Liberalism Kills. . . Hollywood Careers?

We all know that Hollywood is hostile to conservatives. From the liberal-only political contributions, to the scarcity of conservative messages in films, to the abundance of liberal garbage inserted into almost every movie, to the anecdotal stories told by conservatives of being blacklisted, there’s simply too much evidence to support this theory to think that people are just being paranoid. But is being an overt liberal also bad for your career? I think it is.

Let me start by admitting that I have no statistical evidence to back up this article, so this is merely supposition. But over the past 10-15 years, I’ve begun to notice a trend: Hollywood stars seem to kill their careers when they start spouting nasty liberalism.

Hollywood has always bent left. They’ve always made movies like Wall Street to blast “Republican” bankers, China Syndrome to blasted nuclear power, and a slew of movies to hate Nixon. . . boy do they hate Nixon! And there have always been actors who are primarily political, like Robert Redford, who hates Nixon. But these were relatively tame political ventures until the last two decades.

In the 1980s, it became fashionable to support causes: stop pollution, don’t eat dolphin-flavored tuna, boycott South Africa. . . shave the whales. These were the causes that Hollywood types espoused. In fact, it became such a big thing that many stars (who typically are too stupid to tie their own shoes) hired trained public relations firms to find causes for them to “have always felt deeply about.” A few carefully scripted public service announcements later, and bingo -- social relevance.

But everything began to change somewhere around the time the Clintons brought Hollywood into the Lincoln Bedroom. Maybe Hollywood got excited by the idea that they could influence politics? Maybe the politicization of our culture made it easier to be an extremist? Who knows? In any event, Hollywood stars ditched their do-gooder projects and their PSAs and they jumped headlong into politics. Suddenly, political endorsements and campaign commercials were the order of the day.

Then they started getting nasty, and that’s where the problems began. Soon Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon were doing hatchet jobs on Republicans. Then, one by one, the likes of Sean Penn and Danny Glover set out to fellate dictators, Matt Damon and George Clooney went overseas to attack our country as evil, racist and corrupt, and Janeane Garfalo and a dozen others started using “hate speech” against anyone on the right every time they opened their mouths.

And during this whole time, a correlation began to appear: the more these actors spoke, the more their careers collapsed. Look at Penn. Post-Madonna Penn was respected and slowly but surely was establishing himself as an A list actor. . . until he opened his mouth. Now he works in political flicks, but it would be inconceivable to put him into a mainstream movie.

Damon and Clooney were both huge. In fact, I would honestly say that Clooney (and later Damon) was on his way to becoming Hollywood’s biggest present-day star until he started shooting off his mouth. Suddenly, all of his films began to flop. There were no boycotts, no protests; he just lost the ability to get people to come see his films. Could it be that he suddenly couldn’t choose a good film? Or was the audience responding to a growing dislike for his politics? Ditto with Damon, who is now also running on a curious losing streak (apart from his Bourne franchise).

Robbins and Sarandon all but vanished from film, except for bit parts in ensemble pieces. Garafalo, never exactly a star, is now non-existent. And what was the last movie Danny Glover starred in? Alex Baldwin was chased from film around the time of his “move to Canada promise,” and was only rescued by sit-coms.

And there are more. Brad Pitt’s star seems to have faded with his increased political activity. Megan Fox may have killed her career with a combination of hate-filled statements about flyover country people and criticism of her directors. Steven Weber never had a career, but what he had seems finished now that he’s joined the Hollywood Haters Club. Kevin Costner collapsed after Dances With Wolves, and Meryl Streep’s career all but fell apart after she became a verb (“the Streeping of science”), until she was saved by Satan, i.e. The Devil Wears Prada. Tom Hanks hasn’t faded yet, but he’s only recently started to say really stupid things. . . and average people are commenting on it. But these are only some examples.

What I can’t say for certain is whether these stars faded because they began saying stupid political things that offended large parts of the population, or if they started saying stupid things because their careers were fading? Or said differently, did the public begin to shun these actors when they crossed that line into anti-Americanisms? Or did they cross that line hoping to draw attention to themselves to revive moribund careers? Pitt, Damon and Clooney certainly still seemed to have their best years ahead of them when they opened their mouths and began their slides. Moreover, since making these political statements seems to hasten the career decline, it doesn't make a lot of sense that stars would be doing this to save a sagging career.

Could it be that once these actors became “established,” they started taking “riskier films”, i.e. less commercial films, which makes all of this just coincidental? That doesn't seem likely. That could arguably be the case for Clooney, but not for Damon or Costner. Damon and Costner kept right on churning out purely commercial films. It’s just that no one wants to see them anymore.

It’s hard to say anything definite on this because it’s hard to tell exactly what came first -- -- decline or diarrhea-mouth? It’s also hard to tell at what point they first crossed that line into anti-Americanism, and when their views first became well-known to the public. Not to mention that many of these actors still work, just at a much lower level than before.

But putting on my educated guess cap, I would say that this trend that I’m noticing indicates that when actors start spouting off things that offend middle America, middle America simply stops seeing their films. Take for example the total failure of all of Hollywood’s Iraq films. Damon’s Green Zone had a budget of $100 million and pulled in about $26 million domestically in theaters ($86 million total gross), despite being made by the same people who made the highly successful Bourne series. Look at some of these other numbers: The Hurt Locker $21.3 million despite all of its awards, Body of Lies $39 million, Stop-Loss $10.6 million, In the Valley of Elah $6.7 million, Grace is Gone less than $1 million, and The Messenger less than $1 million.

Maybe this just means that people don’t want to be reminded of Iraq? A more likely reason for this level of failure is that people are voting with their wallets and they are tuning out films that they see as being insulting to their values. That would certainly back up the idea that overt, nasty liberalism is a career killer.

Thoughts?