Hollywood Takes on the Left
HAYES, STEPHEN F.
Hollywood Takes on the Left David Zucker, the director who brought us ‘Airplane!’ and ‘The Naked Gun,’ turns his sights on anti-Americanism BY STEPHEN F. HAYES Los Angeles For anyone who has...
...His problem was how to make it funny...
...But Zucker’s fi lm, together with a spike in attendance at events put on by “The Friends of Abe” (Lincoln, not Vigoda)—a group of right-leaning Hollywood types that has been meeting regularly for the past four years—is once again reviving hope that conservatives will have a battalion in this exceedingly infl uential battleground of the broader culture war...
...The fi lm, based on a powerful book by Iranian journalist Friedoune Sahebjam, tells the true story of a young Iranian woman who is framed by her husband on false charges of infi delity and persecuted under the strictures of sharia law...
...Zucker described his new fi lm with words he had chosen carefully...
...Farley told me this story during a break in fi lming at the Daniel Webster Elementary School in Pasadena, last April, with Steve McEveety, the fi lm’s producer, listening in...
...It’s actually just a set—a stunning replica of a subway station—and it sits 15 feet to Zucker’s right...
...Rolling,” he shouts...
...How can you have an intellectual discussion about the war we’re in without knowing who Sayyid Qutb is...
...If it’s the last movie I do, I’ll go work for Steve’s company,” he says...
...Zucker says at the time he was “very liberal...
...He is passionate about the issues that matter most to conservatives and extraordinarily articulate...
...Then 9/11 happened, and I couldn’t take it anymore,” he says...
...9/11 Was an Inside Job,” “Kick Army Recruiters Off Campus...
...Vivendi had just agreed to distribute the fi lm and had promised wide release—news that had the cast and crew of An American Carol in particularly good spirits...
...It opens with George H.W...
...Two years later, he appeared on stage with lefty leading man Warren Beatty and Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern...
...He described Zucker’s infl uence this way: “I used to sit at home with my friends in high school and watch Kentucky Fried Movie and Airplane...
...Why can’t I put it out there...
...They went to Hollywood to chase the dream, and, surprise, the show worked in Southern California, too...
...Reynolds worked hard and, he says, won the confi dence of the fi lm’s directors, who gave him more responsibility...
...Neville Chamberlain, after polishing Adolf Hitler’s boots, signs the Munich Agreement, and declares: “We have hope now...
...Zucker is looking at a monitor showing the inside of an empty New York City subway station...
...I think I’d just had enough...
...Their fi rst effort was an ad mocking John Kerry for his fl ip-fl ops that the conservative Club for Growth paid to put on the air...
...Another person was sent in his place...
...With his friend Lewis Friedman, a comedy writer, Zucker went looking for the absurd in the political left and found an abundance of material...
...Neville Chamberlain: “This morning, I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler...
...Fortunately, Kerry was a stiff...
...Overpopulation—Gay Marriage Is the Answer...
...But I do think we face real evil in Ahmadinejad and the mullahs and all these crazy guys...
...Thank Allah for the ACLU...
...Five...
...Farley hadn’t seen any of Zucker’s ads and assumed he was like everyone else in Hollywood—a Democrat...
...O’Connell’s work ends with a warning about new threats and the particular menace of the “Episcopal suppository bomber...
...If this doesn’t work,” McEveety deadpans, “I won’t have a company...
...Just as the offi cer pulls on the zipper, however, a small army of ACLU lawyers marches up to the policemen with a stop-search order...
...Next the documentary looks at the growing phenomenon of nuns as suicide bombers, seeking 72 virgins in heaven...
...This will not be hard to fi nd in Hollywood,” says one...
...The only thing that really bothers me is when they go off about the president...
...Jesus Christ, I want to slap that guy...
...When I ask him if he had an objective in making the fi lm, he borrows a line from his friend and former partner, Jim Abrahams...
...And several of the fi lm’s leading fi gures have strong opinions about Barack Obama...
...That’s fair,” he says, affi xing his signature to yet another agreement and once again waving it before the cameras...
...Baker’s Iraq Study Group had formally recommended talks with Iran and Syria as part of its proposed solution to the problems in Iraq...
...Zucker was still nominally a Democrat when George W. Bush was elected in 2000...
...Twenty percent,” Baker responds...
...The set jumps to life...
...I don’t think that Obama is an evil guy, I just think he’s wrong...
...Some are not...
...McEveety is one of several big names that will make it hard for the Hollywood establishment to ignore An American Carol...
...From the beginning, Zucker knew what the political message of An American Carol would be...
...Okay, how about 10 percent...
...Grammer has been out as a conservative for several years and has publicly mused about running for offi ce...
...I fi gured he was like everyone else in Hollywood—a Democrat,” Zucker recalls...
...And the voice that’s unacceptable is the one that loves America,” he says, wearing the uniform of an Army general and sipping from a bottle of pomegranate juice...
...Next item: You must agree to stop supplying the explosive devices that are killing our American soldiers in Iraq,” Baker insists...
...Zucker has always been interested in politics...
...Less than a year later, she understood why...
...During a rally at Columbia University, students chant: “Peace Now, We Don’t Care How...
...Obama is not qualifi ed to be president, and it’ll be a disaster,” says Zucker, who then pauses as if he’s said something he should have kept to himself...
...They drew large crowds to caf?s and small theaters in Madison and soon outgrew the college town...
...She worked for Jerry Brown’s 1992 presidential campaign and in 1998 was a fundraiser for Barbara Boxer’s reelection effort...
...When he returned, he took a job as a production assistant on a fi lm—he asked me not to name it—shot in several locations across the United States...
...We will do that,” says the Iranian leader...
...As the lead terrorist once again slips the backpack over his shoulder, he mutters his appreciation...
...Here is the paper, which bears his name upon it, as well as mine...
...We really didn’t have to do a lot of stretching,” says Zucker...
...The spot cuts to footage of German bombers over Warsaw...
...Lots of actors have done it...
...extras lounging around the set trying both to stay out of the way and to get noticed...
...Others throughout the cavernous studio echo his call...
...I just sit there and watch these shows”—he picks up an imaginary remote from the table in front of him, points it at the imaginary television somewhere to the right of my head and begins clicking—“I watch them all...
...he asks, raising his voice so that actors from other tables glance over to see what’s causing the commotion...
...The holiday in An American Carol is not Christmas and the antagonist is not Ebenezer Scrooge...
...He adds: “I don’t have any desire to be taken seriously...
...According to McEveety, the Iranian regime has already begun an effort to discredit the fi lm...
...In 1971, he teamed up with his brother and two friends to create an irreverent revue called Kentucky Fried Theater...
...Jon Voight, who says he was “duped” as a young man into rallying against the Vietnam war, is also troubled both by Obama’s associations and his willingness to end them so abruptly...
...In the fi lm, a rotund comedian named Rosie O’Connell makes an appearance on The O’Reilly Factor to promote her documentary, The Truth About Radical Christians...
...Hollywood Takes on the Left David Zucker, the director who brought us ‘Airplane!’ and ‘The Naked Gun,’ turns his sights on anti-Americanism BY STEPHEN F. HAYES Los Angeles For anyone who has ever been on a movie set, the commotion inside Warner Brothers Studio 15 will be familiar: serious-faced actors and actresses quietly rehearsing their lines...
...Zucker’s response, in effect: “It Depends on the Question...
...Among other things, Zucker condemned the Kent State shootings and lamented the mistreatment of America’s blacks...
...I couldn’t believe it,” says Sokoloff...
...As the 2004 presidential election approached, Sokoloff and Zucker looked for a way to infl uence the debate...
...Sold...
...Fifteen...
...Our discussion continues over lunch and we are joined by Myrna Sokoloff, Kevin Farley, and Chriss Anglin, who plays JFK...
...I’d always assumed they were just used for effect in movies, but here one was...
...Bush meeting with the heads of America’s coal, oil, and nuclear industries: the representatives of the Society for More Coal Energy [pronounced SMOKE...
...Zucker gave Farley the script and, concerned that Farley’s agent would advise him against accepting the role because of the fi lm’s politics, told the actor not to show it to anyone...
...Once they found out I was a Republican, unfortunately for some people it was a problem,” he recalls...
...How did we get here...
...His brother Jerry remains an unreconstructed liberal and recently optioned a sympathetic movie about the life and times of serial fabulist Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame...
...David Zucker believes we are in a “new McCarthy era...
...He’s like family...
...So he answered with some strategic ambiguity of his own...
...How come there aren’t more socialists on Wall Street...
...This friend recommended Zucker contact Myrna Sokoloff, a former paid staffer for Boxer, who had recently completed a similar ideological journey...
...I didn’t know him...
...It’s a satire...
...She’s the antichrist.’ And I said: ‘What the f— do you know about the antichrist...
...He’s like a really clever virus who adapts...
...In 1984, one of Zucker’s college friends, Rich Markey, suggested he listen to a local Los Angeles talk radio show, “Religion on the Line,” hosted by Dennis Prager...
...Sokoloff and Zucker never did write the letter to Boxer, but their partnership would prove much more fruitful...
...Greta comes on and”—he changes the channel once more...
...Eventually, the conversation turns from policy to punditry...
...I chatted with Grammer on the set at Warner Brothers studios...
...It’s a movie...
...Jon Voight plays George Washington...
...Obama’s the farthest left of all of these guys...
...The music stops and Baker returns to the table with Ahmadinejad and Syria’s Bashar Assad...
...Zucker, who owns a Toyota Prius and derives a third of the energy for his house from photovoltaic cells, is still an environmentalist...
...On one of the days I was on set, McEveety had invited Vivendi Entertainment president Tom O’Malley to meet Zucker...
...Over the course of two hours, we are joined by several others working on the movie and talk about everything from taxes—“the rich in this country are being criminalized”— to Iraq...
...Some of their protest signs are ones you’d fi nd at any antiwar rally...
...When she made this point to her Democratic friends, she says, they told her to keep quiet...
...Once onboard, they storm the cockpit using crucifi xes as their weapon of choice...
...David Zucker is sitting in a high-backed director’s chair with his name on it...
...There was this dance that we did—a dance familiar to conservative actors in Hollywood...
...He contributed another $600 to an outfi t called the “Hollywood Women’s Political Committee” which, with members like Jane Fonda, Bonnie Raitt, and Barbra Streisand, probably wasn’t calling for low taxes and abstinence education...
...When terrorists from Afghanistan realize that they need to recruit more operatives to make up for the everdiminishing supply of suicide bombers, they begin a search for just the right person to help produce a new propaganda video...
...Reynolds was active duty military for 12 years and shortly after 9/11 worked as the chief media offi cer for detainee operations at Guant?namo Bay, Cuba...
...But just as he was making a name for himself, word began to spread that he had been in the military and, far worse, that he supported the efforts of his uniformed colleagues in the war on terror...
...Zucker is plainly not worried about offending anyone...
...Such revelations are common occurrences at the periodic meetings of the secret society of Hollywood conservatives known as the “Friends of Abe...
...the director of photography huddled with his assistants around two high-defi nition screens inside a small black tent reviewing the last scenes...
...Petraeus has to couch every bit of optimism in some convoluted formulation to avoid the promised rush of disrespect,” Grammer says...
...When Ahmadinejad asks Baker for permission to develop nuclear weapons so long as Iran promises not to use them, Baker agrees...
...The more Zucker is known as a conservative, the more frequently he has encounters with others who consider themselves conservative...
...The entire fi lm is an extended rebuttal to the vacuous antiwar slogan that “War Is Not the Answer...
...It’s not hard to see why...
...Stephen F. Hayes, a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, is the author of Cheney: The Untold Story of America’s Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President (HarperCollins...
...McEveety, whose producing credits include Braveheart, We Were Soldiers, and The Passion of the Christ, is far too well-established to live or die based on the success of one fi lm...
...Reynolds, too, is a conservative—something David Zucker did not know when he cast Reynolds in the anti-Kerry ad he produced in 2004...
...Most of them have never even heard of Sayyid Qutb...
...When he met Zucker and Sokoloff on the set as shooting on the fi lm began, he told them that he, too, had long considered himself a conservative...
...I didn’t hear those words in that church...
...Although she didn’t vote for George W. Bush in 2000, Sokoloff says she was glad that he won...
...Eventually, the conversation turns to the war and the opposition to it—the subject of their current project...
...When he heard Rosie O’Donnell claim that “radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America where we have a separation of church and state,” he knew he had several minutes of material...
...The young men are relieved...
...We were afraid that he would not want to be involved in something that was so directly taking on the left and that he would not want to play the Michael Moore character...
...Zucker asks...
...David Zucker seems to be of two minds...
...And he created Mpower in part because he wanted the freedom to take risks on fi lm projects others in Hollywood wouldn’t consider...
...When 9/11 happened, I knew Democrats wouldn’t be strong enough to fi ght this war...
...Farley, best known for his recurring role in a series of Hertz commercials, read the script and called back the next day to accept...
...Chamberlain...
...Zucker had originally hoped to cast Dan Whitney (aka Larry the Cable Guy) as Malone, but a timing confl ict kept him from getting it done...
...It would be a satirical look at the war on terror, he told Farley, and explained that he and Sokoloff were political “moderates...
...Although these fi lms had some political jokes, the movies themselves did not carry overt political messages...
...I could never disown him...
...The war on terror, of course, does not lend itself to hilarity...
...Lunch lasts an hour, and we discuss marginal tax rates, the Democratic primary, whether John McCain will pick Condoleezza Rice as his running mate, the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, and whether the talk of closing Guant?namo is serious or just campaign rhetoric...
...Zucker says that the idea to do a feature fi lm grew out of those ads, and several of the actors in the spots, including Turkish actor Serdar Kalsin, who plays Ahmadinejad, have speaking roles in the fi lm...
...Does Obama understand that...
...Grammer, who is friends with Ann Coulter, says he quoted her once to some of the young people who work for him...
...If this does well, it’ll change everything,” says Grammer...
...Other claims were so absurd they didn’t require exaggeration...
...After briefl y considering Frank Caliendo, a fellow Wisconsinite, a colleague passed him a reel from Kevin Farley, the younger brother of the late Chris Farley, and Zucker, who recalled seeing Kevin Farley in an episode of Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, was interested...
...Oh, no...
...It doesn’t work, like BASEketball”—as he says this, he rolls his eyes and moves his right hand across his body to indicate a car going off a cliff...
...Instead, the fi lm follows the exploits of a slovenly, anti-American fi lmmaker named Michael Malone, who has joined with a leftwing activist group (Moovealong.org) to ban the Fourth of July...
...Actually, BASEketball sucked, but by the time it was released in 1998, Zucker had put together enough of a streak that he was widely regarded as a comedic genius...
...Shouldn’t I be allowed to say that...
...I don’t think so...
...Why be original...
...They are surprised to see a security checkpoint manned by two NYPD offi cers...
...and vomit from laughing...
...We won’t do that...
...David Zucker got his start in entertainment right after school...
...They smile fi endishly as they walk toward the crowded platform...
...Fifty million dead worldwide...
...He was raised in Shorewood, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee, in a household where Franklin Delano Roosevelt was viewed as either a hero or a dangerous conservative...
...His name comes up periodically when California Republicans are brainstorming about candidates to take on Barbara Boxer or Dianne Feinstein for their Senate seats...
...It is a frontal attack on the excesses of the American left from several prominent members of a growing class of Hollywood conservatives...
...End Disease—Medicine Is Not the Answer...
...The group, with no offi cial membership list and no formal mission, has been meeting under the leadership of Gary Sinise (CSI New York, Forrest Gump) for four years...
...Action...
...And it’s a funny satire...
...Zucker and Friedman poked fun of the know-nothing culture of antiwar protests...
...I don’t want to point to this thing, just because there are so few fi lms from conservative sources, and make it a target...
...Although his politics were evolving, Zucker remained supportive of California Democrats, giving $2,400 to Senator Barbara Boxer in the mid- 1990s...
...before tossing the sponge to someone off-camera...
...In the 1980s and 1990s, Sokoloff had worked for several stars of the Democratic party’s left wing...
...All three of you,” said McEveety...
...Davi is one of those actors with an instantly recognizable face—he was the villain in the Bond fi lm Licence to Kill—but whose name is unknown to most of the country...
...a frazzled fi rst assistant director guzzling Red Bull and yelling instructions to anyone who will listen...
...Farley is not aggressive about his politics and has chosen simply to opt out of political discussions when they have arisen on other projects...
...If those behind the fi lm have similar views about Obama, many of them have opposing views about the long-term impact of a fi lm like An American Carol on the movie industry...
...JFK concentrates on his food...
...In 2006, Sokoloff and Zucker followed that with a series of uproarious short spots mocking, in turn, the Iraq Study Group, Madeleine Albright and pro-appeasement foreign policy, and pro-tax congressional Democrats.The Iraq Study Group ad was the most memorable...
...Time magazine fi lm writer Richard Corliss recently joked that conservative fi lms are “almost illegal in Hollywood...
...I cannot watch the murder shows anymore...
...O’Malley told Zucker that he was particularly interested in this fi lm in part because he, too, leans right...
...It opens with news footage of British prime minister Neville Chamberlain celebrating the signing of the Munich Agreement...
...the Society of Petroleum Industry Leaders [SPIL...
...Zucker’s latest movie, An American Carol, is unlike anything that has ever come out of Hollywood...
...And we knew that this was not a Democrat movie...
...Zucker had spent a year working on a fi lm with Christopher McDonald without learning anything about his politics...
...And I said ‘I quit.’ ” He decided to write a letter to Boxer, sharing his disgust and telling her not to expect any more of his money...
...Senate...
...The response to 9/11—the right was saying this is pure evil we’re facing and the left was saying how are we at fault for this...
...Well,” intones a narrator, “that negotiation went well...
...It is one of just two references to the ongoing presidential campaign...
...It’s almost like people who are gay, show up at the baths and say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you were gay!’ ” Zucker says...
...But Zucker knows comedy and has spent nearly four decades making people laugh...
...I can’t stand Keith Olbermann,” says Davi...
...I think it would be pompous to say that,” says Voight...
...Sokoloff had begun to sour on the Democratic party and the left generally during the impeachment of Bill Clinton...
...One such fi lm, The Fallen, will be out later this fall...
...When I look at the other side, when I look at Barack Obama, I see expediency,” he says, pointing to Obama’s relationship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and assuming Obama’s voice...
...Really, I really don’t...
...Zucker says that one of the major differences between the left and the right in America today is that leftists think of their political opponents as evil...
...I don’t think so...
...Until now, conservatives in Hollywood have always been too few and too worried about a backlash to do anything serious to challenge the left-wing status quo...
...Naked Gun 2? came closest with a vaguely pro-environment theme...
...Shortly after the fi lm wrapped, he ran into McDonald, best known as Shooter McGavin from Adam Sandler’s Happy Gilmore, at one of these informal meetings...
...It’s a movie...
...Several people who had talked to him regularly throughout the shoot simply stopped...
...I thought that the minute we started talking about politics that would be the end,” Farley recalls...
...But Tom O’Malley, president of Vivendi, believes that the timing of the fi lm’s release—October 3— will give it special relevance to the current debates...
...End Violence—War Is Not the Answer...
...I’ve done that...
...Zucker points to a National Journal study that found Obama to be the most liberal member of the U.S...
...This says we can’t search their bags...
...But having said that, I really believe this stuff...
...Now, this thing about destroying Israel,” he says to Ahmadinejad...
...They all hate America...
...A newspaper stand boasting “Peace with Honour” fl ashes across the screen...
...and the Key Atomic Benefi ts Office of Mankind [KABOOM...
...Reynolds says that he had only two colleagues who treated him the same way they had before, including “an anti-Bush lesbian” who was disgusted by the dogmatism of the others on the fi lm...
...Let’s not burden this little horse with additional weights...
...I’ll need to see your bag, please,” says one of the offi cers...
...And a trip that he was to have taken to participate in an offsite shoot across the country was abruptly cancelled...
...As they leave, another slave, played by Gary Coleman, fi nishes polishing a car and yells “Hey, Barack...
...I try to talk to my friends on the left and they just don’t get it...
...John Kerry was, and Obama is...
...Ann Coulter,’ ” he says, recalling their horror and assuming their voice...
...He founded the company, Mpower Pictures, two years ago with John Shepherd, a former child actor, and Todd Burns, who helped put himself through law school by working as an EMT...
...Nicely done, Mr...
...The music starts again and Baker, like Chamberlain, triumphantly waves the signed agreement...
...If he had been a Republican president we would have demanded his resignation and marched on the White House...
...Reynolds, now a reservist, is scheduled to leave for Iraq in early 2009...
...When they settle on Malone, who is in need of work after his last fi lm (Die You American Pigs) bombed at the box offi ce, he unwittingly helps them with their plans to launch another attack on American soil...
...Yes, he will...
...And I’m scared to death of Obama...
...But Obama isn’t a stiff and he’s really adaptable...
...It was the fi rst of many classics: Airplane!, Top Secret!, The Naked Gun, BASEketball...
...No one on the left wants to admit that radical Islamists want to kill Americans, the Jews—everyone in the West,” Davi says...
...Later that same day, I spoke to Lee Reynolds, who plays the New York police offi cer whose efforts to search the terrorists are thwarted by the ACLU...
...It just gets annoying...
...Along the way, Malone is visited by the ghosts of three American heroes—George Washington, George S. Patton, and John F. Kennedy—who try to convince him he’s got it all wrong...
...The accepted way to speak about America is in the voice that disrespects it...
...Two young men—both terrorists— enter the station...
...Having never done this before, he asked a friend with the Republican Jewish Committee for help...
...If I didn’t do something about it I would feel—My kids would ask: ‘What did you do in the war Daddy?’ ” “I donated my career to stop this s...
...The fi rst assistant director breaks the silence...
...I’m glad some of the bigger guys jumped in—Dennis Hopper, Jon Voight, James Woods...
...A dramatization shows two nuns, strapped with explosives, board a bus to the cries of the other passengers...
...David Alan Grier plays a slave in a scene designed to show Malone what might have happened if the United States had not fought the Civil War...
...And Kelsey Grammer plays General George S. Patton, Malone’s guide to American history and the mouthpiece of the fi lm’s writers...
...Zucker and Sokoloff met Farley in April 2007...
...Zucker took the advice and soon struck up a friendship with Prager, whose conservative views appealed to Zucker as common sense...
...If An American Carol grew out of Zucker’s work on these commercials, the narrative device dates back to 1843...
...You don’t even believe in Christ.’ ” Robert Davi, who plays the lead terrorist in the Zucker fi lm, joins us as the discussion turns from policy to the cable pundit shows...
...As Patton explains to a dumbfounded Malone that the plantation they are visiting is his own, Grier thanks the documentarian for being such a humane owner...
...Not the Christians...
...They caught the attention of some of Hollywood’s boldfaced names—the show would serve as one of Lorne Michaels’s inspirations for Saturday Night Live—and in 1977 they released their fi rst fi lm, The Kentucky Fried Movie...
...He was elected president of his senior class at the University of Wisconsin, and, when he addressed his classmates at commencement in the spring of 1970, his speech was serious—a friend describes it as “solemn” and political...
...I consider myself a centrist,” he said, worried that they might press him more about his political views...
...Zucker thanked him for picking up the movie, which will be one of the fi rst for Vivendi’s new distribution arm...
...Dennis Hopper makes an appearance as a judge who defends his courthouse by gunning down ACLU lawyers trying to take down the Ten Commandments...
...I usually just bite my tongue unless it gets too ridiculous,” he says...
...And that’s why he associated with all of those crazies—terrorists, preachers of hate...
...Quiet please...
...It’s Too Dark Outside, The Sun Is Not the Answer...
...Baker shrugs...
...Triumphant music plays loudly in the background and the diplomacy pauses for a celebration and some photos...
...She served on the campaign staff of Mark Green, a close associate of Ralph Nader, when he ran for Senate in New York against Al D’Amato...
...Matt Stone, who together with Trey Parker created South Park, starred in BASEketball...
...Then viewers are shown footage of imaginary negotiations between James Baker, Syria’s Bashar Assad, and “Iranian madman” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...
...Yeah, all three of us...
...If Farley is nervous that his proverbial big break is coming in a fi lm with politics that might make getting his next big role more diffi cult, he doesn’t show it...
...Avoid embarrassment...
...O’Malley and Zucker chatted about the fact that O’Malley is the nephew of Candid Camera’s Tom O’Malley and that they are both from the Midwest, among other things...
...O’Reilly shows a clip, which opens with a pair of priests walking through an airport—as seen from pre-hijacking surveillance video—before boarding the airplane...
...James Woods plays Michael Malone’s agent...
...As a feminist, I was outraged,” she recalls...
...The other one, more cryptic, comes in a scene that’s a throwback to the Iraq Study Group ad...
...Assad proposes...
...carpenters busily working to construct the set for the next scene...
...The cops look at each other and shrug their shoulders...
...Well, can you reduce the number...
...The lead terrorist glances nervously at his friend and swings his backpack down from his shoulder to present it to the cops...
...Rolling...
...Tom O’Malley, president of Vivendi Entertainment, though, dismisses claims that Hollywood is hostile to conservative ideas and suggests that conservatives simply haven’t been as interested in making movies...
...An American Carol is based loosely—very loosely—on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens...
Vol. 13 • August 2008 • No. 45
