LIGHTS, ACTION, NOTHING:  Hollywood is murdering itself right before our eyes.  Now, you've read things like that before, and you've seen the latest messes from what used to be the film capital of the world.  A new article, though, reports that conditions in the industry are deteriorating rapidly, with a modern McCarthyism choking anyone trying to make a good movie.  This is strong stuff.  From Breitbart: 

Hollywood’s “old boys club is dead,” writes the Free Press. “But a new one—with its own litmus tests and landmines—is rapidly replacing it. ‘This is all going to end in a giant class-action’.”

The outlet spoke to “more than 25 writers, directors, and producers—all of whom identify as liberal, and all described a pervasive fear of running afoul of the new [woke] dogma.”

“Best way to defend yourself against the woke is to out-woke everyone, including the woke,” one writer told the Free Press, which would go a long way towards explaining the self-humiliation Stephen King and Rob Reiner engage in daily by way of Twitter.

How do you out-woke the woke? Easy. “Suddenly, every conversation with every agent or head of content started with: Is anyone BIPOC attached to this?”

For those who don’t know, “BIPOC” stands for something-something people of color.

The result is McCarthyism 2.0:

“Everyone has gone so underground with their true feelings about things,” said Mike White, the writer and director behind the hit HBO comedy-drama “The White Lotus.” “If you voice things in a certain way, it can really have negative repercussions for you, and people can presume that you could be racist, or you could be seen as misogynist.”

Another writer, who, like most of the writers we interviewed, was afraid to speak openly for fear of never working again, said: “I get so paranoid about even phone calls. It’s so scary. My close friends and my family are just like, ‘Don’t say anything.’ It is one of those things, ‘Will I be able to sleep at night if I say anything?’ Getting jobs in this town is so hard, and I’m very grateful to have a great job. If there’s any so-called ding on my record, that would just be an argument against hiring me.”

It is, said Sam Wasson, the author of “The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood,” not so different from the McCarthy era, when everyone in Hollywood professed to believe something that they thought everyone outside Hollywood—the country, their audience—believed. “Hollywood was never anti-Communist,” Wasson said. “It just pretended to be. In fact, Hollywood was never anti- or pro- anything. It was show business. There’s no morality here.”

One industry professional after another tells the Free Press that managers and agents constantly tell them that the production is not hiring white men.

“Now, they’ll just say, ‘Sorry, diversity quotas. We’re just not allowed to hire you,’” a white male comedy writer explained. He says his agent also dumped him.

One writer showed the Free Press email proof of the open discrimination.

“This one a dead end — they are going to limit the search to women and bipoc candidates,” read one email. Another said, “There are some internally that don’t like the idea of hiring a white guy. I wish I had a better way to frame it. Hate this s.....” One more laid it out in just a few words, “Studio now telling us this job must go to a female / bipoc writer. Sorry — it sucks.”

Some have pushed back on this notion by saying there is no discrimination. Blaming “woke” is just an easy excuse for an agent or manager who failed to do his job, they say.

But.

The racist left isn’t exactly in hiding.

“I don’t care if white people aren’t comfortable because black people are uncomfortable all the f...... time.” One black television writer said, “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to bite my tongue so as not to offend white sensibilities, so I don’t give a s... if they’re nervous.”

Has this affected the product or the quality of the art? Easy answer. Have you gone to the movies or watched TV lately?

COMMENT:  Do read the whole thing.  America used to love Hollywood.  Now the country is beginning to despise it.  There are still some people who remember the age of Hollywood greatness.  The golden age.  It is gone, with no guarantee that it will ever return.

I've worked in Hollywood.  In truth, the industry started deteriorating decades ago.  Frank Sinatra even got up at an Oscar ceremony in the early sixties and warned that the wrong crowd was taking over.  ABC did a documentary in the early seventies called, I believe, "Whatever Happened to Hollywood?"  The decline has been slow and steady.  The great British director, David Lean, complained that Hollywood hd forgotten how to tell stories.  But there were always enough people struggling to make movies for actual audiences.  Wokeness may kill them off as well. 

January 9, 2023