Entertainment

Oscar-winning producer comes out of Hollywood’s conservative closet, preps Obama movie

Taylor Bigler Entertainment Editor
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Hollywood is known for its overwhelmingly Democratic-leaning population, despite a few high-profile conservative actors like Jon Voight, Kelsey Grammar and Patricia Heaton. But now a closet-conservative producer is coming out, so to speak, to make a film about President Obama.

Oscar-winning producer Gerald Molen, who collaborated with Steven Spielberg on “Schindler’s List,” has been low-key about his conservatism.

In this week’s print edition of The Hollywood Reporter, Molen speaks about his politics and writes about his upcoming documentary with Dinesh D’Souza, “Obama: 2016,” which seeks to unveil the origin of President Barack Obama’s worldview.

Molen says it was more common to be openly conservative in Hollywood’s early days. For conservatives like Bob Hope and John Wayne, political contrarians were nothing out of the ordinary.

But in 2008, Molen saw a shift in the political discourse of Hollywood. “It was more difficult for conservatives to open up. I don’t know why Hollywood is so monolithic in its liberal politics now,” he said.

“Today, those on the right have a tendency to hide their politics because the left is vindictive. I guess it has hurt some of them in the past, or they wouldn’t hide. All of a sudden, if you disagreed with someone, they’d intimate you’re a racist or intolerant of some people.”

Molen said he is concerned, like many other Americans, about the direction the country is taking. Neither he nor the American public, he insisted, knows much about Obama. While we know the president was a law professor, there are no scholarly articles carrying his name. Molen thinks that the media were soft on Obama, and that is why he wasn’t vetted as intensely as George W. Bush or even John Kerry.

So Molen decided to set out to discover what shaped Obama’s world view.

Molen teamed up with D’Souza, whose book “The Roots of Obama’s Rage” piqued his interest. Molen wrote that “Obama: 2016” will take a fair and balanced look at Obama’s life and career.

He thinks movies like “Farenheit 9/11” are more propaganda than documentary, and that Hollywood liberals are using films to perpetuate their political agenda — something that he vows not to do.

“My movie will be the truth,” he said.

“It’s not really a negative take on Obama because both sides are looked at by Dinesh,” Molen explained. “The movie isn’t out there saying you should vote one way or the other; it’s just the truth, a lot of it from Obama’s own words.”

Could “Obama: 2016” bring Molen another Oscar statuette? The odds are long, but the film comes out in June.

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Taylor Bigler