Letter of Loathing To Tim Robbins (When Left Fights Far Left)

The New York Observer ^ | April 1, 2004 | John Heilpern

[OESY]

Dear Mr. Robbins,

I’ve never written to a movie star before—least of all to one who cares as much as you. That I have contempt in my heart for you disturbs me more than you will at first appreciate.

Make no mistake about my feelings. Your feeble political satire about the war in Iraq, Embedded, which you’ve also directed at the Public, has been dressed up as a revolutionary statement. Enough is enough. I usually strain to be polite, but there will be no apologies from me this time. I’m no political animal, but I know smugness when I see it, and I know bad theater when I see it. Smugness is your calling card in the name of "caring," and I’m left with hate for soft pundits like you and your kind. Your liberal, caring, Hollywood kind, posing as some sort of risk-taking renegade between making movies.

"Oh, here we go!" Is that what you’re thinking, Mr. Robbins? Then let me make my dislike for you clear. It’s something at least for me to be grateful for. It sustains me in my anger.

Will it surprise you if I say that, like you, I’m outraged at being misled by lying politicians? Like you, I opposed the war in Iraq. You are not unique, Mr. Robbins. I’m sorry if you and your wife feel persecuted for your views. But let’s not make out a case for Amnesty.

You have yet to be thrown into a gulag. Put it this way: How much did you really suffer when the Baseball Hall of Fame canceled the 15th-anniversary celebration of Bill Durham—the movie in which you starred—because of your "unpatriotic" opposition to the war? Come on! It’s a baseball movie! The Hall of Fame’s farcical response to you was a perfect example of the stupidity of warmongering American righteousness, not a reason for your preening martyrdom.

Saint Robbins! Wasn’t that you—our rebel voice of principled protest—on smarmy best behavior accepting your glittering Academy Award in craven silence about the war? You and that other uncompromising hero of the antiwar movement, Sean Penn. Our brave, golden heroes! Now eagerly co-opted by the System for a bauble, timid and mute as collaborators, maimed by voluntary self-censorship for the occasion.

Mr. Robbins—a word in your ear, not that you’ll listen. You are deaf to all criticism. You must be. How else to explain the sophomoric wankery of your "scathing" political satire at the Public?

If you wanted the conservative right to have yet more reason to patronize the left, Embedded has offered it up on a plate with all the trimmings. Your simple-minded satire of Mr. Bush and Co. can only be enjoyed by a choir of your fawning groupies who want to be told what they already know and think.

God forbid you—or anyone else—should have the theater in uproar or even honest debate. But wait! Embedded has scarcely begun when a sanctimonious announcement is made, dripping with obvious irony:

"You have every right to express your opinion, but don’t get your feelings hurt if we make you express them outside. A special area has been set up for your convenience. It is behind the orange cones at the corner of Sixth Street and Avenue D. You can say whatever you want to there. Don’t blame us. This is the age where an institution’s First Amendment rights supersede the individual’s. If you don’t like it, move to Iran. We’re not fucking around. If you don’t like it, get the fuck out and don’t expect your money back."

The self-consciously hip tone is established, all right. The accompanying blast of rock music promises a throwback to Vietnam-era protest. But what follows wouldn’t disturb a mouse. There’s nothing to shake us up, nothing for anyone to oppose—nothing except the gloating of a mediocre mind.

Mr. Robbins, you’ve given us little more than pandering political correctness about the American soldiers in Iraq, and a sloppy version of a second-rate Saturday Night Live sketch.

Your hack send-up of W.’s cabal of advisers, with names like Rum-Rum, Gondola and Dick, is astonishingly juvenile. (Oooh! Lot of laughs with Dick.) You’ve got them wearing pseudo-sinister half-masks as if this is Brecht! God love us, old Bertolt must be spinning in his grave.

Your drill sergeant who’s a showbiz queen was first done better by Monty Python a million years ago. Your heavily ironic hymns to the neoconservative guru, Leo Strauss, are humorless. Your lengthy saga about the government propaganda machine exploiting an injured soldier named Private Ryan is, of course, a tired retread of the well-known story of Private Jessica Lynch.

Give us one line, one moment, one single fresh thought to equal "I love the smell of napalm in the morning .... "

How many real war reporters have you ever talked to, Mr. Robbins? Your embedded, censored dopes in Iraq are simply, laboriously ludicrous.

Your soldiers are all sentimentalized Americans out of Central Casting: noble men and women, Simple Folk writing simple, heartfelt letters to the Simple Folk back home. They’re Americans we can be proud of, Americans we can feel for in the midst of this phony war re-created for our knowing pleasure by the Actors’ Gang, all the way from Los Angeles.

Oh, the horror, the horror.

How I loathed the lame dishonesty of it all. Don’t you know that you haven’t risked one damn thing the entire evening? Don’t you know you’ve created nothing that’s remotely challenging or even new? No, that’s too much to ask. You feel good about it, don’t you? Good and virtuous.

Whereas you’ve utterly capitulated to nice, safe bourgeois theatrical taste, where no harm is possible and no outrage ever provoked. Your notion of biting satire is just another smug orthodoxy that won’t even outlive my dismay. If you were doing anything different, the sound of boos and the slamming of upturned seats would be music to our ears. But it isn’t happening, is it? Nor can it happen.

Authentic satire is never safe, and real polemicists do not have clean hands. Have you read Swift lately? Jonathan Swift’s 1729 "A Modest Proposal" is the satirical model that demolishes the cant of all politicians. His famous proposal—modestly and eloquently put—was to cure the burden of impoverished children by eating them.

"I have been assured," Swift wrote, "by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious, nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricasie, or a ragout."

He goes on sensibly, "A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter."

Furthermore,asthewell-researched Swift thoughtfully pointed out, there would be certain nutritional benefits, extra revenue for the city of Dublin, and no child would ever starve for lack of work or parental love.

Today, perhaps nothing can be satirized when everything already appears to be satire. Who can exaggerate the Orwellian arrogance of that convoluted tortured thing, Donald Rumsfeld, better than he? How to send up a dimwit President cracking bad jokes about not finding nuclear weapons when he’s written the script himself?

But a difference can be made, and theater itself first functioned in the 20’s and 30’s as an overnight, living newspaper urgently hitting the streets with the news. It is why tyrants close theaters down in a political crisis, or censor them.

Who would trouble to censor Embedded at the Public? Who is it actually upsetting? But give us a Swiftian bruised heart and soul crying out at the mortal blunders of lying politicians, and we will see a difference. Give us whirlwinds and uproar and aliveness at the theater, and we will be there cheering.

But not for you, Mr. Robbins, glibly slumming it at the Public with your tasteful, dead, second-rate work. It is the moral duty of radical protest to goad and provoke and insult. But you have left me only in despair at the timid political bankruptcy of theater. I’m in despair that theater—mirror and eternal conscience of the world—will ever convey the spirit of true opposition in America, let alone outrage at the weary, unacceptable mess of the world.

Which is why you leave me with such anger, burning.

Yours sincerely,

John Heilpern,
Theater Critic,
The New York Observer

[ActionNewsBill]

too long, no read

I'll sum it up for you...

Dear Mr. Robbins,

You're a no-talent hack.

John Heilpern, Theater Critic, The New York Observer

[Tacis]

I think Heilpern is being unfair. He fails to recognize how far Robbins has gone on such little talent or capability. Robbins simply doesn't know what is "good" because he never has been associated with it. He inherited his place in the biz and has been very well paid for the marginal work he's done. To hold Robbins to standards established by capable people who were clever and not simply successful hacks doesn't seem fair. Some one has to provide those with little intellect material that matches what they've been told to appreciate and does not challenge, why not a B class movie person?

[dirtboy]

How else to explain the sophomoric wankery of your "scathing" political satire at the Public?

Uh, perhaps an explanation is that Robbins is a sophmoric wanker?

But you have left me only in despair at the timid political bankruptcy of theater.

Yeah, that despairs me too / sarcasm.

[OESY]

Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, looking Left

"Smugness is his calling card: Tim Robbins, with his Embedded, has brought
to the stage a smorgesbord of sanctimony and simple-minded satire."

[Spok]

Does anyone know if Robbins put any of his own money at risk in this fiasco? Some actors are willing to put their own money and careers at risk, if they truly believe, like say, Mel Gibson.

[js1138]

You ommitted the part where he says the show sucks because it isn't leftist enough.

[OESY]

too long, no read

a spicy meal to be savored, not fast food to be gulped down

[zbigreddogz]

Now you'er not being fair. Robbins might be a lefty RAT, but he does have talent. Ever seen "The Shawshank Redeption" or "Mystic River"? He's a very good actor.

[Tijeras_Slim]

Bit*h-slap! Little Timmy has produced the theatrical equivalent of an ugly drawing that Mom sticks to the fridge just to be nice.

[Socratic]

"a spicy meal to be savored"

Ah, Johnathan Swift's cooking got to you too, huh?

[Paradox]

I'll sum it up.

Dear Tim Robbins.

Since you are such a no-talent hack, and your play is beyond awful, you have done NOTHING for La Revolucion! You have hurt our cause, you pathetic wannabe.

Signed, a TrueLeftist (tm) Theater Critic.

[Shermy]

These critiques about Tim Robbins miss the big point. This play is a deflection from his own history with Iraq. He adopts the Larouchite conspiracy theory which detaches the Iraq war from a history he is all to aware of, and was a participant in.

Robbins and Susan Sarandon were two of the foremost anti-Sanctions campaigners. They helped spread the "million dead Iraqi babies" lie, a lie repeated by Osama as a reason for 9/11.

Robbins should have a lot to say about Iraq, though no one asks him - a journalistic failure. Robbins studiously avoids any mention of his involvement, and his play, form what I read, can be seen as a distraction from his own guilt. An artistic CYA for his own conscience.

No journalist seems much interested in the context of our 12 year long hostilities with Iraq, and the Kerry campaign is likewise defining the "war" as something that just popped up in Bush's mind either at the instigation of the secretive, hidden Cheney or the you-know-who "neocons".

Who fronted these anti-Sanctions groups and NGOs? Saddam? French or Russian interests? That's an interesting subject to pursue. One of the classic Sarandon performances I saw was just before the "war". On TV she advocated "containment" - that is, the French and Russian position on sanctions. Why did she deviate?

Anyway, for context here's a letter the lovely couple signed in 1998, printed in the New York Times.

___________________________

Are the Children of Iraq Our Enemies?

Ten years ago, on August 6, 1990, the U.S. imposed
economic sanctions on Iraq. Since then, over one million
Iraqis, mostly children under five, have died. 10 years is
enough! The military sanctions on Iraq should continue,
but the economic sanctions not only do not work, they are
killing innocent Iraqi children.

We say, the time has come to stop killing innocent Iraqi
children.

Lift the economic sanctions on Iraq now!

Susan Sarandon

Tim Robbins

Martin Sheen

Liam Neeson

Rosie O'Donnel

Jeremy Irons

Robert Altman

etc.

[ActionNewsBill]

yeah, but Susan Sarandon was hot back in the day

Never did care for those bug-eyes of hers.

[ThreeYearLurker]

It appears the gerbil has burrowed its way from the colon to Mr. Helprin's brain.

[Shermy]

Correction on #15, the letter is from July 28, 2000 NY Times.

I can't find anything Robbins said in 2003, but here's a report about his wife and sanctions from February 2003, generally as I remember her outrageous flip flop.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,79470,00.html

"...The Hollywood anti-war faction got plenty of face time: Comedienne Janeane Garofalo appeared on Fox News Sunday, while actress Susan Sarandon and actor Mike Farrell were paired off against National Review's Rich Lowry on Face the Nation. Lowry joked he did not have enough Hollywood or TV credits to be in the debate.

Garofalo refused to concede there ever could be a "just war" and claimed sanctions were responsible for "mass murders" in Iraq. Sarandon and Farrell, with a slightly different set of talking points, argued, "Sanctions work, war doesn't." ..."

Sarandon abandoned her anti-Sanctions position in face of the fact Saddam was about to be removed militarily. Why the flip flop? She reconsidered her previous position on sanctions due to careful study? She was paid to change her position?

Don't know, but there's a good story about her, hubby and Iraqi politics to be written IMO.

[OpusatFR]

Ouch!

[DCPatriot]

Susan Saradon is STILL hot...politics aside.

That's *all* woman there. < sigh >

[highlandbreeze]

Nooooo! Not Liam Neeson. Lalalalala

[marron]

Robbins and Susan Sarandon were two of the foremost anti-Sanctions campaigners. They helped spread the "million dead Iraqi babies" lie, a lie repeated by Osama as a reason for 9/11.

Exactly. The "containment" that everyone assured us was working as we prepared for war, was under severe attack and Robbins et al were propagandists for this attack.

The containment which supposedly was killing Iraqi children by the trainload was the PR side of a move to eliminate sanctions. The reality hidden by the propaganda was that Saddam was busy buying off the Security Council. "Containment" and the sanctions that were part of it, was coming off the rails, leaving us with a choice of overthrowing Saddam or seeing him emerge from his box stronger than ever.

It is the unraveling of "containment" that forced us to finish it militarily, and so in a way Robbins and his co-thinkers share responsibility for the war. If their "million dead babies" story played into the attack on 9/11, there is a greek tragedy waiting to be written about actors and unforeseen consequences.

[sarasota]

And those teeny tiny teeth. Watching her in Step Mom against Julia Roberts' teeth was a sight to behold.

[marron]

Garofalo... claimed sanctions were responsible for "mass murders" in Iraq. Sarandon and Farrell, with a slightly different set of talking points, argued, "Sanctions work...

Perhaps someone could host a debate between Garofalo and Sarandon.

Don't know, but there's a good story about her, hubby and Iraqi politics to be written IMO.

I'm still waiting to see where the rest of those oil coupons went. Do you suppose they will release any more of that information anytime soon?

[weegee]

If this were WWII, I wonder if Tim Robbins would be writing dramatized scripts for Axis Sally and Lord Haw Haw.

[victoryatallcosts]

I actually think that Tim Robbins is a very good actor. He should stick to it.

Of course, I do like the one political satire film he made- Bob Roberts. The key to enjoying it is fully embracing the narrative device used to tell the story (that the film is a British documentary about the rise of a right-wing folksinger who gets elected Senator from Pennsylvania). See, I watch the movie as though it were a real such documentary and so, therefore, I simply assume that the crackpot conspiracy-theory stuff throughout is simply nonsense.

I wish they'd released a soundtrack albulm. They didn't, of course, because a lot of the "right-wing folksongs" are actually quite amusing and Robbins was afraid that they'd be adopted by actual conservatives.

[Lopeover]

This guy really knows how to diss someone. I hope that Robbins gets it.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

When you, or Mr. Robbins, attempt to use humor to illustrate the reasons for your anger at Mr. Bush, you signally fail to startle the audience with the truth. The problem is obvious, Mr. Heilpern - you are furious at Mr. Bush for reasons which you cannot even admit to yourself. How then can you tell the truth to the public?

Mr. Bush has had the temerity to assert the virtue of valor in defense of the Constitution and traditional values of America. And you at one and the same time know that he is right, and take offense at the implication that you have spent your adult life cynically mocking a virtue. Naturally you are furious - and naturally you can't express the reason truthfully. And naturally when you try to express anger without reference to the truth, you can't be funny.

Until a Jackie Mason gets you in his sights - then you'll be funny. But I doubt you'll enjoy it much.

[Lopeover]

You lefties really do eat each other's young!

[BossLady]

My fav line:

"Your liberal, caring, Hollywood kind, posing as some sort of risk-taking renegade between making movies"

(Pzzzzzzzztttt......smell flesh burning on that one.....)

[Brian Allen]

<< Until a Jackie Mason gets you in his sights - then you'll be funny. But I doubt you'll enjoy it much. >>

On the way to the gas chamber Jackie Mason would crack one about finally being able to get rid of the damned lice he picked up coming down from berlin on the train.

G-d bless and keep him!

[xp38]

etc...you could add the usual suspects

[Shermy]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4516588/


When did you first come up with the idea for “Embedded”?

During the war, I was reading different news sources. I would check everything. It’s the way to get a balance. And I was reading a different account of the war in the U.K. papers and that was for me, curious. I started making notes. I started by writing the scenes with the Office of Special Plans folks—the neo-conservatives—just as an exercise. I wondered what skewed logic was it to use deception and lies to get the American public’s support for the war?

You’re talking about President Bush’s advisors like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz.

Yeah, I did some research on them and I found out about some of the philosophy they adhere to—a kind of elitist philosophy that there are different truths for different people. The idea of the noble lie—that concept exists in the philosophies of some of these people. So I just started writing these characters and that’s kind of where the play started. Then I thought, this is fun to write but there is another story here, and that’s the soldiers who are serving the country.

________________

"I did some research" - not linked to UK papers. Sounds like Robbins lurks on LaRouche sites. Someone should ask him about it...

[Gypssy]

They could have put Fred Savage in Shawshank Redemption and it would have been as good. Robbins is a marginal actor at best. Mystic River is a cast of no talents. Go figure!

[Heyworth]

Does anyone know if Robbins put any of his own money at risk in this fiasco? Some actors are willing to put their own money and careers at risk, if they truly believe, like say, Mel Gibson.

If it's the Actor's Gang, like the article says, then, yes, it's Robbins' money. The company is pretty much a joke on the L.A. theatre scene, self-conciously avant-garde in a very agitprop, 1930s Brechtian way. And they've been a money-loser forever, propped up by Robbins. Here's a link to their supporters. Note Clint Eastwood way down the list:

http://www.theactorsgang.com/involved.htm

[Shermy]

Hey, someone else linked Robbins to LaRouche!

http://www.mrc.org/BozellColumns/newscolumn/2004/col20040323.asp

"...Even the liberal New York Times couldn’t muster a cheer: "Audience members already in sympathy with Mr. Robbins's political views — the folks, in other words, most likely to attend 'Embedded' — will quite possibly go from nodding in agreement to simply nodding off." Three strikes and you’re out.


But a closer look makes the spectacle even more grotesque. Critic Terry Teachout noticed that the character "Pearly White" supposedly quotes the philosopher Leo Strauss: "Moral virtue only exists in popular opinion, where it serves the purpose of controlling the unintelligent majority." Teachout suspected the quote was bogus, and a Google internet search quickly vindicated his suspicion. This supposed Strauss quote actually came, by several odd strands of interpretation, from one Tony Papert, who was writing for the Executive Intelligence Review – an infamous publication of the perennial presidental candidate/crank Lyndon LaRouche. Robbins is so far off the political radar screen with his play that he’s using baked quotes out of the Twilight Zone of LaRouchie magazines!...."

[Ditto]

Jonathan Swift’s 1729 "A Modest Proposal" is the satirical model that demolishes the cant of all politicians. His famous proposal—modestly and eloquently put—was to cure the burden of impoverished children by eating them.

So barbaric and untidy. What would the Vegans say?

Today, we have the surgical cleanliness of Planned Parenthood which is where I'd bet this guy worships at the altar of political correctness.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

How else to explain the sophomoric wankery of your "scathing" political satire at the Public?

Someone's watching a lot of BBC America.

[Monkey King]

There was also a bit of a kerfluffle when Robbins came back to the group after a (long) hiatus to demand the leadership role once more. When the AG balked he said essentially "My money, my theatre".

I don't know if he bills himself as the producer of AG or the Aristic Director.

I'm the production manager of an Equity waiver 99-seat theatre just down Vine St. from the AG and I can tell you that yes, they ARE considered a joke, even among the rank and file leftists that would be too scared to admit it publicly.

[ATCNavyRetiree]

HEY HOLLYWOOD:

Sorry moderator, I just had to do it.... :-)

[Chinese_American_Patriot]

What the hell is wrong with you?? You are attracted to ugly red-head leftists like Susan Sarandon?

[DCPatriot]

I lived with a Trinidadian woman that is a true Socialist. She thinks the government should be there to help everybody afford things that are set up at a price that most people afford to pay by themselves.

She thinks that everybody should have access to free medical care. She thinks that illegals should have all that AND free education and rent assistance.

She also sadly is my Soul Mate.

My current Apprentice is also a Democratic Liberal. She's too beautiful to show the door.

Let's talk about Susan Saradon, okay?

Forget about the body. It's incredible for a woman of any age...but she has a lot of sultry-ness with those sad beautiful eyes and lips.

She's the reason "cleavage" is in the dictionary.

The fact that she is a Leftist Liberal is actually a turn-on to me.

cheers.

[Democratshavenobrains]

So he's accusing Robbins of nothing being anti-american enough?

[Chinese_American_Patriot]

You have one sick, disturbed mind. If you love liberal women so much, why don't you join the libs?

[DCPatriot]

Go away. You bore me.

[Chinese_American_Patriot]

Why don't you go away liberal lover!

[xm177e2]

But not for you, Mr. Robbins, glibly slumming it at the Public with your tasteful, dead, second-rate work.

Tasteful? Whatever.

Of course, that is the ultimate insult, coming from a left-wing art critic. It's like when Andrew Sullivan says someone is boring, or an NRO writer calls someone a Communist. It's the meanest thing they can think of (which is not to say that it's untrue).

[DCPatriot]

YAWN!

Behave, newbie.

[Billthedrill]

This is the age where an institution’s First Amendment rights supersede the individual’s.

Anyone else find this terrifying? This is a perfect distillation of true fascism, the very sort of thing the person saying it fantasizes (incorrectly) John Ashcroft saying. "I'm sorry, Mr. Robbins, I know you think you have a right to express your opinion, but the administration's First Amendment rights supersede the individuals..." Idiots.

[KMG365]

HaHa very funny! I am going to recycle that one, if you don't mind.