Interview

With John C. Wright (scroll down the page or search for his name). Accompanying blog post here.

interview excerpt:

If you ran Hollywood, what changes would you make? What would stay the same?

There are two answers, the political and the artistic.

Politically, Hollywood needs drastic change if it is not to continue loosing money on films that drastically alienate and provoke its main audience, the backbone of its revenue.

Bollywood, movies from India, are more wholesome, more family-friendly, have better song and dance numbers, and notably more attractive actresses. The weft of the Culture of Death hangs over our Hollywood films, which I do not scent from these overseas films. It has been many a year since I have seen a Hollywood film that does not use "philosophical product placement" to thrust one or another particularly annoying little ad for their materialistic, mildly pinko, morally relative, or anti-American world view in my face. We see such things as would make Cicero or Marcus Aurelius blush with anger, not to mention John Adams and Tom Jefferson.

I am not talking about deliberately politicized films whose anti-American bias is bold and clear, like V for Vendetta or Starship Troopers. I am talking about a universal atmosphere. Even lighthearted kiddie fare like Happy Feet or space opera like Revenge of the Sith or epics like Beowulf cannot be told in a straightforward and honest fashion, a story for the sake of a story, but some little message has to be inserted either mocking religion, or sneering at George Bush, or belittling Christianity. I call it "product placement" because it is the intrusion, never where needed, of one extraneous line or extra quip that allows the film-maker to display his political correctness. And we all know that moral relativism and multiculturalism are good right? Because only a Sith would speak in absolutes.

I should not go into what politically I would change in Hollywood if I were the benevolent dictator, because, alas, my benevolence would not last long: I approve of America, and in time of war I approve of censorship, and in my darker moods I approve of the guillotine, the auto-de-fe, and sacrifices to Cthulhu by hooded and masked High Priests not to be described on bloodstained stepped pyramids towering obscenely over the frozen plateau of Leng... and my mood has been dark indeed of late, provoked by a steady stream of pro-enemy propaganda pieces.

So let us draw a kindly veil over the terrors of the political reign of Wright the First, Hammer of the Paynims. I will say only that I am unimpressed with the patriotism of Hollywood, or even their story-telling ability. They hate the things I love and love the things I hate. I wish they would shut up about politics and religion (which your average sci fi guy has thought more about than your average film mogul anyway -- our imaginations not being trapped in the here and now), and stick to art...

Also, a good quote that John C. Wright made in his own comment section:

If 9/11 had been a nuke instead of an airliner, the reaction from the Left would have been the same, only louder.