Total Culture War
The vibes they are a-shifting, folks. You may not want to be in a culture war, but you’re getting drafted to fight it whether you like it or not.
And in a total culture war, you must press the advantage. Do not let up. Fight every day and wear the other side down. It’s more fun that way, trust me.
Let’s review the state of the battlefield:
This summer, Sound of Freedom became the “conservative” movie that smoked Hollywood. So far it’s made over $200 million.
Then there was that ginger redneck with the country song about rich politicians.
Just this past week, some new movie trailers dropped that—shocker—star hyper masculine white men inflicting brutal vigilante violence on bad guys. The bad guys in some of these movies are…HISPANIC. Do DEI casting quotas even count when the BIPOC actors play villains?
Even more incredible: these male heroes are not superheroes. They’re just regular schmos. No one is named Batman. No one wears a cape or wields supernatural strength.
In John Woo’s SILENT NIGHT, a suburban dad goes on a bloody revenge killing spree against the Latino gang that killed his son.
In MUZZLE, Aaron Eckhart plays an LAPD cop who goes on a bloody revenge killing spree against the Latino gang. that killed his canine partner.
Cops playing good guys again? Wut?!
And in THE BEEKEEPER, Jason Statham goes on a bloody revenge killing spree against the phishing company that stole a nice old lady’s money.
I don’t even know John Woo’s politics and it doesn’t matter. But the trailer might juice natural spirits and quench a thirst lot of people forgot they still had.
Hyper masculine action heroes are back on the menu, boys!
And I haven’t even gotten to the goings-on in the world of dissident publishing, where our friends over at Passage Press are doing big things.
I even managed to get a book published this year—under my anonymous Twitter handle!
Truly, we are not tired of winning, are we, folks?
Female Recruits for the Culture Wars to Come
The shift has reached beyond the box office. As you know, I wrote about the right-wing-adjacent feminism debate that took place here in L.A. last month. Obsolete celeb fluffer rag Vanity Fair posted (one month later!) what was meant to be a Longhouse-style takedown of the Free Press debate held in L.A. last month.
But she also accidentally committed a Noticing:
What played out in that theater was the change of guard amongst some of the city’s most esteemed culture players—the land of the elite, Hollywood liberal shape-shifting into a post–#MeToo believe-nothing mindset.
In other words, a vibe shift is here.
A number of self-identifying (or formerly self-identifying liberals) fear that the culture has come for them, with millennial mobs lurking around every corner, like little woke assassins. They feel suddenly afraid to say what they think at a dinner party, never mind on social media or at the office…. People on the coasts aren’t paying attention to this shift within the coasts—an ideological power shift that could shift culture and politics and what’s “safe” to say and who it’s “safe” to say it to.
It’s always charming when a journolib discovers a group of people who have rediscovered the pleasures of speaking their minds. Imagine doing that—out loud! On stage! In Los Angeles, home of the totalitarian mind control overlords of Hollywood!
This debate also featured a hateful gay comedian who dared to make transphobic jokes like “this is the first generation of kids who will be gifted ‘cocks and pussies’ by their parents.
Funny ‘cause it’s true!
The Absolute State of Culture on the Right
The Vanity Fair article goes on to cite the success of the Christian anti-pedo movie Sound of Freedom and the Deliverance kitsch novelty song “Rich Men North of Richmond” as more evidence that the culture is inexorably slipping through her—and the rest of the dead media’s—cold, dead fingers.
A number of prominent right-wing and libertarian media companies over the last year.. are, with great success, tapping into a moment in which political lines are dictating and dividing the kind of content people are willing to consume. Millions of Americans who mainstream pop culture are tribally throwing all of their money and attention behind entertainment that jives with their political views in a way that could result in two separate centers of what was once a singular hub of pop culture. A number of companies, from the Daily Wire to Fox News, have made this play in Hollywood as of late, to create culturally aligned content fit exactly to fill the gaping hole that mainstream creators have left open.
(Isn’t the phrase “gaping hole” transphobic? Or is she talking about the new season of Jazz?)
Unfortunately, outside the relatively limited creative efforts (i.e., successful feature films) coming out of “right wing” media companies, there are very few players developing original IP that could be considered ideologically right wing.
I don’t mean overtly political IP. I don’t mean overtly Christian IP. My grand unifying theory of the kind of creative output we need is that it should be overtly non-political. No more Fox News documentaries. No more movie vehicles starring the latest cancelled actor. No more pitching a scripted series as “non-woke,” even if it is non-woke.
Make it good. Make it true. Make it entertaining. And let the politics be implied.
Which of course makes these projects extremely political. Based, even!
Imagine stories without race quotas, without totally unnecessary LGBTQ sex scenes, without script sensitivity readers, and without Bechtel tests.
For example:
A movie about a man who hates the DEI-driven struggle sessions at his corporate job
A series about a family who gets cancelled by the left for writing a politically incorrect book
A Fugitive-style action movie about a father who has to kidnap his son before his crazy ex can schedule his castration surgery
You get the idea. They’re not stories about “conservatives.” There are no lectures. No preaching. No moralizing. These are examples of stories of regular people thrust into uncomfortable situations against their will. Kind of like our life every day.
After all, the best movies, the ones we all love, are about people who are not explicitly ideological and would prefer to be left alone.
But like Sarah Conner, wishing we wish we weren’t targeted for termination won’t make it true. We’re going to have to accept that this new normal “will never end;” at least, not anytime soon. In the meantime, we can mine it for content gold!
Enter Hollywood, Stage Right
I am quite intrigued by this turn of events. When I’m not writing reactionary housewife screeds and trying to boost our numbers, I am plotting various creative projects that could, theoretically, help us take back the culture. Movies, book, TV series: we need all of it. So far pickings are still slim to none.
If you follow me on X you know I’ve been tweeting out story ideas for a while now.
Anyway, these are the things I think about late at night. Just like some of you do!
That’s why in the 4HL I am lowkey launching a creative development company. What’s that, you ask? Well it’s not a talent agency, a movie studio, or a production company. It doesn’t need camera equipment or actors. It is a development company, where we literally develop ideas. Turn ideas into notions, then expand them into concepts. There’s a lot of writing involved. Beat outlining. And brainstorming.
For now, my company will be focused on developing projects that are mostly mine. A few things have co-writers.
What’s it called? Lost Riviera Studios. Yes, this is happening. And while right now I will be focusing on developing my own original IP, at some point I hope to open it up to outside talent, other writers, and spec script submissions.
Is anyone on our side doing this? Maybe, I don’t know! If they are, nobody’s told me about it. So I’m building a team (of one LOL).
LOVERBOYS
I got hired to write a feature screenplay with a writing partner a few years ago. We got paid to write a spec based on a specific pitch. But the makers decided they couldn’t sell a “period” caper movie starring Americans to the Chinese film market. Many such cases!
The image above is the real poster a graphic designer made for us.
(Note: Yes, I am a based mommy blogger and author of a trad wife how-to manual. But I am also a writer—and writing crowd-pleaser popular entertainment is my love language. The dual nature of woman, you could say. Is this okay?)
LOVERBOYS is one of my favorite things I’ve ever worked on. I thought some of you might enjoy reading it. The idea was to capture a moment in time right before the 1970s turned into the 1980s. It’s a comedy, a caper movie, and buddy road trip flick.
Here’s the logline:
It’s the last summer of the seventies in swinging San Francisco. Peter, a handsome lothario, is on verge of losing his second job in a year. When he find out that his computer nerd best friend has hacked his way into a get-rich-quick scheme, life takes a turn for the better—but not for long. When things go awry, Peter and his three pals find themselves on the run in St. Tropez—pursued by the FBI, the Chicago mob, a notorious Columbian drug kingpin, movie stars—and one angry wife.
I am including a free teaser for my free subs, plus the entire script for paid subscribers.
I also asked DALL-E to design the movie poster and the results were sort of awesome:
How amazing are those?! Hilariously terrible yet awesome. The screenplay was not written by AI. It was slaved over by actual humans.
Here’s a 20-page teaser everyone can read:
Please tell me what you think!
The rest of this post, including the full-length script as a downloadable PDF, is for paid subscribers.
Please consider subscribing—there will be lots more fun stuff coming. Think about it this way: you are investing in a cultural revolution.
I’ll be using the Lost Riviera section of my Substack to add more details on all current in-development projects. I want to know what you guys think. And who knows, maybe one day someone might even want to see one of these things produced!
This is how we win, folx. Thanks for reading.
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