Actor Matthew Marsden Hides Right-Wing Political Views
Americans take it on faith that movie stars are politically liberal. Whether the celebrity lives in L.A. or New York, from Streisand to Sarandon, we know how they see the world because they're honest about it.
Some don't think liberal actors should espouse personal views. The performer should shut up and dance, or sing, or act. This is different from other professions. If you sit at the corner bar, you'll hear a butcher, baker, candlestick maker opine on all sorts of things in public, often loudly after a few drinks. It's their right, yet they'll also be the first to tell you that so-called "famous people" shouldn't do so.....unless they're conservative, of course. The Dixie Chicks? Never, never, never.
The new documentary from Academy Award-winning director Barry Levinson, Poliwood examines the intersection of politics and the entertainment industry. It follows several members of the "Creative Coalition" as they travel to both the Democratic and Republican national conventions in 2008. They waltzed in through the front door, with cameras and no hidden agenda. Everybody saw them.
Then there's Matthew Marsden, furtive thespian.
Last month, the handsome co-star of movies like Black Hawk Down, Rambo (2008 edition) and Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen, appeared at a secret, far-right conclave in liberal Austin, Texas. How secret? It wasn't even listed on the hotel's public calendar.
The sponsor was an outfit called the "Council for National Policy." According to a 2007 story in the New York Times, the conservative group was "founded 25 years ago by the Rev. Tim LaHaye as a forum for conservative Christians to strategize about turning the country to the right." LaHaye was then-head of Jerry Falwell's "Moral Majority," and is co-author of the popular "Left Behind" series that predicts and then depicts the biblical Apocalypse from the specious Book of Revelation.
The council's website is cryptic in the extreme, not listing members or staff, only speeches after-the-fact. News coverage informs us that bylaws of the sneaky society forbid patrons from publicly disclosing its membership or activities.
Nonetheless, participants at the Austin event were smoked out by the local American-Statesman newspaper. Culled from a hall of fame "who's who" of the modern far-right movement, they included George Gilder, co-founder of Seattle's Discovery Institute, which promotes the teaching of Intelligent Design (a fancy term for creationism); Phyllis Schlafly, founder of the Eagle Forum; James Dobson, fundamentalist founder of Colorado-based Focus on the Family; and Edwin Meese, the former U.S. attorney general under Ronald Reagan who positively hates the Supreme Court's 1966 Miranda ruling. (Full disclosure: I hate meeses to pieces, too.)
The Statesman's reporter wrote that his entry to the festivities was barred, and that "functionaries" even broke up his hallway interviews. He went on to describe the Hollywood hotshot who appeared in the midst of this nutty gaggle:
"Movie actor Matthew Marsden was asked if he gives speeches. 'I feel like I'm going to,' he said." What drew Marsden to the scene? "A sidekick marching {him} away replied: 'Americans want to see family-friendly movies.' "
That's quite the disingenuous response, of course, considering Marsden has no history of support for such things. Furthermore, several of his film projects have been rated R, while the recent Transformers, according to its listing on IMDb, was rated PG-13 "for intense sequences of sci-fi action violence, language, crude and sexual material, and brief drug material." Family-friendly?
There are certainly popular entertainers with a conservative bent, some more bent than others. Jon Voight, for example, a great actor on occasion, doesn't hide his opinions. He's gone off the deep end in front of us for years. Just this week, he appeared with Tim Pawlenty in Minnesota, telling the crowd that President Obama is "causing civil unrest in this country....taking away God's first gift to man: our free will." Thursday, Voight appeared with Dobson henchman Tony Perkins at a rally in Washington hosted by the certifiable Michelle Bachmann.
Times have changed. Charlton Heston, who headed the NRA in his later years, didn't spew bizarre religious-right screeds like, say, has-been's Pat Boone and Chuck Norris now do regularly. Heston wasn't a lunatic, and neither, one senses, are conservatives such as Clint Eastwood, Bruce Willis, or Gary Sinise. (The jury, however, is still out on Mel Gibson.)
Director Levinson has noted in interviews for his documentary that most stars don't take public stands on hot button issues because it's generally not a wise career move, especially for those still climbing the ladder. It can offend half of the potential ticket-buying audience. Perhaps this explains Marsden's masked and anonymous approach to civic involvement.
Still, he obviously didn't appear at this unpublicized meeting of the far-right by chance, thousands of miles from the east and west coast media meccas.
If Matthew Marsden is really honored to hang out with anti-gay, religious-right hate mongers -- and that's who he flew halfway across the country to be with in private -- then he should do it in the light of day.
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He is a Brit, is he a citizen? His movies are dreadful including the Transformer II
Maybe Marsden is in line to star in movie based on a LaHaye novel and wanted to meet with the film backers/audience?
Of course he has the right to believe and say whatever he wants to. Democrat or Republican, he is covered under the First Amendment just like the rest of us. That being said, he is affiliating himself with an organization that wants to undermine or outright deny us OUR rights. The right to health care and gay marriage just to name two. Why should I act to put my hard earned dollars into the pocket of people who rally to stop progress, the rights of others, and fight to bring this country back to the 1950s? You have to OWN what you say and do in this world and you don't get to hide behind your art.
I've never heard of him, and it seems he makes movies that I would never see anyway, but I think it is just fine that he is a conservative. I could care less. I have to admit though that the most creative and talented people tend to be liberals. Just my opinion.
I've never heard of Matthew Marsden, nor have I seen any of those movies. It appears that there's no incentive to.
Jackson:
One point.
There is no such thing as the book of "Revelations".
It is the book of 'Revelation'.
See Jackson Williams's Profile
Thanks for the kind correction. I guess this uncovers my theological shortcomings.
I'll fix.
(And please, don't tell James Dobson!)
I promise! :D :D
And don;t feel bad - I actually had to READ IT!!!!
I'm sorry, but I just don't see the point of getting so upset, here, and I am a liberal. So what if he wants to meet with Conservatives? So what if he's not holding a press conference about it? Who cares if he's being "furtive"? Since Marsden doesn't really have any political power (Marsden???) who cares what he spends his free time doing?
For the record, I think conservatives who refuse to see movies with great actors - like Sean Penn or Susan Sarandon, are immature. I can accept the fact that I might have different political views than Marsden or Willis or Voight, and watch their movies without guilt.
there have always been those kinds of groups. fortunately they seem to be losing their influence.
but we still have to be vigilent. they look like pathetic old men and women who used to be important
grasping for relevance in a modern world they themselves are afraid of. they don't understand the
"young folks" today basically. didn't socrates wail about that........... but yes, expose them and
anyone who seeks them out. they prattle about upholding a constitution they don't understand
and would see us become the christian taliban ...........and they can't wrap their closed minds
around that concept either.
When I watch TV or go to the movies I don't give a hoot about the politics of the actors. I care about their art.
I "forgive" Gary Sinise his Republican leanings because I think he is an awesome actor and CSI:NY is my favorite CSI series. He's always the co-founder of the Steppenwolf Theatre, a solid bass player, a talented film director, and really a model citizen who gives to charity and speaks out on important issues. It doesn't bother me that he holds different opinions from me, bringing up certain issues is more important than everyone agreeing on them.
Bruce Willis may be a conservative but he is also one of my favorite action movie stars. Nobody plays blue-collar schlub who ends up saving the world better than Willis.
Unforgiven isn't any less a movie because Clint Eastwood votes Republican.
Mel Gibson may be crazy and his movies controversial but at least he has a point of view and tries to make movies that exist for something other than commerce.
If Marsden is as conservative as the "luminaries" mentioned, then he is probably the biggest hypocrite (hypocrite being derived from the Greek word for actor) in the world. He started in soap operas and has appeared in the types of movies conservatives love to hate.
See Jackson Williams's Profile
I agree. Art is art, regardless of the onerous nature we might perceive emanating from the artist.
And this is a subject going back centuries....not that the below average British actor Marsden merits any parallel; he plainly doesn't. But the issue does.
Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's own documentarian, comes to mind. Her film work is compelling, brilliant in ways. And yet it was used in the service of such a horrible regime, and she knew it at the time.
Then there's the turpitude of an artist. We can't say, "Well, I hate that novel because I now know the writer was a cad who beat his wife." What we can say is, "What a great novel, but what an ass that guy was."
So we must consider so much, really. A great piece of sculpture, a great piece of choreography, a great composition, stands regardless of the creator. That's why I say Jon Voight is a great actor. I happen to think so even as I think -- know, even -- that he's a total loon.
I don't have to join him for dinner, even though I love his work in "Coming Home."
My open-mindedness stops at my wallet. Mel Gibson's or Roman Polanski's movies may be the greatest ever made, but I won't spend a nickel on them that goes into Gibson or Polanski's pocket. It's not a question of Conservatism but morality. Gibson's brand of conservativism is evil and anti-American. I was fine with Eastwood's conservativism until the night he publicly threatened to kill Michael Moore on sight. Haven't seen a movie of his since, and I'll get along just fine.
Marsden's British. Their conservative is like our moderate.
See Jackson Williams's Profile
Well, first of all, ideologies don't translate across the pond in such a simplistic manner. But let's say, for laughs, that they do, and that a conservative Brit (aka Marsden) is somehow like a moderate American. Why would he, as a now-moderate American, want to hang with far-right American wackos like James Dobson, Phyllis Schlafly, and the founder of the Discovery Institute?
Short answer: he wouldn't.
Who?
Thanks for the info. I will avoid every movie made by this guy. Vote with your dollars, folks.
Yes and also, do whatever you can to avoid reading books with points of view you disagree with, and only be around people you agree with.
"the handsome co-star of movies like Black Hawk Down, Rambo (2008 edition) and Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen"
I will avoid his movies because they suck.
That's what were are coming to in this country, with this Republican vs. Democrat obsession on both sides. It's unbelieveble that someone would express outrage about an actor's political views, especially when the person is not being overtly public about it. Grow up, people.
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