by Mark Rhoads
In 1999, Tim Robbins and Jeff Bridges starred in a movie called Arlington Road about a liberal college professor (Bridges) who is sure his next door suburban neighbor (Robbins) is a domestic terrorist. It was easy for viewers to see that Robbins must be the villain. He was a member of the NRA, his sons were in the Boy Scouts, and his wife actually attended meetings of a Bible study group at her church where the pastor was light years from the enlightened Unitarians in town. So the whole family must be terrorists right? After all they fit the nice little profile of clumsy Left Wing screen writers who never venture beyond the Ahi Tuna corridor along either coast line and seldom deign to visit anyone in fly-over country if they even know someone who lives there.
This week ABC has a new drama called Happy Town which labors to reassure liberal urban dwellers who still watch the most hours of TV that thy are not the real freaks in America but instead you must watch out for those demons who dwell in those small rural midwestern towns that reject enlightened liberalism as they hide bigots and serial killers in beautiful old Victorian houses that are too perfectly painted with lawns too well manicured.
Did we see this one coming or not? Lefists never want to engage with conservatives on the merits of any policy debate, but they start by trying hard to tear down their Left Wing concept of the conservative fantasy (that is not a fantasy) of an ideal of a small town America with solid religious values. And if they can't do that, at least they can try to show how low crime rates and the benefits of home school education must come at a terrible price such as hiding crazy uncles in the attic or serial killers in the church basement.
The great pro-American director Frank Capra, who won six Academy Awards, once advised young writers and directors at a dinner of the American Film Institute not to be trend followers but instead be trend spotters in advance when he accepted his AFI lifetime achievement award . There was a time when many Hollywood writers were very creative and original instead of boring and predictable. I think the reason for the difference in generations was that many of the writers after World War II had served in the military and knew something about how freedom was scarce in other countries. But today's crop of Lefist writers have few original lifetime experiences beyond just watching other movies, special effects, and each other. As Michael Keaton said of his clones in the movie Multiplicity (1996) When you keep making copies of copies of copies, the last copies turn out distorted and warped and so do copies of copies of real writers.
