Hollywood Witness
BARNES, FRED
Hollywood Witness Jon Voight, Whittaker Chambers fan. by Fred Barnes In his mind's eye, Jon Voight can see the scene unfolding. Tall, self-assured Alger Hiss is waiting in the witness room to...
...Why would Hollywood release a controversial feature film about alleged Mormon terrorists of 150 years ago while all but ignoring the dangerous Muslim terrorists of today...
...The movie, which opened around the country last week, is September Dawn...
...It recounts, in documentary style, how a few brave souls forced the fourth plane seized by terrorists on 9/11 to crash in Pennsylvania...
...Voight played the secretary of defense in the recent hit Transformers...
...When you ask them if they'd do it again, they say yes...
...I look for films based on their relevance to what we're facing," he says...
...This is a sensitive point for Voight...
...We've got to be supportive of our troops for sure...
...Voight's reaction: "Wow...
...asked Michael Medved, the columnist and talk radio host...
...That's the side "so heartbreakingly written" by Whittaker Chambers in Witness...
...The date—9/11, 150 years ago— "gives you a bit of a chill," Voight says...
...In Hollywood, Voight is a dissident...
...Now we have those in the world who are intent on destroying us...
...Today Voight's heroes are American soldiers...
...gle issue, national security...
...The great stories will reveal themselves...
...Voight, as accomplished an actor as he is, knows he wouldn't be credible as Chambers...
...I believe this is a different time...
...We've put our lives on the line for the rest of the world...
...But he's not active in Republican campaigns or party politics...
...They've really demonstrated their bravery and character...
...He says an anti-jihadist movie would have trouble getting financing, perhaps due to fear it would provoke violent Muslim protests...
...I'm continuously awed...
...We've got to all be alert now...
...It's also a controversial way...
...The threat, he believes, is internal as well as foreign...
...But his role as a zealous Mormon leader involved in the massacre in Utah of a wagon train of Christians on their way to California is weightier and more important...
...It's Whittaker Chambers, who has accused Hiss of spying for the Soviets while a top State Department official...
...Voight is a political loner, and, in the description of an associate, a "conservative independent...
...It's impossible not to be impressed...
...Truth should be brought to every chapter of our history...
...I have to say, in this atmosphere, I would be," he told me...
...They've heard the call to defend our country...
...This war] is more against religious fanatics than politics...
...Voight is eager to make another...
...But if the film is ever made, he'd play Hiss...
...His book, Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10, is the account of a mission in Afghanistan in 2005 to kill or capture a Taliban leader...
...Mormons are unhappy with September Dawn because it implicates church patriarch Brigham Young...
...The fanatical Mormons who believed God justified the killing of men, women, and children were "very reflective of Wahabbis" who teach hatred of non-Muslims and claim God approves the murder of infidels...
...Catholic priests "were the warriors against totalitarian regimes," he says...
...He looks unflustered, indifferent, and doesn't make eye contact...
...This is not like Vietnam where you had one enemy and where the war stops within borders," he says...
...They know their responsibility," he told me...
...And he sees the film as a metaphor for today's Islamic jihadists...
...When he talked to wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army hospital in early August, he found "there are surprises...
...Thank God for these guys...
...The only full-length movie so far about Islamic extremists is United 93, released last year...
...Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, is a Mormon...
...Tall, self-assured Alger Hiss is waiting in the witness room to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) when a short, overweight man wearing a rumpled suit enters the room...
...He's a strong defender of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, says the 9/11 attacks might have been averted if the Patriot Act had been in effect then, believes Communists were "right at the root" of anti-Vietnam war protests in the 1960s, insists the war on terror is "real" and necessary, regards actor Matt Damon as a left-wing "propagandist," and thinks "our best ambassadors" in Iraq are "our troops who are rubbing shoulders" with Iraqis...
...One that has was written by ex-Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell...
...He recalls, word for word, what a Marine at Camp Pendleton, soon to ship out for Iraq, told him: "Hey, Jon, don't worry about us...
...For me certainly, I was drawn to [September Dawn] the way I was drawn to Rosewood, which was about a massacre in a black town," he says...
...The massacre occurred on September 11, 1857...
...This is a way to examine the anatomy of religious fanatics [and how they] rationalize a murderous act...
...His take on the war against Islamists is similar to Bush's...
...I'm a latecomer to this," he says...
...Some conservatives have attacked the film as a poor substitute for a movie about Islamic terrorists...
...we know there are cells from different terrorist organizations that are here and operational and there are others waiting too...
...I have a great love for this country, and we should be united...
...It is no longer a time when we can turn swords into ploughshares...
...One is how positive these guys are...
...But Voight isn't giving up on his dream...
...Voight, however, says the evidence against Young is unassailable and the film's director, Christopher Cain, told the Los Angeles Times that "Young's dialogue was taken directly from speeches and documents...
...He was easy to take down...
...Chambers has confessed to being Hiss's Communist handler...
...On the other hand, there is another side to it," he says...
...And what's relevant in his view is the totalitarian ideology of Islamic radicalism and the threat it poses to America...
...Voight has visited numerous military hospitals and bases...
...So listen, it's a serious business...
...People were "hurt" by the HUAC's hearings on Communist infiltration of Hollywood...
...If a movie has no purpose, Voight says, "I don't do it...
...We know what has to be done and we want to do it...
...Jon Voight has made 62 films, but playing Alger Hiss in Witness might be his greatest role...
...In a separate interview, he said, "I would much rather hear from these guys than the people who are presenting the news on television on a daily basis...
...The Mormon church denies Young ordered the massacre...
...In Hollywood, Voight is an unusual figure...
...It's just overwhelming...
...It's easy to do a piece against Senator McCarthy," he says...
...Voight believes the silent confrontation between adversaries would be a riveting moment in a movie version of Witness, Chambers's 1952 epic about his embrace of communism, his break, and his clash with Hiss and the establishment figures who rushed to Hiss's defense...
...Voight played John Paul II in the television film about the Polish pope and considers him one of the great heroes of the Cold War...
...He doesn't buy Hollywood's take on the anticommunism of the 1940s and 1950s...
...It is a scene with no dialogue, yet one brimming with all the tension and portent of the greatest spy case of the century...
...He's a conservative...
...Voight is now talking to Luttrell about basing a movie on his book...
...He has talked to Chambers's children about film rights...
...Nor does the movie "have anything to do" with Mitt Romney's campaign for the Republican presidential nomination...
...We know for sure there are cells in the United States that are ready to erupt...
...I certainly hope we're paying close attention to all those people crossing our borders who might be dangerous to us," he said in a Q-and-A with Hollywood writer Alan Laukhuf...
...Voight is an admirer of Chambers and Witness...
...They've stepped up...
...So what does Hiss, having denied he knows Chambers, do...
...The movie industry appears to have little interest in Chambers's dramatic rejection of communism...
...This is a war against terrorism, and the terrorism is real...
...To a man, they want to go back to their units, even if they have only one leg...
...His interest is chiefly in a sinFred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard...
...We know that Hezbollah is here...
...We're not pointing a finger at the Mormon church today," Voight says...
...It's wartime, guys . . . we can get complacent...
Vol. 12 • September 2007 • No. 47
