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I guess you might say that Hollywood has always had an identity issue and has fought through the decades to wind up on the right side of the so-called history fence. A lot of the times – most of the ill-advised Cancel Culture craze, the ratings struggles of the NC-17 and PG-13 flicks which has had many folks crying out about censorship (sometimes rightly so), and most notably the Blacklist period in the movie industry during the 1950s when everyone was seeing “Reds under the bed” – the business which has vexingly gifted us with both Citizen Kane and Troll 2 has fallen quite short indeed, yet to their good credit, they usually manage to pivot and ultimately land some great entertainment which eschews self-conscious “virtue signaling” (i.e. going along with the prevailing and loud Twitter-fueled mob of the day). Goodnight and Good Luck was such a rare bird, as was Woody Allen’s The Front. Now it appears that Hollywood is preparing for another such project in the form of an intriguing-sounding podcast, according to our pals over at Variety…
Back in the 1950s, not everything was neatly manicured suburban lawns and “I Like Ike” campaign buttons. In point of fact, Hollywood was caught up in a nationwide fever that proffered that the Communist Party had infiltrated their hallowed ranks and were subliminally pumping out veritable recruitment movies under the guise of clean and wholesome entertainment. As with most things that are a trifle but are made into a veritable Mount Everest, power-hungry politicians from Washington beat the drums of suspicion and animosity the loudest during this strange time, leading an industry that has always had deep connections to the field of politics to engage in what amounted to a modern day witch hunt, tarnishing and ruining scores of innocent lives in the process. Like I said, this was a dark time indeed.
Set to explore the stain which is the 1950s Hollywood “Black List” is the upcoming seven part podcast from creator and executive producer John Mankiewicz (himself a member of Hollywood royalty) entitled The Big Lie. Starring Mad Men alum Jon Hamm, this radio drama from Audible and podcast studio Fresh Produce Media tells the true-life story of an FBI agent (Hamm) who is enlisted to bring to a halt the production of a movie called Salt of the Earth, which he and others are convinced is secretly a ploy by the communist party to add a whole swath of John Q. Public to their ranks. The Big Lie was originally conceived as a story by the actual producer of Salt of the Earth Paul Jarrico.
“Because this was such an important story of a dark, complicated time in a divided America, I’ve always felt I owed it to Paul Jarrico and all the victims of the Hollywood Blacklist to get it told in the best possible way,” explained Mankiewicz in a press release announcing the podcast version of The Big Lie. “Audio was the perfect medium to bring The Big Lie to life, and Fresh Produce Media and Audible were the perfect team.”
As we hopefully turn away from a majority of the Cancel Culture movement which has run amok over the last several years, get set to revisit another dark time in Hollywood when the audio podcast of The Big Lie premieres June 16 on Audible; tell ‘em Vents sent you!
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