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Thursday, February 26, 2009
Reading List: Blacklisting Myself
- Simon, Roger L. Blacklisting Myself. New York: Encounter Books, 2008. ISBN 978-1-59403-247-9.
-
The author arrived in Hollywood in the tumultuous year of
1968,
fired by his allegiance to the New Left and experience in the civil
rights struggle in the South to bring his activism to the screen and,
at the same time, driven by his ambition to make it big in the movie
business. Unlike the multitudes who arrive starry-eyed in tinseltown
only to be frustrated trying to “break in”, Simon
succeeded, both as a screenwriter (he was nominated
for an Oscar for his screen adaptation of
Enemies:
A Love Story and as a novelist, best known for his
Moses Wine detective fiction. One of the Moses Wine
novels,
The Big Fix,
made it to the screen, with Simon also writing the screenplay.
Such has been his tangible success that the
author today lives in the Hollywood Hills house once shared
by Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe.
This is in large part a memoir of a life in Hollywood, with
pull-no-punches anecdotes about the celebrities and
players in the industry, and the often poisonous culture
of the movie business. But is also the story of the author's
political evolution from the New Left through Hollywood
radical chic (he used to hang with the Black Panthers)
and eventual conversion to neo-conservatism which
has made him a “Hollywood apostate” and
which he describes on the first page of the book as
“the ideological equivalent of a sex change
operation”. He describes how two key
events—the O. J. Simpson trial and the terrorist attacks of
2001—caused him to question assumptions he'd always
taken as received wisdom and how, once he did start to
think for himself instead of nodding in agreement with
the monolithic leftist consensus in Hollywood, began
to perceive and be appalled by the hypocrisy not only
in the beliefs of his colleagues but between their
lifestyles and the values they purported to champion.
(While Simon has become a staunch supporter of efforts,
military and other, to meet the threat of Islamic
aggression and considers himself a fiscal conservative,
he remains as much on the left as ever when it comes
to social issues. But, as he describes, any dissent whatsoever
from the Hollywood leftist consensus is enough to put
one beyond the pale among the smart set, and possibly
injure the career of even somebody as well-established
as he.)
While never suggesting that he or anybody else has been the victim of
a formal blacklist like that of suspected Communist sympathisers in
the 1940s and 1950s, he does describe how those who dissent often
feign support for leftist causes or simply avoid politically charged
discussions to protect their careers. Simon was one of the first
Hollywood figures to jump in as a blogger, and has since reinvented
himself as a New Media entrepreneur, founding
Pajamas Media and
its associated ventures; he continues to
actively blog.
An early adopter of technology since the days of the
Osborne 1 and CompuServe forums, he believes that new
technology provides the means for an end-run around Hollywood
groupthink, but by itself is insufficient (p. 177):
The answer to the problem of Hollywood for those of a more conservative or centrist bent is to go make movies of their own. Of course, to do so means finding financing and distribution. Today's technologies are making that simpler. Cameras and editing equipment cost a pittance. Distribution is at hand for the price of a URL. All that's left is the creativity. Unfortunately, that's the difficult part.
A video interview with the author is available.
Posted at
23:16
