Good news, bad news

Lately, in this space, I've spouted off about things that concern me in the shifting, changing makeup of our culture. I sense that countless other Americans share my concerns, and they've let me know that, by a heavy volume of e-mail response.

Well, today I want to share some really good news. It's news that, mysteriously, you probably won't come across anywhere else, though it's readily available.

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That tribal rite, the Academy Awards, is approaching at warp speed, and we will not be able to avoid it, no matter how we might try. You could be snowed in up in the Rockies, with no phone or TV, and some passing mountaineer will tap on your door to tell you who won for "best actress" or "best film."

Many of us have seriously lost interest in the whole thing, because we may not like any of the nominated films or people's performances, and really cringe when we see things fawned over and awarded that trouble us greatly. I'm a guy who has actually made a few films and was in the Box Office Top Ten – for about 10 minutes – years ago. But that was back when whole families went to the movies virtually every week, together, confident that nobody would sink down in the seat in embarrassment, or maybe get up and walk out en masse.

I did that once, as a dad with his brood.

We had gone together to see a very popular musical film, "Paint Your Wagon." It had been a celebrated Broadway smash, terrific music, and the movie version starred Clint Eastwood, in a singing role! It was at the Cinerama Dome, a posh downtown theater in Hollywood – what could have been more ideal for a family outing?

But as the thing rolled along, with giant production, huge cast, all the "good stuff," I realized that the story was about a struggling frontier town whose city fathers decided that the cowboys needed feminine companionship – so they'd build a whorehouse and import a lot of "ladies" to stock it! And when a big musical number centered on all the girls coming in by stagecoach and all the rugged wranglers salivating to get at them, I gathered my flock and we left.

And that was years before "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas," which astoundingly has been accepted, awarded and replayed over and over for a decade. Such films are one of our increasingly standard exports to the rest of the world, confirming to extremist Muslims that we are, indeed, "the great Satan."

But I promised you good news, didn't I?

Well, it comes from Ted Baehr and his MovieGuide organization, the public arm of the Christian Film and Television Commission. Every year, the CFTC does extensive research on the films released that year and compiles authoritative data on what "works" at the box office with paying moviegoers. And guess what?

Eighty percent of the 10 most popular movies in 2005 had strong or very strong moral content and acceptability ratings; and in addition, only one of the top 10 movies, and only three of the top 25, were rated R by the Motion Picture Association! Isn't that a happy surprise?

And get this: movies with no or very few incidents of nudity, foul language and violence earned an average of $45,001,733 per movie, or 65 percent better than movies that contained those elements! Movies with the Commission's low acceptability ratings earned only $27 million and change, on average.

"Every year, our financial analysis proves that good guys always finish first," Baehr said. "Movies with Judeo-Christian values and heroic virtues always do best at the box office."

Wouldn't you think, then – doesn't it just make common sense – that anybody who wants to invest millions making a movie would want to make a profit? And that the proven best, surest way to do that is to produce something the whole family might want to buy tickets to see?

Naw, not Hollywood. At least not a big majority of the "movers and shakers," the moguls who line up to get the Oscars and accolades from their peers.

That's the bad news for this year's awards.

The majority of the Oscars' attention and praise will be for a procession of depressing, controversial, objectionable and downright decadent flicks, led by "Brokeback Mountain," a quaint tale of two homosexual cowboys. Imagine America's families flocking to see that one!

There goes the Western. One of our country's finest exports for 75 years, the dramatic story where lonely heroes fight desperate but victorious battles, where the good guys always win and the desperadoes get what they deserve, has been dealt a possibly fatal wound. I cringed when Clint Eastwood, the quintessential Western hero, had to give the Golden Globe for best director to Ang Lee for "Brokeback," and saw my friend Denzel Washington cringe as he announced the Golden Globe for BEST FILM went to the same sorry tale.

I've since been obsessed with wondering what John Wayne would say. Will his beloved "Alamo" be remade now, with a "new slant," into "Al and Mo"? Will "Shane" be modernized into "Shame, with Al and Ladd"? Will Hollywood treat us to "Catfight at the OK Corral"? "Hang 'em Limp"? "He Wore Yellow Ribbons"? "Stagecrotch"?

I probably couldn't repeat, or in this space print, what the Duke would have to say.

But you and I, and our fellow citizens, can have the last say about all this.

We can be encouraged by the GOOD NEWS proffered by Ted Baehr and the CFTM, and buy tickets to the family-friendly films some brave and admirable souls are still daring to make. And we can boycott, by our absence and lack of interest , all the shameful schlock that morally challenged producers and exhibitors still think they can foist on us.

Let's hand them back their BAD NEWS, without profit or interest. That's the only way they'll ever get the message.

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