Ryan Kavanaugh, CEO of Relativity Media
by Donald Robert Clasen
Aug. 20, 2014
Dear Ryan:
It must be open letter season, if you’ll forgive a bad pun. Since Jon Voight took it upon himself to issue an open letter in response to Javier and Penelope’s open letter decrying Israel’s latest beat down of the people of Gaza, I thought I’d jump in with an open letter to Ryan Kavanaugh of my own. I’m in part reacting to your claim that what they said “makes my blood boil” as you put it, and apparently you are not alone. “Privately, many studio heads have echoed Kavanaugh’s words, saying Cruz and Bardem are ‘uninformed’ and ‘irresponsible.’ ‘People are furious about this,’ said one insider.”
Furious? Boiling blood? What is this? An old Lon Chaney B-noir? Maybe a remake given the state of freedom of speech and creativity we find in Hollywood nowadays. The use of language like that I find mystifying because if it described anyone’s feelings it would surely be Javier and Penelope’s. What less a state of mind would have motivated them to do something so career-risky? I know it exactly described my feelings as I watched the neighborhood bully exact yet another pound of flesh with a periodic “mowing of the lawn” as Israeli officials so charmingly put it.
Hamas for its part “uncharacteristically” didn’t take credit for the kidnappings but as luck would have it for Israel, a previously-unheard of tongue-twister Islamist group, “Supporters of the Islamic State in Bayt al-Maqdis” connected to ISIS stepped forward to take credit.[1] How convenient. They also claimed that the kidnappings and more were “actions…carried out in honor of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed ‘caliph’ of the Islamic State.” As luck would not have it for Israel however, a French report linked to Edward Snowden came out thereafter exposing The Caliph as born of two Jewish parents and recruited and trained by the Mossad as a psy-op specialist to lead ISIS, a group created to replace Al Queda as the default group to obsess over.[2] With the Saudis, Gulf sheiks, Jewish billionaires, CIA drug money and other private shadow sources now bankrolling mercenaries, guns-for-hire, religious fanatics, people who just love having a license to kill and other dreck of the earth, the prospects for Israel staying in control of their latest terror arm are now much better.
So, Ouch for ISIS.
The fact is that Israel also admits that it uses these periodic turkey shoots to test out new generations of weaponry, much of it gotten from strong-arming the US Congress for 670 million weapons and pieces of equipment over the years including munitions of unbelievable power and lethality[3]. The fact that it was caught testing a new advanced death ray and horrific DIME munitions on the helpless Gazans sure didn’t help their image either.[4] Ouch again.
Zap!
After a police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, militarized police were deployed in such a similar, gratuitous show of force that many were commenting, “We’re all Palestinians now.” The connection may be more literal than the average American realizes. When Bush Jr. surprised everyone in mobbed-up New Jersey by appointing dual citizen Michael Chertoff to head Homeland Security, he chose to award contracts to Israeli security companies to train and advise police departments all over the country because no Americans you see, have any security experience. Yes, we get the message. Unarmed American protesters are terrorists too and only a Big Deal/Big Production overkill display of power can sufficiently express what unpredictable little beasts we are. What’s there not to love about such an ally and that Garfield the Cat/Skipper the Penguin Prime Minister of theirs? All they want to do is just help out.
And yet here you are Ryan, just as outraged and blood a-boil as the Bardems but from a completely opposite point of view! Such a chasm of perception would suggest that both sides can’t be right. Both you and Mr. Voight characterized their opinions as “ignorant,” adding:
“It certainly reminds me of the amount of ignorance we have in our business. We are so ready to jump with our opinions without having facts. The fact is the Palestinians fighting in Gaza have made it very clear that they want to kill all of the Jews. Any suggestion that we should allow them to move in as neighbors within a spitting distance of Israel is ignorant and can only be taken as anti-Semitic. That solution would allow the destruction of Israel.”
Your spitting imagery may be appropriate. Rabbis and the devout of Israel are in the habit of spitting on all kinds of things—Christians, priests, crucifixes, churches, mosques, Gentile cemeteries and the like. It’s commanded in their holy book. What’s there not to like about such neighbors? And none of that is to mention little kids being used for sniper practice,[5] the house bulldozings, the olive tree uprootings, the “skunk trucks” spraying un-washable stench on Palestinian neighborhoods,[6] the Death to Arabs chants, the angry lynch mobs, the blockades, the being “put on a diet” of 1400 calories a day, the fishing boat sinkings, members of the Knesset urging the IDF to kill all the Palestinian women because they give birth to “little snakes,” the 47% unemployment rate (before the war!), 175 factories bombed, UN refuges frantically sending out their bombing coordinates six times, and on and on. Why in the world would they want to, “Kill All The Jews”?
It all reminds me of a TV interview once with a long-married couple. The wife was asked, “In all those years of fighting, did you ever consider divorce?” “Oh no, never. Murder sometimes, but never divorce.”
But hey, how about them Mets!? 1,417 civilians to 2 and still in extra innings![7] But that’s bottle rockets vs. death rays for you. Such a drama, they always bring it. Why it’s enough to make you want to drag a couch up a hill, break out some cheese and wine and cheer on the home team!
Go Team!
We hear of all the Israeli children traumatized by the sirens and having to scramble into shelters. Yet thousand-pound American bombs raining down from above, destroying what little they have in their miserable lives, bodies obliterated into little pieces, illegal experimental weapons charring them beyond recognition, 10,000 injured—that’s not terrorism. Tell that to the hundreds of Gazan children now afflicted with permanent cases of Post-Traumatic Stress syndrome—unable to sleep, crying all the time, unable to concentrate in school. That’s the thing about children—they haven’t learned yet how to pose, posture and pretend. When they’ve been terrorized they show it.
I assume the rationale behind all this is well-captured in a quaint rabbinic axiom, “A thousand Arabs isn’t worth a Jewish fingernail.” Neither are a thousand ghetto dwellers in Ferguson either I assume. What monsters, what little ingrates! Wretched anti-Semites all! BTW, I’ve come up with a good definition of anti-Semitism: “Oh, so you don’t like us either, huh?”
The Sin of Silence!!!
Mr. Voight in his letter claimed that Javier and Penelope should “hang their heads in shame” for “inciting anti-Semitism all over the world.” They needn’t have bothered; Israel is doing a plenty good job of it all by themselves. I’ve got a better idea. How about Israel changing its behavior and stopping it altogether? But they need anti-Semitism after all to keep their people in a constant state of terror. They freely admit it, even brag about it all the time in their literature.
I could be wrong about it, but I get the impression that Jon didn’t even write that letter. The language is clumsy and not how a native American would speak. Things like “civilians being…stabbed to pieces,” and “my peers…go and take out poison letters against them.” All this staccato-like syntax sounds like the speech of an Israeli, probably a propaganda specialist who drew it up and had him sign it. Masters of illusion and masters of the discourse, there is no objective reality to these obsessive cynics. It’s all just “point of view” but typical of the love of manipulation and guilt-mongering.
Both of you claim to be perplexed by the silence of so many in the industry over the Bardems’ letter. Well let me explain it to you. For those who generally support whatever Israel does, they are saying nothing because they’re too ashamed and embarrassed to do so. For those who don’t, they’re worried about Career Sudden Death Syndrome. Your subtle threat that they “shouldn’t be commenting” makes my point.
But you producers, studio heads and other execs are trying to be big about it. When the couple issued a clarification and oblique apology, it was reported that there was a “collective eye roll” among studio heads, presumably at watching them squirm under the almighty hand of Hollywood Power which is apparently something of a spectator sport here. Well at least they have some convictions in the first place.
But you’re only concerned for their careers of course. As one producer put it,
“I think the thing any executive or producer will try to calculate before working with Penelope Cruz or Javier Bardem in the near future is what their value is in the all-important international marketplace. And what territories they might have alienated people in by what they said. It might not be that many. But it’s really all about business.”
Uh no, it’s all about kissing Israel’s, uh… ring. If it were all about business you guys would be the first to notice the five billion people outside the US and Israel lining up to buy tickets to their movies. As for studio execs, I’ve been told over and over that all they are ever motivated by are greed and fear. Maybe it’s a little better for you producers. Because you are good at “working connections,” you find the money to make the projects happen and with a little talent and luck, you can become a billionaire as in your own case.
But that’s the point. You make that kind of money because Hollywood is awash in copious amounts of talent, people like the Bardems, both Oscar winners who draw the public. And yet how does the industry refer to these people but by the quaint term of, yes—“properties”! We get it. It says it all.
You hope this won’t affect their standing in the public around the world. It will. Their popularity will skyrocket. And yet their careers may indeed collapse faster than an apartment building in Gaza. After Mel Gibson’s rather innocuous comment about “the Jews,” he had a career-high performance in the critically-acclaimed The Beaver. The movie didn’t even last a week in theaters. Why? Because we’re all well-trained, that’s why. Mr. Voight recognizes that all this subtle intimidation sounds like a new McCarthyism and he’s quick to advise against a new blacklist. But everyone knows such lists are stored in the mind anyhow.
I for my part don’t have a career to lose even though I’m something of an above-the-liner myself, a writer to be specific. I don’t have your pedigree as the grandson of Holocaust survivors but I am the grandson of an occasionally-drunken Irishman who as a one-man party was downright inspirational at times. Like the guy in Braveheart, maybe I’m a little crazy too. I came to Hollywood against my will, led by the God of Israel—Peace Be Upon Him—with a black comedy about the Bush administration and the War on Terror. I wanted to wake up my people the Evangelicals who couldn’t think their way out of a wet paper bag if their lives depended on it, and are the biggest demographic giving Israel cover to act with such impunity. I thought Liberal Jewish Hollywood was my last best hope, that surely they would understand and want to help.
Silly me. “Liberal Hollywood” is no more thanks mostly to the long arm of right-wing settler Israel. Long gone are the days when Vanessa Redgrave could get up before the Academy and thank them for refusing to be “intimidated by the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world.” Semper Fi.
And that’s what I’m concerned about bottom line. Hollywood to me is more than just entertainment or a business. The best it produces is inspirational art that serves an important cultural function by preserving and reminding us of those Enlightenment ideals that keep us from regressing back into the Dark Ages. To paraphrase Matthew McConaughey last year, “There’s freedom of speech dying out there!” The vast majority of Jewish people, certainly Jews who work in Hollywood have no interest in totalitarian religious dogma and what the Assyrians did to them centuries ago.
I’m sure you’re one of them and I hope you won’t take this letter personally. We all fall for clever arguments from time to time. If so I respect your manly attitude. People need to be able to talk about this or any other subject without fear of repercussions. We’re all adults here after all, aren’t we?
All Best Regards Brian,
Don Clasen,
Studio City
[1] http://www.timesofisrael.com/jihadist-group-takes-credit-for-teens-kidnapping/
[2] http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/08/04/french-report-isil-leader-mossad/
[3] http://rockthetruth.blogspot.com/2009/01/israel-drops-dime-on-palestinians.html. e.g.
“Our research shows that during the past decade, the United States provided Israel with more than 670 million weapons and related equipment, valued at nearly $19 billion, through three major weapons transfer programs. In our database, we detail more than 500 different weapons categories, along with the value and quantity of each type of weapon transferred to Israel.” http://mondoweiss.net/2011/04/new-database-reveals-weapons-to-israel-impact-on-palestinians.html
[4] “Israel Unleashes Death Ray on Gaza.” http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/08/11/israel-unleashes-death-ray-on-gaza/
[5] http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2012/09/israel-uses-palestinians-for-target.html
[6] http://www.roitov.com/articles/boash.htm
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Gaza_War
