Tag: hollywood
Trump Announces Three Aging 'Ambassadors To Hollywood'

Trump Announces Three Aging 'Ambassadors To Hollywood'

Donald Trump has announced about 100 nominations to his administration that require Senate confirmation, from cabinet secretaries to ambassadors to foreign countries, but on Thursday the President-elect announced the “nomination” of three more “ambassadors” — to Hollywood.

“It is my honor to announce Jon Voight, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone, to be Special Ambassadors to a great but very troubled place, Hollywood, California,” Trump declared on social media. “They will serve as Special Envoys to me for the purpose of bringing Hollywood, which has lost much business over the last four years to Foreign Countries, BACK—BIGGER, BETTER, AND STRONGER THAN EVER BEFORE! These three very talented people will be my eyes and ears, and I will get done what they suggest. It will again be, like The United States of America itself, The Golden Age of Hollywood!”

Calling it a “seemingly unprecedented role,” Politico reports, “Voight, Gibson and Stallone have been vocal supporters of Trump in recent years.”

The three will not require Senate confirmation, as there is no official role of Ambassador to Hollywood.

“Trump has long had deep ties within the entertainment industry. His pick for envoy to the United Kingdom is his old producer from ‘The Apprentice,’ Mark Burnett.”

The Chicago Tribune noted that “Trump’s decision to select the actors as his chosen ‘ambassadors’ underscores his preoccupations with the 80s and 90s, when he was a rising tabloid star in New York, and Gibson and Stallone were among the biggest movie stars in the world.”

“Stallone is a frequent guest at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club and introduced him at a gala in November shortly after the election,” the Tribune reported. But the paper noted, the “decision also reflects Trump’s willingness to overlook his supporters’ most controversial statements.”

“Gibson’s reputation has been altered in Hollywood since 2006, he went on an antisemitic rant while being arrested for allegedly driving under the influence. But he’s also continued to work in mainstream movies and directed the upcoming Wahlberg thriller ‘Flight Risk.'”

“Voight is a longtime Trump supporter who has called Trump the greatest president since Lincoln,” the Tribune added.

But while some mocked the very idea of “ambassadors” to Hollywood, some political observers see a different motivations.

“If you’re to believe Trump, a task force comprised of three men with an average age of 77 is precisely what Hollywood needs to reclaim its glory days,” reported Vanity Fair‘s Chris Murphy.

“There is no reason to think that Trump genuinely wants to help the U.S. film industry, which has rejected and mocked him since he entered politics,” writes New York Magazine “Intelligencer” senior editor Margaret Hartmann, who described the appointments as “trolling Hollywood.”

She also notes that “there’s the underlying idea that Trump needs to appoint ambassadors to Hollywood, like it’s not part of the United States. He underscores this by calling it a ‘great but very troubled place.’ Referring to Hollywood as a location, not just an industry, and describing it as ‘troubled’ make it impossible not to think of the wildfires.”

Hartmann also says, “it’s not clear what it means to be Trump’s ‘eyes and ears’ in the film industry, unless he’s trying to conjure fears about another Red Scare.”

Others have made suggestions about American culture.

“It means that just like in the Third Reich with the Nazis, MAGA is hyperfocused on gaining control of culture. You can’t control people unless you control culture. Like I said, Hollywood is about to FO [find out],” declared political analyst Rachel Bitecofer.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported, “while some have welcomed the picks,” of Stallone, Voight, and Gibson, “others, such as departing President Joe Biden have warned of an emerging ‘oligarchy’ in the US.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Danziger Draws

Danziger Draws

Jeff Danziger lives in New York City. He is represented by CWS Syndicate and the Washington Post Writers Group. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons, a novel and a memoir. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.

Led By Alyssa Milano, Hollywood May Boycott Georgia Over Abortion Ban

Led By Alyssa Milano, Hollywood May Boycott Georgia Over Abortion Ban

Georgia legislators have passed a so-called “heartbeat bill” that would ban abortion beyond six weeks, and Gov. Brian Kemp appears prepared to sign the legislation into law this week.

But doing so might be costly for the state.

The Peach State has long been a go-to location for Hollywood filmmakers, but the abortion ban has stirred opposition among many big names in the entertainment industry. Actor and producer Alyssa Milano collected signatures for a letter pledging to boycott work that would bring them to Georgia if the bill becomes law.

Other groups, including the Writers Guild of America, embraced the boycott sparked by Milano as well. As CBS News reported, other state governors are stepping up to poach the filmmaking business if Georgia triggers the boycott.

Stacey Abrams, who lost the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election to Kemp in a contentious and dubious election in which he oversaw the vote as secretary of state, warned about the risks of imposing limits on women’s reproductive rights:

#MeToo: How I Learned What Predators Like Weinstein Do To Women Every Day

#MeToo: How I Learned What Predators Like Weinstein Do To Women Every Day

OK then,  #MeToo.
Long ago and far away, I had an academic superior who enjoyed sexually humiliating younger men. There was unwanted touching—always in social situations–but mainly it was about making suggestive remarks hinting that being a “hunk” was how I’d gotten hired.
My “pretty little wife,” as she was insultingly called, got to stand there and watch. We had no idea how to defend ourselves. There was a second guy in my department, also an administrator with power over one’s career, who made a practice of inviting younger men on manly hikes in the woods and making aggressive passes.
It was a thoroughly poisonous atmosphere. I knew that to complain would invite ruin: initially through what’s now called “gaslighting”—claiming I’d imagined everything—followed by accusations of sexual panic and homophobia.
A definite no-win situation.
Ironically, life in a New England college town had been among my Arkansas wife’s girlhood dreams. Instead, she found herself patronized to her face when she opened her mouth—always by academics, never ordinary New Englanders, I should stipulate.  
I quit before they could fire me.
But it was a real learning experience. In consequence, although definitely not Mr. Sensitive, when it comes to sexual abuse I’ve always understood what women are talking about.
Much of the time, it isn’t even about desire—apart from the desire to put you down and keep you there.
Yet my situation was far less threatening than that of the women preyed upon by disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein,  and so many others confronting harassment or worse. First, there was no possibility of physical force. Second, my antagonists’ power was limited to the precincts of one provincial academic department.
All I had to do was walk away.
No harm, no foul.
Not so with Weinstein. As the head honcho at one of the most successful movie companies in the world, he had the wherewithal to advance or ruin an actress’s entire career. Based upon first-person accounts in Ronan Farrow’s lengthy New Yorkerexpose, he was a calculating predator who set the same trap repeatedly in luxury hotel suites in New York, Hollywood, London, and Paris.
He’d invite a young actress to meeting in his hotel suite, greet her with drink in hand wearing nothing but a bathrobe, and then pounce, sometimes violently. A bigtime Democratic donor, Weinstein followed the script as written by Donald J. Trump. You remember how it goes: “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. . . Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
If certain of the New Yorker allegations could be proved beyond a reasonable doubt —alas, they probably cannot—Weinstein belongs not in some luxury European rehab but an American penitentiary. He’s more than a sexual harasser; he’s a rapist.
Also, apparently, a bully in other ways. “Lucky me,” commented the British actress Kate Winslet, “I somehow dodged that bullet. The fact that I’m never going to have to deal with Harvey Weinstein again as long as I live is one of the best things that’s ever happened and I’m sure the feeling is universal.”
Although he’s produced humane films such as Good Will Hunting, The Crying Game, Pulp Fiction, and Shakespeare in Love, tales of his temper tantrums are indeed universal.
That said, Weinstein didn’t invent the concept of the Hollywood casting couch nor the louche sexual ethics of the movie business generally. Trading sexual favors for sought-after parts is as old as the theater. The ancient Greek dramatists Sophocles and Euripides were famous for their adventurous love lives. Indeed, one of the most interesting articles to emerge from the Weinstein affair appeared in Slate, recounting a British fan magazine’s 1956 expose titled “The Perils of Show Business.”
Incongruously illustrated with cheesecake photos, it featured the following rules from actress Marigold Russell that working women everywhere would be well-advised to heed: “One: when you have to talk business, stick to offices—and office hours. Two: refer invitations and offers to your agent. Three: don’t give your home phone number, give your agent’s.”
Actress and director Sarah Polley writes that her agent wouldn’t let her meet Weinstein alone when she was 19, which told her all she needed to know. She also figured that “the idea of making people care about [Hollywood sexual predation] seemed as distant an ambition as pulling the sun out of the sky.”
Me, I’m so vain that I can’t imagine wanting intimacy with somebody that didn’t want me back. Which in the final analysis makes a bully like Weinstein seem almost pathetic to me, although not to his victims, I’m sure.
Awful as he is, there’s also something smug and ugly about these ritual media stonings. For a columnist like the New York Times Bret Stephens to write that Weinstein’s “repulsive face turns out to be the spitting image of his putrescent soul” strikes me as seriously over the line.
 We sinless pundits hide carefully behind our bylines.

Shop our Store

Headlines

Editor's Blog

Corona Virus

Trending

World