by Dave Kopel
America's 1st Freedom, April 2014
Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein boasts production credit for 279 films. He is
about as big a deal as a person can be in Hollywood.
Meryl Streep is generally recognized as one of the greatest movie actresses
of all time, nominated for more Academy Awards than any other actor. Now,
Weinstein and Streep are teaming up for a new movie, "The Senator's Wife," which
Weinstein says is intended to destroy the National Rifle Association and firearm
manufacturers, moving America forward to complete gun prohibition.
On Dec. 21, 2012, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre criticized
Hollywood's "blood-soaked films" for their sensational portrayals of violence.
Included in Harvey Weinstein's filmography are some of the most notoriously and
sadistically violent films ever made.
Weinstein's revelation about the upcoming NRA movie came in an unusual way,
during a Jan. 15, 2014, radio interview on the "Howard Stern Show." Weinstein is
currently directing a movie about the 1943 Jewish uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto
during the Holocaust. He said this story of "Jews with guns" is one he has
wanted to tell his whole life, ever since he was nine years old and his aunt
gave him the book "Mila 18" by Leon Uris, a historical novel about the Uprising.
Stern asked Weinstein how a movie portraying armed Jewish resistance to the
Holocaust could be squared with Weinstein's strong support for gun prohibition.
Weinstein responded that guns were justifiable to fight genocide.
"This is when you're marching half-a-million people into Auschwitz," he said.
"I mean, whatever, I'd find a gun if that was happening to my people. ... I don't
think we need guns in this country. And I hate it. The NRA is a disaster area."
Weinstein's reasoning is weak. He wants guns banned, but he also wants
genocide resisters to have guns. Where are those guns supposed to come from,
anyway? Real-world resisters can't just make a phone call to the props
department.
In the Warsaw Ghetto, the resisters started with just 10 handguns and some
cartridges they had stolen from the Nazis. If Weinstein was aware of the real
history of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, he would know that the uprising was
greatly weakened by the gun confiscation the Nazis had imposed after conquering
Poland in 1939.
Perhaps sensing that he had talked himself into a corner, Weinstein shifted
the discussion to a related topic.
"I shouldn't say this, but I'll tell it to you, Howard," he said. "I'm going
to make a movie with Meryl Streep, and we're going to take this issue head-on."
As for the NRA, he boasted, "They're going to wish they weren't alive after I'm
done with them."
Weinstein further explained that the movie would not be a documentary, but
rather a "big movie like 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington'." In the classic "Mr.
Smith," Jimmy Stewart portrays a naive and good-hearted man who is appointed to
the U.S. Senate, discovers that Congress is totally corrupt and launches a
successful filibuster in support of his proposal to build a national boy's camp.
Weinstein predicted that his new movie will destroy the American firearm
industry, because he would create such strong anti-gun sentiment that nobody
would want to own stock in firearm manufacturers.
"It's going to be like crash and burn," he claimed.
In "The Senator's Wife," Streep will apparently portray the title character.
Follow-up reporting by the entertainment blog "Deadline" explained that the
movie is intended to "expose the NRA for their behind-the-scenes machinations of
what Obama himself called 'intimidation' and 'lies' that ended up defeating
legislation that would have expanded background checks on gun sales." "The
Senator's Wife" will be "a behind-the-scenes account of how the NRA used its
influence with politicians to defeat the bill."
In April 2013, on the afternoon that the Obama-Bloomberg gun control bill was
defeated in the Senate, President Obama did, indeed, blame "intimidation" and
"lies" for the defeat. Of course, Obama didn't mention that the White House,
including Vice President Joe Biden personally, had been intimidating moderate
Democrats throughout the country in order to pass anti-gun laws. Nor did Obama
take any responsibility for the lies that he and his administration had
incessantly repeated, such as the falsehood that 40 percent of gun sales do not
include background checks.
In Weinstein's tale, the only reason the Obama anti-gun campaign failed was
NRA "lies." Weinstein is certainly very loyal to the president, having raised
more than a half million dollars for Obama's 2012 re-election.
Weinstein is reportedly worth about $150 million, and he has made much of
that money by promoting gun violence. Six of his movies are on CNN's list of the
top 20 most violent movies of all time: "Sin City," "Kill Bill: Vol. 1," "Kill
Bill: Vol. 2," "Rambo" (2008), "Inglourious Basterds" [sic] and "Django
Unchained." And that's just scratching the surface of Weinstein's career of
promoting violence.
Consider a Weinstein film that didn't make the top 20 list, "Pulp Fiction"
(1994). Deadline.com quoted one studio head that turned down that movie. He
recalled, "I didn't think it was funny to have someone's head blown off in a car
and then picking up pieces of someone's brain. But when it came out in the
theaters, people laughed. And I think that is an indication of what is happening
in our society."
Harvey Weinstein had no such scruples, serving as co-executive producer for
that film.
Shortly after announcing his upcoming anti-NRA film, Weinstein appeared on
"Piers Morgan Live." Weinstein told Morgan that he was swearing off gratuitous
violence.
"The change starts here," Weinstein announced. "It has already. For me, I
can't do it. I can't make one movie and say this is what I want for my kids and
then just go out and be a hypocrite. ... I'm not going to make some crazy action
movie just to blow up people and exploit people just for the sake of making it.
... I can't do it."
Weinstein then addressed people who accuse him of hypocrisy.
"Well, I think they have a point," he said. "You have to look in the mirror,
too. I have to choose films that aren't violent or aren't as violent as they
used to be."
Weinstein has plenty of experience in producing movies that don't luxuriate
in violence. These include lightweight kids' movies (e.g. "Air Bud"), as well as
movies that portray more traditional notions of morality, such as modern
versions of Jane Austen novels.
But whether Weinstein will keep his promise to abandon gratuitously violent
movies remains to be seen. The Internet Movie Database (IMDB.com) reports that
Weinstein's announced future films include "Kill Bill: Vol. 3," directed by
Quentin Tarantino. Putting together this sequel will be a challenge for more
reasons than just Weinstein's avowed renouncement of violent content. By the end
of "Kill Bill: Vol. 2," everyone, Bill included, had been gruesomely murdered.
Also in the Weinstein pipeline, according to IMDB.com, is "Halloween III,"
depicting the continuing adventures of a teenage serial killer, and backed by a
$23 million budget. For a director who is supposedly turning his back on
violence, these blood-soaked sequels seem odd choices. While they may have been
in the works before his professed change of heart, he's still apparently willing
to continue his involvement with them.
Of course, "The Senator's Wife" will not be accurate. But accuracy is not
exactly a Weinstein forte, even when he's doing documentaries. Weinstein has
been the producer of three "documentaries" by Michael Moore, "Fahrenheit 9/11,"
"Sicko" and "Capitalism: A Love Story." Moore's track record of deceit,
fabrication and libel is immense--but apparently that is no problem for
Weinstein.
Assuming Weinstein makes good on his promise to attack the NRA, the national
media will almost certainly laud "The Senator's Wife." The release of the movie
may even be heralded as a major turning point in the "national conversation"
about gun violence. The various "grassroots" groups that Bloomberg controls
could exploit the publicity to hold events and fundraisers at movie premieres
all over the country. And the Bloomberg machine could launch a campaign
insisting that America's mothers demand enactment of the Bloomberg gun-ban
agenda.
Also, considering the Hollywood heavyweights involved, "The Senator's Wife"
would almost automatically be in contention for several Academy Awards.
Now you might say to yourself: "So what? I won't see that movie. No matter
what Weinstein says, a single movie isn't going to destroy the NRA and the
American firearms industry."
And you have reason for optimism. Like many Hollywood moguls, Weinstein knows
that hype sells movies, even if the hype doesn't come true. So don't expect the
price of stocks in publicly traded firearm manufacturers like Sturm, Ruger & Co.
or Smith & Wesson to plummet instantly.
But movies can affect culture over the long term. That's the point that
LaPierre was making about "blood-soaked films." From "Pulp Fiction" in 1994 to
the forthcoming "Kill Bill: Vol. 3," Weinstein has played an important role in
coarsening the movie-going audience--much of it young and impressionable--to
brutal criminal violence.
In Hollywood, it is acknowledged that certain types of movies are not
appropriate for young people. That's why Hollywood now slaps an "R" rating on
any movie that depicts smoking. Yet Hollywood sends mixed messages by
structuring its marketing campaigns to appeal to the very people who are
supposedly too young to see the theatrical releases of these films and may later
obtain the "unrated" DVDs.
If you don't think movies matter, consider one of Weinstein's stars,
Sylvester Stallone. Weinstein was executive producer for the 2008 version of
"Rambo," the fourth movie in the "Rambo" series, which debuted in 1982. In the
series, Stallone plays a Special Forces soldier who goes around fighting and
shooting people in Southeast Asia and the United States. The main character's
most distinctive fighting "skill" is spray-firing a machine gun from his hip.
Back in the late 1980s, when the gun prohibition lobbies were just beginning
to promote "assault weapon" bans, they convinced the media to portray
semi-automatics as "Rambo guns." (For example, see The New York Times,
Aug. 1, 1988.)
There were plenty of people at that time who had no idea what a
"semi-automatic" was, but who had seen the TV commercials featuring Rambo
spray-firing his machine gun. The public deceit fostered by the gun prohibition
lobbies was much easier because of Stallone's "Rambo."
Presumably this was fine with Stallone, who is a gun-confiscation advocate
and who has helped the Brady Center raise money. It took about two decades of
public education to overcome the "Rambo" label on semi-automatics, and even
today a large minority of the American public still believes the lie.
Of course, "The Senator's Wife" won't convert most Second Amendment
supporters into civil rights opponents. But there are plenty of uninformed
voters who don't have much of an opinion about gun policy, one way or the other.
They'll go to the movie because it features Streep and other big stars, and some
will leave the movie believing Weinstein's conspiracy theories.
In this respect, "The Senator's Wife" will likely echo Moore's Academy
Award-winning "Bowling for Columbine"--discerning viewers will recognize it as a
pack of lies, but poorly informed viewers may take it at face value. "Bowling
for Columbine" actually became part of the national curriculum in French
schools--mandatory viewing for every French schoolchild, poisoning the next
generation of French minds against Americans and against firearms.
Of course, we would be remiss not to mention that Weinstein has a First
Amendment right to make any kind of movie he wants, anti-nra or not. Likewise,
though, we have a First Amendment right to point out the hypocrisy of an
individual who has made millions on violent films portraying some 5 million
non-violent NRA members across the country as the enemy and swearing to make
them "wish they weren't alive."
Since President Obama has proclaimed his continued support for more gun
control laws--laws that would largely only impact law-abiding Americans--there's
little doubt that he'll be a big fan of the movie. And he's likely to use the
media hype over the film to further push his gun-ban agenda on you and me.
In the end, whether or not "The Senator's Wife" makes a substantial
difference in the future of the Second Amendment remains to be seen. The outcome
may depend in part on whether or not civil rights supporters succeed in exposing
the film's falsehoods to the general public.
