Conservatives have long pitched their project as a return to normalcy, a way to set right a world that\u2019s gone off its axis. In theory, it\u2019s an understandable goal. Who doesn\u2019t react to getting older and more removed from the engine of culture with an initial feeling that the next generation is doing it wrong?\u00a0<\/p>\n
In practice, the right\u2019s message is more of a respectable veil covering the fact that they want the power to beat up on minorities<\/a> and buy anything they want. But there\u2019s one arena where the right might actually be bringing back an honest-to-goodness return to tradition: the multiplex.<\/p>\n The lines between television and the movies used to be rather rigid. There were movie stars and there were television actors, and rarely did the twain meet. Actors without matinee idol looks or sufficient draw could make a living as character actors. Faded stars could scrape out a second act in B-movies and lesser studio offerings without losing the prestige of the silver screen. Television actors traded that type of cachet for steady work and wider audiences. A movie star appearing on television was a sign of terminal decline.<\/p>\n The rise of prestige television and streaming shook up the established hierarchy. If television could hit something approaching the same cinematic highs and emotional depths as a Hollywood movie, even if rarely, then the stigma of going episodic couldn\u2019t last. The prestige TV gold rush inspired plenty of marquee stars to jump ship, taking roles from deep-pocketed streamers for niche audiences. (Somebody must be watching Reese Witherspoon and Billy Crudup on Apple TV\u2019s \u201cThe Morning Show,\u201d but I can\u2019t say I\u2019ve ever seen them.) The old order and the connotations of each medium had gone post-modern and topsy-turvy.\u00a0<\/p>\n Enter Ben Shapiro.<\/p>\n The Daily Wire co-founder and conservative political commentator has made several attempts to break into Hollywood. Over the years, he has repeatedly alluded to a script he wrote as a young man at the behest of the late ABC executive Leonard Goldberg, while his dramedy about a conservative student at Harvard never got off the ground. But that hasn\u2019t deterred Shapiro. He\u2019s used his political commentary outlet as a springboard to produce a series of execrable comedies and thrillers<\/a>, from 2023\u2019s irredeemable and laughless \u201cLady Ballers,\u201d which centers on a group of former high school basketball players reuniting to compete in women\u2019s basketball by posing as transgender women, to the semi-competent and bloody hatefest \u201cRun Hide Fight: Infidels.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Shapiro\u2019s films haven\u2019t made much of a dent in Hollywood, let alone the wider culture. But that is likely to change with The Daily Wire\u2019s upcoming film \u201cConfession.\u201d<\/p>\n Shapiro\u2019s films haven\u2019t made much of a dent in Hollywood, let alone the wider culture. But that is likely to change with The Daily Wire\u2019s upcoming film \u201cConfession.\u201d<\/p>\n Written by Shapiro, \u201cConfession\u201d follows an academic in Moscow under the rule of Joseph Stalin. He\u2019s brought in for questioning after allegedly conspiring with a dissident priest, only to find that his interrogator is a former student. In less ideological hands, the film could be an interesting examination of loyalty and state overreach. Coming from the man who accused Baron Harkonnen<\/a>, the villain in the \u201cDune\u201d science-fiction franchise, of being a communist, we aren\u2019t holding our breath.\u00a0<\/p>\n Still, the announcement of \u201cConfession\u201d made a splash, less for its logline than its topline. The cast is chock full of former Oscar nominees and one-time A-listers. The participation of James Franco, Rob Lowe, Brad Dourif and Emile Hirsch make this the most star-studded production Shapiro has ever produced. Beyond the musty Cold War paranoia and production design straight out of the \u201cCommand & Conquer: Red Alert<\/a>\u201d video game, the film is small-c conservative in its appeal to a bygone tradition: giving disgraced actors a mid-budget springboard from which to launch their career revivals.\u00a0<\/p>\n Franco was once a megawatt star, but his career faltered shortly after several women accused him of sexual misconduct<\/a> in 2018. In the late aughts, with a Screen Actors Guild-nominated turn in \u201cInto the Wild,\u201d Hirsch was positioned to be the next big thing. But the belly flop of \u201cSpeed Racer\u201d and a 2015 assault of a female Paramount Pictures executive<\/a> at the Sundance Film Festival put his career on ice. Lowe\u2019s scandal-plagued days are long behind him, but he\u2019d settled into a career as a reliable network television star. Most recently, the star of \u201cThe West Wing\u201d has been a mainstay on Fox\u2019s campy disaster series \u201c9-1-1.\u201d \u201cConfession\u201d sees him trying out long atrophied dramatic acting muscles, taking a tentative step into Hollywood. Dourif has never generated any significant controversies to our knowledge, but his appearance is notable because it contradicts his 2024 retirement announcement.\u00a0<\/p>\n Want more sharp takes on politics? Sign up for our free newsletter<\/a>, Standing Room Only, written by Amanda Marcotte, now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n Taken with the blink-and-you\u2019ll-miss-it starring turn from Jonathan Majors in \u201cInfidels,\u201d The Daily Wire\u2019s gambit becomes clear. In reaching out to disgraced or out-of-fashion actors, the company is getting notable names for their bargain-basement productions. The actors, in turn, can add a few performances for their sizzle reels that post-date whatever controversy pushed them out of the limelight.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s not a bad deal for either party. From the actors\u2019 perspective, they\u2019re just following the B-list trails blazed by actors like John Travolta and Nicolas Cage, stars who spent decades cranking out direct-to-video duds while seeking the right role to catapult them back into notoriety. What\u2019s new is the ideological bent of a studio like Shapiro\u2019s. Typically, appearing in outwardly conservative fare was the mark of an inwardly conservative star. Think Kirk Cameron\u2019s Christian schlock or Kevin Sorbo\u2019s post-Hercules output. When a name like Jim Caviezel shows up in QAnon-adjacent thrillers<\/a>, it\u2019s a bit of a \u201cfork found in kitchen\u201d situation.<\/p>\n Shapiro\u2019s comeback machine is something slightly different. Given what we\u2019ve seen from the films he has worked on in the past, the machine is likely to be clunky \u2014 but that won\u2019t matter to either party if it works.\u00a0<\/p>\n Conservatives\u2019 belief that \u201ccancel culture\u201d has gone too far, that men chastised for behaving badly are really victims of a radical mob run amok, allows them to take on names that are not welcome in Hollywood. If the ploy works, it\u2019s proof that they were right all along \u2014 that cooler heads prevailed and the initial controversy was an overreaction.\u00a0<\/p>\n With the Daily Wire\u2019s film arm, Shapiro is bringing back the B-list for a cancel culture age, offering dimmed stars the chance to bide their time until the unistudio of Paramount\/Warner Bros. comes calling.<\/p>\n Read more<\/p>\n about right-wing media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Conservatives have long pitched their project as a return to normalcy, a way to set right a world…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634467,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-634466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}