A new book by Erich Schwartzel, Red Carpet: Hollywood, China and the International Battle for Cultural Supremacy, argues that star Richard Gere has been blacklisted in Hollywood due to his long time criticism of China.
Writing for ZeroHedge, Dinesh D’Souza explains the case made by the book:
Schwartzel files that as Gere continued to promote the cause of Tibet, and castigate China for its human rights abuses, Hollywood became increasingly more uncomfortable with his public advocacy. The late 1990s and early 2000s referred a period in which the American motion picture market was flattening out, and Hollywood studios progressively aimed to broaden in China.
China, after all, has more than a billion people. It didn’t leave the attention of studio executives in California that tens of countless Chinese were moving from the rural areas to the cities, and they were becoming avid customers of Western items. Hollywood salivated at the possibility of tapping this market for American motion pictures.
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In this environment of Hollywood courtship of the Chinese communist program, Schwartzel reportsthat “Gere was too radioactive to hire.” His simple presence in the credits might suggest the film would not be approved for release in China. At this moment, Gere ended up being persona non grata, at least as far as the big studios were worried. He would have to be content appearing in independent, modest-budget feature movies such as “Arbitrage” and “The 2nd Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.” [emphasis original]
As D’Souza mentions, Gere’s biggest public moment happened throughout the 1993 Oscars. Before providing that year’s Oscar for art direction, Gere ripped into China’s “horrendous human rights situation” and called for the communist country to totally free Tibet.
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Four years later, Gere starred in Red Corner, the unusual studio film– even in those days– critical of China’s fascist regime.
US star Richard Gere (L)and the spiritual leader of Tibet, Dalai Lama, share a laugh during a press conference at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City on September 28, 1987. (COSTS SWERSEY/AFP through Getty Images)
A quick look at Gere’s IMDB page certainly reveals a profession decrease. One of our biggest movie stars, who’s just 72 and in good health, should, at the minimum, be winning the kinds of roles Robert Redford, Michael Douglas, William Hurt and so on, have actually enjoyed in the Marvel Superhero franchise. But as all of us know, Disney/Marvel are two of China’s the majority of outrageous Hollywood sluts.
Given that 2017, Gere’s only appeaed in a television miniseries. One gig in five years? Also, it’s been more than a years given that he’s starred in something approaching a Huge Movie.
Julia Roberts trips with Richard Gere in a scene from the film ‘Pretty Female’, 1990. (Buena Vista/Getty Images)
History will not look kindly on the American institutions that have actually offered their souls to China’s Nazis, and did so only to become richer than they already were. We’ve had the NBA, Hollywood, and the news media– not to discuss countless corporations– become outrageous quisling and even propagandists for these genocidal gangsters and human rights abusers. Hollywood is the worst of them all, however, since Hollywood is expected to be about the stability of the art and the human spirit. And yet, it is well documented that Hollywood’s so-called artists voluntarily censor themselves and propagandize to calm China.
The only excellent news in all of this is that it now looks as though they have offered their artistic souls for short-term gain. Over the previous couple of years, China has practically totally closed its doors to American movies, which has actually led to a long line of monetary and creative catastrophes that were produced, budgeted, and censored to calm China. However China stated no, so these castrated blockbusters made nowhere near the money expected.
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