Posts Tagged ‘hollywood’

Jews in Hollywood, It’s History, not Some Vast Conspiracy or Something we Can’t Mention

Posted: February 5, 2024 by datechguy in business, comedy, culture, entertainment
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German Woman talk show host: Mr. Williams, why do you think there is not much comedy in Germany?

Robin Williams: Did you ever think you killed all the funny people?

Today at Don Surber’s site he celebrates the contributions of various ethnic groups, starting with Blacks as it’s black history month and ending with the WASPS who founded this country making all those other contributions to America possible. He notes many people who might have been forgotten a few I had never heard of and in going through the list he has this section about Jewish Americans:

As for Jews, I can go on all day about them. They gave the country physicists, Irving Berlin and a host of comedians. Jews invented Hollywood by founding Columbia, Fox, Paramount, Universal and MGM. Even the Warner Brothers were Jewish. Could we kindly stop the anti-Semitism already?

Emphasis mine

That reminded me of this Dave Chappelle bit on Kanye & Jews:

Now the hesitancy to talk about Jews in Hollywood/Entertainment or bring it up is something I’ve never understood. When various ethnic groups come to a country and start a business you will see family coming over and joining in. There is a reason why so many pizza places were run by Italians.

If people start a business, especially people outside the dominant culture they tend to hire family and people from their same ethnic group, additionally people who come to a country looking for work tend to check first within their ethnic group, same culture, same language and once they assimilate they and/or their children & grandchildren branch out.

So see a lot of XXX and sons, but you very rarely see XXX and grandsons because by the time you reach that generation the kids are Americanized and go their own way.

So Thomas Edison not withstanding if Jews went all in on entertainment, if Jews founded Columbia, Fox, Paramount, Universal MGM and Warner Brothers why should anyone be surprised if.

  1. They tended to hire a lot of Jews when they started.
  2. A lot of Jews tended to gravitate to the entertainment business
  3. And a ton of Jews are still in the business today. 

This makes sense particularly if you consider that Jews historically have not been particularly loved or treated well through history. Why wouldn’t you get involved in an industry that is:

  • Profitable
  • Secure (meaning that it won’t disappear)
  • Has influence
  • And gives you the change to put the Jewish point of view out there

Alas because some were far leftists you had a leftist point of view pushed too but I digress.

Bottom line I’m not about to get my knickers in a twist because ethnic Jews took the risk to get into the ground floor of the entertainment business which provides comfort and joy to people all over the world and still reaping the rewards of that risk. If you have a problem with that then that’s your problem.

But neither am I going to deny that’s the case because people might feel upset about it being said openly. Frankly I think the reaction of of a Jewish person to the “Jews run Hollywood” business should be: ”Yeah Jews are big in Hollywood and I’m damn proud of it!”

It’s not a conspiracy, it’s just the way things went naturally.

I’ll leave you with the Robin Williams joke I started with, he delivers it better than I write it.

Jim Caviezel as August Landmesser Delivers The Quote of the Year

Posted: July 12, 2023 by datechguy in culture, entertainment
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Two days ago in one of my “Under the Fedora” posts I wrote this about the movie The Sound of Freedom

The Outsized reaction of the professional left to the performance of the movie the “Sound of Freedom” last week and Disney’s decision to sit on it for a week seems rather odd, particularly when you note how consistent and united this reaction is.

Why you would think the left and their allies had a big hand in that pie. And if they didn’t before they might now.

Of course that’s nonsense, just because the elite left knew about Jeffrey Epstein and tolerated him for decades and knew about Harvey Weinstein and tolerated him for decades and knew about Matt Lauer and tolerated him for decades and woke Disney sat on this film for half a decade doesn’t mean that they have a hand in child sex slavery. Besides if that was the case people would have been afraid to work on the film and it’s star Jim Caviezel would have folks running away from him in Hollywood over it:

Oh wait:

I want this to be so huge that they’re forced to look at this. I lost my agents over this. Yep, 17 years, 15 years. I lost my lawyer over this, and now I understand why all these actors didn’t want to do the movie because of this. Listen, you do Schindler’s List fifty years later, you’re a hero. Try doing Schindler’s List when the real Nazis are right there. Understand how that becomes more dangerous? I don’t understand why people are willing to let children be hurt, but in this time, Hollywood says, ‘No, no, let’s kick that down fifty years from now and then [see where we’re at]. That’s crap.

Jim Caviezel in an interview with Angel Studio’s head Neil Harmon

Hollywood in Toto notes a slight difference in the penalty for making this movie for Caviezel and other Hollywood starts in ….interesting situations:

Alec Baldwin accidentally shot and killed a crew member on a movie set and his career never missed a beat. Production on the film in question, “Rust,” resumed earlier this year.

Ezra Miller’s rap sheet is a mile long, but the nonbinary actor anchors one of the summer’s biggest adventures, “The Flash.” And, had the movie performed well at the box office, Miller would have played the speedster in the sequel.

Jim Caviezel agreed to star in a fact-based story about child sex trafficking, exposing an ongoing crime many people don’t know about.

Perhaps the day will come when the Hollywood left will be suddenly decide that like Lauer, Weinstein and Epstein those involved in this kind of thing (the child trafficking not the movie) are to be shunned while stars and elites proclaim their public shock that it was ever going on, but until that critical mass is reached Caviezel will remain Hollywood’s August Landmesser standing separate from the crowd.

#UnexpectedlyTM of course. (hat tip insty)

Closing thought:

Caviezel’s quote instantly reminded me of the Three Stooges who were my favorite as a kid. It’s worth noting that their hilarious short “You Nazty Spy” came out in 1940 when the Reich was poised to swallow up most of Europe and it would have been very easy for Nazi agents to target three comics staring in shorts for revenge by Nazi agents.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvVPopDC9vA

Building solid products

Posted: July 9, 2022 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncategorized
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I still enjoy going to the theater for a movie. My last in-theater movie was Dune, and while I have a good sound system at home, nothing can compare to giant theater speakers making your chair shake as a sandworm travels across the screen. Theaters have had to up their game compared to when I was a kid. Back in my day, you were lucky to get hot popcorn with something resembling butter and a seat that was cleaned a few hours ago. Now your seat is cushy, was reserved in advance (no rushing to the theater), and at my local theater you can order alcohol and dinner from your seat!

Movies are finally starting to up their game as well. We went through a drought of movies after Avengers: Endgame that just seemed didn’t inspire spending the money to go to a theater. On top of that, the movies went both woke and China-censored at the same time (which ironically often conflicted with itself). But times are changing, and Hollywood seems to be waking up to the realization that it should make solid movies and worry less about pleasing the Chinese or the woke mobs.

Apparently, its big enough that even CNN is recognizing it.

Look at the Top Gun sequel. Rather then make a movie about a sad Tom Cruise now working as the top DEI enforcement officer at the Pentagon, or cut out the Taiwanese flag on his iconic jacket, Hollywood decided to just make a solid movie. And it sold, bigly, now well over 1 billion dollars. Or look at Spider-man: No Way Home, another solid movie that just focused on being a movie. Or Dune, which took complicated source material and pieced it into an action-packed film.

My point is, if you make a solid movie, more often than not you’ll make money. That holds true across many other disciplines: make a solid product, and you’ll make a solid profit.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. If you like this post, why not listen to the author narrate his epic tale of woe to you by purchasing his book on Audible?

Hey Salon, Hollywood remaking South Korean movies is not racist

Posted: December 19, 2021 by John Ruberry in Uncategorized
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By John Ruberry

Every once in a while I come across an article on the internet that makes me want to scream in disbelief. Such as is the case with a piece on Salon by Carolyn Hinds with the headline, “Hollywood, please stop adapting K-dramas. It’s not just unnecessary, it’s racist.”

Wow, look who is woke.

While acknowledging adaptation of motion pictures from one culture to another is commonplace, Hinds, who begins one sentence with, “As a Black woman, cultural appropriation is behavior I’m all too familiar with,” unloads on the wave of Hollywood remaking South Korean movies. And she spews this awful offal, “Instead, I’m referring specifically to how Hollywood seems to be making a concerted effort to focus on South Korean – as well Japanese – content, for the sole purpose of remaking the stories to appeal to American audiences, i.e. white audience.”

But as Mark Levin so often responds on his radio show to a recording of some liberal, “Oh, shut up you idiot!”

Hinds calls the Asia-to-Hollywood artistic transfer “whitewashing.”

There are plans in Hollywood to remake the Korean thriller Parasite, a movie that I thoroughly enjoyed and one that I felt was deserving of its Best Picture Oscar. In her Salon piece Hinds brings up other movies from South Korea that were remade by Hollywood, including Oldboy, another fabulous film. The flat American version (or so I’ve heard, I haven’t seen it) was directed by Spike Lee. Il Mare was redone as The Lake House, which starred Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. Moving beyond South Korea, Hinds notes that Martin Scorsese’s The Departed was inspired by a Hong Kong flick, Internal Affairs.

No society exists in a vacuum, not even North Korea, which is it should be. Culture crosses borders, as does science as well as political notions. The modern version of democracy comes from the European Enlightenment. The greatest form of government is utilized not just in the United States, but also in South Korea and Japan.

Another South Korean film I enjoyed is The Good, the Bad, the Weird, which as you probably guessed is a remake of Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Western, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. And weird it is–instead of an American Civil War setting, this Western takes place in Japanese-occupied Manchuria in 1939. Hinds ignores this specific cultural transfer in her Salon piece. The soundtrack of The Good, The Bad, The Weird includes an instrumental rendition of the Animals’ 1965 hit “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.” The original was recorded by Nina Simone, an African-American woman.

Moving on to television, do you know that there is a Korean version of the American television series, Designated Survivor?

What about Japan, which Hinds mentioned earlier. The stellar collective of writers here at Da Tech Guy is known as Da Magnificent Seven, a tip of the hat to the 1960 Western that starred Yul Brynner and many others. That film is an acknowledged remake of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai. The first movie of Leone’s “Dollars Trilogy,” A Fistful of Dollars, is an unacknowledged remake of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo.

Kurosawa, who named John Ford as one of his major influences, filmed a Japanese warlord version of Shakespeare’s King Lear, a brilliant epic, Ran.

So now you know why I called Hinds an idiot.

Dan Bongino on his radio show often notes that the unhinged left run will run out of enemies, so it is doomed to devour itself.

Hey Hollywood: Remake more South Korean and Japanese movies.

Hey South Korea and Japan: Remake more Hollywood movies.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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