Through nothing else but the force of habit, I still check the movie directory listings. Regularly, I come away disappointed. This is because I’m in the demographic slot Hollywood doesn’t’ care for. What is it?

. I am an adult.

Consequently this former avid filmgoer, who once went to from four to six movies per month, hardly goes any longer. .

I cannot relate to the juvenile and violent pap that has become t Hollywood productions. Increasingly, I find myself watching dvds and most of the titles that I prefer predate 1970.
That’s an anomaly. Consider: when the studios in Tinsel Town were producing films on a factory assembly line basis and churning out four hundred or more releases per year, the results were far better than today’s multimillion dollar productions.

James Cameron practically ran the table at the 1998 Academy awards with his film “Titanic.” As a movie patron, I remember being more interested in the shipwreck than in any of the lead characters. The special effects were state of the art, but Cameron’s revisionist script reminded me of how much better the history of the doomed voyage was recounted in the 1958 British release “A Night to Remember” and how the melodrama was more than adequately covered in the 1953 version of “Titanic” with Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb. In fact, whenever something worked in the blockbuster remake, it seemed obvious that Cameron had cribbed material from the two earlier films.

That’s why the other day I shuddered to learn—from dapper Sun Times columnist Bill Zwecker—that Steven Spielberg is planning to film two motion pictures on location in Chicago. Be still my beating heart. America’s top popcorn salesman has been trying to achieve respect in La La Land by pandering to the far Left. Being simply old-line Bolshevik is not enough. Each political pose needs to exceed the last brazen embrace of anti-Americanism.

Spielberg’s “Lincoln” will star Liam Neeson as the rail splitter. And, it is rumored that Sally Field—the former “Flying Nun”—, is under consideration for the role of Mary Todd Lincoln. Well, at least Field will have a handle on the crazy aspects of Mary Todd who was committed to an asylum by her last surviving son. Given Field’s political rants, she seems a natural for the role.

The film is to be adapted by Tony Kushner from a biography by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Kushner is a gay activist (or Queer as the moniker now best known) for the musical “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.” Kushner more recently collaborated with Spielberg on “Munich.” In this controversial film about the kidnapping and subsequent murder of the Israeli Olympic team by Arab terrorists. Together, Kushner and Spielberg advanced the theme that the Palestinian terrorists and the Israeli Mossad agents assigned to hunt them down in a retaliatory series of raids were morally equivalent. Doris Kearns Goodwin was formerly a familiar talking head on PBS news and documentary programs until serious allegations of plagiarism in her writings became widely publicized. Goodwin admitted paying a private cash settlement to author Lynne McTaggart over a claim that she had plagiarized from the latter’s work. Can you say “hush money?” Similar allegations about plagiarized passages in her other books have dogged her ever since.

Spielberg, Kushner and Kearns Goodwin combined are extremely discomforting to thisIllinoisan. Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln had four sons, but I am expecting to see something of a Gore Vidal revisionist interpretation of the Great Emancipator than Carl Sandburg‘s legendary Lincoln. I hope I am wrong.

If that is not enough, Spielberg’s next project is to recreate the madcap antics of “The Chicago Seven Trial.” Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen is supposed to be in line to play Abbie Hoffman. Cohen is best known for playing the anti-Semitic title character in the film “Borat.” I guess that it is necessary to prove your liberal bona fides in Hollywood by donating money to leftist candidates and engaging in casual anti-Semitism and opposition to Israel, even if you are from a Jewish background. How exciting to think that these talents will restage the 1968 Democratic convention and the Days of Rage in a wholly objective manner and that it will be coming soon to a theater near you! Of course, without the riots in Grant Park, Richard M. Nixon might not have attained the presidency but liberals seldom consider the fact that their actions produced a decidedly unintended consequence.

There is a story that visionary film director Orson Welles sought an appointment with Spielberg to discuss some projects over lunch. An admiring Spielberg readily agreed to the meeting. Welles, who was a Hollywood outcast, had taken to financing and producing his own films for pennies on the dollar. He frequently accepted trite acting roles to pay his bills and to raise funds to attempt to complete his many unfinished projects. Spielberg, who had recently scored a series of huge box office successes, declined to invest in Welles’ latest film obsession and did not wish to loan him funds against a future percentage of the movie’s anticipated profits. Welles added that the worst part of the luncheon was that Spielberg left without offering to pick up the check for the meal. It figures.

A few years later, Welles learned that Spielberg had paid thousands of dollars to purchase the prop sled, “Rosebud,” from the film “Citizen Kane” at auction. Welles laughed at the irony of it all (Welles had asked to borrow a sum smaller than the winning auction bid) and stated that he hoped that Spielberg would someday learn that he purchased a balsa wood fake since the original sled had been burned in the furnace at the conclusion of the movie.

That figures as well, form what we know of Spielberg.

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Daniel J. Kelley is a regular contributor to “The Chicago Daily Observer” and a recovering movie fan.