Mirvish Starts a Substack on Hollytics/Poliwood!

Trump shows us how to Make America Bribe Again and how that affects Hollywood.

Hi! Welcome to my first Substack entry into what I’m calling my “Hollytics/Poliwood” series of posts (or maybe it should be “The Cheerful Subversive’s Guide to the Intersection of Hollywood and Politics”? ). I’ll get into how and why Trump’s decision to deflate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act will affect Hollywood. But first, why am I writing this Substack at all?

In short, there are woefully few Hollywood or “entertainment” journalists who regularly cover the intersection of the world of film and politics, and even fewer political journalists who cover Hollywood. LA journos don’t cover DC, and DC journos don’t cover LA. These are two industry towns who are jealous of each other, don’t understand each other and rarely feel the need to do so. If Washington is “Hollywood for ugly people,” then Hollywood is “Washington for dummies.”

So why bother thinking about the interchange between the two? Because what happens in Washington matters to Hollywood: Financially, socially, politically. And likewise, the cultural and media output of Hollywood can make a huge impact on what happens in Washington.

With the exception of the Motion Picture Association (formerly the MPAA) there are very few institutional edifices in Washington that represent Hollywood (they’ve got a fancy building and theater just up the road from the White House). But honestly they haven’t had much influence in DC since the days when MPAA head Jack Valenti was a regular in both the Oval Office and the Oscars. And even when they do carry some heft, their only real lobbying clients are the big studios (currently Paramount, Universal, Warners, Disney, Sony, Netflix and Amazon). It’s in neither their interest nor mandate to protect Hollywood from the ravages of strikes, runaway production or the rise of AI. Don’t look for the MPA to save you. It’ll be lucky to save itself.

Each of the big Hollywood unions have lobbyists in DC, but their footprint and impact are sadly small and they’re not always on the same page with each other, much less with the MPA (piracy and copyright issues being notable exceptions).

And as for indie film in particular? There’s literally not a single permanent lobbying effort representing our interests in either Washington, Sacramento or Albany. Most of the main institutional backers of indie film (ie. Gothams, Film Independent, Sundance) either are precluded from formal lobbying efforts as 501(c)3’s, or simply don’t have the bandwidth or mandate for it. (Let’s see if the new Future Film Coalition might help fill this void.)

Politics isn’t just Washington. All politics is also local. It’s about decisions made by the Los Angeles, Culver City and Burbank city councils. It’s about film tax credits in Iowa and New York. It’s about how major studio owners are influencing local elections and why. It’s about who’s running which union and the political and cultural currents within them. And yes, it’s sometimes about the small “p” politics of film festivals and award shows.

Someone ought to comment on this interplay between these two worlds, and it might as well be me. As a former DC inhabitant, I was a speechwriter for US Senator Tom Harkin. In college, I majored in History and Political Science and was mentored by retired Sen. (and McGovern’s brief Veep nom) Thomas Eagleton. As a journalist, I interned and wrote for The Washington Monthly, as well as wrote for and been written about in The New York Times. I co-wrote, with my filmmaker pal Eitan Gorlin, the DC satirical novel I Am Martin Eisenstadt: One Man’s (wildly inappropriate) Adventures with the Last Republicans for Farrar, Straus, Giroux, which arguably got better reviews than most of my films.

As a filmmaker, I’ve directed and produced about half a dozen features, most recently the Watergate thriller/comedy 18½. My films have played in over a 100 festivals worldwide, all had theatrical, streaming, airline and home video distribution. As a non-fiction writer, I’ve written two editions of my book The Cheerful Subversive’s Guide to Independent Filmmaking (Focal Press/Routledge) and have contributed articles to Filmmaker Magazine, Variety, IndieWire, FilmThreat and The Huffington Post. At best, I’m an award-winning artist. At worst, I’m an annoying gadfly.

I’ve straddled the political and film worlds as well or better than anyone else these days, so I may as well comment on their intersection from time to time. Since writing a Substack seems easier than podcasting, I’m starting here. My pal, filmmaker and distribution guru Jon Reiss told me to start one and I usually take his advice. With the rapid collapse of useful and meaningful social media that isn’t dominated by sponsored ads or screaming discourse, Substack’s as good a place as any to write more than 300 characters (yup, I’m on Bluesky now, too). Keep in mind that while I’m many things, I’m far from a lawyer and rarely an expert on anything, so don’t take my word for much of anything. I’m a pundit (who once wrote a book about a fake pundit) and therefore susceptible to the same level of ridicule and contempt that most pundits should elicit.

I don’t know how often this will be, how long these posts will be or if there’ll be more than one. Let’s see how this goes.

For a quick early installment, there’s plenty of things the new Trump administration has done that are either horrible from a Constitutional, legal or moral perspective, economically devastating, or just bizarrely disruptive to the running of a functional government. (Though for half the country that voted for him, maybe these are all terrific!) But for today, I just wanted to focus on his executive order dismantling the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). For those unfamiliar, it’s the act that says it’s illegal for Americans to bribe international officials or companies, and likewise illegal for international players to bribe Americans.

We need new hats: "MABA" (Make America Bribe Again!)

Trump exec ordered it all-but-eliminated and Attorney General Pam Bondi issued instructions to the Department of Justice to do just that. Never mind that the FCPA was enacted by Congress and can’t just be disposed of with a wave of Trump’s magic wand. But if the DoJ doesn’t enforce it, it’s essentially dead. (Andrew Weissmann and Mary McCord do a nice deep dive on their latest podcast episode of Main Justice.)

Apparently, during his first administration Trump asked Sec. of State Rex Tillerson to do away with the FCPA and Tillerson (as former head of Exxon, no less!) argued that the FCPA keeps US companies on a level playing field. But with no “Tea for the Tillerson” in this cabinet, there’s no one left to protect the FCPA.

What’s this got to do with Hollywood? Without legal prohibitions on bribery, Trump has given a greenlight to Hollywood to fully bribe film festivals in other countries. Want to get your film into Cannes, Berlin or Venice? Just write a fat check to those respective festival programmers or government officials who sign off on the festivals! Likewise, if you’re a fabulously wealthy European producer who wants to win an Oscar for your obscure Lichstensteinian musical rom-com, just start writing checks to every member of the Academy!

Those cynical and savvy observers (perhaps everyone reading this) may argue that these practices have been in place for years and no one got arrested or even particularly cared. Hollywood studios who wanted big premieres of their films in Cannes could guarantee huge marketing dollars to throw lavish parties on the Croisette and fly their A-list actors to the red carpet. That’s been going on unchecked since the festival started in 1945.

And well-heeled international filmmakers have spent millions of dollars on Hollywood publicists, lavish parties and even not-so-subtle gifts to organizations like the Academy, Golden Globes, and guilds, not to mention pay-or-play awards-season interviews and advertorials that appear in the trades, newspapers and websites. Awards season is a multi-million dollar industry that is largely greased by the largesse of international and multinational players.

Will getting rid of the FCPA change anything for Hollywood? Probably not. But at least up until now there was always a fig-leaf of respectability that film festivals, awards organizations and journalism outlets held onto to impute their integrity and rationalize their respectability. Trump has now yanked the fig leaf right off and encouraged public groping (as is his wont).

So next year, when Amazon comes out with their proposed documentary about Melania, don’t be surprised if it premieres at a major international film festival and mounts a shockingly plausible awards campaign. All Trump has to do is get some rich toady (or Jeff Bezos, desperate to stay on Trump’s good side) to pay off otherwise respectable festival programmers and juries in Europe. Likewise, Trump could get bestie Putin or Saudi Arabia’s MBS to underwrite an insanely expensive and extravagant awards campaign for Oscars, Globes or Emmies. Reportedly, Melania has already “offered” blue-chip CEO’s the “opportunity” to “sponsor” the film for $10 million a piece and get a “credit.” Not sure if it’s part of the pre-nup or marital kompromat, but I’ll wager Trump has plenty of reasons to keep Melania happy. And traveling to European film festivals and Hollywood awards parties has the added benefit of keeping her out of the White House.

And for all my fellow indie filmmakers, that means it’s open season on bribery! Years ago, I facetiously noted in a piece in Filmmaker Magazine that bribery and blackmail are “valid” ways to try to get accepted into a film festival. But it’s a far cry from sending a case of PBR to a festival office (as I suggested at the time) to what we can do now with the FCPA gutted.

You literally can raise hundreds of thousands of dollars from investors with the now legal and appropriate goal of bribing your way into otherwise respectable international A-list festivals. You could now have an IMDb-credit-worthy “Producer for Bribery” on your team! You can now unapologetically deduct “bribes” as a line-item on your taxes (as opposed to the old standby of “marketing”)! If your accountant or priest object, just tell them it’s all 100% legal, encouraged by the President and officially part of US foreign and domestic policy. What’s good for Melania, is good for America!

For those few who are registered lobbyists representing Hollywood interests in Washington, I know you’ve got a lot on your plate right now. But please, keep the FCPA on your agenda. To the MPA, DGA or SAG (to say nothing of CAA, WME and UTA), if you don’t want to see Chinese and Russian films sweeping the Oscars next year, much less Melania, now is the time to stand up and be counted. There’s not much check or balance on Trump now, but all it will take in Congress is a couple of Republicans (who want to rub shoulders and take selfies with A-list stars) to drag Pam Bondi into a hearing room and quiz her on bribery. Likewise, for those MPA member companies (who aren’t Amazon), now would be a great time to start funding a lavish hagiographic biopic about Chief Justice John Roberts. When all’s said and done, he might be our only hope.

Hope you liked my hot take on the sexy issue of the FCPA and how it could affect Hollywood! And if you think I should keep Substacking on the world of Hollytics/Poliwood, please let me know.