Why we hate us: the business of making movies drives Hollywood nuts.(Viewpoint essay)

YOU think you know Hollywood? Sure, you've seen your share of movies. You read Vanity Fair and Entertainment Weekly and sneak a peak at Showbiz Tonight from time to time to catch the latest on Lindsay Lohan's sexual orientation. You probably even have a million-dollar script inside you, howling to get out. Who knows, maybe you're even one of the tiny minority of Americans who have seen Frost/Nixon, Milk, or The Reader, three of this year's Best Picture nominees that combined have grossed less than $50 million so far.

In that case, you know that we show folks are a bunch of neurotic, granola-crunching, coke-snorting, Prius-driving, raw-foods-consuming, bed-hopping, real-estate-obsessed, anti-gun, pro-gay-marriage, metrosexual Obama voters who talk deals all day at Orso's and Sushi Roku and sleep each night in upscale, all-white enclaves with "Armed Response" signs in front of the houses.

You know we revel in making movies about how evil Amerikkka is, how disastrous the Iraq War was--just like Vietnam!--how dysfunctional the "typical" American family is, and how the American Dream is founded upon the ruthless conquest, pillage, and exploitation of Indigenous Peoples and the original African African-Americans. You're sure that Hollywood is a conspiracy of illiterate ids in pursuit of a superabundant lifestyle, Ivy League-educated sociopaths only a few generations removed from the glove salesmen and nickelodeon operators who first came west.

In other words, you know we're as liberal as liberals can be. And indeed we are. It's just not for the reasons you think, which means you really don't know anything about us at all.

As we begin the Obama Era, it behooves you to learn a little about us--because, whether you realize it or not, you elected us. With Rahm Emanuel gatekeeping at the White House and his Uberagent brother, Ari Emanuel of Endeavor, battling CAA, ICM, and William Morris for control of Hollywood, it's the ethos of Tinseltown that will be rocking your world for at least the next four years.

Many explanations have been offered to account for our ludicrously parodistic version of liberalism. There is no cause too ridiculous for us to support, as long as it is described as a civil-rights issue and is couched in the language of "fairness," preferably tinged with self-loathing and anti-Americanism. Among the cliches cited for our conformism are (a) the arts are a natural home for sensitive and suffering souls, (b) like journalism, the movie business has long attracted crusaders for "social justice," and (c) the immense wealth generated for its creators by a hit movie--or, even better, a long-running television series--provokes an internal backlash of guilt over undeserved good fortune, which is then partially expiated by "good works," especially when those works involve spending taxpayers' money. (Taxes? Us? We have accountants for that.)

Forget about it. The origin of our reflexive liberalism lies not in the kinds of people who go into movie-making but in something far deeper: the nature of the movie business itself, which drives us insane.