Cinema and The Coming Civil War of Nazi Passive Aggression
Assume Christianity.
I spent the weekend in The City of Angels.
I’d been invited to study screenwriting for a weekend with an organization of storytellers that claimed to be devoted to the idea of liberty.
I was told to draft three concepts to pitch during the weekend. I intended to take this assignment quite seriously and devote several hours of work to its completion.
Instead, I became engrossed in working on a screenplay I’d started, in addition to my other writing projects, which I felt were more pressing and so left the assignment largely drafted only in my head.
My flight left at 6 AM.
I had two screenplays to read on the flight, after which, I was going to write up my three pitches and be ready for the conference that evening in Los Angeles.
Instead, I found Gone With The Wind was offered as an in-flight movie and watched it immediately without hesitation.
There are more important things than deadlines.
I landed in a smoggy summer desert and ordered an Uber. My driver was Gabriel. A black man who spoke no English.
In the back were two more black men. One fat with glasses, one skinny with a do-rag. They spoke English very well.
“Aye John.”
“Yeah?”
“Aye man, you gotta card?”
I didn’t know what.
“Whaddya mean like a business card?”
All three of them laughed.
“Nah nah man. A card, a medical card. We goin’ to the dispensary man.”
“Oh.”
Now, I laughed.
“No, sorry I don’t.”
“Damn man, we looking to have some fun out here.”
Gabriel dropped the two patients on a corner in downtown LA. A green sign with a cannabis leaf reading “BEST BUDS” had an arrow that pointed to the basement stairs of an abandoned building.
I reached my hotel, checked in, then went to the conference.
I expected to find like-minded individuals with a passion for liberty, and for the art we had come to study. Instead, I got a heavy dose of pragmatic, business-oriented, lectures.
There was much value in it, and a lot of very wise people imparted insight and good advice, for all of which, I am grateful.
But there was also a lot of desperation. A lot of people telling long stories about themselves. And some of the most painfully awkward people I’d met since engineering school at UVa.
Most of the attendees pitched TV shows and asked questions about writing for television. They told me movies were dead. That it was a golden age of TV. More than one of them told me that Citizen Kane was overrated.
I listed some other movies I loved.
Obsolete. Out of date. Irrelevant.
On the last day of the conference, there was a two-hour lecture by a professional screenwriter devoted entirely to the thesis that it was better to write for TV than for Film.
I could find no flaws in his argument.
Then he asked who would rather write for Film than TV.
I could tell by his reaction that mine was the only hand raised.
“You? Really? You’d really rather write movies than TV?” He was shocked.
“Yes.”
“Have you been listening to anything I’ve said?”
Laughter.
“Yeah, I have,” I answered flatly.
“And you still want to write for Film, not TV?”
“Oh yeah, absolutely. I’d pick movies over television every time.”
“Why?”
“I just prefer that art form.”
“Do you prefer having income and job security?”
Laughter.
“Well I — I mean — I don’t know. I guess yeah. I mean obviously, I’d like that, but that’s not — ”
“But you’d rather be poor and out of work?”
“No, I just mean that — ”
“Look, I get it, man, you love movies — we all love movies — I’m just saying that doesn’t really exist anymore. And anyway, all the best writers and creative artists are all working on television now.”
He gestured to the room and asked, “What was the last great movie you saw?”
Silence.
“Anybody, just yell it out, last great movie you saw in theaters.”
“Dunkirk!” somebody said.
“Dunkirk. Ok, great, what else?”
Nothing.
“Silence.” I said.
He looked at me. “What?”
“Silence.”
He furrowed his brow. “I don’t…what is that?”
“It was Scorsese’s last picture. A movie called, Silence.”
“Alright well, I’ve never heard of that, but okay. Did that make a lot of money? Did a lot of people see that?”
“No, not at all. He worked on it for thirty years and I think they lost like $45 million on it.”
Laughter.
“Alright, now what’s the last great TV show you saw?”
The room exploded.
I spoke to him privately.
“Hey, I just wanted to say thanks so much for your lecture I learned a lot it was really great.” I said as I shook his hand.
“Oh yeah, of course. My pleasure. So did I convince you to make the switch to TV?”
I forced a polite smile. “No, sorry I just don’t really like that medium. I mean I watch TV and I like TV, it’s just not where my creative ambitions lie.”
“Yeah, but why? I really don’t see the appeal. I mean what exactly is so important to you about movies?”
“Well I don’t know how to explain it exactly it’s just the way my mind works. Rod Serling once said it’s hard to do something important on TV because every six minutes you’re interrupted by a dancing rabbit selling mouthwash.”
He didn’t like that remark. “Well that’s the old days, TV doesn’t get interrupted by commercials anymore.”
I shook my head. “TV rewards filling time and holding attention, and movies depend on efficient and effective storytelling techniques. So movies necessitate more focused, coherent, and potent communication. And that’s always been what’s exciting to me because it’s the communication that I think is important. Obviously, TV has other advantages, and you listed all of those, and I understand that and I respect it, and maybe that’s fine for other people, but for me, personally, I like cinema. I need it. Not movies, not TV, but cinema.”
“See you said there are eight million hours of scripted TV made every year in the US and I think that contributes to a lot of problems. Like we give people a lot of cheap fatty food, easy access to drugs, and lots of porn and casual sex, and top it off with endless hours of amusing entertainment they can access anytime, anywhere, and that tells them that this is the way things are supposed to be. And I know there are a lot of good things about TV, and a lot of great work being done, and all of that, but overall I think it’s making things worse, not better.”
“Scorsese himself said he doesn’t watch anything anymore because ‘The images don’t mean anything.”
“All this pleasure-inducing amusement divides people and makes them complacent. It feeds their addictions and promotes selfish indifference.”
“I spoke to the great English director Terence Davies once and he said ‘television demonstrates, but cinema reveals.’ And David Hume said that it’s the obligation of the poets to bring people into each other’s moral community. So I’ve always thought that artists have a responsibility to reveal people to one another. To reveal people to themselves. And, in a way, to reveal God.”
“Maybe I’m way off base, but if television was doing that then having eight million hours of it should make things better, not let them keep getting worse.”
“I’ve always thought that cinema was the best way to serve God. And I know that sounds a little weird, but that’s why I want to make movies.”
He said I was conceited.
I pitched him one of my movie ideas.
He said, “I think you make a movie like that people will be out hunting you down trying to kill you. People don’t want to see movies like that. They want a satisfying ending. They want answers.”
“Well, what if you were an artist who didn’t have any answers? What would you do if you were me?”
He shrugged. “If I were you? I don’t know, I can’t imagine what that would be like. I think you’re dead.”
“What?”
He leaned forward. “I said I think you’re dead. If you don’t wanna make TV you’re not gonna make anything. You’re dead kid. Film is dead. Movies are dead. I think you might as well forget the whole thing and go do something else.”
I thanked him again.
And shook his hand.
While all of this was going on, on the other side of the country in a little college town called Charlottesville, a Nazi terrorist from Ohio rammed his car into a crowd of Virginians and killed a woman named Heather Heyer.
I lived in Charlottesville for four years and graduated from the University of Virginia in 2014. Someone I’d known then reached out and asked what I thought about what was going on.
I can’t express it.
The images are surreal.
Crowds of torches, yelling white faces, and saluting swastikas all marching on the same lawn where I was taught about Honor and forged many friendships.
The videos of the car slamming into Virginians on the streets where I had been responsible for protecting the health and safety of others churn my stomach.
There is violence and hatred and killing in the town where I fell in love.
And people ask me what I think about it.
And what I have to say about it.
And I can’t find the words to communicate what I feel.
I don’t know what policy agenda to prescribe this sick and wounded nation.
But I can tell you that I have seen a lot of great American movies.
And in these movies are the thoughts and feelings and experiences and sufferings and victories and struggles of countless millions of American men and women who aren’t here today to see what this nation has become, or to say what they think about it, or tell us what to do.
But in some of these movies are a group of evil monsters called the Nazis.
And I don’t know what it’s worth.
I don’t know what to do today, or tomorrow, or the next day.
But I can tell you that in the past, the American answer to the question of what to do about the Nazis was focused, efficient, and effective.
We killed them.
We killed them until they agreed to stop being Nazis.
Good or bad, that’s the historical precedent on this one.
Congressionally sanctioned, multinational, open warfare.
We killed them, until they gave up and then celebrated the fact that we had killed them and that they had given up.
And then we made movies about it.
And we watched them.
And if we don’t remember who we are and find some way to teach each other compassion and love then that’s where we’re going to end up again.
At war with the Nazis.
Killing them because we couldn’t teach them to love.
But this time it’s not going to be in Germany, or France, or anywhere else.
This time it’s going to be here.
At home.
A civil war.
And when it’s over, if it comes, then America and what it could have, and should have been will be lost forever.
The place where Liberty and Justice took their last bow.
Look for it only in books, for it will be no more than a dream remembered…
I’m back in New York now, but Virginia is still heavy on my mind.
Everyone I talked to in Los Angeles told me not to bother finishing my screenplay.
No one’s going to read it.
No one’s going to make it.
No one’s going to see it.
And I’m quite certain that when it’s finished, it’s not going to be much good.
But I’m going to finish it anyway.
Fuck it.
Fuck Hitler.
Fuck the Nazis.
Fuck terrorism.
Fuck hate.
I caught the red eye to New York.
And I watched Gone With the Wind again.
May the Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
Wahoowa.
Amen.
