In the 2015 movie “Trumbo,” top Hollywood scriptwriter Dalton Trumbo fights against the evils of a blacklist that prevents him from earning a living in the late 1940s and 1950s because of his membership in the Communist Party of the United States.
The plot of the film — based on a true story — could work for a documentary about Hollywood today, but with an important twist. Now far-left and pro-Communist voices are celebrated. The cancel culture has come for conservative and Christian voices. And heaven help anyone in Hollywood who supports President Trump.
Actor Antonio Sabato Jr. is out to change that.
ANTONIO SABATO JR. ANNOUNCES HE'S STARTING A 'CONSERVATIVE MOVIE STUDIO': 'NO MORE BLACKLISTING'
Sabato, remembered for a congressional run and his role on “General Hospital,” on Thursday announced a way to fight back. In true Andy Hardy fashion, he’s putting on a show — a lot of them. He’s starting a conservative movie studio. He has to.
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It’s insanely difficult for good men and women in Hollywood who aren’t on the far left. “I was blacklisted,” he said. "All my representatives left me, from agents to managers to commercial agents. I literally had to move, find a new job to survive and take care of my kids."
That gave Sabato the impetus to fix things. “We are putting together a plan to create a conservative movie studio for all patriots to do projects that Hollywood would never do,” he tweeted.
That’s a mighty long list. Hollywood no longer makes many movies that celebrate our nation or tell the true stories of the American experience. The gap between the Left Coast and the rest of our country has grown bigger than the Grand Canyon (the place, not the mediocre Lawrence Kasdan movie.)
The gap between the Left Coast and the rest of our country has grown bigger than the Grand Canyon.
Hollywood has lost the ability to craft stories about real life, and viewers know it. The audience has moved on to the only things movies can deliver effectively — escapist stories of animation, science fiction and superheroes. In the pre-pandemic days of 2019, back when people went to movie theaters, the top 10 films were completely dominated by such fantastic fare.
The closest thing to a movie about normal people was the murder mystery “Knives Out.” It was ranked 21st. Four separate superhero movies punched their way into the Top 10, including No. 1 “Avengers: Endgame.”
You have to go all the way back to 2000 to find a year where the Top 10 featured several movies even plausibly realistic. From “Gladiator” to “The Perfect Storm,” Hollywood actually focused on real human beings doing heroic things.
Even when such movies are made, Hollywood doesn’t try to replicate the effort. There was no attempt to capitalize on the success of 2014’s “American Sniper.” Clint Eastwood’s biopic about the military’s deadliest sniper resonated with the parts of America where citizens still revere the flag and volunteer for military service.
There could, and should, be many more such movies. Just look at the patriots who earned the Medal of Honor. More than 3,400 of these medals have been awarded to our military heroes. But we are lucky if we get one big box office movie about heroes in a year. Until now.
It won’t be easy. Sabato is starting a movie company. He’ll still be ignored by most big names and have to fight with unions, wealthy blacklisters and distribution networks that are run by people who hate the right. He might have to create entirely alternate means of distribution — churches and political clubs, for example.
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It’s daunting, but this week had to give all of us hope. The world watched as the left and the media came for Goya Foods CEO Robert Unanue simply because of the kind words he had for President Trump. Everyone expected Unanue to back down and apologize. To run away and beg for forgiveness.
He stood his ground. Supporters flocked to stores to buy every bit of Goya food they could find. Even President Trump and his daughter backed Goya.
Cancel culture was canceled for a time. If we can do it once, we can do it every single day.
That means we can give Sabato our support — and when the time comes, our dollars. If he’s willing to fight for our free speech, how dare we do anything less?
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One statement Sabato made sticks with me. It was a commitment: “No more blacklisting and no more injustice from the socialist's elites," he wrote.
Here’s hoping Sabato can pull it off, end the new blacklist and give all of us a reason to say “Hurray for Hollywood” again.
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