GEORGE MF WASHINGTON: Men and Their Dreams.
“Tucker The Man and His Dream”, like “Caddyshack”, “Animal House”, “Trading Places”, “Wall Street” and a million other classic Hollywood stories from the 80’s is not about rich versus poor. It’s about class. Preston Tucker’s real crime, like Al Czervick and Danny Noonan at Bushwood, the brothers and pledges of Delta Tau Chi, Winthorp and Billy Ray Valentine, and Bud Fox at Jackson Steinem, is that he tried to rise above his station and was destroyed by the powerful public and private interests who, in Hollywood’s view, enforce a rigid social hierarchy and control America in a way that is unfair and ultimately illegitimate.
And the thing is, they weren’t wrong. We cheer at the end of all these movies because, Preston Tucker excepted, the heroes of these movies defeat those corrupt entrenched interests and succeed beyond their wildest dreams.
And that’s America. Or it used to be.
The problem is that, somewhere along the way, Hollywood switched sides.
Elon Musk is everything those movies once celebrated about the great idea men of America, and yet there is no more hated individual in Hollywood right now than Elon Musk. All over town, executives are abandoning their Teslas and fleeing his free speech platform X for the sunnier partisan silos of Bluesky where censorship is not only allowed, but encouraged… which is a hell of a thing for an industry which came of age during the “Blacklist Era” to do.
And why? Because Musk defied them. He chose to take the side of the disruptors against the powerful entrenched interests… of which Hollywood is now a critical part.
Hollywood has become a defender of the system, rather than a critic of it. When Musk betrayed that system he betrayed them. And so they attacked, ultimately throwing in their lot with the same side which ultimately destroyed Preston Tucker… a truly nefarious partnership between government and corporate interests. For all the talk of Fascism flying around the corridors of Hollywood these days, they seem to have missed a critical classroom lesson somwhere along the way.
Would Francis Coppola, or any other “elite” American filmmaker ever dare to make a movie called “Musk: The Man and His Dream”? Would any traditional Hollywood studio finance it?
To ask the question, is to answer it.
What a change we’ve seen since 1988. In the Hollywood of 2024, men and their dreams are all well and good, just as long as they stay in their place.
This dovetails with what James Delingpole dubbed “The Drawbridge Effect” a decade ago:
You’ve made your money. Now the very last thing you want is for all those trashy middle class people below you to have a fair shot at getting as rich as you are. That’s why you want to make energy more expensive by opposing Keystone XL; why you’re all for environmental land sequestration (because you already own your exclusive country property); and Agenda 21 – which will make all Americans poorer, but you not so much, because you’ve enough cash to cushion you from the higher taxes and regulation with which the greenies want to hamstring the economy.
No wonder the left hates anyone who wants to lower that drawbridge.