Hollywood set for conservative film fest

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 29 (UPI) -- Conservative filmmakers are gathering in Hollywood for this weekend's Liberty Film Festival, featuring films grounded in conservative points of view and a tribute to the late U.S. president and movie star Ronald Reagan.

Billed by its promoters as Hollywood's first conservative film festival, the Liberty festival will take place this Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles, opening with screenings of "In The Face of Evil" and "Celsius 41.11."

Writer-director Stephen Bannon's "In the Face of Evil" is an examination of Reagan's conduct of the Cold War. "Celsius 41.11" -- a documentary directed by Kevin Knoblock and written and produced by Emmy-nominated filmmaker Lionel Chetwynd -- is a rebuttal to Michael Moore and other opponents of President George W. Bush's foreign policy and a defense of the war on Iraq.

The festival will also feature the West Coast premiere of talk-show host Larry Elder's film "Michael & Me" and the world premiere of "WMD: The Murderous Reign of Saddam Hussein" by Kurdish-Iraqi filmmaker Jano Rosebiani.

Among the other world-premiere presentations is "Terminal Island," a thriller by Jason Apuzzo and Govindini Murty -- who also are the main organizers of the festival.

Mike Wilson's "Michael Moore Hates America" will screen at the festival, after getting its Hollywood premiere Thursday night at the Writer's Guild of America theatre.

The tribute to Reagan Saturday will include a screening of "Desperate Journey," the 1942 drama in which Reagan co-starred with Errol Flynn as American pilots behind enemy lines in World War II Germany.

Apuzzo told United Press International he and his colleagues began putting the festival together a few months ago in response to a spate of Hollywood product that questioned Bush's policies.

"A lot of us thought that Hollywood was putting together a package of narrative and documentary films -- including 'The Manchurian Candidate,' 'Silver City' and endless left-wing documentaries," said Apuzzo, "and a lot of us got the sense that the town was coordinating this to influence the election."

Michael Moore was more outspoken that most other anti-Bush filmmakers about wanting his movie, "Fahrenheit 9/11," to go down in history as the first theatrical release to play a role in turning an incumbent president out of office. Apuzzo said he's sure Hollywood mounted a coordinated campaign against Bush.

"I think that they absolutely were intending to coordinate it," he said.

He saw evidence of a coordinated attack in the Fox summer release "The Day After Tomorrow," which he called "an environmentalist screed." The picture starred Dennis Quaid as a climatologist trying to save the world from the consequences of sudden, catastrophic global warming.

"The villain is a vice president who, incidentally, looks like Dick Cheney, and the premiere was tied in with a MoveOn rally at which (former Vice President) Al Gore was speaking," said Apuzzo. "You start to say, 'This probably is not a coincidence.'"

Once he and Murty committed to producing the festival, Apuzzo said it was "strikingly easy" to find enough conservative-themed movies to fill the schedule.

"We've been basically swamped with materials," he said.

Apuzzo said the entertainment press has been very responsive to the festival, with entertainment trades Variety and The Hollywood Reporter planning coverage, as well as the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post and the BBC.

Apuzzo said he hopes the festival will embolden conservatives in Hollywood to be more open about their politics.

"We're sort of billing it as a coming out party," he said.

Apuzzo said he couldn't predict who might go public with their conservatism in Hollywood, but he said he has been hearing "rumblings from behind-the-scenes" that some major celebrities are rethinking how open they want to be.

"These people are very sensitive," he said. "These are people who have careers at risk."

Apuzzo would not name names.

"I'm not going to put their careers at risk just for the sake of festival PR," he said.

Apuzzo said conservative filmmakers have to work around the Hollywood system to get their movies out, but market forces of the sort that propelled Fox News to a place of dominance in cable news may eventually help identify and exploit a market for explicitly conservative movies.

"I would also mention 'The Passion of the Christ,'" said Apuzzo. "A lot of people have compare 'The Passion' to 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' but 'The Passion' made four times the grosses. I think all of these things indicate there is a vast audience for this stuff, and if Hollywood does not approach this audience other people will."

The final day of the festival will feature a panel discussion titled "You'll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again," on the subject of whether there is a Hollywood blacklist against conservatives. Plans call for the panel to include producer-director David Zucker ("Phone Booth," "Scary Movie 3"), social critic Michael Medved, producer Doug Urbanski ("The Contender"), Andrew Breitbart of The Drudge Report and writer James Hirsen ("Tales From the Left Coast").

The festival will conclude with a screening of Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 epic "The Ten Commandments," starring conservative icon Charlton Heston -- which festival organizers called a parable of the Cold War.

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