I’m having a Spike Lee moment.
In the early 1990s, director Spike Lee was attempting to make a film about Malcolm X. He was having trouble getting the proper funding for the project, so he turned to some black luminaries for help. The list included Bill Cosby, Prince, Michael Jordan and Oprah.
I’m making a documentary about Whittaker Chambers, and I need to find my Oprah — although our project will cost a fraction of a fraction of what “Malcolm X” cost. I’m trying to raise funds for the project here.
Chambers is a titanic figure in American history. He became a communist spy in the 1920s and 1930s, and the repercussions of his defection from that evil faith are still being felt today. Chambers revealed that Alger Hiss, a prominent State Department official, was spying for the Soviets. He warned about creeping socialism before Barack Obama was even born. Every year, the warnings found in Chambers’s masterpiece, “Witness,” continue to slowly come true. The Chambers story has every element that makes for great storytelling, right down to the spies and car chases.
The budget for my film would be about the same as the budget for the cleaning lady for Denzel Washington’s trailer during the making of “Malcolm X.” The good news is that the technology has changed to the point where my director and I can make a terrific film, indeed one superior to “Malcolm X,” for a fraction of the cost.
The bad news is that we may be dealing with such acute political and historical ignorance in America that it’s not clear how many people even know who Chambers was or appreciate his importance. When I announced the “Witness” project, I heard from several conservatives, all of them offering variations on the same theme: Attaboy, way to go, about time, sounds fantastic. Bill Bennett tweeted about it and Reason magazine’s Nick Gillespie blogged about it. Even James Wolcott, a Vanity Fair writer who is definitely not a conservative, tweeted that he thought the subject would make a great film: “What a cast of characters!” But for every Bennett, Gillespie and Wolcott, there may be thousands, probably millions, of people (even conservatives) who don’t know who this great man was or understand his importance to American history and the present day. Chambers warned that ultimately socialism would take over the West, the people having become so spiritually supine and consumerist that we simply roll over and die. Well, here we are.
In the weeks since the project launched, I’ve often wondered how many conservatives know that Ronald Reagan credited the book “Witness” with his conversion from New Deal Democrat to conservative Republican. I’m not sure I want to know the answer to that question. Certainly the public schools don’t teach things like that — and homeschoolers can only do so much. The result is that we are in danger of raising a generation of Americans who do not know who Whittaker Chambers was. Imagine the reaction if Martin Luther King Jr.’s memory began to fade in the same way. Americans would be embarrassed, and rightly so.
I appreciate all the kind words from journalists and commentators who have access to large audiences. Their quick reactions, tweets and blog posts mean that there is indeed enthusiasm and an audience for this documentary.
Enthusiasm, however, doesn’t pay a crew (even a tiny one).
At one point, I kicked myself for not mentioning my project to Newt Gingrich, who I met at the National Shrine several months ago. This was before Newt’s campaign had taken off, and it would have been easy to have gotten his attention. His company, Gingrich Communications, has made documentaries before. But the moment passed.
Then I thought of Bill Bennett. An essay of mine was reprinted in his new volume “The Book of Man.” He sent me a signed copy of the book and tweeted in support of the Chambers project. Maybe he could get behind us. Bennett’s sons went to Georgetown Prep, my alma mater. For the price of one year’s tuition, we could make our film. Then we could go to the school and show it there.
Then it hit me: Maybe I could toss out a pitch to Ann Coulter, who knows the history of the Chambers-Hiss case, having written about it in detail in her book “Treason.” I could be Spike Lee to her Oprah.
In my darker moments, I’ve doubted the intellectual and artistic energy of modern conservatism. There have been scores of articles in the last few years about the disappearance of the conservative intellectual — that we have become the movement of Rick Perry instead of Russell Kirk. Chambers was an author and translator who could speak over a dozen languages. He was friends with William F. Buckley, one of the right’s great thinkers and writers. I’m not sure we have another Buckley today.
But then, one of the things about being conservative is that you look for on-the-ground solutions to problems and get to work solving them. Conservatism was considered extinct when Buckley started National Review for $300,000 in 1955. More than a half-century later, we can make broadcast-quality documentaries for a percentage of that. We don’t have to model ourselves after Hollywood, dumping tens of millions of dollars into films that depict America as a repressive wasteland. On the other hand, we can avoid campy cheese like many of the few films that actually do get churned out by conservatives. We can create art and storytelling every bit as subtle and compelling as the art made by the best artists, and for a fraction of what they spend.
We just need to have the will.
Mark Judge is the author of A Tremor of Bliss: Sex, Catholicism, and Rock ‘n’ Roll.