A Fountainhead for the Screen Art
In the real world, Star Trek Starfleet Academy would have marked the end of Hollywood — a hundred million dollars torched by the leftist dolts running what had been one of the great studios, responsible for such classics as Sunset Boulevard, The Ten Commandments, Psycho, The Godfather, and the original Star Trek TV and film series. Paramount Pictures threw the fortune at a bunch of feminist idiots who knew nothing about Star Trek other than terms like warp speed, Federation, phasers, and Klingons. They could never have come up with these concepts themselves but had no problem using them to bash white men. Of course nobody watched the show. In one week, it fell off the Paramount+ chart entirely.
Miller’s post may portend a more symbiotic relationship between a conservative government and the screen arts, a la theater at the Trump Kennedy Center.
But Hollywoke is not the real world. It’s a land of limitless money wherein leftism trumps art. Where truth and beauty are white supremacist and sexist. And only those who cleave to the Marxist agenda will have an infinite shot at the screen. They will continue to be in a Phantom Zone like out of the Superman comics, churning out product as if they had an audience, when the only audience is themselves.
While traditionalist film artists either scrounge for just enough funds to present their work or throw in the towel. Last week, the excellent actor Nick Searcy (Justified) appeared to do the latter, channeling the frustration of many on X. “I’ve tried,” Searcy posted. “Conservatives will not support us. They will not fund us. They do not think feature films and TV shows are important. Until they do, nothing will change.”
Nick is absolutely right. And I’m pretty tired of crying in the wilderness myself. It’s bad enough that we who know how to tell a story in a book or interpret it for the screen never get the opportunity to do the latter. We have to watch feminist abominations like Starfleet Academy, Snow White, G20, (Star Wars) The Acolyte, plop before us with no end in sight. It recalls the best scene in Ayn Rand’s brilliant novel The Fountainhead, where outcast genius architect Howard Roark stands at the construction site of a monstrous building while Marxist architecture columnist Ellsworth Toohey — who helped deny Roark the contract — tries to taunt him.
“There’s the building that should have been yours. There are buildings going up all over the city which are great chances … given to incompetent fools. You’re walking the streets while they’re doing the work that you love but cannot obtain. This city is closed to you. It is I who have done it! … Mr. Roark, we’re alone here. Why don’t you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us.” “But I don’t think of you,” Roark says, and walks away.
The Fountainhead has a positive ending. Despite Toohey’s campaign against him, Roark keeps finding men of vision who ignore the leftist media rot and hire him to design beautiful functional structures. Sadly, such men are woefully absent from the screen trade.
Even one of the most visionary, Elon Musk, hasn’t made the financial investment in the narrative arts that could both save cinema and better the world. He’s pledged to pour millions supporting Republican candidates in the midterms, and hopefully they’ll win. But they won’t inspire anyone the way great movie heroes like John Wayne once did, as in his final film, The Shootist (1976).
“I won’t be wronged. I won’t be insulted, and I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to other people, and I require the same from them.” This simple code for men has more truth and impact than any impossible feat by any girlboss or beta male in any movie made this century. That is why John Wayne, to modern Hollywood, is more of an alien than a fey birdwatching Klingon in Starfleet Academy.
The bridge between politics and entertainment culture is not lost on this White House. Last week, its most eloquent — thus Left-hated — spokesman, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, opined on the Star Trek disaster on X. “Paramount screwed up royally when they decided to kill off Kirk in Star Trek Generations. @WilliamShatner disagreed strenuously but was a team player and out-acted everyone in the film. But it’s not too late for Paramount to make amends with Shatner and save the franchise. Do it!” To which the legendary Shatner replied, “I am so on the same page with you @StephenM … Call me.”
Miller’s post may portend a more symbiotic relationship between a conservative government and the screen arts, a la theater at the Trump Kennedy Center. The D.C. institution’s new name and administration caused liberal producers to cancel scheduled runs of Hamilton (blackened Founding Fathers), Fellow Travelers (an opera about a gay romance during McCarthyism), and Eureka (a play slamming the anti-vax movement). They’ve been replaced by timelier and timeless concerts by the Vienna Philharmonic and National Symphony Orchestras.
I hereby volunteer to be the Executive Director of Trumpwood. In that role, I would greenlight the plethora of rich actually knowledgeable modern stories I have read — Andrew Klavan’s Cameron Winter mystery novels, Larry Correia’s Son of the Black Sword fantasy novels — and written — my Mark Slade-Neil Cork political thriller novels, the first of which, The Washington Trail, just got one of the wittiest book reviews I’ve ever enjoyed: “A world where men are men, women are women, horses are horses, and with any luck the cowboy kisses the right one.” These movies wouldn’t win any Oscars, but they would fill theater seats.
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