Wagging the Tale

   As long as there has been a Hollywood, there have been people in Washington, D.C. who have tried to control it.
   In 1930, moments after talkies overtook America, the pols ordered the imposition of a Production Code. It was administered by a former Postmaster General and among its sillier rules was the mandate that a man and a woman – even if they were married — could not sleep in the same bed.
   In spite of the Code, which was surely unconstitutional, Hollywood soldiered on, making over 500 movies a year. By the late 1930s, 80% of Americans went to the movies at least once a week.
   Washington then hit Hollywood in the pocketbook, forcing the movie studios to divest themselves of their movie theaters on the grounds that theater ownership violated anti-trust regulations.
   In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Washington dealt its dirtiest blow to Hollywood, when, taking a page from Richard M. Nixon’s playbook, the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) charged that Hollywood had fallen into the hands of Communists.
   Nixon had proved the efficacy of the Big Lie, the baseless smear, by accusing his opponents in both a 1946 Congressional race and a 1950 Senate race of being “pinko commies” and thereby beating them.
   It was one of the darkest, meanest periods in American history. Ambitious and unscrupulous Washington politicians not only savaged the lives and careers of a great many talented writers, directors and actors, but savaged and subverted the Bill of Rights. The questions HUAC members asked witnesses were wholly out of order, in flagrant violation of their rights, but when witnesses refused to answer on those grounds, they were either jailed on contempt of Congress charges, as happened to ten writers, or placed on a blacklist, as happened to hundreds of people, some of whom didn’t work for years.
   In the wake of that ugly time, Hollywood went about its business – which was, by then, global, and Washington pulled its punches to an extent. But sooner or later virtually every pol who wanted to make headlines had at Hollywood because it was an easy and highly visible target. Charges of excessive violence and/or sex in the movies and on TV came as regularly as rain. A rating system –- for TV as well as movies — was put in place. Even so, any violent incident inevitably led to pols pointing fingers at Hollywood, rather than at the obvious and severe problems, contradictions and inequities in contemporary America – because it was a whole lot easier to scold Hollywood than to actually solve the problems, contradictions and inequities.
   The simple truth is that Hollywood has, from its beginnings, been a uniquely powerful and largely benign force in America and the world, because stories are as vital to people as food and Hollywood tells great stories.
   Movies get into our heads. They touch us and move us. They are church, school, our communal dreams and nightmares, our collective consciousness. It is Hollywood movies, not Washington reality, which show us how to be (and how not to be), and they have drawn millions of people from all over the world to America.
   Though only moments before September 11, some pol somewhere was undoubtedly yammering about Hollywood’s evil influence, since September 11, the pols have not only stopped scolding Hollywood, they have come courting.
   First, Washington policy wonks acknowledged what any movie goer knows — that Hollywood is far better at seeing around corners than Washington — and came calling on filmmakers to find out not only what was going to happen next out there in the real world, but how to deal with it – because variations of what happened on September 11 had already happened in the movies.
   Second, last Sunday, George W. Bush’s top political advisor Karl Rove met with about 40 studio executives at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills.
   According to the Los Angeles Times, a faxed invitation to the meeting said, in part, “The anticipated outcome of the meeting would be an initial plan encompassing several substantive ways we can lend support to our nation’s cause. We assure you that this will be a private, confidential working meeting of the most senior administration officials and entertainment industry principals only. No press or elected officials will be present.”
   Washington – which has spent 80 years attacking Hollywood’s portrayal of America – now wants Hollywood to sell America to the world.
   Has anyone here seen “Wag the Dog?”
   No medium is more powerful than the movies. And Washington knows it. That’s why it has spent so much time and energy attempting to bring Hollywood to heel and why now, under the banner of patriotism, wants to put it to work for the government.
   But it isn’t Hollywood’s job to produce propaganda to order for Washington. Its job is to make movies -– and make them truly and well.
   The Hollywood executives who gathered in the Peninsula on Sunday are more beholden to the mega-corporations that own the studios than to Hollywood. They are not filmmakers; they are business people – who are probably more at home with the Bush people than with the people who actually make films. And so, once again, it is up to the people who actually make the movies – producers, directors, writers and actors — to reject this latest terrible idea from Washington.
   Good movies – the kind that roil our hearts and stick in our heads – are made by hugely talented, iconoclastic, passionate people – from Hawks, Capra and Ford to Kasden, Soderberg and Hansen. Such people don’t take orders, much less make movies to order.
   Washington’s current overtures to Hollywood are as wrong-headed as its long-running assaults on Hollywood. As movie mogul Sam Goldwyn famously said, “If you want to send a message, call Western Union.”