John Lee Hancock responds to right wing attacks on 'The Blind Side'

It used to be the liberals who loved to play the victim. But now it's conservatives who just can't enough of that warm and cuddly feeling of being an oppressed minority. What else could possibly explain the sudden spurt of right wing attacks on "The Blind Side," John Lee Hancock's wonderful new family drama that stars Sandra Bullock as Leigh Anne Tuohy, a God-fearing Memphis go-getter who becomes a surrogate mother to a homeless African American teenager who ends up being a star football player.

The movie is a big hit, having been immediately embraced by audiences everywhere, especially in red-state America. (The film got an A-plus audience rating from CinemaScore, one of only two films this year to score that high.)

But conservative bloggers who either didn't bother to see the movie or decided to deliberately ignore the fact that the film offers a totally positive portrayal of a white Southern evangelical Christian Republican family, have attacked the movie for one small joke made at the expense of George W. Bush, whose photograph, on the wall of a government office, is played for a laugh (For those who haven't seen the movie, here's the gag: frustrated by the glacial response from a dead-eyed government bureaucrat, Leigh Anne demands to know who is in charge. The civil servant points to a framed photo of a smiling George W.)

Big Hollywood's John Nolte, for example, used the joke as a launching pad for a furious attack on leftist Hollywood, calling it "the single most intolerant industry in America today" and an industry "engaged in an ideological war with traditional conservative America." 

But how could Hollywood be such a snake pit of lefty lock-step America hating if it allowed a filmmaker to make a mainstream studio picture that painted such a warm, affirmative portrait of an evangelical Christian family? Nolte proposes the wildly paranoid theory that even if you are a conservative working in Hollywood, you have to placate the Bush-hating liberals by taking shots at conservatives in your movies. Or as he put it: "You had better inoculate yourself. And that's what the gratuitous, unnecessary, jarring, take-you-out-of-the-movie shot at Bush is: an inoculation. The filmmakers want to work again, they want to be invited to all the right parties....They all knew they were insulting the very audience the film was marketed at for no reason other than to insult them. But there was absolutely no way in hell this thing was going to see the light of day without something for the Hollywood bigots to snicker over."

Is that really what happened? Was it really possible that John Lee Hancock, whose last film was a stirring tribute to the men who fought at the Alamo, is an American-hating lefty or a squishy conservative willing to betray his cause with a Bush-bashing joke? I asked Hancock if he could explain why he put the joke in the film. His response is especially telling, since it reminds us that movies are made by real human beings, not ideological robots, who have the same flaws and sensitivities as the rest of us. Here's what Hancock had to say:

"This wasn't in the book. It was something I witnessed several years ago in a post office. It was not intended to represent Leigh Anne Tuohy's feelings about Bush (she's a conservative Republican) but rather the civil servant's. Given Leigh Anne's dress and demeanor I figured the civil servant would be knocking down Leigh Anne a notch by taking a slap at Bush. I always thought of it as a smile, not a laugh. After completing the movie and playing it for an audience I realized it was, for some, more of a laugh, and a cheap one to boot. I do regret not coming up with something more clever. But it wouldn't be a movie of mine if I didn't somehow figure out a way to piss off both conservatives and liberals."

 

How'd you like to see Harvey Weinstein on 'Dancing With the Stars'?

Leaving no stone unturned in his efforts to make "Nine" into a huge end-of-the-year, must-see movie, Harvey Weinstein is essentially renting out the entire Disney/ABC media empire in the hopes of inducing millions of couch potatoes to scamper out to the multiplex next month to see his lavish Rob Marshall-directed musical. It's hard not to appreciate the delicious irony of the partnership in light of Weinstein's acrimonious split with the studio years ago. As Variety reports in this eye-popping story -- especially eye-popping in the way it makes it abundantly clear that virtually everything on TV these days is up for sale -- it will be difficult to turn on your TV without being subjected to a blatant plug for "Nine."

ABC's "Dancing With the Stars" won't actually have the twinkle-toed movie mogul appearing in person. But its Nov. 17 show will feature a dance number set to "Be Italian," one of the featured songs in "Nine," with dancers donning outfits from the movie. Even better, a host of ABC soap operas, including "All My Children" and "General Hospital," will have episodes in December with plugs for "Nine" written into the storyline. The movie's trailer is slated to run Nov. 22 on every Disney-owned network (Lifetime, ABC Family, SoapNet and A&E) as well as during the "American Music Awards" which airs that night.

The Variety story is filled with endless bragging from marketing executives about the benefits of all this plugola-style stealth advertising ("Look at the breadth of who we reach -- we can reach any demo multiple times through any given day," boasted Disney/ABC Unlimited senior VP Dan Longest). If you ask me, using bare-knuckled product integration to promote a movie billed as an Oscar contender is unbelievably tacky, since it transforms a supposedly classy film into just another cheesy household product.

On the other hand, I'm betting that envious rival studios will be eagerly trying to get their Oscar hopefuls in on the scam. After all, Oprah has already been the head cheerleader for "Precious," which is supposedly a top contender in the Oscar race. So let's see ... if "Nine" can pay for plugs on "Dancing With the Stars," then maybe "Avatar" can pay for a plug in "Family Guy," "An Education" could slip a plug into an episode of "Desperate Housewives," "The Hurt Locker" would seamlessly drop into "CSI" while "The Lovely Bones" would be a perfect fit for "Cold Case" or "The Ghost Whisperer." And hey, if the price was right, I'm sure Jeff Zucker could talk Jay Leno into working some "Inglourious Basterds" jokes into his monologue.

Imagine the possibilities. If you read my blog one morning and see me writing repeatedly about some Hollywood movie project whose future is still "Up in the Air," you'll know that I'm on the take, happily shilling for some award-season movie along with everyone else. (I'm being sarcastic, of course. I'll leave the plugola to ABC and the other networks.)

Photo of Penelope Cruz in "Nine" from the Weinstein Co.

Oscar whopper of the week: Clint Eastwood not arrow straight?

I hope none of my editors will take this personally, but there's nothing scarier than seeing a newspaper editor write his own story without some kindly soul hovering nearby, making sure the editor, left to his own devices, doesn't fire off a few zany lightning bolts that should never make the page. I fear that's what happened to Variety editor Timothy Gray today, who offers up an otherwise perfectly serviceable preview of the oncoming Oscar season, reminding us of all the changes afoot -- top studio executive hirings and firings, the disappearance of first-dollar gross deals, and the expansion of the Oscar best picture nominees.

But in his quest to portray this season as marvelously different from all other seasons, he arrived at this whopper: "There are so many films from female, gay, minority and foreign-language helmers that seem to be worthy of consideration this year that it's possible the best-director noms might not include a single English-speaking, Caucasian, straight male."

Say what?

If you look at any one of the multitude of Oscar prognostication lists in the blogosphere, you'll find that among the obvious best picture favorites are movies directed by the likes of Clint Eastwood ("Invictus"), Quentin Tarantino ("Inglourious Basterds"), Jason Reitman ("Up in the Air"), Pete Docter ("Up"), the Coen brothers ("A Serious Man") and James Cameron ("Avatar"). All of the aforementioned are straight, white guys -- and frankly, from everything I know about the many-times-married Cameron, when it comes to being straight, you'd have to count him twice.

Mark Twain had a term for Gray's kind of wacky prediction -- he called it a "stretcher," as in a preposterous exaggeration. It would be wonderful to have a more diverse lineup of filmmakers in the best director race, since so few studios make an effort to hire minorities or women. But the revolution is still off on the horizon. You can bet that, as always, there will plenty of straight white guys at the Kodak Theatre this year, anxiously wondering if their name will be called oh-so-late in the evening when the best director nod comes around.

Photo of Oscar statuettes by Al Seib / Los Angeles Times

Gore Vidal on Roman Polanski's sexcapades: The media has it all wrong

The Atlantic has just put up a truly bizarre interview that John Meroney did with Gore Vidal, the acerbic literary lion who's out promoting a new memoir, "Snapshots in History's Glare." It offers Vidal's remembrances of various stages of his career, including his lengthy stint as a Hollywood screenwriter. At 83, Vidal isn't much of a novelist anymore, but he's the man to see if you want to hear explosive (some would say crackpot) theories about American politics and social mores.

He doesn't disappoint in this tart-tongued chat with Meroney, dismissing Teddy Kennedy's legislative legacy as "nothing," writing off the New York Times as "a bunch of dull hacks," dubs Louis B. Mayer "the worst anti-Semite of all" and -- how's this for a whopper -- describing Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson as "virgins." That pushed the interview into Roman Polanski territory, the two men knowing each other via a shared friendship with the critic Kenneth Tynan.

Vidal is just as dismissive of Samantha Geimer, Polanski's 13-year-old victim, as he is of Teddy Kennedy, saying: "Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she's been taken advantage of?" When Meroney gently takes issue with this characterization of Polanski's victim, Vidal continues: "There was a totally different story at the time that doesn't resemble anything that we're now being told. The media can't get anything straight... The idea that this girl was in her communion dress, a little angel all in white, being raped by this awful Jew, Polack -- that's what people were calling him -- well, the story is totally different now from what it is then."

That provokes this exchange:

Meroney: You think anti-Semitism is motivating the prosecution of Polanski?

Vidal: Anti-Semitism got poor Polanski. He was also a foreigner. He did not subscribe to American values in the least. To his prosecutors, that seemed vicious and unnatural.

Meroney: So you're saying that a non-Jewish director wouldn't have to worry about getting caught up in a sex crime scandal? Such a thing wouldn't be an issue for Martin Scorsese?

Vidal: Well, he's an absolutely sexless director. Can you think of a sex scene he's ever shot?

You'll have to read the rest on your own dime. But I would defy Vidal to produce evidence that the media portrayed Geimer as some kind of virginal innocent. In fact, for years the media has flirted with a blame-the-victim portrayal of Geimer, saying she was put in harm's way by a pushy stage mother who left her alone with an insidious Lothario like Polanski. There's also virtually no evidence of any overt anti-Semitism on the part of the media's portrayal of Polanski. He may often have been cast as a vaguely disreputable European smoothie, but it would be a big stretch to find any anti-Semitic tone to that characterization.

But Vidal has his story and he's sticking to it, even if this interview could do more to harm Polanski's cause than anything a thousand of his hysterical detractors could ever possibly say.

RELATED:

IS HOLLYWOOD REALLY A HOTBED OF SUPPORT FOR ROMAN POLANSKI?

Photo of Gore Vidal by Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times

Will 'Precious' auteur Lee Daniels' trash talk cost him an Oscar?

You can read veteran New York Times writer Lynn Hirschberg's new profile of Lee Daniels -- the man behind "Precious" -- as a portrait of a filmmaker who'll never be satisfied, no matter how much success he has in life. (When the film earned a 15-minute standing ovation at Cannes, Daniels' responses included: "What's the record? Can we break the record for the longest standing ovation at the festival?")

You could also read the story as an unsettling glimpse of a man who seems so in need of being the most audacious black man on the planet that he's even ambivalent about an Obama presidency -- as when he tells Hirschberg that " 'Precious' is so not Obama. 'Precious' is so not P.C," as if both of those possibilities were bad things. You could also read the story and realize that Daniels is -- like so many other insecure people in showbiz -- always in need of solace and reassuring words. When he showed "Precious" to his manager (who he made a point of saying was white, but didn't mention by name,) he acknowledged that his manager made the fatal error of not offering an upbeat assessment. "My manager said, 'Sorry, but I don't think anybody is going to see this movie.' That man is no longer my manager."

So why does all this matter? Because scoring a huge profile in the Sunday New York Times Magazine is a tried and true launching pad for Oscar campaigns. So the best the way to read Hirschberg's profile of Daniels is by asking -- will it help Lionsgate, which begins its release of the film Nov. 6, land "Precious" a best picture nomination?  

PRO: Everybody loves having a nutty, bigger-than life character in the middle of the Oscar conversation. I mean, how much fun would last year's Oscar race have been without Mickey Rourke and his chihuahuas? But there's a fine line between being colorful and being combative, so Daniels has to tread carefully. As a gay African American, he has tons of street cred as an outsider. That should help, especially in a year where most of the obvious best picture contenders ("Up," "Nine," "The Hurt Locker," "An Education" and "Up in the Air") are insider affairs, from polished, sober-minded filmmakers with little facility for trash talk. (It'll be another story if Quentin Tarantino, who can mouth off with the best of 'em, gets a nomination.)

For now, Daniels looks like he has the microphone all to himself. At his first gala screening in Cannes, he greeted the crowd by saying, "I'm a little homo, I'm a little Euro and I'm a little ghetto." If he could expand on that litany at the Oscars, it would liven up the proceedings considerably.

CON: Oscar voters prefer their filmmakers to come off cool and self-assured, not outrageous and self-involved, which is why they still haven't forgiven Jim Cameron for his "Top of the World" chest beating acceptance speech. (Actresses get a pass -- they're actually encouraged to be as wacky and self-absorbed as possible.) So Daniels' downfall may come from his boast in the Hirschberg profile where he claimed that he "kind of co-directed" "Monster's Ball," which he produced, but was actually directed by Marc Forster. Daniels also says he gave (the Oscar-nominated) Halle Berry her line readings, which is bad form even if it were true and could lose Daniels a couple thousand votes from the actors branch right off the bat.

Even more problematic, Daniels spends much of the story talking about what other black people want and like and believe ("Black people are not all saints.... As African Americans, we are in an interesting place"). Oprah can make pronouncements like that -- she's put in several decades as the queen of American women. But an unknown filmmaker? It's hard to imagine the nearly all-white academy getting all warm and fuzzy over Daniels, especially an academy that still finds it uncomfortable around brash black men. Just ask Spike Lee, who after all his groundbreaking films is still waiting ... and waiting ... for his first Oscar.

Photo of Lee Daniels by Jennifer S. Altman / For The Times.

L.A. billboard owners squash 'Land of the Lost' anti-smoking ads

We knew that the Will Ferrell-starring "Land of the Lost" was a humiliating failure that lost so much money this summer that it probably played a big role in getting Universal Pictures chiefs Marc Shmuger and David Linde fired a couple of weeks ago. We also knew -- because some of us are gluttons for punishment -- that the movie featured a host of shots featuring Ferrell smoking a pipe, which earned Universal a chorus of Bronx cheers from anti-smoking advocates. In fact, the American Medical Assn. Alliance (AMAA), which keeps track of family health issues, cited "Land of the Lost" when it named Universal as its biggest offender in the unnecessary depiction of smoking in mass-appeal summer movies.

But what the New York Times' Brooks Barnes reveals online today is that L.A. billboard owners, already enormously unpopular for shamelessly installing an ever-growing assortment of hideous video billboards, refused to accept ads from the AMAA publicly calling out the studio for its on-screen promotion of smoking. The AMAA had previously announced that the studio "found to be the biggest smoking offender would be publicly shamed on nearby billboards." But when the AMAA went to buy billboard space, every local billboard vendor refused to sell.

According to the AMAA, the billboard vendors, who take in a huge amount of revenue from (surprise!) movie industry advertising, weren't going to let their favorite clients be embarrassed in such a public way from an anti-smoking organization. It's yet another black eye for L.A., which has allowed billboard pollution to run rampant without even putting up a fight.

But let me give the last word to AMAA President Nancy Kyler, who says: "It's a sad day when movie studios can promote smoking to youth, but public health advocates cannot find a billboard in the whole city of Los Angeles that will run an ad to alert the public about the problem." 

Who says the Hollywood junket press never ask any tough questions?

I've been hearing that Fox flew a bunch of bloggers and entertainment writers over to London for a "Fantastic Mr. Fox" junket. So I figured that surely someone in the bunch, even if he or she were there on Fox's dime, might ask Wes Anderson for his response to the unflattering profile of him written by my colleague Chris Lee in our Sunday Calendar section. If you missed it, the piece painted a picture of a film crew that was openly critical of Anderson's work methods, in particular his decision to let the crew spend roughly a year in London, doing principal photography, while Anderson holed up in Paris, communicating largely by e-mail.

Lee quoted Tristan Oliver, the film's director of photography, as saying he thought Anderson was "a little sociopathic," while Mark Gustafson, the film's director of animation, said that Anderson had "made our lives miserable." Ouch! That's the kind of talk you hear at the craft services table after a long day of shooting, not the kind of chatter you normally read in the L.A. Times. Even though I'm a big fan of Anderson's work, including his new film, I have to admit that if I were interviewing him today, I'd be bugging him for some plausible answers.

But apparently there's something in the sumptuous surroundings at the posh, all-expenses-paid London hotel where Fox put up its carefully selected journalists that seemed to totally sap their curiosity. At least that's what happened to Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells, who after a "pricey breakfast" at the Dorchester Hotel, sat down with Anderson and managed to lob the following softball question, which tells you everything you need to know about the high level of probing inquiry inspired by the cozy creature comforts of junketeering.

For me, the obvious question to ask Anderson would be: "Why was your crew so unhappy about working with you?" But for Wells, the question was as follows:

Now if I were being hired by Wes Anderson to work with him, I would have a very clear idea,  before we had even talked about the particulars, that I was going to be working with a guy with a very specific, personality related, stylistically related thing, right? So I'm trying to get from you how can -- what is the best way to expand upon and understand the, uhm, slight griping in that Chris Lee piece ... because I don't understand how anybody could say, well, whenyou're going to do a film somebody's way, you're obviously going to be adhering to a very particular thing and that's all there is to it.

I don't know about you, but if I were teaching How to Answer Toothless Junket Press Questions 101, I would suggest that the only appropriate answer would be: "Jeff, I couldn't agree with you more!"

So, what did he really say? Click here to see the interview.

Image: "Fantastic Mr. Fox." Credit: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Michael Moore watch: Hey, bub, what happened to the baseball cap?

Everywhere he goes promoting "Capitalism: A Love Story," whether it's to gab with Jay Leno, Charlie Rose or Tavis Smiley, or even take the stage at his own movie premiere, Michael Moore wears his trademark baseball cap. It's his one and only fashion accessory, his way of reminding us that he's just one fleck of DNA -- or one good film-school class -- away from being a tubby auto worker on the assembly line in Flint, Mich. I'll bet Moore would wear a baseball cap to the White House. 

So what was the heavyweight occasion that inspired Moore to lose the cap and doll himself up in a coat and tie? (Hint: It sure wasn't the Keith Olbermann Show.) Just watch:

Photo: Sean Kilpatrick / Associated Press

Is Hollywood really a hotbed of support for Roman Polanski?

With all the studio hirings and firings in the last 24 hours, I've been too busy to revisit until now one of the most wonderfully bizarre twists in the Roman Polanski case. For days on end, I've been reading stories everywhere about how the Hollywood elite has rushed to Polanski's defense, saying he should be released from custody in Switzerland, seemingly glossing over that in 1977 he gave a 13-year-old girl champagne and a Quaalude and had sex with her.

There is no disagreement about the sex. But I take issue with all the stories -- including this latest one from Wall Street Journal critic Terry Teachout -- that claim Hollywood's support of Polanski is evidence of just how out of touch the movie industry is with the rest of the world. Teachout bashes all of the "Hollywood celebrities" who have rushed to Polanski's defense, starting with Harvey Weinstein, who was quoted in a story in my paper, describing Polanski's vile conduct as a "so-called crime." Teachout rattles off the names of a host of filmmakers -- including Woody Allen, Jonathan Demme, Sam Mendes, Mike Nichols and Martin Scorsese -- who signed an international petition that "demands the immediate release of Roman Polanski."

There's only one problem: All of those filmmakers, along with Harvey Weinstein, live far, far away from Hollywood and, with occasional exceptions, make their movies outside of Hollywood as well. If you look up the rest of the names on the best-known petition in circulation, it is filled with the names of foreign filmmakers, writers and actors -- including the likes of Pedro Almodovar, Wong Kar Wai, Alfonso Cuaron, Isabelle Adjani and Salman Rushdie -- who also rarely set foot in Hollywood. If critics like Teachout want to claim that high-brow artists and writers have rushed to Polanski's defense, fair enough. But to say that Hollywood is in his corner, as part of a political argument that Hollywood is a liberal elite woefully ignorant of mainstream values, is just hogwash.

There's no petition going around with the names of the real Hollywood elite -- A-list filmmakers and studio chiefs like Steven Spielberg, Alan Horn, James Cameron, Amy Pascal, Jerry Bruckheimer, Brian Grazer, Tom Rothman, J.J. Abrams, John Lasseter or Michael Bay -- because the real Hollywood elite isn't supporting Polanski. In fact, they haven't offered the slightest hint of backing for Polanski. It's only European and New York-based artists, who clearly see the world in a very different light than the real Hollywood elite.

To that point, I'd like to let you read a lively essay from screenwriter Josh Olson, who's best known for earning an Oscar nomination for his script for "A History of Violence." In this essay, which he wrote for The Times, he makes some of the same points I've just made but in a much more personal, not to mention entertaining, fashion. He even takes the paper to task for some of our coverage. And while I think we've done an outstanding job of covering the Polanski story, I think we're always open to constructive criticism. So look at what Olson has to say -- he certainly doesn't pull any punches. Keep Reading:

Michael Mann on Marc Shmuger: 'I do return his phone calls. He's a terrific guy.'

It's always pretty easy to tell when some studio bigwig has finally had enough and decided to stop taking calls from Nikki Finke, since that usually signals that the studio, in terms of play in her Deadline Hollywood blog, is about to go from the penthouse to the outhouse awfully fast. Just as 20th Century Fox is in the penthouse right now, getting all sorts of favorable mentions in Finke's blog in return for some nice little news scoops, Universal has gone in the other direction -- or to use the title of the studio's recent horror flicks -- straight to hell.

Universal's top execs used to play ball with Finke. But that cozy relationship ended some time ago, with the studio freezing her out, which is why as the news surfaced this morning that studio chairman Marc Shmuger was getting the ax, Finke erupted with an incredibly nasty post -- even by her standards -- about Shmuger. She called him, among other things, a "polarizing [jerk...though she uses stronger language that I can't print here]" and a "thin-skinned cry baby," adding "I hate Shmuger, really detest the putz."

To bolster her case that he was a loser, she claims that a wide variety of top filmmakers couldn't stand him either, citing Michael Mann ("supposedly won't return his calls"), Spike Lee ("reportedly will never talk to him again") and Clint Eastwood ("openly hates him"). It sounds like very damning stuff, but is it actually true? I don't have Clint's home phone number, so I couldn't ask him for verification, but guess what? I did talk to Michael Mann today after Shmuger was fired, so he had no need to suck up to the guy anymore. And Mann said that Finke's account was totally erroneous.

"That stuff about me not returning his calls -- that's just not true," Mann told me. "He's a terrific guy, and Marc and I have a terrific relationship. He was incredibly supportive during the making of 'Public Enemies,' and I think he's going to have a lot of good will wherever he goes. I don't dislike him at all. In fact, I like him a lot. He always had a lot of good ideas and was a stand-up guy. From a filmmaker's point of view, working with him, and Donna Langley and Adam Fogelson, it was a really great experience."

Mann laughed. "You really have to stretch to say I had problems at Universal. I even got along with the business affairs guys, who are the ones you're supposed to have a tough time with." 

Photo of Michael Mann by Daniel Deme/EPA