When Good Morning, Vietnam debuted in 1987, critics wondered whether enough time had passed for America to embrace a comedy about the nation's most controversial and contentious war. (Answer: We were, thanks to the late, great Robin Williams and an outstanding supporting cast.) Critics tweaked the Coen Brothers for Hail Caesar!, a 2016 comedy that satirized Hollywood's blacklist era (the first one, anyway), by essentially conceding the point on communist infiltration of Hollywood ... nominally, anyway.
Now the question is whether America will embrace a comedy about the COVID-19 lockdown and the Keystone Kops response by governments at every level. Arresting surfers on the beach? Hilarious! Governors shutting down restaurants while dining at the French Laundry? C'est magnifique! Making up distancing rules and mask mandates on the fly while hiding the true source of the virus? Locking people in their homes, shutting down schools for months on end, forcing vaccinations that don't actually prevent infection or contagion?
Er ... that may never be funny, to be honest. However, Robert F. Kennedy's former running mate wants to give it the ol' cinematic try, and at least Nicole Shanahan has the right advisor in place for the effort:
Covid contrarians tight with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are pitching Hollywood on an unlikely leading man: National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya.
Nicole Shanahan, Kennedy’s running mate in the 2024 presidential campaign, is searching for investors to fund a movie that pokes fun at the pandemic response with a star based on Bhattacharya, who rose to prominence with his anti-lockdown manifesto and relentless tweets opposing social distancing.
The script for the satirical comedy, “The Rash,” is by renowned author Walter Kirn, who wrote the novel “Up in the Air” that became an Oscar-nominated movie starring George Clooney. The new Kirn screenplay stars a “no-nonsense” public health professor at a Stanford-like California university — mirroring Bhattacharya — who speaks out against mass hysteria amid a mysterious outbreak of a contagious skin condition.
The story of the pandemic is one “of great heroes who stood up and said no” to “dangerous scientific experiments mixed with misleading propaganda, mass psychosis, and outright lies,” says the Brownstone Institute in a recent appeal sent to potential funders of the film.
Shanahan has the right author in place, too. Earlier attempts at conservative-oriented comedies had issues with writing, but Walter Kirn is the real deal. Up In The Air is actually a perfect model for this project. That Jason Reitman film dealt with the cratered jobs market of the 2008 finance-sector crisis and recession, and Kirn wrote the first script for the adaptation from his own novel. Kirm knows this context well, and has the chops and experience to create a legitimate screenplay that will get respect from investors as well as studios, actors, and other participants.
Speaking of investors, Shanahan certainly has inroads into those communities. When she ran as RFK's running mate and provided some of the financing for the campaign, her estimated net worth exceeded $1 billion after her divorce from Google founder Sergei Brin. Shanahan also practices law, so she hasn't exactly rested on her laurels since the 2022 split. Shanahan could finance it herself, and probably will to some extent, but (a) films are expensive to produce, and (b) the rule is usually never use your own money.
This sounds like a great project, albeit one that Hollywood may not want to make. The entertainment establishment had no problem propagandizing for Anthony Fauci and the authoritarians who imposed mandates and censorship in the pandemic emergency. They have barely acknowledged the existence of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, however, and have entirely ignored how he and the other Great Barrington Declaration scientists got COVID-19 policy right. Shanahan had better get investors who will be comfortable working outside the studio system, as well as cast and crew who have some cojones in dealing with the fallout from any satire that truly lands on those who deserve it most.
And that brings us to our Fantasy Casting Segment. Who will step up to make The Rash, and who will assay these roles best? I already have my Fauci favorite – James Woods would absolutely nail it. Jon Voight comes to mind for Francis Collins, of course. If Chris Pratt doesn't mind playing a pretentious villain with zero self-awareness, he could take on the role of Gavin "French Laundry" Newsom. Dana Carvey would be awesome as Joe Biden. Donald Trump could play himself, I suppose, and probably would prefer to do so. (Assuming, of course, that Kirn hasn't made the perhaps-wiser choice to fictionalize the identities of pandemic figures for better satirical range.)
Even though the prospects for success here may not be great, given the current ideological bent of the entertainment industry, it's not impossible either. Let's encourage Shanahan to pursue this project, which also holds the prospect of annoying the Protection Racket Media in general, too. If the conservative and libertarian movements can't combine to get a film like this made ... what are we even doing here?
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