“We need people on the inside,” writes R.J. Moeller from Los Angeles. “We need talented actors, musicians, editors, and screenplay writers who can stake a claim for a differing worldview than that of HBO, David Geffen, and whoever wrote Milk.” Go West, young conservative!
The full text of his essay follows. Subscribe to the free, weekly Acton News & Commentary and other publications here.
Read more on Commentary: Young, Entrepreneurial, and Pursuing Good Art in Hollywood…
How shalom, common good and prosperity can come from an unlikely place.
An interview with Gary Stratton by Jon Hirst.
Read more on Can Anything Good Come from Hollywood?…
Ben Shapiro was at the Heritage Foundation recently to talk about his new book, Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV. Publisher HarperCollins describes the book as “the inside story of how the most powerful medium of mass communication in human history has become a propaganda tool for the Left.”
One of the more interesting discussions at last week’s Heritage Foundation Resource Bank meeting in Los Angeles was the “Hollywood Conversations” session with screenwriter and novelist Andrew Klavan and Lionel Chetwynd, a writer, producer and director. Both men pleaded with the gathering of conservatives — social, political, economic — to stop beating up on Hollywood ad nauseam and to do more to support good work by conservatives.
In the Washington Post, Anne Applebaum takes a look at Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, and his worshipful celebrity fans in the United States. Here’s the key paragraph from her column, The New Fellow Travelers:
Via The New Editor, a restatement of a basic economic rule that we all need to remember as government in America swings back to the left. Clive Crook, in the course of reviewing Robin Williams’ Man of the Year, notes the potential unintended consequences if an anti-business mood overtakes our representatives:
Last weekend I had the joy of sharing in a special meeting in Newport Beach, California, that was appropriately named the Issachar Project. This small project is the work, primarily, of my friend Andrew Sandlin of the Center for Cultural Leadership. Andrew is convinced that there must be an intellectual and existential coalition of (1) Christians working in Hollywood and elsewhere in the film industry and (2) serious Christian thinkers in the arts.
You may recall that the sons of Issachar are described in the Scriptures as “men who understood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chronicles 12:32). Their number was small but their impact was great. This unique gathering included men and women, mostly under forty. The purpose of this group was not to form a “think tank” but rather to explore the neglected dimension of knowing God through beauty and imagination, in other words to explore how we know him incarnationally, not merely intellectually.
Most of the invited participants at this unusual meeting were film and television script writers, producers, teachers of the arts and reviewers. We heard four presentations on subjects like how Genesis 1 provides a storyline for narrative, how we should understand Acts 17 as it relates to the Mars Hill context of our times, and why we should watch films in the first place. Brian Godawa, author of the outstanding, and highly recommended new book Hollywood Worldviews: Watching Films With Wisdom & Discernment (InterVarsity Press), was a major contributor to the event, as was Jack Hafer, who produced the fantastic feature film, “To End All War.” Read more on The Issachar Project: The Importance of Film…
The Templeton Foundation and Movieguide are sponsoring two panels at the upcoming Screenwriting Expo in Hollywood (Oct. 19-22).
According to AgapePress (courtesy of The Church Report), “‘Christians in Hollywood’ and ‘Writing for the Family Film Market’ are the titles of two panels slated for what is billed as the world’s largest conference and trade show for screenwriters’.”
S.T. Karnick, who also blogs at The Reform Club, has some pretty solid and informative musings on popular culture.
One of his most recent gems comes along with the news that Fox has created a new religion and family friendly division for its movie studios, named FoxFaith. It also looks like Disney is phasing out its plans to make R-rated movies.
Here’s a convincing op-ed piece by William Romanowski, who teaches film studies at Calvin College, “Missing the big picture.” He writes in USAToday about the ambivalent impact of the upswing of religiously-oriented movies coming from Hollywood. “Were more evangelicals to think about movies in terms of their faith beliefs, they would actually have an opportunity to not only buy tickets, but also to begin to shape the entertainment industry,” he writes.
