Observers of the American film industry have been fretting about its prospects for almost as long as it has existed. They questioned its viability in the wake of television, bemoaned the impact of the studio system on creative freedom, lamented the rise of the blockbuster, wondered where the blockbuster had gone, and pronounced that streaming and Covid would kill off moviegoing. Now Donald Trump has designated the decline of Hollywood ‘a national security threat’. A presidential proclamation on the future of movies. The best Pauline Kael could ever do was 5,000 words in the New Yorker.
Industry insiders are bemused by this abrupt show of solidarity from a political party that usually pronounces Hollywood to rhyme with ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’.
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