End cinematico-politic discrimination now!

Political movies pretty much suck, including even the few that aren't thoroughly dominated by leftie perspectives. So I wrote in a guest-post at HughHewitt.com on Wednesday.

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

I wrote over the weekend that Josh Brolin's wooden appearance on Saturday Night Live was probably the worst advertisement possible for his new movie. And I'm okay with Kelsey Grammer in small to moderate-sized doses, and I try to be open to casting against type (even for a role so thoroughly defined as George C. Scott did it), but seroiusly — Dr. Frasier Crane as General George S. Patton, even in a comedy?

Screenwriter and PJM blogmeister Roger L. Simon writes that even if we shun Oliver Stone's W as both anti-Dubya dementia and an awful film on its own merits (or lack thereof), we ought not pretend that An American Carol is better than it is just because we're hungry for movies with conservative themes. I actually haven't seen either one yet, but Roger thinks both are pretty bad:

[D]welling on being “victims” of Hollywood by conservative filmmakers is a surefire prescription for continued failure, just as it is for other minority groups. To applaud this kind of filmmaking is to applaud affirmative action for conservatives. Not good.

I agree, but I'm still trying to figure out how to create an elegant paraphrase for Chief Justice Roberts' prescription from last year's Seattle School District case: "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race" becomes ... what, exactly, in a cinematico-politic context? I can't quite figure it out, but I doubt I'm likely to get much help from entertainment lawyers on this.

"The way to stop Hollywood from making bad political movies on only liberal themes is to stop buying tickets for bad political movies"? Naw, that's not quite it. Does what I'm looking for have the compound word "box-office" in it, or is that a rabbit-trail?

— Beldar