On Sunday night, Moonlight shocked America by defeating heavily favored Best Picture contender La La Land. It s no coincidence that an Oscars ceremony that opened with Kimmel tweaking President Trump ended with the Academy giving the Best Picture Oscar to Brokeback inner-city Miami. This isn t the first time the Academy has bowed to political correctness rather than quality. And this year s Oscar battle featured two battling Hollywood priorities: Honoring itself, and honoring the most politically correct picture of the year. One of the reasons Hollywood no longer rakes in the big bucks other than on tentpole features is that it sees only the profound movies as those that center on intersectionality concerns, upholding the virtue of identity politics, and the importance of art itself. That s why TV, which actually tells stories rather than getting hung up on the self-important nonsense of the movie industry, now outranks Hollywood in terms of quality. Ben Shapiro breaks down everything that happened in Hollywood on The Ben Shapiro Show and explains why it s time for Hollywood to get its act together and get back on track with making movies that tell stories that tell people stories they want to see, and not ones that tell them how important they are or that they should be. What do you think of Moonlight? What was your favorite movie that won Best Picture? What are your thoughts on the Oscars and why it was the best film you saw this year? Is it a good one? or a bad one ? What's the worst movie you watched this year ? and why you think the Oscars are better than the rest of the Oscars? And what do you have a better movie you re watching right now? Are you concerned about the future of Hollywood in 2020 and what you d like to see in 2020? You ll be sure to check out Ben Shapiro's new movie that s going to be nominated for Best Picture or Best Picture in the next few years? Subscribe to the Ben Shapiro show on Netflix? on Amazon Prime Video? Subscribe to Ben Shapiro s newest podcast, The FiveThirtyEight? Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad-free version of the show? Subscribe and review Ben Shapiro on The Five Guys Podcasts Subscribe on Podcoin Subscribe on Spare Change Subscribe on POD Castle on iTunes Subscribe on Stitcher Subscribe on PodcastOne Subscribe on Itunes Learn more from the Podchaser Subscribe on Crackle Subscribe on Pocketcast Subscribe on Your Local Podcasts Like Itunes
00:00:14.000It's interesting in the way that all character studies are kind of interesting.
00:00:17.000It's a look at a place and at a time and at a person, but it doesn't truly uplift or soar or actually do much of anything.
00:00:23.000It won because the Academy voters preferred not to hear another year of griping about hashtag Oscars so white, and because those same voters could feel good about supposedly slapping Donald Trump in the face with diversity.
00:00:33.000It's no coincidence that an Oscars ceremony that opened with Kimmel tweaking President Trump, remember last year when it seemed like the Oscars was racist?
00:00:41.000Ended with the Academy giving the Best Picture Oscar to Brokeback Inner City Miami.
00:00:45.000This isn't to say there can't be a great movie made about a black, gay, coming-of-age story.
00:01:21.000Instead of Zero Dark Thirty or Lincoln.
00:01:23.000In 2005, Hollywood had its biggest PC off in a Best Picture fight between Brokeback Mountain, Crash, and Munich.
00:01:29.000Capote was actually a better picture than all of those three.
00:01:31.000One of the reasons Hollywood no longer rakes in the big bucks other than on tentpole features is that it sees only the profound movies as those that center on intersectional concerns, upholding the virtue of identity politics or the importance of art itself, rather than movies that tell people stories that they want to see.
00:01:47.000La La Land is a far better, more watchable movie than Moonlight, but there were at least three other movies that were better than either this year.
00:01:53.000Hell or High Water, Arrival, and Hacksaw Ridge, and all three were nominated.
00:01:56.000That doesn't include what I thought was the most entertaining flick of the year, 10 Cloverfield Lane.
00:02:00.000Unfortunately for those pictures, they weren't concerned with black gay children or the wonders of Hollywood.
00:02:04.000If somebody ever makes a movie about a half-black, half-Native American bisexual transgender trying to make his or her way in Hollywood, you can hand them the Oscar right now.
00:02:12.000And this is how you know Hollywood is dying.
00:02:14.000Instead of telling particular stories with general appeal, Hollywood tells stories that appeal only to themselves.
00:02:19.000They reassure themselves of their importance every single year, either by making movies telling them how important they are, or by making movies trying to show how important they are by taking on the issue of the day in after-school special fashion.
00:02:31.000It doesn't make for good entertainment.
00:02:33.000Which is why TV, which actually tells stories rather than getting hung up on the self-important nonsense of the movie industry, now outranks the movie industry in terms of quality.
00:02:47.000So we'll talk everything Oscars in just a minute.
00:02:49.000We will also be talking about the Democrats picking a new leader and what you need to know about Tom Perez, that new leader.
00:02:55.000But first, we have to say thank you to our sponsors over at My Patriot Supply.
00:02:58.000So, if you're concerned about the failure of local government to help you in time of need, if you're concerned about an economic downturn, if you're concerned about a natural disaster, you know, the levees breaking like they did in Northern California or New Orleans, or you're worried about just a natural disaster of any sort, a tornado,
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00:04:35.000Okay, so, we can jump right into the Oscars.
00:04:38.000So, the big winner at the Oscars last night was not Moonlight.
00:04:40.000The big winner at the Oscars last night was Donald Trump.
00:04:43.000That was the big winner at the Oscars last night, because Donald Trump basically could sit there and watch Hollywood make a mockery of itself.
00:04:50.000Sally Cohn, one of my favorite people on the left of MSNBC and CNN fame, you remember her, hands up don't shoot, Sally Cohn tweeted out right before the Oscars that she hoped every single speech was political.
00:05:00.000To which I tweeted, so does every Republican in the country.
00:05:03.000We all want every speech to be political.
00:05:05.000Because the more political these speeches are, the better off Republicans are, because watching all of these
00:05:11.000All of these sort of comforted, rich, limousine liberal socialists ripping on America is really something that off-puts a lot of voters, and people react to that by voting for people on the Republican side of the aisle.
00:05:24.000Hollywood has never driven people into the arms of the Democrats, except through kind of their subtle cultural moments, but they don't drive people into the arms of the Democrats by just shouting about how terrible Republicans are.
00:05:33.000This is something that Hollywood gets wrong.
00:05:36.000Creating story, creating character, that stuff can help convince people that Democrats are right.
00:05:40.000But it doesn't convince people Democrats are right when Marlon Brando sends up Sachin Littlefeather at the Oscars in 1973, a Native American spokeswoman, to pick up his award and rant and rave about how America's means to the Native Americans.
00:05:51.000Nobody voted Democrat because of that.
00:05:53.000And nobody voted Democrat in 2003 because Michael Moore got up at the Oscars and talked about the fictional president, George W. Bush, getting us into a fictional war.
00:06:01.000Hollywood people think that we want to hear what they have to say.
00:06:04.000We want to hear the stories they have to tell, but we don't actually want to hear the things they have to say because the things they have to say are generally stupid.
00:06:09.000They don't know anything about politics, so why in the world would we listen to them when it comes to politics?
00:06:14.000But again, Hollywood doesn't know that, so instead what Hollywood does is they think that we're watching because we want to hear their opinions on politics.
00:06:20.000So Jimmy Kimmel just couldn't help himself.
00:06:22.000He opened up with a bunch of jokes about Trump.
00:07:22.000So, yeah, he does all of these jokes in a row about Donald Trump, and we're all supposed to sit there and be like, yeah, this is great, yeah!
00:07:29.000The real reaction is, can you guys get over yourselves, please?
00:07:32.000Really, this is the best that you can do?
00:07:34.000These are your best jokes about Donald Trump, calling him racist?
00:07:37.000And calling, presumably, the people who voted for him racist?
00:07:39.000That's a great way to alienate an audience that's already not watching any of your Best Picture nominees.
00:07:43.000Nothing that was nominated for Best Picture this year did well at the box office.
00:07:46.000I think the only exception, as far as a movie that did well at the box office, was Arrival.
00:07:51.000I'm not aware of any other movie that was nominated for Best Picture this year that did over $100 million in business.
00:07:55.000Did Arrival end up doing $100 million in business?
00:08:26.000Um, but Viola Davis, who was, I thought she was fantastic in Suicide Squad.
00:08:29.000That's why I thought that she had to win.
00:08:31.000So was that guy who, like, shot fire from his fingers and everything.
00:08:33.000Anyway, Viola Davis, she gets up and she gives this speech.
00:08:38.000I became an artist, and thank God I did, because we are the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life.
00:08:47.000We're the only profession, the only one, that celebrates what it means to live a life?
00:08:52.000So I was complaining before this show started today that I'm kind of tired.
00:08:55.000You know the reason I'm kind of tired today?
00:08:57.000Because my wife has woken up the last several mornings at 4 o'clock in the morning to go into the hospital because she is a doctor and she's in her residency, which means she's getting up at 4 o'clock in the morning to help people who in some cases are terminally ill.
00:09:09.000Clearly the only profession that cares about living a life, that honors and celebrates living a life, is Hollywood.
00:09:14.000And it's so just, bleh, when Viola Davis says stuff like this, the fact is, the vast majority of people in the United States work jobs where they're helping each other live better lives.
00:09:23.000But the artists have to pat themselves on the back, and this is what I was saying at the very beginning, the artists in Hollywood have to make themselves feel important one of two ways, because otherwise they're just reading lines for a living and wearing funny costumes.
00:09:33.000So they have to make themselves feel important in one of two ways.
00:09:41.000That's gonna be the thing that makes us important.
00:09:43.000Or, alternatively, we have to talk about how important we are to everybody else.
00:09:47.000Now, I don't get on the air every morning and talk about how important my job is.
00:09:51.000I don't, because it's either important to you or it's not important to you, but I don't have to preach how important what I do is to you, because you'll decide for yourself.
00:09:58.000And I think that's true for the vast majority of people.
00:09:59.000When you call a plumber, he doesn't show up to your house and go, you know what?
00:10:02.000It's really important I fix your toilet today.
00:10:05.000I'm the guy who stands between you and crap running over your floor.
00:10:10.000But the artist community, because they understand that people sort of see them as frivolous, they feel the necessity to go out and talk about how special they are all the time.
00:10:36.000You know, art is wonderful, it's enriching, it can connect us to each other, but the utter arrogance, the true arrogance of saying the only profession that celebrate what it means to live a life, I mean, that's really astounding.
00:10:51.000I mean, they actually put together the funeral arrangements where we remember people.
00:10:55.000There's also something that's really, it's really high-handed about saying that only the lives we choose to honor in Hollywood are the important ones.
00:11:28.000Your life doesn't end when your life ends unless Viola Davis exhumes you and makes a story about you, you know, that's not even real, right?
00:11:36.000Unless a fictional story about a person who never existed.
00:11:39.000No, what actually makes your life important is the friends and family around you and the way you impact the world in a better way and the way that you do honorable things for friends and neighbors and make the world a better place.
00:11:47.000That's how you make the world a better place.
00:11:48.000There are a lot of people who are remembered who are really evil.
00:11:51.000That doesn't make them more important.
00:11:54.000Being remembered by people who actually matter is, I think, more important than Viola Davis remembering you.
00:11:58.000And the idea that Hollywood is what confers value on people is really kind of gross.
00:12:03.000I mean, another element of this, and some people liked this, some people hated it, I didn't like it, was Jimmy Kimmel did this routine where he ushered in a bunch of people off the Hollywood tour bus directly into the Oscars.
00:12:12.000See, the whole point of this little schtick here is to demonstrate just how special Hollywood is.
00:12:16.000It's so special that you can bring people in off the street, and then you can show them just how magical Hollywood is.
00:12:20.000I mean, look at all these important people.
00:12:22.000And look at all these ne'er-do-well rubes, you know, just walking out.
00:12:34.000See, what would have been great, honestly, and what would have been funnier, is if Kimmel had, before this, taken a bunch of the stars to visit people on their actual jobs.
00:12:41.000They make movies about these actual jobs, but it'd be really funny to take Chris Pine, for example, in Hell or High Water, and take him to an oil derrick, and show him the people working in oil derrick.
00:12:53.000Or it'd be really funny to take Nicole Kidman and take her down to the local plumber's union, and have her see what people are actually doing over there.
00:12:59.000Because that would have said, okay, look, we're Hollywood, and we know what we do is kind of frivolous, and it brings meaning to some people, but
00:13:05.000We also understand that what you do is really important.
00:13:07.000Instead, this whole event is all about how Hollywood is super duper important to all of our lives.
00:13:11.000And look, it's fun, I enjoy the Oscars as much as the next guy, although I admit I did not watch a lot of it live last night.
00:13:16.000But at the same time, this sort of, this sort of, I'm going to look down on you because we're from Hollywood and we're special, it manifests itself not just in terms of general
00:13:25.000Attitude toward the people who live in the middle of the country that are a bunch of rednecks and rubes.
00:13:29.000It also manifests itself in terms of politics, and we're going to talk more about that in just a second.
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00:13:50.000If you watched on Friday, we live-streamed the film so you could actually see it.
00:13:53.000The Arroyo is a fictional film set on the southern border about the crisis that's taking place on our southern border when one rancher's land is overrun by the drug cartels, and he has to figure out what to do about it.
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