Hollywood used to give us the chance to sit under one roof and enjoy a universal story. The magic of the movies was always something we could share. We all remembered lines from famous movies like “I’ll be back,” “I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse,” “Here’s looking at you, kid,” “We’re gonna need a bigger boat,” and “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”
We got along better as a country when we could share movies. We didn’t just share the experience inside a movie theater, where we could leave our politics and our disagreements at the door. We also shared stories that became part of our shared history. We all remember the Summer of the Shark and the year Titanic won Best Picture.
But now, 24 years into the new millennium it’s all gone. Or most of it anyway. Whatever is left of Hollywood is meant only for a small portion of America. They are running out of stories to tell because their sample size is no bigger than the island of Manhattan.
But Hollywood doesn’t seem to have noticed just how disconnected they’ve become from ordinary life in America. It isn’t just that Americans have moved on because Hollywood took a side after 2016 and alienated them. They also seem to be living in a different time, back when the box office wasn’t a ghost town, and Julia Roberts and George Clooney could still open a movie.
They seem unable to let go of the past, specifically 2008, when Barack Obama won the presidency. Hollywood has never felt so useful, so full of purpose, and so GOOD as it did when it formed a powerful alliance with the Obama coalition.
Barack Obama's presidency was like a phoenix from a fire flame. It was more than just “hope and change.” He rescued us from the despair of the 2000 election, 9/11, the oppressive surveillance state that followed in its wake, the two failed wars in the Middle East, and a $700 billion bank bailout.
It was as though he was scripted by Aaron Sorkin, directed by Rob Reiner with a forever soundtrack by Bruce Springsteen. A sophisticated everyman, a faithful husband and most importantly, he was the first Black president and that meant America had changed.
Obama was our religion, our big tech early adopter, and a president who appreciated music and film. He was redemption for the very rich, people like Julia Louis Dreyfus, Barbra Streisand, and all the Silicon Valley overlords.
Hollywood has always been in bed with the Democrats, but never like this. It was more than politics, climate change, gay marriage, and Obamacare. It was a transformational experience—elevating the marginalized. And if you do that, you are no longer seen as the ruling aristocracy. Now, you are “good.”
But times have changed. Hollywood has changed. America has changed. What counts for celebrity now is much broader than it used to be and celebrities are losing their cultural clout and their influence. It’s just that they don’t seem to have realized that yet.
After 15 years of social media, it’s not that everyone will be famous for 15 minutes — it’s that everyone is famous all of the time. Jennifer Lopez, Blake Lively and Katy Perry have all had their careers nearly wiped out with one viral TikTok meme that extends beyond the reach of publicists and the mainstream media.
The Trump presidency upended Hollywood in ways almost no one talks about. Most people who lived through it can’t see the truth, let alone tell it. But I lived it. I saw what happened, how mass hysteria took hold, and how, all of a sudden, we believed that racism was driving the Trump movement and was an oppositional force we all had to fight with everything we had.
There was just one tiny problem. It wasn’t true. None of it. The movie La La Land wasn’t “racist.” Green Book wasn’t “racist” and “homophobic.” I am not a “racist” because I made a joke on Twitter. Millions of Americans are not “racists” because they voted for and still support Trump. Yet, Hollywood uses that to justify wiping out half of its audience overnight.
Here is Batya Ungar Sargon on Megyn Kelly:
But now, it all feels so out of date, doesn’t it? It’s an America that maybe existed once but doesn’t exist now except in the insulated, isolated bubble of the cultural elites. In almost every other way, the world has passed them by.
AI is fast becoming a legit form of filmmaking - no actors required.
Not only won’t Hollywood tell universal stories anymore but they can’t. They don’t know this country anymore, and neither does the Democratic Party, not that there is any difference between the two. So why shouldn’t AI take over?
But it isn’t only that. They tell Americans every day what they think of them in every movie, at every award show, when every villain is the guy in the MAGA hat. I’ve never seen such disdain for the working class as I do now. There is always the threat - we’ll accept you, but you must denounce Trump. You must align with us against our common enemy or else.
They’re kidding themselves. To quote a line from one of the few good movies Hollywood has put out lately, Top Gun Maverick, “The future is coming, and you’re not in it.”
The marriage between the Democrats and Hollywood is suddenly more obvious than it ever has been. Did George Clooney really write the op-ed that pushed out Joe Biden? Are billionaires Reid Hoffman and Abigail Disney really calling the shots behind the scenes?
Why should any American care if Julia Roberts gets uncomfortable when the guy bringing her fresh hot towels for her feet wonders what’s going on in America? From the Town Hall with Oprah:
And Meryl Streep stokes fear that Trump might not accept the election results, like last time.
To them, that was the most traumatic event, but that’s only because the media covered everything that happened in the Summer of 2020.
But maybe those special people in Hollywood who have enjoyed fame and wealth for so many decades could tend to their own gardens. After all, Hollywood is an empire in collapse, and they have no real solutions to fix it.
I’ve covered Hollywood for 25 years and have never seen it in such dire straights. There isn’t even a public that watches the movies up for the Oscars every year, let alone turns out on a Friday night.
But it isn’t just the Oscars. The box office is a ghost town. Families and maybe teenagers will still turn out. Cable news, late-night comedy ratings, and awards shows are all down.
Note the ratings for the Emmys after 2016 (Statista).
And for the Oscars (Statista):
Whenever I watch an awards show, I think, "What is all this for?" If hardly anyone is watching the movies and hardly anyone is interested in Hollywood's business, why are they still giving out gold statues? So, John Oliver can win yet another Emmy for parroting the party line of the state?
“Let them eat the joy of the rich.”
It took me a long time to see that there was a bigger country beyond the enclosed paradise we manifested. It was the real America, not the imagined one. I drove across the country and saw it for myself. I saw how people live, how their food is grown and delivered, and all of the different states, each with its own identity and character.
Yet Hollywood only delivers a certain kind of face for America. It looks like the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where every group is included, and no marginalized person is left behind. But when you do that, you’ve already written your story. You’re just telling the same story you’ve been telling for a decade. To tell good stories requires something more truthful.
I had an entire hit piece written about me because I dared to mock the “White Dudes for Harris,” their absurd and tone-deaf pitch to all of the white men, and masculine men overall, that they’ve alienated throughout the last decade, especially in superhero and action movies where they seemed to punish and blame their fans for accusations of spreading “toxic masculinity.”
I joked that it was “white power,” which I meant as sarcasm. But that was it. That was enough. Out of utopia, you must go. And where is Tom Wolfe when you need him the most?
They could not handle being mocked by someone who was once on the inside, who once respected them. They expect me to defer to their greatness and their superiority like I used to. Apparently, one “high-profile Academy member” did not think the joke was funny. Watching my friends and co-workers vanish like wildlife before a tsunami was terrifying.
And that is what they really want. They want to rule through terror all the while wearing the mask of the “good people doing good things.” Has it dawned on them yet that they’ve destroyed every great thing they ever represented in their efforts to preserve utopia? 2008 might have been the greatest time for the Left, but it’s over. It’s never coming back.
This is an administration that refuses to relinquish control, has no respect for democracy, and only disdain half of this country, mostly the working class half, who have been trying to use their voices and their votes to make change. Their crime? Choosing Trump over Obama.
It isn’t unity they want. It isn’t tolerance. It isn’t forgiveness. It’s submission.
But America wasn’t built that way. America was built for change. And if they can’t move forward because they can’t let go of the past, then it’s time to move out of the way.
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Dear Hollywood: Read the Room