The Reactionary Utopian
                    February 26, 2007


HOW TO MAKE A GREAT MOVIE
by Joe Sobran

     Despite Seymour Hersh's latest lurid allegations in 
THE NEW YORKER, I don't think the Bush administration 
really wants to nuke Iran. Thinking outside the box, it 
has merely realized that an obvious solution to global 
warming is nuclear winter. And if Iran strikes back, so 
much the better, in the long run.

     So this may be just their way of saving the planet. 
And after all, isn't that what we want? Can't we all just 
get along?

     Not that this will stop Al Gore and the Hollywood 
Left from caterwauling. Those people are never satisfied.

     They finally gave Marty Scorsese an Oscar for THE 
DEPARTED, a film about hoods in Boston. I enjoyed it as a 
work of art, but I asked my brother Tom, a successful 
Boston lawyer, if it was based on the feared Sobran crime 
family and, if so, whether we could sue, but in his 
waggish way, Tom answered only that he thought BORAT was 
based on the Sobrans. I'm not the only wise guy in the 
family, so to speak.

     It occurs to me that in order to make a great movie, 
you have to be not only an artistic genius, but also a 
pretty fair businessman. In the first place, you have to 
raise a lot of money and also gather and coordinate a lot 
of disparate talents, or there will be no movie at all. 
All Rembrandt needed was a few tubes of paint, a brush, 
and a canvas. lt didn't cost him millions of dollars to 
do a picture. Think what Scorsese has to pay for a few 
tubes, as it were, of DiCaprio and DeNiro, not to mention 
stunt men, extras, and key grips. That's why I'm a 
writer. It's a lot cheaper. Rembrandt didn't need stunt 
men.

     Let's just suppose I get an idea for a somewhat 
unconventional children's book, THE LITTLEST HOLOCAUST 
DENIER. This is what Hollywood might call "high concept," 
though I don't see Hollywood snapping it up. It's not 
exactly Harry Potter. And the principal role would 
probably be too challenging for today's child actors.

     Continuing our supposition, let's say Wolfgang 
Amadeus Schickelgruber, nicknamed Wolfie, is a German 
prodigy, a gentle, dreamy, lonely boy with a strong 
independent streak inherited from his father, Hans, who, 
after a few drinks, is apt to blurt out things like, "I 
don't know about you, but as for me, I've had it up to 
here with all this Hitler-bashing. After all, which of us 
is perfect?"

     Such remarks cannot fail to leave their impression 
on a sensitive boy, and soon little Wolfie finds himself 
an outcast at his school. The other children tease him 
about his views -- kids can be so politically correct! -- 
and when his teachers refuse to defend him, he is 
expelled. He is sent to reform school for several months, 
most of the time spent in solitary confinement, then 
placed in a foster home, where he becomes a victim of 
child abuse by his brutally liberal foster parents.

     Isolated, Wolfie is befriended by a kindly skinhead, 
Fritz, the only adult who offers him nonjudgmental 
empathy. "National Socialists are the targets of negative 
stereotypes," Fritz points out. "Even the Pope was a 
member of the Hitler Youth."

     But Wolfie's case becomes an international sensation 
when such civil rights leaders as Al Sharpton take up his 
cause. "We've been here before," says Sharpton. "The Jews 
wouldn't listen to Tawana Brawley, either." At age seven, 
Wolfie is the youngest person ever to be interviewed by 
Larry King.

     He is startlingly articulate and tenacious. "Look 
what happened to Marlon Brando when he said the Jews run 
Hollywood," he tells King. "I remember," says King. "He 
said it right on this show. And he kissed me on the 
mouth." "Brando was sort of weird," Wolfie agrees. "That 
doesn't mean he was wrong."

     But back to Hollywood. Scorsese has to make a dozen 
of the most brilliantly original films of all time and 
wait until he's an old man before he gets his Oscar, and 
Al Gore gets one the very first time he narrates a 
documentary! It must be Gore's bubbly delivery, so 
reminiscent of Robert Preston merrily panicking the River 
City rubes in THE MUSIC MAN. I don't know how else to 
explain it.

     And now the news media are reporting, with their 
usual good taste, that Anna Nicole's remains are 
"decomposing" (except for the implants, presumably). Good 
work, folks! That's the way to keep the American public 
fully informed. Now on to Iran.

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