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The Real Robert Redford
Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 8:04 pm
by _Coggins7
(CBS/AP) Actor, director and producer Robert Redford invited the family of Ernesto "Che" Guevara to a private Sunday screening of his company's new movie about the revolutionary's early years: "The Motorcycle Diaries."
"I've come to present the movie I produced about Che," Redford said in brief comments to reporters outside a Havana theater. "I'm very happy to be here."
"The Motorcycle Diaries," directed by Brazilian Walter Salles, and featuring Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal in the lead role, tells of Guevara's travels across Latin America before joining the revolution of Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
Guevara's widow, Aleida March, and several of their children were seen at the screening of the movie.
Among others seen entering the theater for the screening were Ramiro Valdes, a former commander in Cuba's revolution more than 40 years ago; and Alfredo Guevara, who directs the annual New Latin American Cinema Festival.
Havana was a second stop for "The Motorcycle Diaries," which received much praise and a standing ovation Saturday, at the Sundance Film Festival that Redford hosts annually in Park City, Utah.
The portrait of the Argentine-born rebel as a young man is intended to provide insights in the early stirrings of his social conscience.
The film isn't the first time that Redford has immersed himself in the atmosphere and issues of Cuba during the revolution that put Fidel Castro in power in 1959.
In 1990, Redford starred in Sydney Pollack's "Havana" as a gambler who rolls into town in 1958 hoping to make a pot of money, falls in love, and is changed by the events he witnesses as the revolution explodes.
Redford also visited Cuba for real, in 1988, at which time - according to the New York Daily News - there were reports that he had gone scuba-diving with Castro.
Those reports earned him an interrogation by U.S. Treasury agents upon his return.
This must alter the analysis just a bit. I have said that Redford was an airhead. This, however, is indicative of something far deeper, far more malignant, and far more immune to both moral intelligence and intellectual integrity.
The long standing name for individuals like this--for which Hollywood is a kind of little Mecca, has always been useful idiot. Whether we're speaking of Walter Durante and socialist Russia or Satre and the Nazis, the romantic infatuation of decadent, elitist western intellectuals with idealistic mass murderers, collectivist tyrants, and Huxleyan master controllers continues unabated.
This is a prime example of why I watch little Hollywood product anymore, even when I'm aware its a very good product in a technical sense. I just refuse to supply nutrients to this kind of cancerous tumor any longer.
Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 8:31 pm
by _gramps
Coggs wrote:
The long standing name for individuals like this--for which Hollywood is a kind of little Mecca, has always been useful idiot. Whether we're speaking of Walter Durante and socialist Russia or Satre and the Nazis, the romantic infatuation of decadent, elitist western intellectuals with idealistic mass murderers, collectivist tyrants, and Huxleyan master controllers continues unabated.
Bold added.
Are you talking about Kissinger here, or....
Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 8:43 pm
by _the road to hana
As opposed to which Robert Redford? Is there one that's not real?
Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 9:28 pm
by _Coggins7
gramps wrote:Coggs wrote:
The long standing name for individuals like this--for which Hollywood is a kind of little Mecca, has always been useful idiot. Whether we're speaking of Walter Durante and socialist Russia or Satre and the Nazis, the romantic infatuation of decadent, elitist western intellectuals with idealistic mass murderers, collectivist tyrants, and Huxleyan master controllers continues unabated.
Bold added.
Are you talking about Kissinger here, or....
I certainly think Henry Kissinger can be legitimately described as a Western intellectual elite. Whether he is an "elitist" or not I cannot say. Perhaps he is. And, what was your point here?
Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 9:31 pm
by _gramps
Coggins7 wrote:gramps wrote:Coggs wrote:
The long standing name for individuals like this--for which Hollywood is a kind of little Mecca, has always been useful idiot. Whether we're speaking of Walter Durante and socialist Russia or Satre and the Nazis, the romantic infatuation of decadent, elitist western intellectuals with idealistic mass murderers, collectivist tyrants, and Huxleyan master controllers continues unabated.
Bold added.
Are you talking about Kissinger here, or....
I certainly think Henry Kissinger can be legitimately described as a Western intellectual elite. Whether he is an "elitist" or not I cannot say. Perhaps he is. And, what was your point here?
I'm wondering if you would consider him to not only be one of the intellectual elite, but also one of those who had a romantic infatuation with idealistic mass murderers, or whether he gets a pass in your book?
Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 9:40 pm
by _Coggins7
I no of no evidence of any "romantic infatuation" with idealistic mass murderers that can be placed at the feet of Mr. Kissinger. Not according to real history, at any rate.
Then of course, there is the alternative kind of history favored by the Left and promulgated by Western intellectual elites like, say, Noam Chomski, who do, indeed, have romantic infatuations with idealistic mass murderers. Not all mass murderers mind you; just those who share his politics.
I suspect you are referencing Kissinger's involvement with the overthrow of Marxist dictator Salvatore Allende of Chile? Whatever was right or wrong about that incident, none of it flowed from any 'romantic infatuation" with Pinochet, but only from the national security interests of the Untied States and its allies in Latin America, for whom another Cuba developing in South America was of serious concern.
Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 9:52 pm
by _Coggins7
And in any case, Pinochet was not an idealistic mass murderer like Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, or Comrade Che. He was a traditional Caudillo who used brute force and fear to keep his political opponents and their supporters in check.
Good leftists, as the 20th century attests, only go in for the idealistic kind of mass murderer, and when we use the term "mass" we should not make the mistake of positioning ideologically neuter lightweights like Pinochet against the real heavy lifters of the 20th century revolutionary Left.
Pinochet's total stands at about 3,200. Mass murder in no uncertain terms, but hardly of the kind traditionally perpetrated by the "idealistic" species of autocrat.
Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 11:51 pm
by _moksha
Coggins, now that Robert Redford has publically insulted Mitt Romney, I think perhaps a review critical of Mr. Redford might be welcomed for FAIR or FARMS publication. Here is a fact that could inflame the hearts of conservative Mormon readers even more: He has made movies with Jane Fonda!
Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2007 12:35 am
by _Coggins7
Well yes, Fonda is an outright traitor to her country in war time, and openly collaborated with the enemy (and a particularly visious one at that). American POWs were tortured savagely in response to refusal to answer the questions she asked them in the manner her and her North Vietnamese handlers required (and the poor bastards who actually thought she was there to help them...trying to send her messages about their treatment in the hopes she'd get the word out. And the entire time they were right where she wanted them. It makes me ill just thinking about it momentarily).
I'm afraid I don't see any point in writing an article for the Maxwell Insititute about Redford, as Redfored insulting Romney has nothing whatsoever to do with their mission or focus.
Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2007 1:37 am
by _the road to hana
Coggins7 wrote:I'm afraid I don't see any point in writing an article for the Maxwell Insititute about Redford, as Redfored insulting Romney has nothing whatsoever to do with their mission or focus.
Give the man a peanut.