The “blacklist” is Hollywood’s great myth. The truth is that Hollywood leftists were the ones who began organizing and covertly blacklisting people over their politics and now the blacklist is a literal blacklist.
Peter Sadovnik and Peter Kiefer have a few quotes, some named from people sorta willing to go on the record, and more anonymous ones that address the climate of fear in the industry over wokeness and diversity quotas.
The old-timers accustomed to being on the inside—and the (non-BIPOC) up-and-comers afraid they’d never get there—were one-part confused, one-part angry, and 10,000-parts scared.
“Everyone has gone so underground with their true feelings about things,” said Mike White, the writer and director behind the hit HBO comedy-drama “The White Lotus.” “If you voice things in a certain way it can really have negative repercussions for you, and people can presume that you could be racist, or you could be seen as misogynist.”
That’s what wokeness and leftist politics ultimately does. It silences you.
And I recall a whole bunch of shots at White and The White Lotus because the cast was too white or something of that sort. (I didn’t watch it myself and have no idea.)
This quote is a biggie.
Howard Koch, who has been involved in the production of more than 60 movies, including such classics as “Chinatown” and “Marathon Man,” and is the former president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, said: “I’m all for LGBT and Native Americans, blacks, females, whatever minorities that have not been served correctly in the making of content, whether it’s television or movies or whatever, but I think it’s gone too far. I know a lot of very talented people that can’t get work because they’re not black, Native American, female or LGBTQ.”
Howard Koch is probably willing to go on the record because he’s retired or semi-retired.
It’s the anonymous quote that give you the proper HUAC blacklist effect, the one that never actually existed, but that the industry mythologized and then actualized.
Another writer, who, like most of the writers we interviewed, was afraid to speak openly for fear of never working again, said: “I get so paranoid about even phone calls. It’s so scary. My close friends and my family are just like, ‘Don’t say anything.’ It is one of those things, ‘Will I be able to sleep at night if I say anything?’ Getting jobs in this town is so hard, and I’m very grateful to have a great job. If there’s any so-called ding on my record, that would just be an argument against hiring me.”
The article delves casually into the impact on the industry, but I think anyone who watches the stuff already knows it happened. The product has gotten much worse and more disposable. There’s less original product and more recycled material. While the visuals have dramatically improved due to new technologies and piles of money being thrown at production ($20 million episodes are no longer an insane notion), but basic creative assets like writing and acting have imploded.
Hollywood is looking like a glitzier version of a third world industry, capable of making things that look slick, but lacking the basic creative skills that make a movie more than a set of effects shots. TV shows insist on intimacy, but are incapable of telling stories. Movies go grandiose, but lack the technical skills by directors to humanize and to keep pace with the nine-figure effects budgets.
Hollywood blacklisted itself and the golden goose is dying.
Leave a Reply