If you can arrange for an extraterrestrial to take a bike ride and conjure a theme park full of digital dinosaurs, surely you can arrange a Hollywood fundraiser for a Republican senator.
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Not necessarily.
Until recently, even a person with the creative genius of Steven Spielberg might have had a hard time imagining himself sipping chardonnay at a reception in support of a Republican candidate in a town long dominated by liberal Democratic Party influence.
But fresh political winds are blowing through Hollywood, and next month’s reception for Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) at the headquarters of Spielberg’s DreamWorks SKG is being viewed by some as a sign of a strategic reassessment by the entertainment industry.
Changes in the corporate ownership of some of Hollywood’s most important studios, a generational shift in the industry’s leadership and the realities of working with a Republican-controlled Congress for the first time in decades have contributed to the new political thinking.
This, in turn, has started a shift in the balance of campaign contributions.
Over the last two years, the ownership of some of this town’s premier studios has passed into the hands of mega-corporations through mergers and purchases.
The Walt Disney Co. swallowed Capital Cities/ABC. Already a giant, Time Warner gobbled up Turner Broadcasting System. Not content with straddling the global beverage market, Seagram Co. bought MCA. Before all that, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. added Fox Inc. to its jewel case.
The resulting synergy of creative talent, marketing savvy and global reach has dramatically broadened the political interests of the entertainment business, once more narrowly defined by movies and television.
The industry is now dominated by companies that are far more dependent on decisions made in Washington. Companies are concerned about controls over cellular communication, digital television, satellite networks and their ability to market their entertainment products abroad.
All that, coupled with the GOP control of Congress, is at the core of the political re-thinking now under way.
“Things are getting much more balanced,” said Fred Karger, a California political consultant. “It is no longer politically difficult to support a Republican. With the Republicans controlling Congress, there is a new kind of reality to deal with.”
For some Republicans who spent years in the political closet, the new congressional realities have allowed them to speak out more boldly.
“There was a time in this town when you would be called a Nazi if you admitted to being a Republican,” said Lionel Chetwynd, a writer and director who left the Democratic Party for the GOP after coming under the sway of then-presidential aspirant Ronald Reagan.
“We had to show that you could have a successful career in Hollywood without being a liberal,” said Chetwynd, one of the founders of a conservative lunch group known as the Wednesday Morning Club.
The new Republican wave is far from cresting, and many of Hollywood’s biggest names continue to share their glamor and money with the Democrats.
Spielberg gave $200,000 to the Democratic Party last year, part of the $530,000 DreamWorks contributed overall. Such people as Barbra Streisand, Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone and Robin Williams continue to give generously to the Democratic Party, according to federal election data.
In the past, stars who openly supported conservative ideas were few in number. The most prominent celebrity with outspoken Republican views was Charlton Heston, but more recently Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone have contributed to the Republicans.
During Reagan’s years in the White House, despite his background as an actor, Hollywood still seemed to have a liberal bias. Of course, Congress then was controlled by the Democrats.
No official statistics on specific industry contributions exist from the Reagan era because federal law did not require reporting of donations until 1990.
There are clear signs that the industry now is starting to place its bets on more than one horse.
In the 1995-96 campaign season, Republican candidates for the first time received more money from entertainment industry political action committees than did Democrats.
According to federal election figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, Republicans garnered $1,542,094 in entertainment industry PAC money, compared with $1,039,795 given to Democrats. Four years earlier, Democrats collected nearly $425,000 more than Republicans.
While the bulk of the $8 million in soft-money contributions from Hollywood went to the Democratic Party in 1996, the Republicans increased their share from just around $700,000 in 1992 to more than $3 million last year.
Those numbers are not lost on Republicans, particularly those with powerful committee assignments in Congress, who have been welcomed with increasing regularity at Hollywood power breakfasts, lunches and dinners.
Shortly after the Republicans gained control of Congress, Motion Picture Association of America chief Jack Valenti, a former Johnson administration official, held a breakfast that brought together top executives from MGM, Time Warner, Paramount and Sony with House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).
Within weeks, Gingrich set up a 12-member task force to build bridges to Hollywood and placed Rep. Sonny Bono, a former entertainer and now a California Republican congressman, in the chairman’s seat.
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In the last few months, top GOP lawmakers, including Sens. Fred Thompson of Tennessee, himself a former movie actor, and John McCain of Arizona as well as Louisiana Rep. Billy Tauzin, have been wined and dined and, in some cases, lionized by the industry elite.
All three were among those who attended a high-level tete-a-tete at Walt Disney Studios in March that brought together studio executives to talk about pending legislation that could affect copyright protections and TV syndication rules.
A beaming Tauzin, who chairs the House Telecommunications Subcommittee, was featured on a recent cover of Broadcasting & Cable magazine with the headline: “The Gleam in Tauzin’s Eye.” In an interview, he laid out industry-friendly legislative plans that would affect the television industry.
Specter’s June visit is being billed by DreamWorks as a personal favor from Spielberg for the Pennsylvania Republican who helped the director with his project to videotape and archive the personal stories of Holocaust survivors.
Specter’s staff sees it as an opportunity to test the Hollywood political mood.
“We are going in, and I think we are going to have a really nice event,” said Carey Lackman, finance director of Specter’s re-election campaign. “I can’t say for sure how well we will do, but we are encouraged by what we hear.”
Amid the rising Republican tide, there also has been a growing mood of disillusionment among some Hollywood political activists.
Last month, the highly successful Hollywood Women’s Political Committee disbanded after having raised more than $6 million for liberal candidates over the last dozen years. In a statement, the group, which included Streisand, said it would “no longer cooperate with a system that promotes the buying and selling of political office.”
Andy Spahn, director of corporate affairs at DreamWorks, said he too detected growing disenchantment with the political system among Hollywood insiders, some of it based upon the never-ending demand for contributions from candidates facing expensive campaigns.
“There is no down time any more; it never ends,” said Spahn. “There is less money given now, in part as a result of the focus on campaign-finance reform,” he said. “This is dampening Democratic dollars, mainly.”
For other long-time Democratic supporters in Hollywood, the shift toward Republicans comes as no surprise.
“All this talk about the fact that Hollywood is liberal has never been true,” said Mike Medavoy, chairman of Phoenix Pictures and a successful movie industry producers.
“Hollywood is a combination of the pragmatic and the idealistic. Funding for these elections usually depends on who is running things and who needs what. If a Republican Congress can pass legislation, then the money will go there.”