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Over the past couple of years, American moviegoers have been beset by such godawful crap as Date Movie, Epic Movie, Superhero Movie and the soon be released Disaster Movie.
Conservatives, leaping upon the almost miles per hour of inertia that this chain of shitty movies has left in its wake, found a guy who hasn’t made a good movie since 1988 to write and direct An American Carol, which is basically a Michael Moore spoof starring Chris Farley’s brother, features Jon Voight making political statements and includes a cameo by Bill O’Reilly.
Unfortunately, that’s a far more appealing description than we’re getting from people who have seen the movie.
I’m holding a palm card that was just given out at the Heritage Foundation to promote the new David Zucker film An American Carol. If I fill out the card, I can take one of four pledges, such as “Yes, I will send the trailer to my contacts” and “Yes, I want to be AN AMERICAN CAROLER or THEATER CAPTAIN.” It’s an induction to a movement, as the slogan on the card makes clear: “Finally, a movie for us.”
By “us,” of course, the filmmakers and promoters mean conservatives. Executive producer Myrna Sokoloff has put together a “pro-soldier, support our troops, pro-America” comedy, which Stephen Hayes previews in the new Weekly Standard. In it, filmmaker Michael Malone (Kevin “brother of Chris” Farley) and his organization MoveAlong.org are trying to repeal the Fourth of July when three angels—the Angel of Death, George S. Patton, and George Washington—come to him and convince him to change his ways.
No, wait. It gets worse.
The crowd at Heritage got to see a trailer and a few minutes of clips 24 hours before either of them will be generally released. I’m a huge fan of the Zucker-Leslie Nielsen canon, and not much of a fan of Zucker’s ads for Republicans. The footage we saw floated somewhere in the middle of those two projects, quality-wise. Fat-assed Malone travels to Cuba, pledges to destroy America, and takes advantage of the invisibility granted by ghost status by grabbing a protestor’s boobs. Bill O’Reilly appears out of nowhere to slap him. “I just like doing that,” he says. Terrorists led by everybody’s favorite pockmarked tough guy Robert Davi bitch that they’re low on suicide bombers ("All the good ones are gone!") and all answer to the name Mohammed. In a scene that Sokoloff described, but didn’t bring, Patton and his soldiers storm a courthouse that’s about to remove the Ten Commandments and start opening fire on the people trying to stop them. “You can’t shoot these people!” Malone says. “They’re not people!” says Patton. “They’re the ACLU!” At this point we see that the ACLU members are unkillable George Romero zombies.
This honestly sounds like someone making a parody of a conservative movie. That’s got to be the point of this, right? I mean, portraying conservatives as bloodthirsty morons and reducing your critique of liberalism to fat jokes and zombie comparisons? Having Bill O’Reilly tell a joke rather than be a joke? This has to be someone making fun of conservative attempts at humor, please. Otherwise, this is just too sad to contemplate.
(Also, Romero zombies aren’t unkillable. You just destroy the brain.)
Details about the movie were kept secret, on purpose, until this month. In February, it was reported that Kelsey Grammar would be Scrooge in the new movie. He’s actually playing the ghost of George Patton, and Jon Voight is playing George Washington. In a clip we saw, Washington takes Malone to St. Paul’s Cathedral to lecture him on freedom of religion and “freedom of speech, which you abuse.” Malone is grossed out by dust in the priest’s box, so the doors open onto the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center. “This is the dust of 3000 innocent human beings!” bellows Washington. Malone whimpers that he’s just making movies. Washington won’t have it. “Is that what you plan to say on Judgment Day?”
What the fuck is this? I’m kind of speechless. It’s hard to make fun of humor that flops miserably, it’s even harder to make fun of humor that decides its target audience is three thousand smouldering corpses ready to be flayed so that Jon Voight can take the brave stand that Michael Moore is a fat bitch.
“That scene,” said Sokoloff, “is hard to put in a comedy. But we had to do it.”
That scene would be hard to put in scat porn. Don’t sell yourself short.
The whole meeting had the tone of a FARC strategy session more than a fun publicity junket. This movie isn’t just going to sell tickets (it’ll open in 2000 theaters), it’s going to liberate Hollywood’s Republican untouchables and open the floodgates to more conservative films. “Last year you saw a bunch of anti-military movies like Redacted and In the Valley of Elah,” Sokoloff said. “All of them had big stars, and, thank God, they bombed. America didn’t want to see that stuff on screen. We have to show up to a movie that has our values. If this succeeds, if could change everything.”
It could! Finally, movie studios would be convinced of the merits of offering up cheaply produced schlock to make a quick buck off of a gullible audience with low standards. Finally, the era of highbrow “films” with credible performances and comprehensible scripts is over. That, and I can sell my parody version of Shawshank Redemption, called Shanked!. There’s twenty minutes of buttsex jokes. That’s three more than any other film ever - even the gay ones!
Sokoloff did worry about the last political comedy to hit theaters, Swing Vote. “People just didn’t want to see something about the election,” she mused. Is it a bad sign that both of the fictional politicians in that film, Dennis Hopper and Kelsey Grammar, are back in this? Probably not, actually. Swing Vote tried to tell a sappy Capra story divorced from real-world politics. This movie grabs the culture war by both horns and starts riding and hollering.
Expelled just called, it’s looking forward to the company in the $2.99 bin at Best Buy.
How big will this movie be? Keep in mind that the movie was picked up for distribution in September...at the end of July. It has no posters. No trailers. It does, however, have pledge cards.
The impending failure is far funnier than anything in the movie at least. Thanks, Zucker!
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Posted by
Jesse Taylor on 10:53 AM •
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“Finally, a movie for us.”
If by “us”, he means “heartland conservatives,” keep in mind that every single mass market movie is made for just that demographic, and they consume them in mass quantities.
On the other hand, if by “us”, he means “people who don’t like movies,” maybe he’ll find a new, albeit small, audience. However, it’s never worth trying to create a product to attract people who don’t buy your product to begin with. Seriously, he thinks that all the AEI folks who either don’t watch movies or enjoy mainstream dramas or foreign films are going to suddenly line up to buy tickets to a screwball comedy because it’s a conservative screwball comedy?
..is anyone else reminded of “Reefer Madness”?
Wow. Just...wow.
I guess my fear is that if it succeeds, I’ll never be able to look another American in the face again. I’ll always be wondering...what if they liked that piece of shit?
I guess this is yet another entry in the world of special Just For Conservatives pop culture. Because being exposed even to reality-based pop culture (let alone the reality-based real world) is just. so. hard.
This reminds me a little of the special Christian cartoons that came on in the middle of weekday afternoons on the couple or three religious channels we got when I was a kid (I guess aimed at fundy homeschoolers?). They were typically the only thing on that wasn’t soap operas if you were home from school on a weekday for whatever reason. We can’t allow our children to be polluted by the secular and dangerously liberal world of He-Man or the Care Bears!
In my opinion we should let ‘em go. Shows how totally irrelevant and out of place they really are in this country.
C’mon this at least has to be funny ironically. Using 3000 dead bodies to make the statement that all criticism of your country dooms you to hell? No one would even put that in a movie parodying right wingers because they’d think it’s too over the top. Nope turns out you haven’t even begun to scrape the bottom of the barrel. Though it is chock full of the funniest thing ever: dead liberals. That always goes over well on the right. Add Bill Clinton getting hit in the groin with a sports object of some sort and we’ve got a slice of fried gold.
http://thesebastards.blogspot.com/
It definitely sounds funnier than Jane Austen’s Mafia!
Sounds like a movie made by someone who doesn’t understand that Colbert is making fun of them, not with them.
Start with replacing these guys with Robin Williams as George Washington and Don Rickles as Patton…
Sounds like a movie made by someone who doesn’t understand that Colbert is making fun of them, not with them.
Hell, D, I don’t think they understand that Jesus’ General is making fun of them, not with them.
guy who hasn’t made a good movie since 1988
Hey! I liked A Walk in the Clouds!
Well, it’s true Keanu Reeves looks like my late father, especially when he’s in uniform, so that automatically pushes buttons. And the kid brother goes to “Stanford”. I liked it.
Anyone? Bueller?
Just me then. OK.
Is it possible that Zucker is a double-agent for the left? Or is he just Harold Zoidberg?
Oh, for the love… we’re unkillable Anthony Romero zombies. So much work we have left to do. *eye roll*
They’ll probably try the busing-church-groups in strategy that they used for The Passion of the Christ, but I have a feeling the church groups aren’t going to bite. It’s hard to argue that it’s uplifting, wholesome family entertainment (you know, like torture porn is!) when you have the lead character grabbing women’s boobs.
Springtime for Hitler, brought to you by The Half Hour News Hour.
So, what conservatives really want are people like Goebbels and Riefenstahl.
I guess if you want good old-fashioned propaganda, there you go…
Hey! Maybe we could have some kind of athletic event, film/tape it, and show how Americans dominate the world!…
And, no, I’m not Godwinning the thread - google “The Producers” and you will understand if you are too young to understand.
It’s adorable that they rounded up all of the half dozen Republican actors in America to appear in this film. Jon Voight? Dennis Hopper? Maybe they can find some wingnut Brady Bunch actor who hasn’t worked since the ‘80s to round out this all-star cast.
I guess my fear is that if it succeeds, I’ll never be able to look another American in the face again. I’ll always be wondering...what if they liked that piece of shit?
Hell! I’d feel the same way ... and I’m American!
Although I could always use the excuse that I was born elsewhere. I wonder if Trinidad has dual citizenship?
Ms Kate, I was Godwinning the thread because in this case it’s entirely appropriate… 
Wingnuts want Patriotic American films. All they need to do is translate them from the original German…
So, if Voight’s daughter never speaks to him again, will it be the conservative tripe in this, or the horrendous acting job that turns her away?
Springtime for Hitler, brought to you by The Half Hour News Hour.
Nah—too Jewish.
I want to know why George Washington and George Patton both look like Jon Voight....?
And where is George W. Bush?…
It’s got one thing going for it—they should be able to power all the theaters off of George Washington spinning in his grave…
...and will Little Annie Coulter play the Angel of Death?…
How is “In the Valley of Elah” anti-military? I guess I missed that part of the film.
see also: poe’s law:
it is hard to tell fake fundamentalism from the real thing, since they both sound equally ridiculous. the law also works in reverse: real fundamentalism can also be indistinguishable from parody fundamentalism. for example, some conservatives consider noted homophobe fred phelps to be so over-the-top that they think he’s a “deep cover liberal” trying to discredit more mainstream homophobes.
This film brings me unbearable sadness.
All of the “if only...” thoughts, the things that should have been, but can never be.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 ended far too soon.
Where did you go Joel, Crow and Tom Servo? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you....
Wow, they may actually eclipse the entire body of Uwe Boll’s work to get a lock on the distinction of being the most utterly shite and incompetent film-makers alive
Hell! I’d feel the same way ... and I’m American!
Although I could always use the excuse that I was born elsewhere. I wonder if Trinidad has dual citizenship?
Tonybrown74 on 08/13 at 01:12 PM
Sure, Trinidad offers dual citizenship - if you also live in Tobago.
Nah—too Jewish.
I got it! I got it! We’ll work up a number six on ‘em!
Does anyone remember the name of that flag-waver that Disney pushed upon theaters, ostensibly as a counterweight to Fahrenheit 9/11 back around 2004 or so?
Neither do I. Neither do the tens...nay, _scores!_ of people that saw it, I’ll wager.
I suspect that unless some wingnut-welfare-funder takes this on as his pet project, it will likely meet the same fate.
Where did you go Joel, Crow and Tom Servo? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you....
They went to Cinematic Titanic.
How is “In the Valley of Elah” anti-military?
If it doesn’t say “George W. Bush ROCKS!!!” then it’s anti-military.
There’s plenty of movies with conservative values out there. Movies in which heroic Americans save the day from evil terrorists? Heartwarming comedies in which people end up getting happily married? That’s 90% of Hollyeood’s output!
Oh, right, not those values--the ‘liberals are evil’ values. The ‘Michael Moore hates America’ values. The nasty, sniping insult-driven values.
This is going to be one long Dennis Miller monologue. ACLU jokes? Parodies of Sicko? At least the Meet the Spartans folks are parodying current stuff that people have seen.
This won’t even get the 26%. The people who respond positively to Bill O’Reilly don’t go out to movies.
Passion of te Christ? No, this one’s (for many reasons) another Battlefield Earth.
Wingnuts want Patriotic American films. All they need to do is translate them from the original German…
I have one word for you:
Vielfrasse!!!
“However, it’s never worth trying to create a product to attract people who don’t buy your product to begin with.”
Great line, Jesse. Can we send that slogan to some of our “Democratic” “leaders”?
I’m not sure that everyone in the party understands the concept.
Just like Corsi book on NYT best seller list I am sure a ton of tickets will be bought in bulk on Fandango and they will claim modest success wiuth an opening weekend of $5 million.
There is no way in hell the average moviegoer is going to see this movie and too many CONS are too broke to fork over $10
Refresh my memory, please. Is that the one where we go a-ridin’ into town, a-whuppin’ and a-whompin’?
FWIW, I liked BaseketBall. Otherwise, the “X Movie” formula that Zucker has perfected has led to a decade of cinematic dreck.
and takes advantage of the invisibility granted by ghost status by grabbing a protestor’s boobs. Bill O’Reilly appears out of nowhere to slap him.
Wouldn’t it be more plausible the other way around?
How is “In the Valley of Elah” anti-military? I guess I missed that part of the film.
It pointed out that when the US military goes to war, sometimes our soldiers die, and we can’t have that. Especially if they dare to have soldiers die in non-John-Wayne-approved ways.
And after it bombs they’ll be crying “liberal bias” all the way to the bank. Well, a very small, local bank.
Well, a piggy bank.
But it will be a vindication!
Aw man, I really think Kelsey Grammar can be funny.
Now I find out he’s willing to make a piece of refuse like this movie?
Jesus!
Hell, D, I don’t think they understand that Jesus’ General is making fun of them, not with them.
Wait, Jesus’ General isn’t really a paro—
no, seriously, it’s not really a—
oh, c’mon, it has to be a—
oh crap.
Gotta run. I have a letter of apology to write to the General. I hope he realizes I was in on the joke the whole time.
I guess this is yet another entry in the world of special Just For Conservatives pop culture. ...
Say, how’d that conservative version of “The Daily Show” on Faux Snooze work out? I’m sure that its success is legion, and I just don’t read the right papers and hadn’t heard how it’s doing. Oh.... You say it’s “history” ... “toast” ... “sh*te on a shingle” that’s been tossed in the elementary school cafeteria garbage bins .... Why hasn’t that fact made the news?
Cheers,
Picking up on MsKate, one wonders if this really is The Producers in real life, in the sense that Hollywood Accounting will allow the studio to write off the losses from the boxoffice take of successful movies.
Still, one assumes that Dennis Hopper will take his salary from this turd-in-waiting and use it to subsidise his role in some indie flick.
That’s got to be the point of this, right?
I think the point of this is a political (rather than monetary) version of the scam in The Producers: Make the worst (right-wing) movie ever made, then, when few theaters will screen it and no one goes to see it, publish twenty-five books about the incident, all with the subtitle How Hollywood Crushes Dissent, Stifles Free Speech, and Works to Destroy America. It’s brilliant!
It’s really kinda funny how utterly misbegotten this all sounds. Incoherent rage at Michael Moore is only “In” with the thinnest sliver of the movie-going public. A whole movie dedicated to primal screams at Michael Moore is going to look absolutely demented to your average movie-goer.
And the GOP brand is not just damaged, it’s just about got its arms and legs tore off. A movie focused on blowjobbing people who three-quarters of the country despise—it’s amazingly bad business.
Has someone forwarded this to John Rogers at Kung Fu Monkey? Sounds like the kind of thing he’d have fun destroying…
Hey Falconer, Grammer is on record as saying that “John McCain has more integrity than any man I ever met.” Yes, it’s sad when people you like reveal themselves to be very stupid.
Yes, it’s sad when people you like reveal themselves to be very stupid.
This became very clear to me when he accepted a role in the film 15 minutes.
The Maxists had Soviet Realism Cinema
The Conservatives have American Realism Cinema.
America F--- Yeah!!!
somehow “Larry the Cable Guy” summoned up enough brain cells to turn this gig down
maybe he isn’t as stupid as he seems
It’s about time the Hollywood conservatives got some respect. They have been humiliated, ignored and run out of town by the evil liberals intent on ruining their careers and keeping them from making a red cent.
Ask Kelsey Grammer, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris, Bruce Willis, Clint Eastwood, Tom Selleck, Dennis Hopper, Robert Duvall, Bo Derek, Joel Surnow, Brittany Spears, Drew Carey and the rest.
The blackballing must end!
-GSD
I have to find a way to go see this with my 12 year old son, the boy who named “Michael Moore” as his hero in a school project, because it would be a bullshit-detector tripping fun festival.
The trick is to do it without adding to any meaningful statistic of success for the film.
somehow “Larry the Cable Guy” summoned up enough brain cells to turn this gig down
maybe he isn’t as stupid as he seems
Only the stereotype of poor working class guy is stupid. The real working class guy who isn’t a poor working class guy anymore is probably pretty shrewd.
How can you ignorant liberals want to miss a film that has comedy great Fred Travelena returning to the big screen in his role as Jimmy Carter.
What’s not to love?
-GSD
Sounds like a Jack Chick Tract brought to life.
Refresh my memory, please. Is that the one where we go a-ridin’ into town, a-whuppin’ and a-whompin’?
Except for the women-folk.
So this is the Patton who flips his Maserati.. er.. Jeep after drinking 15 rum and cokes?
This film will be a huge, history-making success in two respects:
First, it could very well be a new high-watermark in the “unintentional comedy” area (think Rocky Horror Picture Show).
Secondly, it will also be an instant “propaganda classic”, right up there with that other Conservative great, “Birth of a Nation”. This, just like Birth of a Nation, will be another recruiting tool in the KKK’s arsenal (arsonal?).
Today, the chair of the Arkansas Democratic Party has been shot at office headquarters. Last month, churchgoers were murdered for the crime of belonging to a “liberal” church.
Under these circumstances, only a Republican, or a caveman, would release a movie which jokes about shooting Democrats.
Naw, we rape the shit out of them at the number 6 dance after the show.
I love it! It’s brilliant! So creative!
On the one hand, if someone had described Borat to me in advance......
On the other hand, this really sounds like nothing more than a very slick way to discover who the most wingnut conservative actors in Hollywood are and end alll their careers in one blowout move.
On the one hand, if someone had described Borat to me in advance......
Borat had the advantage of Sasha Cohen actually being both smart and funny.
“The whole meeting had the tone of a FARC strategy session more than a fun publicity junket.”
Are you certain there’s no “E” in that acronym? Sure seems like there ought to be.
“The whole meeting had the tone of a FARC strategy session more than a fun publicity junket.”
Are you certain there’s no “E” in this acronym? Sure seems like there ought to be.
Ms Kate @ 2:48: Buy a ticket for another film and sneak into this one.
It’s not as if anybody will see you
Looks like General Patton’s been spending more time at the Crafts Service table than at the front.
But Michael Moore is WAYYYYY fat, so there.
I have to find a way to go see this with my 12 year old son, the boy who named “Michael Moore” as his hero in a school project, because it would be a bullshit-detector tripping fun festival.
The trick is to do it without adding to any meaningful statistic of success for the film.
Ms Kate
1) Go to a big multiplex cinema
2) Buy a ticket for some other movie that starts about 15 minutes after that one.
3) Enter with that ticket, but actually go to this movie.
4) BONUS! When you leave in disgust after ten minutes, you can still see the entire second film.
-fred
This must have been the film that provided snippet I saw the other night on the Jumbotron at a Sacramento Rivercats Triple-A baseball game. It went on for a solid few minutes, but nobody knew what the hell it was and the clip was incomprehensible and not even close to funny. Maybe they’ll send it down to single-A?
This has the look of a career-killer for everyone involved. Zo long, Zucker!
P.S. Don’t the Republicans think that recidivist criminal Kelsey Grammer should be on Death Row or something?
So in a time of our history where the right has declared ‘open season’ on democrats and liberals and their devotees are following through, a movie that shows ‘loyalists’ shooting ‘ACLU zombies’ is coming out just in the nick of time?
What fucktard retarded idiots would think that this is a ‘great time for a movie for ‘us’.
Kelsey Grammar probably had pangs of guilt that a 6 hour flight and a dip in the beautiful Hawaiian waters couldn’t wash away when he had his ‘incident’ (or his heart wanted to stop any possibility of embarrassment)… I’ve grown to expect this kind of sociopathic wet dream shit from Dennis Hopper but never is the right time for this ‘hidden message’ for the Manchurian supporters of the Blight Wing of American politics.
(And to think that the Bush administration spent days and weeks combing through Taliban messages looking for ‘hidden messages’ and the Blight Wing trumpets this turd lush with blatant (and hidden) messages)
Given AG Mukasey’s devotion to ‘justice’, I’d expect the crimes to result from this to be prosecuted just like all of the other Bush crimes… Ya have to love ‘sometimes a crime isn’t a crime’. Rumsfeld couldn’t have said it any better
This honestly sounds like someone making a parody of a conservative movie.
Does it have musical numbers? And UFOs appearing from nowhere for no appearant reasons?
Mike Ess: So, what conservatives really want are people like Goebbels and Riefenstahl.
You mean, competent people who understand how to use their chosen media for maximum effect in the service of evil or vanity? Good thing those two are dead.
DrBB: And after it bombs they’ll be crying “liberal bias” all the way to the bank. Well, a very small, local bank.
I’m very glad that Germany closed the tax hole that allowed for Uwe Boll movies. That sounds like the kind of movie that people could have made a fortune on under the old law.
This has the look of a career-killer for everyone involved. Zo long, Zucker!
You have to be kidding, right? The Blight Wing has B-I-G money and an endless supply of ‘jobs’ to support those that the rest of the world ‘misunderstands’ and ‘under appreciates’…
She’ll have some ‘job’ at the Heritage Foundation or maybe some rich (ignorant) Blight Wing mouth breather will create a new ‘non-profit’ that will ‘employ’ her and save her from the unemployment lines…
They have a way of supporting their foot soldiers and in a grand fashion too…
When this thing inevitably bombs, the wingnuts will be there to screech that the librul media and entertainment establishment killed it.
Yet more evidence that Conservatives have embraced low-brow identity-group politics.
Aw man, I really think Kelsey Grammar can be funny.
Now I find out he’s willing to make a piece of refuse like this movie?
Jesus!
So Sideshow Bob is the real Kelsey Grammar.
Screw Kelsey Grammar, it’s David Hyde Pierce I watched Frasier for.
First, it could very well be a new high-watermark in the “unintentional comedy” area (think Rocky Horror Picture Show).
i am sooo glad i wasnt the only one thinking that this could make a great new midnight cult film. it could even be interactive like midnight rhps showings! like, when they shoot the aclu zombies we can all shoot each other with water guns! or when they show the 3000 dead bodies we can all fall on the ground and pretend to be dead!
i am excited to find out that no matter how stupid your film is, it can get distribution. im going to get a nice digital camcorder and im going to film my dog sleeping, and then its going to be a huge hit, a cross between andy warhol’s “sleep” and “homeward bound, the incredible journey”
w00t.
just noticed, looking at the photo i have to point out, isn’t george washington wearing far too much rouge for the comfort of your average conservative? i didnt realize manly conservative men wore blush. combined with the pale matte mary quant-esqe lips, our founding father looks a little like he was given a makeover by a 5 year old playing with mommy’s makeup.
It’s not rouge, it’s righteous anger. ‘Cause if there was anything George Washington could not abide, it was people criticizing their government and defending their freedoms.
An American Carol
You don’t get to use that word, Zucker! You’re not an American! You don’t even have a flag on your head! IN AMERICA.
And the GOP brand is not just damaged, it’s just about got its arms and legs tore off.
‘Tis but a scratch!
Maybe they can find some wingnut Brady Bunch actor who hasn’t worked since the ‘80s to round out this all-star cast.
I understand that Jerry Doyle’s been whining about having a hard time getting work since Babylon 5 “because of” his Rethuglican views. Why didn’t they dig him up?
Wouldn’t it be more plausible the other way around?
Only if he’s got a loofah or a falafel in his hands.
> “I understand that Jerry Doyle’s been whining about having a hard time getting work since Babylon 5 “because of” his Rethuglican views. Why didn’t they dig him up?”
As I understand it, Doyle is now an independent. And he has his own radio show, so it’s not as if he’s having trouble paying the bills.
MikeEss’s comment about conservatives looking for the next Goebbels or Riefenstahl got me thinking that maybe it’s a good thing we’re starting to see movies like this or Expelled coming out. Okay, maybe Expelled wasn’t a comedy, but it was advertised with images of Ben Stein dressed like a schoolboy in short pants, so obviously someone involved with that movie made an epically disastrous attempt to bring the funny.
Anyway, my point is this: authoritarian politics aren’t particularly suited to comedy. All the memorable authoritarian propaganda I can think of tends to be heavy on drama, spectacle, and self-sacrifice, and light on the laughs. If you want people to willingly make sacrifices for their country and their glorious leaders, their way of life needs to be endangered by ruthless and implacable enemies; if those enemies are portrayed as funny or laughable, how threatening can they really be?
For years now, Americans have been told that they need to be strong, show resolve, and sacrifice their Constitutional rights in order to defeat Islamofascoterrorism. This sort of message becomes much less compelling as people hear it year after year, though. I can only hope that we’re seeing movies like this turkey because the right-wingers are seeing diminishing returns from their traditional propaganda, and are looking for a new way to convey their ideas. Unfortunately for them, this requires them to shift their efforts from dramatic propaganda, which they can be pretty good at, to comedy, which most of them just don’t seem to understand very well. So, with any luck, they’ll keep spending time and resources floundering around in media and genres they can’t utilize effectively.
Or, to put it another way, the right-wing authoritarians already have plenty of would-be Goebbels and Riefenstahls who are willing to write and direct ideologically-charged comedies, but what they desperately need are some Chaplins and Marx Brothers.
i am excited to find out that no matter how stupid your film is, it can get distribution. im going to get a nice digital camcorder and im going to film my dog sleeping shitting
Fixed for analogical aptness.
Voight has been a joke for years. There’s nothing he won’t do for a buck.
And, judging by that picture, Washington and Patton are totally about to get it on.
It actually saddens me to see Grammar stooping to this level of sheer, unadalterated shit. As a comedic actor, he’s not untalented. I suppose this is an object lesson in why one should not allow misguided political sensibilities to override artistic judgement.
Still, he has no-one but himself to blame. He should have known better. The fool.
As for Zucker, was Airplane! even all that good? I saw it several times as a kid, and recently watched part of it again when it was on a Saturday afternoon matinee on the local FOX station...Oh, man. I really remembered liking it when I was a wee ‘un, but I couldn’t take more than 10 minutes before I had to change the channel, it was that painful. The film was just so stupidly unfunny, it left me completely cold.
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“Finally, a movie for us.”
If by “us”, he means “heartland conservatives,” keep in mind that every single mass market movie is made for just that demographic, and they consume them in mass quantities.
On the other hand, if by “us”, he means “people who don’t like movies,” maybe he’ll find a new, albeit small, audience. However, it’s never worth trying to create a product to attract people who don’t buy your product to begin with. Seriously, he thinks that all the AEI folks who either don’t watch movies or enjoy mainstream dramas or foreign films are going to suddenly line up to buy tickets to a screwball comedy because it’s a conservative screwball comedy?