Hollywood's new politics

The Observer (UK): Hollywood's new politics. Founding eBay made Jeff Skoll a billionaire. Now he is doing something very different - producing political movies that recall the rabble-rousing days of Warren Beatty and Robert Redford, and turning American filmgoers into grassroots activists.

The reporter and I spoke by phone for the article, and I was quoted here:

It's difficult to know how smooth the leap from discussion to action will be, but a good deal of discussion, at least, is already under way. JD Lasica, author of Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation, is participating in the group blog about Good Night, and Good Luck, and thinks Participant's project is 'a fascinating idea and a worthy experiment. It's still too early to tell whether it's going to pan out. As we're moving into the digital age, people in Hollywood are starting to grasp the idea that they have to do more than just put pictures on the big screen. They have to take into account where the audience is today, and more and more people are involved on the internet. It's more than just a gimmicky, viral marketing approach - they're looking for a serious conversation about the issues that are raised in the film.' ...

If, since Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, politics have become de rigueur, a cynic might suggest that organisations like Participant were just cashing in.

Lasica laughs at this idea. 'I think Jeff Skoll has enough money not to have to cash in,' he says. Clooney, for his part, has countered that he grew up during the civil rights era, during Vietnam, with the protest films of the late 1960s and early 1970s. This is what shaped him, he has said - his tastes are long-standing not opportunistic.