Hillbilly Elegy and the Fate of Hollywood

First, a word about the comments. I tried to keep them open, but I’ve been getting complaints about how toxic they’ve become. A group of people seem to believe that the comment section is theirs, and they bully and harass anyone who tries to comment here and who isn’t part of their group. Yeah, that isn’t going to be how this site is run, not anymore. This is a broadly inclusive comment section that doesn’t include a cabal of bullies.

I will be moderating the comments until such time as things calm down, if they ever do. I’ve been getting too many complaints and since it’s an election year and everyone is losing their minds, this is just the easier way to do it.

I’ve been running this site for over 25 years. Half of my life. I’m old. I’ve poured my blood, sweat, and tears into it. I have been here from presidents going all the way back to Bill Clinton. I’ve lived through it all and I’ve tried to be as honest as I can be. I’ve never lived through anything like we’ve just lived through and, frankly, I find it deeply disturbing what happened to the people with all of the power, how they used that power, and how they came to believe this country – Hollywood, all culture — belonged to them.

I know what happened to Hollywood, the Oscars, and the Left writ large after Trump won in 2016. It seemed mass hysteria had come to the utopian Left. We began to devour ourselves, canceling people right and left, creating a climate of fear that ultimately became institutionalized and all but destroyed Hollywood. There is no other way to say it.

The first thing I did was push back against extreme fanaticism and bullying on Twitter. And on this site. I confronted what I believed to be mass hysteria that was consuming the Oscars, the film industry and all culture under the complete control of the Left. II became a target of bullying time and time again. Once, I defended Ansel Elgort when idiots on Twitter called him a “pedophile rapist,” which was patently absurd. I took a screenshot of the disgusting tweets I got — and trust me, that was only the tip of the iceberg of what went down.

This is what that looked like:

It went on and on and on and on, long before I escaped the bubble of the Left and now exist in the far preferable land of the free — the outsiders, the Proles. But even when I was a faithful and loyal Democrat, Film Twitter piled on non-stop. It was so bad at times that a podcast I was going to do with fell apart because some of them were too afraid to appear on a podcast with me. It wasn’t just me. People would be unpersoned and everyone would go along with it. And still do!

I was a little less vulnerable to mass hysteria because I had read every book ever written in Salem in 1692. I also know about other episodes like that throughout history, like the Red Scare. I knew enough to know two things. 1) mass hysteria episodes do eventually evaporate and 2) history never sides with those who went along with it. Everything I’ve done up to now has been in an effort to stand on the right side of history, be true to myself and try to find some common ground with my fellow Americans.

After I watched the bottomless hatred, dehumanization, and rage from my own side, I decided I wasn’t going to do that anymore. The reason that I have become so overtly political is that I believe the only way to save the Left, to save culture, to save Hollywood is for Trump to win. The empire is collapsing already. Once it falls, we can rebuild anew. But man, this is a very dramatic, very exciting election – not just the assassination attempt, but the old man in the White House who refuses to step down but also probably can’t win. It’s everything you could ever want in a great movie or script yet there are no writers who will ever write the truth about any of it, not for a long time.

People are nicer on the Right than on the Left. People on the Left act as though people on the Right are enemy combatants who must be either thrown in jail or murdered on the spot.  Even though they fantasize about that on the Left, it doesn’t exist to the same degree on the Right, despite what you’ve been told. They don’t have that kind of power to say, “You’re not welcome in this country anymore,” not even to the migrants who cross the border illegally. Maybe that will change if Trump wins. But all they get from the Left is you’re RACISTS for worrying about it.

I am willing to be friends with any reasonable person. It’s just that many on the Left exist inside an insular feedback loop and, thus, are not reasonable. But that will change if there is a reset, which I hope there is.

Hillbilly Elegy was published when the Left liked JD Vance more. He was seen as someone who could explain the Trump phenomenon because he came from the exact kinds of towns that have been hollowed out by bad trade deals and infested with fentanyl. Vance’s mother was an abusive heroin addict who, thanks to the strong will of his grandmother, made it out. He joined the military, then graduated from Ohio State and then Yale Law School. It was there that his professor convinced him to write down his life experiences in a memoir, and that memoir was Hillbilly Elegy. It was nabbed by Netflix in 2017 and began filming in 2019 with Ron Howard as the director, starring, famously, Amy Adams and Glenn Close.

Imagine this movie released in November of 2020, the year from hell. It wasn’t just COVID. It was also the protests and riots, then it was “cancel culture,” and it was the climate of fear that brought Hollywood to its knees, where it still mostly is. We’ve not come out of it. It’s just become standard protocol that everyone obeys, even people I thought were heroes.

Take, for example, this interview with the actress Julia Fox who bragged on TikTok that she walked off a project because, she said, the director was “racist,” that he gave “Proud Boy vibes.” It’s exactly that kind of knee-jerk response that has killed the Left. They have created a stereotype of what they think Trump supporters are and anyone might be one, any white male. Doesn’t have to be white, it can be anyone. They’re labeled “far right,” as the commenters often say here about me (not anymore). But look at what just happened to Julia Fox? Her fanaticism drove her away from a project that might have been good because the director, she said, was racist because he didn’t think it was necessary to follow the Woke Code when it came to casting.

@juliafoxSMDH 🤮🤮🤮♬ original sound – Julia fox

“Until this white man director came in….” She has a brand on TikTok now and leaving this project actually helps her brand probably more than the movie would. She sees herself as a woke warrior and lives up to it. Usually, it’s entertaining. But this seemed to me to be a good example of that weird line so many in Hollywood have drawn where activism dominates all.

Keep in mind that this is the status quo in Hollywood now. They see themselves as social justice warriors who are out in force every day to ferret out the bad guys—usually some form of white male. That’s why Vulture is hot on the trail with its own “journalist” trying to find out the director’s name. Fox said she might put him on her TikTok. Might.

Anne Victoria Clark believes she can narrow down the possibilities of this “racist” director:

While it would be libelous for us to throw out guesses as to who exactly could fit this bill, this is the kind of sentiment that could unfortunately be lurking in the minds of any number of mediocre white guys with dreams of recolonizing India. Director and actress Natalie Morales even hopped into the comments to confirm the sentiment isn’t rare: “Unfortunately this has been a very familiar situation for me too, but under the surface,” she wrote. “They usually don’t have the guts to say it out loud in a meeting.” So, until Fox decides to drop a name: Every man is a suspect! (Except Sam Levinson.)

It’s just concluded that this person IS everything Julia Fox says he is. He’s a racist, a sexist, a misogynist and she has the power to ruin his career and the careers of all involved. But it seems to make her feel like her life has some purpose to it, and really, that describes most of what has happened to culture on the Left. It’s still mostly run by white people, but they are white people who need a sense of purpose, and that is to make art and movies more “fair” and equitable so that everything looks like, say, the streets of Manhattan, but you never really know where you are or even what era you’re in. All that matters is that the criteria have been met so people like Julia Fox can sit back and feel okay about what she’s watching.

They are not unlike the Catholic women in the 1930s who policed the indecency and smut out of Hollywood, leading to the Hays Code. Even people who feel crushed under the weight of this madness mostly won’t say anything. They’re afraid of being called out by the scolds too.

Let me ask you, how in the world can the industry survive this? The answer: they can’t.

But it does give you an insight into what started this madness and why Hillbilly Elegy was dropped right in the middle of it like a cow in a twitter. And speaking of Twisters, Lee Isaac Chung has, mercifully, decided NOT to include a sanctimonious lecture on climate change for the new movie. Hollywood is getting the message, but it needs to be faster.

“I just wanted to make sure that with the movie, we don’t ever feel like (it) is putting forward any message,” director Lee Isaac Chung explained in an interview with CNN. “I just don’t feel like films are meant to be message-oriented.”

Glory, glory, hallelujah! I bow down to the great Lee Isaac Chung. I bow down. 

I bring all of this up because now that JD Vance has been named Trump’s Veep, Film Twitter has renewed its desire to bring it all back home. Puritans always need an outlet. That’s why there has to be a sacrifice. Trump fit the bill for a long time and in some ways, still does. They are all forced to be so well-behaved all of the time that they need to generate villains just to be able to feel something, to feel like the better people, to feel human. None of Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Jimmy Kimmel are funny anymore. All they do is drag out the safe villains and take shots at them.

But because that line always exists, that Trump line that no one is allowed to cross, everyone on the Left is in a constant state of fear and paranoia. I’ve always believed that as more people can see Trump as a human being and not Voldemort, and his supporters as just people and not Nazi brown shirts, we can get back to something that seems normal.

I can’t relate to people who hate half the country. I can’t relate to people who are glad Trump was shot but disappointed they missed. I know that’s how they honestly feel, but it’s hard for me to fathom that kind of human being.

Ron Howard has a new movie coming out called Eden, which seems like a really great movie on its face. It’s about this strange case in the Galapagos Islands where people who aren’t all that different from today’s Wokeotpians. They fled Germany to find something like paradise. Then it got weird. Really really weird. There were murders. Barely any of them made it out of there alive.

I know almost nothing about the movie. But I do know that it’s an election year and I know JD Vance is on the ticket and I know forgiveness is something the Left no longer knows. But if they go after this movie because they’re mad about the election, I’ll be going nuclear on them. Fair warning.

Was Hillbilly Elegy a great movie? No. Was it a fine movie? Yes. Was it worthy of being made into a film? Absolutely. Not if you judge people by their skin color, gender, or sexuality, but if you love great stories, then you know this is a great story.

The people who felt the need to uprank this film out of the kindness of their hearts and the willingness for the film to succeed?  Those are closer to my people than those who stomped on it just because of JD Vance.

The last thing you should know is what I’ve been saying for quite some time now. We are in the midst of a massive pendulum swing and counter culture revolution. It’s an exciting time to be creative and make movies, write books, and start a YouTube channel. It’s an exciting time to be alive everywhere except inside the toxic, suffocating bubble of whatever it is you want to call what has happened to the Left. It’s not going to be fixed with gulags or by throwing Trump in jail. It will be fixed when we can all be together again as one country.

Thanks for listening. If the comments calm down and people are decent to each other again, I will remove the moderation.