Hollywood Without Commies

Dear President Gorbachev:

I wish to discuss a serious matter. Over the past months I have watched with growing alarm as your policies of glasnost and perestroika --well intentioned, I suppose--have created an insidious threat to all of us here in Hollywood. Knowing you are fully occupied with other matters, i.e., rectifying the fresh orange shortfall in the Moscow Mom-and-Pops, I am writing to bring you an update on our own crisis.

Truth to tell, it all starts with some good news. Every night for a week now, ticket lines have snaked outward from some of our movie theaters, as long and sinewy as the Volga River. So great are these lines that sometimes their ends cannot be detected. Perhaps if you looked out your office window to the McDonald’s in Red Square you would see lines like these, but that is not certain.

And what movie has produced these lines? This should make you proud, Mr. President. It’s “The Hunt for Red October,” a movie from the novel by Mr. Tom Clancy. This movie tells a tale of your submarines and our submarines and the whole world on the edge of major ionization. It’s straight from the--pardon the expression--Brezhnev era and I think you would love to see this movie when it comes out in video. Do they have a Sam Goody’s in Moscow yet?

Maybe not. In any case, “Hunt” (in Hollywood we refer to movies by the first word in their titles, probably the same way you refer to “polit”) has done very big box office here. I tried to worm my way into the theater and was turned back, like some non-party member trying to buy an orange in your mom-and-pops. Most everyone else, it seems, has somehow made it inside.

In its first weekend alone, “Hunt” has set box office records and our Hollywood newspaper, Variety, put it this way in their banner headline: “ ‘HUNT’ RED-HOT IN $17 MIL BOW.” If your Moscow translators claim that last line is not English, Mr. President, do not worry. Just send it to your L.A. office. They’ll know what it means.

So, you’re probably asking, what’s the trouble over there in the land where fresh oranges drop from trees? Just this, Mr. President. During the opening sequence of “Hunt,” there’s a little disclaimer that scrolls across the screen. It says, in effect, “this movie takes place back when we still hated Commies, before Gorbachev came along and screwed things up.”

Are you starting to catch on? Yes, Mr. President, that’s right. You and perestroika are endangering our supply of Commies. And here in Hollywood we need Commies for Big B.O.! We need the Evil Empire like your factory workers need Stoli.

Do you expect us to make movies about reforms in some fresh orange program? We’ve got too many oranges over here already! We let them roll into the gutter where they get squashed by white limos! No one cares about oranges over here!

Excuse me. I just hope you will grasp the gravity of this situation. Perhaps an example would help. Do you know which movie came in second to “Hunt” and its $17 millions last week? That was something called “Driving Miss Daisy” and it collected a sorry $5 mil. Do you know what’s wrong with “Driving Miss Daisy?” No Commies!

Already our top journalists are grumbling about the future of movies without Commies. They are claiming that “Hunt” barely squeezed in under the wire and tut-tutting about that miserable disclaimer. They are making gloomy predictions that this is the last Commie movie ever. A big part of our B.O. is slipping away.

Now, if we had substitutes, it would be different. But we’ve tried everything. Colombian drug dealers don’t have 10,000 ICBMs aimed down our throats. Noriega is too short. We’ve worn out the Nazis and, besides, the kids aren’t sure what they did.

So what to do. Trying to make a Commie movie with Commie substitutes is like trying to make vodka out of rice. Not the same thing. We are facing a world with no more Manchurian Candidates, no more Seven Days in May, no Top Guns. Do you know, Mr. President, what the B.O. was for Top Gun? I can’t bear to tell you.

I am trying to be reasonable on this issue. I know history has turned against us. So let me make just one suggestion. It just might save us here in Hollywood. Mr. President, every once in a while, could you do something low and cunning and mean? Sneak a few missiles into Cuba, anything to give us the willies again. I won’t be more specific because, after all, you guys have the expertise.

I await your thoughts, and in the meantime,

Ciao