How to Dry Up Hollywood Funding for Democrats
Tired of Hollywood powers that be attacking Republicans in the most insulting and ignorant (see Barbra Streisand tweets, for example) way? You can strike back, YUGELY.
Tom Hanks and Oprah routinely promoted Barack Obama. Have you had enough of Mark Ruffalo (who did not attend college) spouting nonsense and twaddle to his millions of twitter followers? Disgusted by Leonardo DiCaprio, Al Gore and many more celebrities lecturing us on our responsibilities to Mother Earth while they consume vast amounts of carbon and calories (in the case of the latter, anyway)? Does George Clooney need a bigger estate on Lake Como? Does Johnny Depp need more money to blow and pay lawyers to defend himself from charges he beats up women?
For decades, conservatives have been under siege from Hollywood. The few overtly conservative actors have been all but blacklisted and, their Marrano counterparts are often afraid of revealing their true selves to coworkers. Democrats routinely collect donations from Democrats in La-La Land. They often also benefit from the luster celebrities impart to their campaigns via appearances, performances, and social media.
There is one easy way to strike back and it was revealed by, of all places, the New York Times.
The past summer box office has been one of the most horrendous Hollywood has faced in years. This has been partly due to competition from other entertainment options (including video gaming), high ticket prices, and a run of movies that are just plain awful.
The Hollywood hypocrisy that runs rampant might also have made feeding the beast less appealing as time has progressed. (How many industries and jobs have been lost because of Hollywood propaganda? Please see my 2013 column on Hollywood’s Pious Hypocrisy that also covers the pernicious effects of widespread nepotism in Hollywood)
Rather than look in the mirror (something you think vain people would do quite often) and realize that their old tired formulas and retread sequels are to blame as well as liberal braying Hollywood has continued to pour out mush for the masses. Well, the masses have struck back and so can you
Brooks Barnes of the New York Times reports on the pain the website Rotten Tomatoes has caused the misnamed entertainment industry.
Between the first weekend in May and Labor Day, a sequel-stuffed period that typically accounts for 40 percent of annual ticket sales, box office revenue in North America totaled $3.8 billion, a 15 percent decline from the same span last year. To find a slower summer, you would have to go back 20 years. Business has been so bad that America’s three biggest theater chains have lost roughly $4 billion in market value since May.
Ready for the truly alarming part? Hollywood is blaming a website: Rotten Tomatoes.
But most studio fingers point toward Rotten Tomatoes, which boils down hundreds of reviews to give films “fresh” or “rotten” scores on its Tomatometer. The site has surged in popularity, attracting 13.6 million unique visitors in May, a 32 percent increase above last year’s total for the month, according to the analytics firm comScore.
Studio executives’ complaints about Rotten Tomatoes include the way its Tomatometer hacks off critical nuance, the site’s seemingly loose definition of who qualifies as a critic and the spread of Tomatometer scores across the web. Last year, scores started appearing on Fandango, the online movie ticket-selling site, leading to grousing that a rotten score next to the purchase button was the same as posting this message: You are an idiot if you pay to see this movie.
Mr. Ratner’s sentiment was echoed almost daily in studio dining rooms all summer, although not for attribution, for fear of giving Rotten Tomatoes more credibility. Over lunch last month, the chief executive of a major movie company looked me in the eye and declared flatly that his mission was to destroy the review-aggregation site.
The column points out claims that movies that have basically been all but destroyed at the box office by postings on Rotten Tomatoes. The irony is that Rotten Tomatoes is headquartered in the belly of the beast (Beverly Hills) and is owned in part by movie studios and Fandango.
So how can you, John Q. Citizen register your disapproval of not only movies but the liberal powerhouse that Hollywood has become (one pines for the days of Ronald Reagan)?
Register to become an official critic on Rotten Tomatoes. The requirements are relatively easy --just ask reviewers such as Screen Junkies and Punch Drunk Critics (yes, they are actual Rotten Tomatoes critics).
The Tomatometer (that aggregates scores from reviewers) has become a very important barometer that audiences check across a wide variety of formats (including Fandango and Comcast viewer guides) before deciding whether to purchase tickets.
How to make life as miserable for Hollywood as many of them have played a role in making Americans miserable?
Hit them at the box office –where it hurts. Become a critic for Rotten Tomatoes and post scathing reviews.When only idiots go to movies, maybe they will get the message.
Rush Limbaugh pioneered this sort of strategy in Operation Chaos, and a similar strategy can be used to turn the studio-owned (!) Rotten Tomatoes into a Frankenstein that destroys its own.