The New Hollywood Left



(image via gocalifornia)

In the beginning there was The Kennedy White House. The Camelot narrative, festooned with public intellectual courtiers like Gore Vidal, Artie "Historian of Power" Schlessinger and Tennessee Williams (among others), attracted the glittery luminaries of Hollywood, like Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra and the young, impressionable Warren Beatty.

Then came the cash-money and, for a generation, Hollywood has -- with a few action movie star exceptions -- been a reliable source of funds for the Democratic Party. Politico, today, charts the new guard in Hollywood money, propelling Democrat party stalwarts ever upwards on revenues gained from the digitized -- no longer celluloid -- dreams of Lalaland (The Corsair pours himself a glass of Chateau Prieure Lichine 2000). From Politico:

"The old guard — including such well-known figures as Norman Lear, 85; strong>David Geffen, 65; Rob Reiner, 61; Stanley Sheinbaum, 81; and Mike Medavoy, 67 — is still going strong, among them 1960s-era activists, billionaire donors and sturdy intellectuals who influence Democratic politics at all levels. (Media-savvy Geffen’s early support for Barack Obama — and his public branding of his former allies, the Clintons, as 'liars' to The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd in February 2007 — revealed one of the first chinks in candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton’s sturdy Hollywood armor.)

"But a newer army of Hollywood heavyweights has emerged over the past few years. They might prefer being called 'progressive' to the stigmatized 'liberal,' but their beliefs are identical. And though they each have their own personalities, their own methodologies and (occasionally) their own agendas, they often cross paths at fundraisers as well as at the VIP sections of Stones’ concerts, Sunday brunches at Pizzeria Mozza or at the annual TED conference in Monterey."

Among the new Tinseltown Ten: An Inconvenient Truth producer Lawrence Bender, Ariel 'Ari' Emanuel and -- we shit you not -- 80s pinup Heather Thomas. The full story here.