Comedian Steve McGrew’s liberal alter ego got bumped from Twitter this week, and he wasn’t alone.

Twitter either temporarily or permanently suspended the comedy accounts of The Babylon Bee, faux woke warrior Titania McGrath, Jarvis Dupont, Guy Verhoftwat, Tolerance Police and Sir Lefty Farr-Right QC, according to Spiked-Online.

What did they all have in common? They either mocked Cancel Culture, Social Justice Warriors or Democrats in toto.

HiT reached out to McGrew to find out if Liberal Larry will be returning to Twitter and why the timing of the Twitter suspensions may not be accidental.

HiT: What can you share about your Liberal Larry character’s suspension? How did you learn about it? Were there previous warnings from Twitter and what was the official reason for the ban?

Steve McGrew: Yes Twitter murdered Liberal Larry. Well, they killed his account. There was no warning. It was weird how I found out. Larry had just Tweeted a happy birthday message to great Communist actor Robert De Niro, and I received a reply notice for that tweet.

I signed on to read the reply and it said the original tweet wasn’t available. I thought, how could a De Niro tweet get me in trouble? But when I went to Larry’s main page it gave me the “account suspended” message. So I checked my e-mail and there was this:

Apparently I was accused of spamming or some B.S. I wasn’t. Larry was just a comedy character with over 30K followers!

HiT: For those who weren’t following your Liberal Larry account what can you share about the personality and his Tweets?

McGrew: Liberal Larry is the ultimate liberal, very woke, always wears a pink P hat and doesn’t wear shirts because clothes are a symbol of white racism. He says no indigenous people wore shirts until the sexually repressed white man came here and forced everyone to cover up.

You could always bet he was going to say something stupid about hot topics and anything Trump did. Basically he was every person that replies from the Left to any media story posted about Trump or his election.

HiT: This isn’t your first time facing a social media punishment. Can you briefly sum up how Twitter and other platforms have punished you in the past?

McGrew: I pretty much stay in Facebook jail. My wife bought me a T-shirt that says Facebook Jail Repeat Offender.

My main account on Twitter, my verified account that had over 113,000 people, was killed off by Twitter. So I used another account I had (because Twitter used to let you have more that one account) then that account was “reported.”

RELATED: Steve McGrew: PC Codes Divide Americans

Basically it was attacked by whiny liberals who were upset I was a Trump supporter with more followers than them. Like most liberal hack comics with no following, they’re bitter little people doing each other’s open mic events.

HiT: Are you aware of any left-of-center comics facing similar social media scrutiny? If so, can you share who?

McGrew: I don’t know of ANY lefty comic or Twitter account getting banned. There are accounts that wish death to Trump, some have posted how they’d like his death to happen, and they’re still there. And yes, those are violations of Twitters terms … which I think they make up as they go.

HiT: The timing of the suspensions (your character, The Babylon Bee and more…) came at the start of the DNC convention. Coincidence?

McGrew: Oh yeah, the timing of the suspensions is very suspicious. The day of the DNC convention. Done before the convention. I think it was so we couldn’t live tweet and slam the crap out of how bad the DNC convention was.

That first night was like the Jerry Lewis telethon! Only with less comedy and more disease. And for a group that has its legs wrapped around Hollywood that thing had the worst production values.

HiT: Final, related thoughts?

McGrew: Twitter will die as soon as Trump leaves. When he goes to Parler.com it will be over for them. All of us who got slaughtered in the St. DNC Massacre have moved over to Parler. I’m moving all my characters to Parler. Most are there now.

Oh. And I did get an email claiming “SUCCESS” in getting Liberal Larry banned from Twitter. It’s a guy who’s been claiming he was going to get Larry fired for a long time.

Twitter is full of bitter sad people with no life. It’s a cesspool of crying Commie wannabes who hate America and hate Trump even more. I guess they still aren’t over Hillary losing. Just wait and see how they act when Trump wins his second term.

The post Comic Suspended by Twitter: ‘Suspicious’ Timing to Blunt DNC Jokes appeared first on Hollywood in Toto.

Nick Cave isn’t in danger of “cancellation” …yet.

The creative force behind Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds still has some heavy thoughts about the cultural trend and why he’s hoping it fades to black soon.

Only he doesn’t sound optimistic on that front.

Cave connects with his global fan base via The Red Hand Files, his freewheeling blog. Recently, someone wrote to the singer/songwriter about cancel culture, and Cave didn’t mince words about it.

As far as I can see, cancel culture is mercy’s antithesis. Political correctness has grown to become the unhappiest religion in the world. Its once honourable attempt to reimagine our society in a more equitable way now embodies all the worst aspects that religion has to offer (and none of the beauty) — moral certainty and self-righteousness shorn even of the capacity for redemption. It has become quite literally, bad religion run amuck.

Cancel culture’s refusal to engage with uncomfortable ideas has an asphyxiating effect on the creative soul of a society. Compassion is the primary experience — the heart event — out of which emerges the genius and generosity of the imagination. Creativity is an act of love that can knock up against our most foundational beliefs, and in doing so brings forth fresh ways of seeing the world. This is both the function and glory of art and ideas. A force that finds its meaning in the cancellation of these difficult ideas hampers the creative spirit of a society and strikes at the complex and diverse nature of its culture.

This isn’t the first time Cave attacked Cancel Culture. Last year, he shared his fears of not just conventional faith but the growing “woke” sentiment. 

I tend to become uncomfortable around all ideologies that brand themselves as “the truth” or “the way”. This not only includes most religions, but also atheism, radical bi-partisan politics or any system of thought, including “woke” culture, that finds its energy in self-righteous belief and the suppression of contrary systems of thought. Regardless of the virtuous intentions of many woke issues, it is its lack of humility and the paternalistic and doctrinal sureness of its claims that repel me…Wokeness, for all its virtues, is an ideology immune to the slightest suggestion that in a generation’s time their implacable beliefs will appear as outmoded and fallacious as those of their own former generation.

Cave previously rejected someone’s suggestion that he, or other singers, might regret using select words in songs that have recently fallen out of favor.

I would rather be remembered for writing something that was discomforting or offensive, than to be forgotten for writing something bloodless and bland.

Many stars either embrace woke culture or stay silent on the matter. Among those fighting back against it include Adam Carolla, Ricky Gervais, Judy Gold, Nick Di Paolo, Dennis Miller and Bill Maher.

The post Nick Cave Calls Cancel Culture the ‘Unhappiest Religion in the World’ appeared first on Hollywood in Toto.

A quick perusal of Judy Gold’s Twitter account makes it clear she won’t be voting for President Donald Trump this fall.

The veteran comic routinely rails against both the President and the GOP. That’s standard stuff for modern comedians, an entertainment group that reliably leans to the Left.

Folks like Nick Di Paolo, Evan Sayet and Dennis Miller are the exceptions to the stand-up rule.

And, sadly, the battle for free speech in 2020 is being fought primarily on the Right -- with a few exceptions:

• Ricky Gervais
• John Cleese
• J.K. Rowling (as of roughly two weeks ago)

You can add Gold to that list.

The liberal comedienne dropped by “The Adam Carolla Show” podcast this week and tore into anyone trying to censor what comedians say. 

Why?

Partly because she’s promoting her upcoming book, “Yes, I Can Say That: When They Come for the Comedians, We Are All in Trouble.” The July 28 release from the Emmy award winner explores a culture that demands comics only tell certain jokes, certain ways.

Or else.

She spoke with Carolla, one of the fiercest defenders of free speech alive, about the pressure placed on comedians in 2020.

She shared how Vice TV ran a segment on college bookers, all of whom were 22 or so years old, telling comedians what they can and cannot say

“They have no life experience, no knowledge of comedy and I was interviewed as the opposing viewpoint,” Gold said.

She doesn’t take kindly to that trend.

“Don’t you f***ing tell me when I get on stage what I can say, what I can talk about. We are comedians. We are social commentators. Our goal when we get on stage is to make people laugh. That’s it. Don’t tell me that you’re triggered by a word … if you don’t like a comic, change the channel.”

Gold then described why censoring a comedian disrupts the creative process.

“There’s so much that goes into a joke or a bit. Nuance. Intent. Context. Who the f*** are you to tell me, ‘Oh, I can’t say that word. It might trigger this one.’

And it’s the progressive left that has really corrupted free speech,” added Gold, host of the podcast “Kill Me Now.”

Carolla gently stepped in, saying it’s not liberals but Leftists censoring thought in 21st century America.

Gold wouldn’t let the issue die.

“This idea that comedians are being canceled, their life’s work is being erased … no,” she said..

Carolla noted that when he was in his early 20s he’d never even consider telling an older, established comedian what jokes could be told.

“These 22 year olds are like drunk with power … ‘Take this tweet down or modify this. You’re gonna do comedy? Let me vet it,'” he said.

Gold brought up the farcical notion of participation trophies, where children who don’t achieve anything of value are rewarded for their efforts. That’s part of a larger cultural rot, one leaving young Americans unable to cope for themselves.

“I believe being offended is a choice. You make that choice,” she said, adding the folly of trying to steer clear of challenging thoughts. “This idea that you can never feel uncomfortable .. .what are you being protected from? ‘Oh, that triggers me.’ You got triggered the minute your alarm goes off in the morning … learn how to f***ing live, you idiots! The world does not revolve around you.”

Gold blames her own ideological side of the aisle for Cancel Culture’s emergence. Ironically, the Amazon page for her book cites rare examples where conservatives decried political humor:

The fallout after Michelle Wolf’s roast at the 2018 White House Correspondent’s Dinner, Samantha Bee’s forced apology after calling Ivanka Trump a “feckless c*nt,” Kathy Griffin’s being “blacklisted” from Hollywood after posting a photo with what looked like the president’s severed head, all represent a dangerous and growing trend—to censor comedians.

The post Liberal Comic Judy Gold: The Progressive Left Has Corrupted Free Speech appeared first on Hollywood in Toto.

Project 21 isn’t your typical black organization.

The group is sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research, a “communications and research foundation supportive of a strong national defense and dedicated to providing free market solutions to today’s public policy problems.”

The group, while officially nonpartisan, embraces values more typically associated with right-of-center Americans.

This week, Project 21 followed the lead of other black groups in the wake of the George Floyd protests. The organization wants change, targeting an august creative body and an Emmy winner in the process.

The group formally asked The Kennedy Center to rescind the Mark Twain Prize from 2010 recipient Tina Fey. The “Saturday Night Live” alum earned the honor for her work on that legendary show, her NBC sitcom “30 Rock” and feature films like “Mean Girls.”

The group sent a letter to the D.C. based Kennedy Center requesting it take back the Mark Twain comedy prize from Fey “in light of the use of blackface on her television show and her recent request to remove that content from circulation.”

“We are not trying to cancel Tina Fey. Tina Fey cancelled herself when she asked Hulu to purge offensive episodes of ’30 Rock,’ calling the fruits of her creativity ‘ugliness,'” said Project 21 member Horace
Cooper in the June 26 letter. “We are simply alerting the Kennedy Center -- which has acted in the past to protect itself and the integrity of the Twain Prize -- to do so again in light of Tina Fey’s admission.”

The group insists it’s not joining the Cancel Culture wave nor does it wish Fey to lose any particular gig.

“Instead, we are asking you to act to preserve the integrity of the Twain Prize and the Kennedy Center itself,” the letter said.

Fey asked Hulu to remove four episodes of her “30 Rock” series that featured white characters donning blackface. The streamer complied with Fey’s request, one of many such pop culture erasures in recent days. The comic star co-wrote two of the episodes in question.

Here is part of Fey’s statement on the matter:

‘As we strive to do the work and do better in regards to race in America, we believe that these episodes featuring actors in race-changing makeup are best taken out of circulation,’ she wrote.

‘I understand now that ‘intent’ is not a free pass for white people to use these images. I apologize for pain they have caused.

“[i]t is her newly-announced standard to which she should be held,” Project 21 concluded.

The request wouldn’t be unprecedented. The Kennedy Center rescinded its comedy prize from previous winner Bill Cosby in light of his incarceration for drugging and raping a woman roughly 16 years ago. 

Fey’s “missteps,” the letter alleges, “occurred within the field and thus directly reflect on the honor of the institution.”

Traditionally media outlets would scramble to cover such a story, particularly at a time when race is at the forefront of the national conversation. A good faith Google News search found a few mainstream sources, like The New York Daily News and The Daily Mail, tackling this story. Most avoided it.

Variety, Deadline.com, The Hollywood Reporter and TheWrap.com similarly chose to ignore it.

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Since the current summer movie season has become a barren chest of toys on lockdown, it’s a fine time to recall one of the most surprising films to ever become a summer blockbuster.

In fact, it might be the greatest surprise sleeper of all-time. No one, not the rival distributors or even the studio releasing it, knew what they had in “Ghost.”

At the start of 1990, all eyes were on Warren Beatty’s “Dick Tracy,” deemed “the next Batman,” and “Days of Thunder,” which, coming from the same team that gave us “Top Gun,” was expected to perform big. Both films under-performed, though they weren’t alone.

In addition to not living up to the expectations set by their predecessors, “Back to the Future Part III,” “RoboCop 2,” “Another 48 HRS” and “Gremlins 2: The New Batch” made less than everyone expected.

Although “Total Recall” and “Die Hard 2” were massive hits, they (along with “Another 48 HRS” and “RoboCop 2”) were heavily criticized for their scenes of graphic violence. “Arachnophobia,” the maiden release from Disney’s new Hollywood Pictures label, wasn’t the “Jaws with spiders” everyone expected,

Sam Raimi’s “Darkman” was more a beloved cult item than a genuine crossover hit, and seemingly no one was willing to admit that the early-in-the-season Mel Gibson/ Goldie Hawn hit “Bird on a Wire” was anything but dreadful.

It seemed none of the movies could catch a break and hopes for a through-the-roof hit were dashed. Then, along came “Ghost.”

In case you’ve forgotten, Patrick Swayze stars as Sam Wheat, a Wall street stockbroker whose passionate romance with his girlfriend Molly (Demi Moore) is cut short when Sam is murdered in a mugging. Molly is comforted by Sam’s best friend (Tony Goldwyn) but her perspective is challenged when a psychic (Whoopi Goldberg) appears and tells Molly that Sam is haunting her.

Even worse, Sam is trying to prove from beyond the grave that his death wasn’t a random incident.

Everything about “Ghost” was a surprise, starting from its filmmakers. It was directed by Jerry Zucker, part of the ZAZ (Zucker-Abrams-Zucker) comedy team that made “Airplane!” and “The Naked Gun.” Zucker had never made a dramatic film before and his playful but not obtrusively stylish approach is unexpected.

So was the casting of Swayze, Moore and Goldberg, all of whom were coming off a series of flops that appeared to be putting an end to their earlier breakouts. “Ghost” opened near the very end of a busy summer of 1990, after weeks of notoriously brutal and noisy sequels.

With a striking trailer, a successful nationwide sneak preview to drum up business a week before opening day and that eye-catching poster (the tagline was a single word: “Believe”), it opened at the # 2 spot, then jumped up to the coveted top spot the following week.

Between July 13 and Dec 1990, it bounced around the top ten. Only adding to the mania was the resurgence of The Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody,” the unofficial love theme from “Ghost,” which had previously been a hit back in 1955.

To everyone’s amazement, “Ghost” wound up not just the biggest hit of that summer but the year, a gigantic, zeitgeist-favorite smash. It remains one of the most popular and profitable movies ever made.

Looking at it today, just in time for its 30th anniversary, “Ghost” is a little hokier than I remember but still wildly entertaining and properly moving.

It helps that Sam and Molly are so sympathetic and likable and not rich yuppie stereotypes; despite their spectacular apartment and Sam’s clearly well-paying job, they come across more as idealistic bohemians than the second coming of Gordon Gekko.

FAST FACT: “Ghost” hauled in $217 million back in 1990, beating “Pretty Woman” and “Home Alone” at the U.S. box office.

Most remember the “pottery scene,” which is as sensual and novel a love scene as we’ll ever get in American cinema. Indeed, it seems to be the only part of “Ghost” everyone recalls.

It’s far from the best part of the movie.

In fact, there are quietly powerful passages in the first half that bear mentioning. The late, wonderful Swayze, who is superb here, has a monolog in the early going where he casually and fearfully reflects on the fragility of life; he’s lying in bed with Molly, noting a televised plane crash and how its random tragedy took the lives of those onboard. It’s a bit of foreshadowing, of course, but gives the character, and the actor playing him, a vulnerability uncommon for men in film at that time.

Later, Moore has a heartbreaking speech on how she can’t break out of the daily patterns of tending to her late lover’s clothing; Moore’s performance is the film’s most underrated and it was a seriously underestimated turn at the time. She’s not just a persuasive crier, Moore is going to some raw places as an actor and is playing her role as grounded to reality as possible.

Goldberg made history for being (at the time) only the second African American actress to ever win an Academy Award. It’s a well-deserved honor, as the film needs her sharp comic relief and deft take on an awakened charlatan. The third act is overstuffed with chases and fight scenes but truly soars during an extended bit where Brown must make an impossible trip to the bank with Sam guiding her.

“Ghost” is strikingly odd, an amalgam of disparate genres that, against all odds, works as a love story, supernatural thriller, comedy and mystery. The greatest special effect on hand here is the film’s uncanny ability to change genres.

It’s earnestness, particularly in the straightforward way it portrays the supernatural elements, are what date it more than the ’90s hairdo and visible technology. In addition to Goldberg’s performance, “Ghost” also won an Oscar for Bruce Joel Ruben’s screenplay; when the mystical aspects of the story are made literal, it’s a bit goofy. On the other hand, the sequences with Vincent Schiavell’s “Subway Ghost” are among the film’s most compelling.

When filmmaker Adrien Lyne adapted Ruben’s famous, said-to-be-un-filmable “Jacob’s Ladder” screenplay, he toned down the on-the-nose references to angels and demons. Coming out the same year, “Jacob’s Ladder” is strikingly similar to “Ghost,” though its vivid scenes of horror and unceasing intensity proved to be too much for most.

It played briefly in theaters and has since developed a healthy cult following.

Lyne’s smart, stripped down take on Ruben’s depiction of the afterlife is a stark contrast to Zucker’s wholehearted, take-it-or-leave it presentation.

While Zucker’s film is full of arresting moments (like Sam’s leaping from one subway car into another), it plays fast and loose with its own logic. For example, while Sam and other spirits can move through walls, they sometimes can sit on chairs or furniture, or sometimes not. Thankfully, the emotional core of the story is strong enough to distract from the screenplay’s sketchier aspects.

RELATED: How Patrick Swayze and ‘Red Dawn’ Captured ’80s Ere Fear

Another thing that bothers me: the final moments of Willie Lopez (extremely well played by the late character actor Rick Aviles) seem harsh, considering he’s a pawn and one of the few characters who is quick to realize the reality of his situation.

Despite the New Age touches, the spirit world is akin to a homogenized version of legalistic Christianity; the good go to Heaven, the bad go to Hell and there’s no gray area or nuances. In this world, God is like Sam’s offscreen and never-seen boss: a strict stickler for details.

When the script falls prey to the pulpier, B-movie ready qualities of Ruben’s otherwise inventive and cleverly plotted screenplay, it’s not just the actors who elevate it but a grade-A production team. Editor Walter Murch (without argument the greatest film splicer alive), cinematographer Adam Greenburg (who shot “The Terminator” and “La Bamba”) and composer Maurice Jarre (who scored “Lawrence of Arabia”) give master-class contributions.

It’s also the tender work of the three leads (as well as Goldwyn’s wonderful slow burn) that truly haunts.

And, of course, there’s also that pottery wheel…

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