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Aug. 25, 2025 - Epoch Times
22:09
How Hollywood Alienated Middle America—And What’s Next | Nick Searcy
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Hollywood spent probably the last 15 or 20 years basically telling half of its audience that they don't want them to watch, that they hate them, that they're deplorable.
People just go to the movies to be entertained.
They don't go to be lectured about how terrible they are because of who they support politically.
In this episode, I'm sitting down with actor and director Nick Searcey.
Best known for his role as Art Mullen in the TV series Justified, he played Ronald Reagan's chief of staff James Baker in the Reagan biopic released last year.
They have quotas in terms of the racial makeup of a movie.
He's also the director of Gos The Trial of America's Biggest Serial Killer.
Everybody was afraid to distribute the film.
They had one distributor say, I really like the film.
I think it's very good, but I can't be the one to release this because it would ruin me.
This is American Thought Leaders.
And I'm Janja Kellek.
Nick Cersei, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
No, thank you.
Thanks.
Nice to be here.
Recently, President Trump announced a 100% tariff on films made outside of the United States.
What do you make of this?
I think it's kind of about time.
I mean, it's funny.
I've been trying to get this movie made that I wrote with a friend of mine about the Texas border that we've been trying to get done for probably six years now.
Finally found a company that wanted to make it.
And they said, yeah, we'd like to make it, but we want to shoot it in Thailand.
I'm like, you want to shoot Thailand for Texas?
And they go, look, 50% cheaper there.
You can make the movie for literally half the budget.
Every job I've done in the last few years has been Canada.
It's been Dominican Republic.
It's been overseas England.
So it's something's got to be done.
We've got to get.
American productions shooting back in America.
Is it just that it's so inflated here or that they make it so unreasonably cheap over there?
I mean, or is it a combination of both?
I think it's both.
I mean, I think that, you know, transportation costs, gas fuel costs, and union labor costs is probably the main driver of it.
It's just cheaper to pay a crew there.
It's cheaper to travel all the actors to a foreign country and pay the crew what the crew gets there than it is to shoot in America and pay the American wages.
I think that's most of it.
And then also there are tax incentives.
Definitely in Canada, the tax incentives are probably a bigger part of why you shoot in Canada than the labor costs.
Labor is probably not that much different in Canada, but the taxes are.
So I was looking at a talk you gave about five years ago.
And you basically said that we, meaning, let's say more conservative-leaning actors, entertainment industry people, need to really get into the game of entertainment.
We got to build a new Hollywood.
You were saying that we have an opening right now to do so.
What is it about Hollywood that makes that need something that's essential in your mind?
Well, Hollywood spent probably the last 15 or 20 years basically telling half of its audience that they don't want them to watch, that they hate them.
that they're deplorables.
You know, if you don't support Obama, if you're not for these rights, the, you know, transgender rights, these different rights groups, if you're not part of that, then we're going to demonize.
you and we're going to make programming that makes fun of you, that ridicules you.
And so that's what's been happening.
They've driven half the audience away.
People just go to the movies to be entertained.
They don't go to be lectured about how terrible they are because of who they support politically.
And so that's what Hollywood's been doing for 25, 30 years.
And people are sick of it.
And half the country's just turned them off.
And so that's what I mean by there's an opportunity there.
People to make movies that are not necessarily conservative movies, but movies that just aren't ramming a woke philosophy down your throat.
So, how is it that you kind of survived Hollywood?
I mean, you've been, you've played all sorts of different roles.
You've been a director, you've been a producer, actor, you know, sitcoms, movies.
What was your evolution and thinking?
I don't know that I did evolve that much.
You know, I was in New York for seven years in my twenties, sort of doing stage and not really getting anywhere in the film business.
I didn't really get started until I was in my thirties.
We had moved back to North Carolina, my wife and I to have our baby.
We didn't want to have the baby in New York City.
And the movie business was down in North Carolina, and I started doing smaller parts, and I sort of built my career up in North Carolina.ina acting in Georgia and things.
Fried Green Tomatoes was the movie that kind of put me on the map enough that I could move to LA.
So by the time I moved to Los Angeles, I was already in my thirties.
I had a child.
I was kind of a grown up and my belief system was already pretty, pretty set.
It didn't change me much.
I just when I first went to Hollywood, I didn't know I was supposed to keep my mouth shut about what I thought.
So by the time I realized that it was too late and I figured, well, everybody knows by now, I'm just going to have to go with it.
But you were, you know, successful, I think by any standard.
Yeah, I mean, I've been very fortunate.
Everything I got, I kind of scratched and clawed and auditioned for and won, you know, because I didn't know anyone.
I was just a kid from North Carolina.
I didn't even know any professional actors.
I've been fortunate to be part of some really great movies, and the joke I tell is that, you know, people with good taste obviously think I'm good.
That's why I don't do very many bad movies.
What you said about, you know, clawing your way, I think most actors or actresses would say, that's just the business.
What's very low.
Very low.
Yeah.
And so, but somehow, and you said your belief system was set, but this, what I'm saying is it feels, this feels to me like it goes against, you know, kind of your thesis here, right?
That, that, that, that you can't make it as someone who has a more conservative viewpoint.
Well, I do think Hollywood's changed though.
I mean, I've been there, I was there for thirty years.
So when I went there, it was, what, Clinton was president, you know?
It wasn't so, so divided.
It wasn't so galvanized, you know?
And so you could have discussions with people back then.
I remember having a discussion with fairly civil discussions with Democrats on set, you know, making some jokes about Clinton or whatever, you know, and it wasn't, it was fairly good natured.
But after Bush, when Bush got in and the Iraq war and then Obama right after, that's when it really got to be like, okay, you, you, if you're not one of us, you're a bigot, you're a racist, you're a terrible human being and that sort of thing.
So it kind of evolved to the point where, you know, I think it was more dangerous to come out as a conservative if I'd come out as a conservative while Bush was president.
President, then it probably would have been more difficult.
But my trajectory, which I already said, is certain in terms of my acting career, you know, before it really got so polarized.
I see.
This is something that's very, very interesting.
There is these, you know, huge awards ceremonies, a variety of the Oscars being kind of, I suppose, the supposed to be the pinnacle.
But when you see the Oscars, you don't necessarily know a lot of the films.
I mean, I definitely wasn't like that when I was younger.
These were, you know, blockbusters.
And there's something that's shifted, like, like you're saying, that's for sure.
Yeah, when we were growing up, you know, in the 70s., everyone knew every movie.
Everyone watched the Oscars like it was the Super Bowl.
And you're going, oh, wow, is Five Easy Pieces going to win?
Is The Godfather, The Apartment, you know, all these movies that everyone knew, French Connection.
And now they nominate ten films.
They're barely in the theaters.
They're in the theaters for a week to qualify, and then they're on Netflix or something.
So it's just a totally different way of doing the award ceremonies that has nothing to do with quality, you know, Does the content fit our political ideology?
And do we want to reward a film that doesn't fit our political ideology?
How is it possible to make films that aren't popular?
Isn't that how it works?
I mean, isn't that how, where the money comes from?
Well, yes, you would think, but I think Hollywood has some deep pockets and the way films get made now, it's not so much dependent on the box office now as it used to be, because now they're made by streaming services.
So everything's kind of spread out.
You're paying your $15 a month to a streaming service so they can make a bunch of things that you don't want to see, but they'll make that one thing that you do.
That's what I think has happened is that, you know, films are just not so dependent on straight people buying tickets.
I remember like you as Netflix or HBO would go out and just buy a, you know, and produce a like a massive miniseries or series or movie because and they pick the actors presumably from their data.
These are the actors that people like.
These are the themes that people like and they would construct a film around that.
But I suppose that could be leveraged in a different way, the same approach, right?
Instead of going for the gold, you could be going for some sort of ideological.
And now they literally, you know, they have quotas in terms of, you know, the racial makeup of a movie.
I think I heard that Reagan was not eligible to be considered for the Oscars because the cast was too white.
What's a historical piece?
I mean, you know, what are you going to do non-traditional casting about a slice of history?
It doesn't make any sense.
And so that's why Hollywood is falling apart.
And I mean, I know, I just left Hollywood four years ago.
I left Burbank.
And I just know so many people there that are just like, there's no work.
Editors, you know, camera people, they're all moving away because there's nothing for them to do.
Tell me about making Reagan.
Well, that was, you know, I knew the producers and they'd asked me to be part of it.
And it took a long time because we shot it in the middle of COVID.
And so there were all these crazy restrictions that they had to go by.
SAG had imposed all this stuff.
And it was such a huge cast that it became almost comical.
I mean, we weren't allowed.
to ride in the van together to the set because we might kill each other with COVID or something.
So we all had to have our own rental cars.
We all had to drive ourselves.
Each actor had his own golf cart.
So when there's ten of us in a scene in a boardroom, you know, sitting around the table, well, there's ten golf carts bringing us all.
I mean, it was kind of silly.
I guess the producers couldn't help it.
They had to do it to get the movie made.
But there was, for example, there was one scene where we were supposed to be the 1976 Republican National Convention.
We're all crammed into this little room.
They're shooting it tight.
They want to make it look like we're on the floor of the convention.
And so they bring the actors that have lines.
They bring us all to this set.
And all the background actors have masks on.
They're in costume, but they have their masks on.
And we're, you know, we're principal actors don't have their masks on because I guess we're superhuman beings and we, you know, impervious to the disease or something.
So we get there and the first AD says, okay, everybody, when you're here rolling, everybody take your mask off and put it in your pocket.
Make sure you tuck it in so that those little strings don't hang out.
And then we'll play the scene.
And then as soon as it's over, just put your mask on back.
And I said, yeah, everybody, because when we're cameras are rolling, it's 1976 and the virus didn't exist back then.
So if you act really well, you'll survive.
But if you suck, you might get COVID.
So everybody be on your best behavior.
So it was a little silly, but it was it's a great movie, I think.
It's a great thing to be a part of.
Got to play James Baker, which was fun.
I had a nice wig.
The joke was it was an honor to play James Baker.
It's the first time I've ever played a swamp creature.
Nick, we're going to take a quick break right now and folks, we're going to be right back.
And we're back with actor, producer, director and author Nick Searcy.
Tell me about, of course, John Voight is in the film.
I've been thinking about this, the special ambassadors that President Trump has assigned to Hollywood.
We haven't heard much about them since they were assigned.
Do you know if they're it's John Voight, Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson, of course.
Do you know if they're doing anything?
Well, I think John Voight is the one who I heard this that he was sort of came up with the tariff on foreign films, tariff on films shot overseas.
That's what I heard.
I don't know if that's true or not.
You know, it's a funny thing about the conservative side of filmmaking, the conservative side of Hollywood.
What happens is you get people like John Voight, Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson, who have such big stars that it doesn't matter, right?
Their conservatism is not going to affect them.
Maybe it'll affect them with certain people, but they're never going to be hurting for work.
There's always going to be people that want to have them in their movie just because they're great actors and they...
But they've kind of made it.
There's not a big movement on the conservative side to help out conservatives that are lower down on the ladder.
What could they do?
Well, people with that kind of power, I mean, with that kind of star power, they could form a studio.
They, you know, it's been done in the past, you know, United Artists, you know, that kind of thing.
They could have enough money and power that they could pull together a studio because that's what's needed.
You know, that's why Netflix and Amazon is able to churn out so many films.
You know, they have pooled their resources so that they're making the kinds of films that support what they believe in.
We don't do that.
Conservatives are afraid of investing in films because basically it's a bad investment.
You know, chances are you're going to lose your money.
So what we have to do if we really want to compete is create a system where we have, we're able to make 10 films and maybe one of them makes enough money to float the other nine.
That's what they do.
So I wish that they would use their star power and their influence to build something like that, but I don't think they will.
It's not how the conservative mind works.
You know, we're all individuals.
We all want to do what's best for us and we don't necessarily think collectively like the left does.
So you have been advocating for the building of this more conservative or right-leaning Hollywood for a while.
I watched that talk you gave about five years ago at Hillsdale College.
So I guess it's not going well, right?
You have some films that are breaking through here and there.
You have Sound of Freedom, which made a fortune.
And you have studios that are coming up.
You have, you know, The Daily Wire said they were going to get into entertainment, although I think that's kind of been a failed experiment up to this point.
Have Angel Studios.
And they have a very interesting, different business model, right, that they came up with the chosen.
Right, and Angel Studios, it's kind of a misnomer.
They're not really a studio.
They're more of a business, they're more of a distribution company.
But you can go to Angel Studios with an idea and they will pass that idea along to their investors.
And if their investors vote that that's something that they should throw money at, they do.
So that's a good start.
I mean, it's definitely heading in the right direction.
I just don't think that we're there yet.
You know, it's still too hard.
Every conservative filmmaker that I know is in the same boat that I am.
We're out there trying to get somebody to invest in our one project, our single project.
I have a project called Where I'm Bound, Labor of Love for Me.
It's a movie about gospel quartet music in the 1960s.
Really great story, great script.
You know, we've had a great response to it.
But it's hard to get conservatives to invest in a movie because they've been burned before.
A lot of conservative investors have lost their money and that's because it's not a situation where you're investing in a in a like a spate of films you know so that it can be spread out over if this one doesn't do that well maybe this one does if you're investing in one movie at a time it's you know it's riskier and so I think that's the that's what we're up against.
We need something like a Sony.
or a Warner Brothers on the conservative side.
You know, something just occurred to me.
You know, you made the film Gosnell, of course.
You directed it.
Incredible film, I mean, that I, I mean, heart-wrenching., difficult, difficult film, very difficult film.
When we were talking earlier, you mentioning it, there's some reason why the distribution of this film isn't very good.
Maybe it's because it's so difficult.
But I wonder if this, you know, angel model of pay it forward might actually work for this film.
It started with the chosen.
It was a brilliant idea, right?
If people who are, you know, presumably Christian want to share the story of Jesus, which probably a lot of them do, they can pay for others to see it.
And it seemed to work really well for them, right?
And then they tried with other films.
It worked for some other productions as well.
Maybe it would work for this production.
Maybe actually tell me a little bit about this film for the benefit of those who haven't heard it about Gosnell and where it's at right now.
Well, Gosnell was crowdfunded.
You know, that's the thing about Gosnell.
It wasn't investors.
They just gave the money to Ann and Phelum to make the movie.
And so we made it for that amount.
I had sort of lobbied, why don't we just like get some investors too, and then we'll have a little bigger budget and we can make a better movie.
But they didn't like that idea.
I think they raised 2.3 million.
And then they spent whatever they spent whatever they spent on the script and whatever.
So we made the movie for less than $2 million and finally got distribution.
It took us two years to get distribution.
Everybody was afraid to distribute the film.
They had one distributor, kind of a big Hollywood distributor, say, I really like the film.
I think it's very good, but I can't be the one to release this.
because it would ruin me.
Tell it for those that aren't familiar with the story, maybe just give us a quick synopsis.
Goznell was the true story about Kermit Goznell, a doctor in Philadelphia who ran a woman's clinic that was really an abortion mill and where he did a lot of illegal abortions, not only after the approved limits, but literally killing babies after they were born.
And this was discovered by a detective who was investigating the clinic for, for like narcotic fraud.
It became a big national story that, you know, the national media ignored.
And that's why Anne and Phelum wanted to make the movie.
The movie was as much about what Kermit Gosnell did as it was about how the media tried to suppress it because it didn't support their abortion agenda.
So that's what the movie was.
about, and we tried to make a really strict kind of just the facts, ma'am, kind of courtroom drama.
I didn't want it to be preachy.
I remember when I first read the script, the thing that attracted me to it was this one scene where Gosnell's attorney, who I wound up playing, is cross examining a legitimate abortion doctor, and he makes her tell us all the steps that happen.
in an abortion.
And I remember reading that going, I did not know that's what it was.
You know, you hear about abortion and you you have some sort of idea about it but you don't know exactly what they do and that's why I wanted to make the movie was really that scene I just said okay if we're going to talk about abortion you can have whatever opinion you want to about it but let's focus on what it really is this is what it is support it or don't support it is up to you all right Final thought as we finish.
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