Movie Tarrifs

[Leo Enticknap]

My favorite act of political satire in recent years was on the 2016 election night (which I just missed participating in: my naturalization ceremony was a few weeks later), in which the theater I was working at the time played Gremlins 2. We wanted to be even-handed and double-bill it with something that was equally merciless to Hillary, but we couldn't find anything that was that, even moderately entertaining, and not potentially offensive to at least one significant demographic. A Gremlins 3 in which the little furry monsters take over the White House would have great potential (maybe Phoebe Cates could become the Karoline Leavitt character, and introduce Gizmo that way; he then gets an accidental bath in The Donald's Diet Coke, and the rest is history...), but it would only work with a script that was genuinely funny and didn't set out to alienate completely half the potential audience. The scene in which the gremlins gate crash one of Leavitt's press conferences would more or less write itself.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I've read "Jon Voight’s Plan To Save Hollywood", I guess that gives me a head up regarding Donald Trump, because this isn't a plan for tariffs on "movie imports", it's a plan to incentivise Hollywood productions and such maybe one of the more "sane" plans from the current governments, which doesn't say much about the actual quality of the plan, unfortunately.

As far as I understand the ambiguous bullet-point lingo, the "tariff part" applies only to those who outsourced their production to foreign countries and made use of local incentives in those countries. Still, I think it will be easy to find loopholes around those limitations... As a matter of fact, those limitations could actually backfire, as some companies may now consider to outsource their entire production to foreign countries, in order not to incur any of those "tariffs"...

What makes this plan definitely distinctively Trump is the "American Cultural Test"... I had a good laugh while reading that. Yeah, sure, the U.K. has something similar, but hey it's the UK, you know, the country that fries everything that fits into the fryer and the same country making people watch paint dry.

[Mike Blakesley]

it would only work with a script that was genuinely funny and didn't set out to alienate completely half the potential audience.

I do miss the days when movies, TV and comedians could make fun of whoever the president was and pretty much everyone would think it was funny.

[Marcel Birgelen]

That's what you get when both sides are so very much entrenched into their respective beliefs that it has become nothing but a cult. While MAGA has managed to create some kind of core movement that's functionally beyond OT3-levels of crazy, you see the same kind of cultism on "the left" too. But maybe it explains why the best the "Greatest Nation of the World" has to offer as presidents are a bunch of senile old men...

A working democracy is expensive, it needs constant checks and balances. Politicians, from all parties, need to be held accountable. A healthy dose of parody should be part of the program and is healthy for the relationship between the people and those that govern us. On the other hand, a good politician doesn't shy away from dishing it out, but should also be able to take some for the team.

What I personally miss, especially in this iteration of the U.S. government is sanity, respect and a bit of class... It's like watching a kindergarden, where the biggest bully has become the principal.