Medved Gives Sneak Preview of His Book on Media : Lecture: The critic, whose ‘Hollywood versus America’ will be out in August, argues that movies are the enemy of decency.

Author and movie critic Michael Medved acknowledges that his ideas about popular culture once were likened by a reader to Adolf Hitler’s. But Medved’s talk here Sunday--at a synagogue, no less--seemed well received by the sold-out crowd of 800-plus.

Medved, the co-host of “Sneak Previews,” a weekly program of movie reviews carried nationally on public television, said he believes that current American cinema is the enemy “of decency” and of family-oriented, “traditional American values.”

The values communicated in current American films “are so loathsome, so distasteful and so at variance with the values of most Americans, it’s no wonder to me at all that the movie business is in a state of acute crisis,” Medved said at Temple Beth Emet during a lecture sponsored by the Jewish Community Forum, an independent Orange County-based adult education organization.

Medved said he endorses the controversial motion picture and television code recently recommended by Roman Catholic Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, which urges against, among other things, nudity, suggestive dancing and lustful kissing. This year’s Academy Award contenders, Medved said, perfectly represent Hollywood’s bent toward depicting America’s darkest side.

Three best-actor nominees portray “murderous psychos”: Anthony Hopkins in “Silence of the Lambs,” Robert De Niro in “Cape Fear” and Warren Beatty in “Bugsy.” The other two aren’t much better, Medved added, calling Robin Williams’ character in “The Fisher King” a “delusional” homeless man and Nick Nolte’s in “The Prince of Tides” a “depressed, suicidal neurotic.”

The predominance of such characters and of “nightmarish” subject matter, Medved said, citing various statistical studies, is utterly “hostile” to values held by the majority of Americans, who believe the media contain too much profanity, nudity and violence. That explains why movie attendance has hit a 15-year low, he said.

There’s even more evidence that Hollywood has “deliberately ignored” public opinion, he continued, citing other studies showing that last year, seven of nine G-rated movies were profitable whereas only 10% of R-rated films made money.

He asserted that not a single film about the popular Persian Gulf War or about Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf has been made or is being planned. But, he said, there will be five films about the 1960s radical Black Panther Party and one about Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, whom he described as a “lesbian with a mustache.”

Medved, 43, who is an emphatic, animated speaker, is the co-author of “What Really Happened to the Class of ‘65?” and president of a synagogue in Venice. He has worked as a screenwriter at three studios and at one TV network. He also lectures widely and has appeared several times on “The 700 Club,” an evangelical Christian talk show (on which he has always insisted on being identified as a Jew). His talk Sunday was based on his book, “Hollywood Versus America,” due in August.

Referring to the Reader’s Digest article that a reader compared to Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” Medved allowed that the article may have had a “superficial likeness” to Hitler’s notorious thesis, but he said that unlike Hitler, he staunchly opposes censorship. Still, he said, a voluntary content code that “upholds decent standards” and discourages “antisocial behavior” should be adopted. “You can’t say that any criticism of popular culture amounts to an attack on the First Amendment.”

Some Hollywood executives already are communicating positive values with films or programs that condemn drug use and promote condom use and recycling, Medved said. Perhaps producers could go a step further and “push the idea that it’s better to get married before you have kids,” that hard work pays off and that violence is bad.

“People can do something, and the Jewish community can do something, by reaching out to the people who create” films and TV, Medved said. “It’s important to remember that those celluloid shadows that dance across the screen don’t control us, we control them.”