conservatives truly love and respect what this country stands for (could the Trace Atkins song in the trailer be any more on the nose?). All of which goes to show you that there are few things more depressing than an unfunny comedy, especially one populated by has-beens (Kelsey Grammer, no doubt trying to rustle up funds for his next misbegotten Broadway show), crackpots (Jon Voight), and all-around attention whores (Bill O’Reilly). And this guy directed The Naked Gun? How the mighty have fallen…

Hollywood Conservatives Face "New McCarthyism", Goblins, Unicorns

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:30:00 GMT

One of the favorite activities of the modern movement conservative is to claim that, since not every single aspect of the culture panders to him, he is being discriminated against. Having never actually experienced any actual discrimination -- unlike, say, black people -- the right-winger seems to believe that it is an oppression too heavy to be borne that he is sometimes made aware of things that he does not personally enjoy. Liberal arts classes in college taught by liberals? Discrimination against conservatives! Some people don't adhere to the tenents of the Southern Baptist Convention? Discrimination against conservatives! Young people listening to the rappity-hop music? Discrimination against conservatives!

This week has seen a big push in one of the favorite such complaints of the movement conservative: that, because of the preponderance of liberals in Hollywood, conservatives are being discriminated against in Hollywood. Jason Appuzzo, founder of the late, unlamented Libertas Film Festival, was one of the biggest purveyors of this ridiculous myth; Brent Bozell is another. But in the last ten days, we've seen an op-ed by Jon Voight in the right-wing Washington Times in which he blamed American liberals for the murder of millions by the Cambodian dictator Pol Pot, and claimed that "if, God forbid, we live to see Obama president, we will live through a socialist era that America has not seen before, and our country will be weakened in every way". The editorial was widely scoffed at, and conservative gadflies, who mistake being made fun of for being blackballed and having your entire career destroyed, immediately came crawling up from the cellar to complain about "establishment entertainment journalists expertly wielding the tools of the New McCarthyism". So says Andrew Breitbart (who, earlier this year, I heard peddle the absurd notion that Hollywood celebrities are afraid to say they support our troops in Iraq, lest they face censure at the hands of the liberal bosses). While conservatives almost universally react to liberal opinions on the part of entertainers with some variant of "shut up and sing" (witness the widespread hostility the Dixie Chicks faced a few years ago), let one of their own get laughed at for mouthing of some ill-conceived right-wing talking point, and we're witnessing the vile fascism of "a town that doesn't embrace free speech anymore". Breitbart's commenters are even worse, claiming that "the old McCarthyism was harmless compared to the new". (Those who wish to compare and contrast may note that Mr. Voight currently has three films in production, and starred in one of the most successful films of 2007, as opposed to, say, Dalton Trumbo, who spent a year in prison because of the blacklist, or Hanns Eisler, who was more or less forced to leave the country and ended up in the hands of the Soviet East Germans, or Alvah Bessie, who never worked in her chosen profession again, or Canada Lee, Bartley Crum and John Garfield, who all died because of the horrible after-effects of coming under McCarthyite scrutiny.)

Meanwhile, the Weekly Standard featured a cover story entitled "Hollywood Takes on the Left", in which David Zucker outlines his difficulties and frustrations in making An American Carol, his long-promised conservative comedy. Zucker, too, complains of a "new McCarthyism" in Hollywood, designed to keep Republicans out, and frets that "conservative films are almost illegal in Hollywood". Even if one ignores the fact that movie studios are owned and run by capitalist multimillionaires who are hardly hostile to the core principles of conservativism, this absurd sense of pseudo-oppression fails for one simple reason: audiences tend to like or dislike movies based on whether or not they're entertaining, not based on their ideological bias. (After all, as conservatives love to remind us, liberal anti-Iraq War films have been duds at the box office.) If Zucker's film fails, it won't be because of some mythical Hollywood liberal mafia; it will be because the movie is preachy instead of funny, and audiences don't like preachy.

Luckily, because of the freedom of speech people like them denied victims of the blacklist in the 1950s, Zucker, Breitbart, Voight, and their ilk are welcome to complain all they like about how terribly oppressed they are; that they actually do so is all the evidence you need of the moral bankruptcy of the modern conservative movement.