GOP Donors Ignore Movies at Their Peril

As is boldly apparent, progressives have captured and now maintain a near monopoly on the nation’s institutions.

• Media
• Sports
• News
• Academia
• NGOs
• Publishing
• The civil service

Progressives own most of the major cultural levers, and their philosophy controls them. The recent election has engendered hope of a conservative claw back.

The environment is target-rich, but equal in importance among our wayward institutions is the field of entertainment, specifically, film and streaming TV. For too long, Hollywood content engendered something like fear on the right side of the political spectrum.

In 2015, I teamed with screenwriter and novelist Roger L. Simon to raise $12 million to finance a historical drama on 1960’s radicals. Think Bill Ayers, who was seminal in the rise of Barack Obama; Columbia professor Kathy Boudin who participated in an armored car robbery in which two cops and one driver were murdered; and Joanne Chesimard, a convicted murderer who escaped prison and made it to Cuba, where she was granted asylum.

Violence, sex, crime, courtrooms, cops and prison — all proven elements of successful entertainment. This time, the aim would be an honest narrative, one detailing how despicable these progressive “heroes” were.

It served the dual purpose of establishing the notion, a beachhead, if you will, that there existed an underserved audience that was pro-America and anti-left wing. In short, an audience that not so many years ago was routinely served by Hollywood.

I put together a brief PowerPoint presentation and compiled a list of GOP donors: Mellon, Adelson, Koch, Singer, Friess, McMahon, Walton, Wynn, Johnson and a host of others, summing to a few dozen.

I can only guess how tedious it must become to have a great deal of money and be besieged by people who want you to give some to them. However, there are worthy charities, and the wealthy give generously to them.

None of them offer the chance of a profit, let alone an opportunity to influence and persuade the public as stories often do. I felt our argument was a good one, and the Oscar-nominated Simon, at least, provided a well-established talent.

At the time, the Koch brothers had announced they had cobbled together donors who had pledged a combined $980 million to defeat Hillary Clinton. That meant our goal was a smidgen more that 1 percent of that amount. Interestingly, when Donald Trump became Clinton’s opposing candidate, that consortium of donors declined financial participation.

I call this interesting because, obviously, Trump won without the $980 million, an outcome which, it seems, at least makes it fair to ask: Is political advertising the only path to political victory?*

Response to our overture was something beneath underwhelming.

I recall a very kind letter from Linda McMahon, a woman who knows and understands show business. And there was a particularly thoughtful response from the office of the late Foster Friess.

However, the only spark of hope arrived in an email from Tim Phillips, the head of Americans for Prosperity. That’s the organization that reportedly shepherded the ephemeral $980 million, in which he offered a conversation.

I don’t know what happened or why, but all my subsequent efforts to reach him failed.

RELATED: KEVIN SORBO MAKES MOVIES ON HIS OWN TERMS

To be sure, no one has a claim to anybody’s time or money. Rejection is a permanent fixture in the entertainment industry, and I long ago learned to accept it with equanimity. Of course, a willingness to hear “no” makes it a good deal easier to ask nearly anything.

The movie business paradigm that existed for more than a hundred years is done. There aren’t going to be movie stars as we once understood them. Netflix, which is carrying enormous debt, has turned the financial corner, but other streaming services struggle to earn a profit.

People have paid to see entertainment since at least the ancient Greeks. That’s 3,000 years of data suggesting that well-told stories will always matter. From an entrepreneurial point of view, it’s an asset, one that is extremely valuable but is presently reeling and diminished.

Isn’t that when you want to grab an asset? Doesn’t this moment afford the best opportunity to trample competitors, and in so doing open avenues to profit and political persuasion?

Who knows, perhaps if people can be persuaded to a point of view before an election, it won’t be necessary to pour so much money down the depthless hole of advertising when campaign season begins.

*Harris significantly outspent Trump in the recent election which, at least in part, further bolsters the notion that there are better ways to invest political capital than in advertising.

KH Cutts was formerly a regional theater actor and a sometime screenwriter. He spent the last two years writing under the pseudonym Charles Martel for the Canada Free Press. He can be found on X at @CassandraTwist and contributes to both Rumble and The Federalist.