In an article for The Daily Beast on Friday, entertainment writer Matt Wilstein eagerly touted the newly released film Miss Sloane as the latest barrage in Hollywood’s crusade against gun rights. He promoted how the political thriller “focuses on a battle-hardened female lobbyist who gives herself the Herculean challenge of taking on the gun lobby.”
Wilstein described how the screenplay’s author, Jonathan Perera, was inspired to get the anti-gun screed in theaters after hearing left-wing movie producer “Harvey Weintstein’s plans to make a film starring Meryl Streep that he said would make the NRA ‘wish they weren’t alive after I’m done with them.’” Perera recalled: “If the Weinstein Company thinks that the American people are going to be interested in this movie, then perhaps I should try to get mine out.”
The piece further explained:
Perera started doing research for the film just after Congress failed to pass the Manchin-Toomey bill....Despite opinion polls in favor of imposing stricter background checks on gun purchases, he was disappointed when the bill died on the Senate floor and “that was the end of it.” For Perera, this inherent “disconnect between the will of the people and the actions of their representatives” could only be explained by the influence of lobbyists.
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Wilstein lamented: “The film is about a ‘broken political process,’ he says, one that potentially became even more broken after the film was completed....Now that Republicans control both houses of Congress and there is a Republican president-elect, [director John] Madden believes the NRA is probably feeling fairly secure in its position.”
Referencing Weinstein’s upcoming NRA-bashing film, The Senator’s Wife, Wilstein touted other on-screen efforts to go after guns:
...advocacy groups like Everytown for Gun Safety and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence have been working to make what increasingly feel like longshot legislative goals closer to reality by getting them in front of TV and movie audiences. Everytown collaborated with House of Cards to get a storyline about Claire Underwood’s gun control efforts into the show’s fourth season while the Brady Campaign consulted on an episode of The Good Wife that tackled similar issues.
However, with GOP success in the presidential election, he fretted: “the fear is that we are starting to tip in the opposite direction.” Wilstein whined: “If anything, this election demonstrated how unwilling many Americans are to take their cues from those easily-demonized coastal elites in Hollywood.”
He hopefully concluded: “But what these films can do, especially if they are seen by large enough audiences, is make the prospect of gun safety legislation—barely mentioned during the presidential campaign and unlikely to get much airtime under President Trump—feel a little less like fiction.”
