www.hollywood-elsewhere.com/2008/07/scratch_him.php
From last year's incredibly elusive Super Bowl ad to the film's viral marketing campaign, Cloverfield had everybody scratching their heads and drooling in anticipation. Aside from the as-yet untitled title and the Blair Witch-ian visual style, the film's biggest appeal was the enigmatic creature who was last (un)seen hurling the decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty onto the crowded streets of New York City. All we knew about the mysterious beast was that it was big and angry. Now that the highy-anticipated project has come and gone, one question has fortunately been answered: Cloverfield was a major success.
I've never thought of Jon Voight as intellectually challenged, but it's hard not to at least consider the possibility after reading his 728 Washington Times op-ed piece slamming Barack Obama. "The Democratic party, in its quest for power, has managed a propaganda campaign with subliminal messages, creating a God-like figure in a man who falls short in every way," Voight wrote. "It seems to me that if Mr Obama wins the presidential election, then Messrs. Farrakhan, Wright, Ayers and Pfleger will gain power for their need to demoralize this country and help create a socialist America."
Voight piece will say, "Okay, the Times gave him the rope and he hung himself." But you'd think an arch conservative working in an overwhelmingly liberal town would think about restraining himself for expediency's sake, if nothing else. My honest deep-down reaction is that I now have a reason to feel negatively about the guy. I'm not saying Voight is on the HE shit list (although the idea certainly feels good -- just as it felt good to imagine the same thing last spring about Tina Fey when she became a rabid Hillary person on SNL), and I certainly don't think a symbolic condemnation along these lines would matter much to anyone. Nonetheless, it's going to be hard henceforth not to think of Voight as some kind of diseased wingnut. I'll always admire and respect Voight's better performances (Luke in Coming Home, Reynolds in Enemy of the State, Ed in Deliverance, Howard Cosell in Ali, Manny in Runaway Train, FDR in Pearl Harbor, Jack in Desert Bloom, Paul Serone in Anaconda). And he's obviously entitled to say and write whatever he wants. But it's only natural that industry-based Obama supporters will henceforth regard him askance.
Well you know, Angie thinks more like Voight than you might imagine. But she doesn't think of herself that way and in fact she's made it known that cutting and running out of Iraq would be a disaster. She is quoted on the set of Changeling saying something about more conservative than people might think. And your attitude of having a shit list for anyone who disagrees with you is childish at best.
Wells to Zimmergirl: I didn't say I had a shit list, or that I believe in the idea of one. I just said it feels good to think of shit-listing certain people. Not that I think for a second that anyone would give a damn.
Zimmergirl, you should read or see some of Jolie's interviews or some of her articles and book -- they are always a good read, always interesting -- and you'll see that she has nothing to do with her father.
Since when are hollywood actors also known as brain surgeons? If I listened to every Tim Robbins, Maggie Gyllenhahl or Jon Voight spout their stupidity, my head would explode.
Thanks Superhero, I know a lot about her and have read many interviews -- believe me, she's one of the great ones - just saying that it's assumed she's a big ol' liberal but she isn't. She isn't going around appearing in Obama videos though, not yet, which leaves her open to be shit-listed.
Are y'all, (those on the left side of things), so insecure with your beliefs that you need to circle your wagons and drum out of society those whose political opinions don't follow yours right down the line? And of course now that we find out he's conservative he's suddenly a jerk and a shitty actor, too?
But Jeffrey, as several of us have pointed out, you were wrong about Tina Fey. In an Entertainment Weekly article, she revealed that she had actually written additional material for the end of her spiel, which was later used as Tracy Morgan's response. But you never addressed that fact and now we see that Fey is still on your I-have-a-list-but-not-really list. Granted, there's really no way to misinterpret Voight's piece. But if you're going to have a I-have-a-list-but-not-really list, you should be consistent.
Come on, you guys are basically saying that Wells says "Jon Voight is a conservative and is therefore stupid and a shitty person" and yada yada yada, when in actuality I believe Wells is saying that Voight is an idiot because he actually buys this bullshit about Obama being tight with Bill Ayers and Louis Farrakhan when it's not the case, and that Obama is a fucking communist or something which is completely ridiculous. Voight also says that the US won't have any morals whatsoever and will be a socialist state under an Obama presidency.. Voight is an idiot for regurgitating completely disingenuous fear mongering talking points, not for being a conservative.
"I haven't been able to determine the political contribution records of director Joshua Michael Stern or co-screenwriter Jason Richman." Hope you're proud of the destination your political journey of discovery has taken you on. You're smart enough to someday you'll realize you need to spend the rest of your life apologizing for where your zealotry has taken you.
It's too bad, I had earned so much respect for the guy from his chilling performance in Baby Geniuses II: Superbabies. Sometimes a performance is so striking, so true-to-life, that it alters your perception of life.
I've read Obama's books and Voight simply doesn't know what he's talking about. He talks about Obama's "teachers" and doesn't mention Barack's mother, who would get him up very early in the morning and do additional studies with him before he went to school each day. And one of the things that impressed me in The Audacity of Hope was that Obama seemed pretty centrist to me. He believes in hard work and open markets but at the same time believes that government has a role to play in improving quality of life.
I love how you are basically calling for a current day blacklist of Hollywood actors who don't agree with your opinion. Why can't you be like 95% of the rest of Earth's population who couldn't care less what people's politics are. To say you won't see his movies anymore seems perfectly reasonable, but to advocate that no one else work with him seems, well, slightly fascist.
I was just checking on the political donations record of the director and co-screenwriter of Swing Vote in order to check out a rumor about alleged conservative allegiances among the cast and crew. I wasn't calling for a blacklisting -- I said the idea feels good, given my loathing for the right. It's been said in this town many times that the right has a debt to pay for the blacklisting of lefties in the '50s, and that in all fairness it's probably going to take a long time to make amends. The fact is that the philosophical grandfathers and great-grandfathers of today's right-wingers ruined the lives of many Hollywood screenwriters in the '50s, and so their descendants now have to suffer and make up for that. I don't have that history in my craw, but I can see the logic in wanting to make it rough for the right in this town. I don't think its right but I can see the point of view of the leftie who feels that way. My own view is that you always work with the best people you can, regardless of political affiliation. Stanley Kubrick was absolutely correct to hire Adolf Menjou as the cynical French general in Paths of Glory, despite Menjou's reprehensible right-wing views that included supporting the blacklist. And good for Cecil B DeMille, that awful, sanctimonious, two-faced Bible-thumping vulgarian, for giving Edward G Robinson a job on The Ten Commandments. Seriously -- that was a good and compassionate thing he did, even if he was a prick and a bully at heart.
After Edward G Robinson (liberal) had been blacklisted during the McCarthy era, DeMil...
|
http://csua.com/feed/