Ep. 94 skewers Garland’s Supreme Court nomination as a "well-behaved" liberal pick Republicans should reluctantly confirm to block Clinton’s potential radical choice, while mocking Trump’s foreign policy boasts and debate boycotts as cowardly. Filmmaker Cyrus Nawasta defends The Young Messiah—a divisive Jesus childhood film—against religious backlash, revealing its Clinton-era suppression threats and financing struggles. The episode blends sharp political satire with cultural jabs, from Breitbart’s collapse to Reagan.com’s privacy gimmicks, ending with a Drifters musical detour. [Automatically generated summary]
Once again, the black, ghoul-haunted mist of the clavenless weekend swirls around our feet, rising like a tide of living darkness and plunging the three days before us into a fathomless obscurity alleviated only by lightning strikes of pure terror.
On the bright side, I might have time to take in a movie.
But as we approach the perilous depths of clavenless unknowing, there's still time to look back behind us at the smoking wreckage of the week just past and assess the damage.
We see, for instance, that Andrew Breitbart's dream of creating a news operation that would challenge the mainstream media has now permanently collapsed in on its hollowed-out center of Trumpian partisanship.
As a result, Ben Shapiro has had to act with integrity and walk away from his job there, leaving him more time to hang around the Daily Wire offices, practicing his tap dancing and working on his color-by-number flower pictures.
Which, believe me, is incredibly annoying.
Then, of course, there are the primaries in which a woman unfit for public service and a man unfit to be let out of the attic room where we had him locked up for so long both move closer to running for an office once held by George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Millard Fillmore.
Because even Millard Fillmore was better than either of these two knuckleheads.
But why be glum?
Let's look on the bright side.
Plenty of good things are happening too.
And if we can only learn to accentuate the positive, our mood will lift and we'll have a bright smile on our faces when the clavenless blade of weekend evil falls on our unsuspecting necks.
For instance, here's some good news.
For many years, conservatives have been complaining that Hollywood treated us unfairly.
Every time a conservative appeared on screen, he was a loudmouth, dishonest jackass radiating bigotry and misogyny.
But now we're on the verge of nominating Donald Trump, who actually is a loudmouth, dishonest jackass radiating bigotry and misogyny, so Hollywood isn't being unfair to us anymore.
So that's good, right?
All right, then there's Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.
Yes, he's a left-winger, but he seems like a well-behaved, pleasant gentleman with very good manners, so he should make a very nice guest when he comes to your house to take your guns away.
And finally, a recent poll shows that some 53% of young people ages 18 to 29 view socialism favorably, which means we can all go to our graves knowing that all those irritating little snowflakes will soon be stealing each other's stuff, receiving second-rate health care, and accusing each other of microaggressions against the revolution before throwing their former best friends into gulags.
That serves the stupid punks right.
So, really, when you look at it like that, everything is tickety-boo, and we can head into the clavenless weekend with a song in our hearts.
Nobody knows the trouble I seen.
Nobody knows but Jesus.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Claven, and this is the Andrew Claven show.
All right, and we have to go back to our friends at Hillsdale.
Come on, cheer up, people.
This is the happy part.
What if it was a requirement for every person in public office to have the Constitution sandblasted onto his chest?
I'm sorry, there's something about this copy that just inspires these vengeful fantasies in mine.
We could have him sleeping with the Constitution under his pillow, and instead of simple random drug tests, he'd have simple random constitutional rights tests, which we would have nobody in government.
The halls would be empty.
If you want to fully understand the Constitution and your constitutional rights, go and check out the free online course, Constitution 101 at Hillsdale College.
You sign up for Hillsdale College's Constitution 101 for free at hillsdale.edu slash Andrew, and they will start sending you video classes into your inbox right away, and you will learn about the Constitution.
That's hillsdale.edu slash Andrew.
You will learn about your rights and learn where they are protected, which is in the Constitution, long-forgotten document that we once had in this country, and you can find out at Hillsdale.
All right, let's get started here.
What am I talking about?
First of all, we're going to have an interview today with one of the most, really, he's one of the most controversial directors in Hollywood, Cyrus Nawasta.
He is a guy who has been hounded by the Clinton administration until they virtually had one of his films banned, and now he's got a new film out, The Young Messiah, about Jesus.
Senator Cruz and Debates00:09:59
So he's starting more trouble.
And he will be on in the second half of the show.
So please stay tuned for that.
What else?
Happy St. Patrick's Day.
Oh, I'm wearing green.
I am wearing green.
A total accident.
Because I hate St. Patrick's Day.
It has nothing against the Irish.
My wife is a former Flanagan, but I just hate days that are dedicated to drinking, you know, because I actually, I love to drink.
I love a good whiskey, a good wine.
And these guys who go out on a specific day and get drunk and then kill themselves and others, I just feel that's amateur night.
All right.
So I want everybody to know that I do read the comments that come in to the Daily Wire.
And I haven't quite figured out how to answer the comments yet because they won't let me get onto the site.
But I do read them.
And I did read the one the other day from the guy who says he's not going to listen anymore because I laugh too much.
So I have issued an edict.
There will be no more laughter on this show.
The people in the room have been told people outside the hall.
And when I get home, I'm just going to tell my family to no more laughing.
And it'll be, you know, these are grim, grim.
Oh, now we've already broken it.
Never mind.
These are grim times and grim times to call for grim voices.
All right.
So here, just a, I just want to take a quick survey of what Donald Trump has done just in the last, I think this is the last two days.
I think this is within the last 48 hours.
All right.
Last 48 hours, he's made three statements of interest to me.
Okay.
So the first is he's on Morning Joe, and Mika, whatever her name is, asked him what he's going to do, who he's going to talk to to get up to speed on foreign policy, because he obviously knows nothing about foreign policy.
So who's he going to talk to?
So this was his response.
I'm speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain.
So a lot of people made fun of this, but the fact is that he didn't always feel like that.
We have a clip, an earlier clip, where he discussed the same thing.
I got a good brain.
All right, so maybe.
Very touching, inspiring, as he first found his legs and became the man he is today.
So there he is.
Now, then the next thing that happens is he's talking.
This was on CNN, I think, with Cuomo.
He's talking about what will happen if there's a brokered convention, if there's an open convention.
I think we'll win before getting to the convention, but I can tell you, if we didn't, and if we're 20 votes short, or if we're, you know, 100 short, and we're at 1,100 and somebody else is at 500 or 400, because we're way ahead of everybody, I don't think you can say that we don't get it automatically.
I think it would be, I think you'd have riots.
I think you'd have riots.
You know, I'm representing a tremendous, many, many millions of people, in many cases, first-time voters.
These are people that haven't voted because they never believed in the system.
They didn't like candidates, et cetera, et cetera, that are 40 and 50 and 60 years old and they've never voted before.
Many, many of those people, many Democrats, many Independents coming in.
That's what the big story is, really, Chris.
I mean, the really big story is how many people are voting in these primaries.
The numbers are astronomical.
Now, if you disenfranchise those people and you say, well, I'm sorry, but you're 100 votes short, even though the next one is 500 votes short, I think you would have problems like you've never seen before.
I think bad things would happen.
I really do.
I believe that.
I wouldn't lead it, but I think bad things would happen.
Pat, if we don't give him the nomination, bad things will happen.
See, this is the art of the deal.
This is something that he has developed over time.
This is the way when he was, you know, when he was building his buildings, he would go in and make these kinds of deals with bankers to get his loans.
Here, we have that on tape, too.
I think in all fairness, I should explain to you exactly what it is that I do.
For instance, tomorrow morning, I'll get up nice and early, take a walk down over to the bank and walk in and see.
And if you don't have my money for me, I'll crack your f ⁇ ing head wide open in front of everybody in the bank.
And just about the time that I'm coming out of jail, hopefully, you'll be coming out of your coma.
Bad things happen if you don't give Trumpy what he wants.
It really is.
If my nomination is hit by lightning, if it falls off the cape, if a policeman shoots my nomination in the head, there'll be people in this very room that I will be blaming.
That's two, right?
Okay, now here's three.
What about the Fox?
He was supposed to do another debate now that the candidates are down to three, two and a half.
I mean, it's Trump and Cruz and the little raisin-looking guy.
So he's going to show up at the debate.
Here's the third cut.
I think we've had enough debates.
We've had 11 or 12 debates.
I did really well in the last one.
I think I've done well in all the debates.
I mean, according to Drudge and everybody else, I won the debates.
But I think we've had enough.
How many times can the same people ask you the same question?
I think we've had enough.
So in two days, we have learned that Trump is a dope, a bully, and he's a coward.
He's running away from Ted Cruz.
He doesn't want to stand on the stage.
I mean, when you really listen to what Trump says, it's always the same thing.
We're angry because of this, this, and this, and I'm going to make it better because I make great deals and know good people.
That's it.
That's his campaign slogan.
So he's running away.
He's running away from Ted Cruz.
It's like, you know, the big bully was such a tough guy when he was dealing with all these kind of various candidates who had their flaws.
If he has to stand up and actually argue and debate with Ted Cruz, he's hiding under the desk.
This is the same guy who's threatening riots.
You know, he's a tough guy, but he's hiding under the desk when it comes to a fight, Mano Amano.
You know, I just wanted to throw that out there because there's a lot of people, including Senator Cruz, by the way, who are saying, you know, the media hasn't vetted this guy.
They haven't dealt with his mafia connections.
They haven't dealt with all the businesses he's had that have failed.
They haven't really, really taken a look at him.
And I don't actually think that that's fair.
I think the media, you know, I don't, Cruz says he thinks that the media is trying to make it so that Trump will be the nominee because they think he'll lose to Hillary Clinton.
I don't actually believe that.
I think that they are hitting him.
They hate him.
They want to stop him.
He is right out there.
You just saw him.
He's a dope.
He's a bully.
He's a coward.
And people love him.
People love him.
It's me they hate.
It's me and Shapiro they hate for pointing it out.
You know, I mean, it's like they don't hate him for what he is.
They see what he is and they tell themselves a story about that he's something different.
So it has nothing.
This does not have to do with the media.
This is on us.
This is on the people.
This is what the people want.
And as I said, H. You know, Minkins said that democracy is the idea that the people know what they want and they deserve to get it good and hard.
So this is, don't blame the media.
one you can't you can blame the media for obama's first election not for his second but for his first but not for this all right want to deal quickly before we bring uh cyrus on i want to deal quickly quickly with the supreme court nominee this has been it's exact playing out exactly as i said it would they're selling this idea that he's a moderate that it's ridiculous that we can't uh do we do we have a picture of him do we have a picture of the of the nominee uh merrick gardner There he is.
He looks, if you took his hair off, the guy looks like he could be my mild-mannered brother.
He looks exactly, so I think Obama is just messing with my head at this point.
Like, stop it, Obama!
Stop it!
You're driving me crazy, man!
The Supreme Court guy looks like me.
But he does.
He looks like he could be one of my brothers, but if you just took the hair off him, you know.
Anyway, so we're hearing what a moderate he is and all this.
And actually, you know, one of the things that really bothers me in politics is people get so ginned up that they don't think things through.
They just know if you say, if you're on the other side and you say black, I say white.
If you're on the other side, you say three, I say four.
I say the opposite of whatever you're saying.
And immediately we've all thought, including me, that they should hold up the nomination, not have any hearings, not listen to him at all.
So last night I thought, well, wait a minute.
Obama has posed this idea that Merrick Gardner is not a moderate.
I mean, he's a left-winger, but he's a moderate left-winger.
He's not as far left, as crazy as Elena Kagan or somebody like that.
He's not like a radical left-winger.
And I thought, well, what if we did have a hearing on him?
What if we appointed him?
What if we said to ourselves, look, there's going to be maybe at least two judges that are going to die in the next term.
You know, they're nine.
Ginsburg, I think, is 90, and another one is 80, and they're going to be liberal judges.
And so if we win, if by a miracle Ted Cruz is the president, we'll get our two guys, plus this guy will be kind of a wash.
And if we lose, if we lose, Hillary Clinton is going to appoint somebody a lot more radical than this, and she'll get away with it.
So we'll kind of take the bet that if Hillary Clinton, if Hillary Clinton wins, she'll get somebody worse than Gardner.
But then I realized, no, because on every important issue, this guy is going to vote for the left.
And if Hillary Clinton wins, we'll still have time to have a hearing and let him in.
We can still let him in between November.
So I think that the Senate just has to hold tight.
They say it's going to be tough.
I don't think it's going to be so tough.
I don't think the people are going to have a hard time understanding this.
Let me, before we go into our interview, let me read the Reagan.com advertisement, which at this point I should know by heart.
But the point of it is that your privacy is under attack.
Amazing Lord of the Rings Movies00:14:37
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And if you do it right now, you get two free months, ReaganPrivacy.com.
All right, there is a new movie out, a lovely movie.
I have seen it.
It is just a beautiful picture based on Anne Rice's Christ the Lord out of Egypt.
And it basically deals with what are called the hidden years of Jesus Christ.
He's a little boy.
There's only one sentence about this in the Gospels.
But this kind of shows us the problem that his parents have dealing with knowing what they know and trying to break it to him.
So let's take a quick look at a clip.
This is Mary finally breaking down and explaining to her son who he is.
When one morning my room filled with light, it was white light, like the sun, but with no heat or pain.
It was pure.
The air itself was glowing I saw a figure Larger than a man, but like a man inside the light.
And it spoke to me.
It said, Hail Mary, full of grace.
The Lord is with thee.
I had found favor with the Lord, and I was blessed among women.
It said that from my womb would come a sun.
It's a beautiful picture.
The young Messiah.
It's in theaters now.
Cyrus Nawasta directed it and he wrote it with his wife Betsy.
Cyrus, as I say, is one of the most controversial guys in Hollywood.
He was attacked by conservatives for perceived liberal bias in the 2001 Showtime film, The Day Reagan Was Shot.
He was attacked by liberals for his perceived conservative bias in The Path to 9-11.
The Clinton people came after him so badly that the film has still not been released on DVD.
They pressured Disney ABC to keep it under wraps, and they have.
His film, The Stoning of Soriah M, was condemned by the lovable leaders of Iran for showing our Muslim brethren dealing with a woman's supposed infidelity by throwing rocks at her until she died.
And now, which they do, and now he has dealt with Jesus Christ, always a touchy subject.
Have we got Cyrus?
Hello, Drew.
Hey, there you are.
How's it going?
It's going great.
How are you?
There you are.
Yeah, you know, you are a troublemaker, dude.
Everything you make blows up.
When you break it down like that, I guess it sounds that way.
But actually, I'm really a sweet guy.
Well, I didn't say you weren't.
You're a sweet guy, but you're causing a lot of trouble.
So how did you come to make this film?
This is Anne Rice's Christlord.
You made it as the young messiah.
How did you come to make this?
You know, it sort of fell into my lap.
It's an odd thing.
Basically, Anne Rice wrote a rave review of my previous film, The Stoning of Soria M.
We had an agent in common.
Conversations ensued.
My wife Betsy had read the novel when it first came out.
I thought it was really a fresh, original idea.
Just an amazing idea for a story.
And I leaped at it.
It was tough, though, right?
I mean, you went through a lot to get this onto the screen.
Yeah, it's been now six years from conception to release.
People tell me that's short in Hollywood, but, you know, I think that we went through some bumps.
I mean, along the way, the movie was up.
We were deep in pre-production in early 2013, and the financing fell apart.
So we had to sort of reconstruct from that point $3 million in the hole, which can be a major gargantuan task.
But we got there, and, you know, the project just wouldn't die.
It's really, I mean, it really is a beautiful film, and it's very, it's very moving to watch this little boy, you know, just a kid, come to terms with the fact that he is at the middle of history and he's got this task.
It's not just a big task, it's the biggest task that he's got to do.
And he's just trying to get his mind around it.
Now, I know that whenever I make a religious comment about anything, I get letters.
There's always somebody I didn't dot an I here.
I didn't cross a T.
And here you're dealing with a story that's not in the Gospels.
Are you coming under fire from religious people?
Not as much as we expected.
Okay.
Honestly.
I mean, we've gotten some nasty stuff, but overall, they've been very kind.
I mean, Christians are going to see it.
We did okay business this past opening weekend.
We finished third amongst like the seven new films out.
We would have liked to have done better.
That's always the case.
I think our numbers right now are indicating that the word of mouth last weekend was terrific.
We had an A-minus cinema score.
Yeah, I noticed that.
People really love it.
Yeah.
So if the word of mouth helps, we'll see how we do this weekend.
I think there is a Christian element that is, what's the word I'm looking for?
They have a wait and see attitude because it's extra-biblical material.
So they're saying, let me hear some more about this.
Let's wait and see if it's worth looking at.
And we're hoping we'll get them this weekend.
Well, what do you say to people when they say, because I've discussed the movie with people, with Christians, and some of them, not all, but some of them say, oh, you know, you shouldn't make it.
If it's not in the gospel, you shouldn't make it.
You shouldn't imagine it.
And what do you say to those people?
Well, I'd like for them to cite me a movie that has done it perfectly.
You're always making choice.
The minute you make a choice on who plays Jesus and what he looks like, you're interpreting.
You know, the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo, I call that an interpretation.
Millions of faith-driven people go to Rome every year to look at it and to touch God.
Everything's an interpretation.
Everything's a work of art.
It's how you do it that matters.
And that's why I think people should give the movie, give a work of art, a television show, whatever.
Give it a chance.
Give it a shot.
See what you think.
See where it's coming from.
Did you have the sense?
I mean, I know you wrote this with Betsy.
Did you have a sense when you were writing it that you were dealing with some?
I mean, I know you're obviously no stranger to controversy at this point, but did you have a sense that you were walking into a storm?
Yes.
We knew all along.
And like I said, that's why we had theologians.
That's why we did it very carefully.
That's why it's all in how you do it.
We got a lot of help.
And yes, we knew we were navigating a minefield, no question about it.
How do you deal with a, you know, I know that dealing with child actors is notoriously difficult to do.
How do you deal with getting, how do you get a little boy like that?
It's an incredible performance, really.
And his face is 50% of the thing, you know, he's got this great face.
He really is a beautiful kid.
But how do you get him into that part when he says, what's my motivation?
What do you say exactly?
Well, you know, I learned early on that this is an exceptional child.
He's very bright, very capable, very thoughtful.
He can listen.
He's totally game.
I would say that my task was eased and the burden was eased exponentially just by the sheer maturity of young Adam.
Adam Graves Neal is his name.
I started to talk to him like he's an adult actor.
I talked to him about, you know, intentions, objectives, the circumstances of the scene, where he's coming from.
I talked to him like he was a 25-year-old actor, and he got it.
And there were times I'd have a conversation.
I have a 10-second rule, which is I never want to talk to an actor more than 10 seconds between a take.
But sometimes I would lay things on him and I'd say, oh, he's not going to get that.
He's not going to remember that.
He hit every mark.
He was on it.
So we were fortunate.
Yeah, I have to say, your choice of faces, it does have this great combination of looking real, but at the same time, it looks almost like a Renaissance painting.
I think a lot of that is the actors you chose.
They just look, they look like they stepped out of the Bible, or at least out of my imagination of the Bible.
It's an amazing cast.
Thank you.
Thank you.
No, that's great.
I mean, I, you know, I wanted to approach it as naturalistically as possible.
I wanted this film set 2,000 years ago to feel like you can walk into this world.
It's a believable world, and these are believable people, and they speak in a fashion that you understand them and it makes sense so that you're inside the scene, inside the drama, and not wondering, what did he just say?
With a lot, you know, that's been the case with a lot of these biblical movies, and I saw them all.
I put myself through the torturous process of watching every biblical movie that's been made back practically in the last 50, 60 years.
And some I loved, some I loved, and some I thought, you know, and what I'm looking for really more than anything else is what they did wrong, the missteps.
Because you have to put your people in this world.
They have to be a fly on the wall and believe that it exists and that these moments are real.
What's the worst one you saw?
See, mine would be the greatest story ever told, but just curious.
You know, they're all a jumble to me.
They're all a jumble to me.
There's so many that seem like they are directed by the same guy and the same actor was playing Jesus.
That's certainly one of them.
I'll tell you one that surprised me, and it has its share of cheesy moments.
But I think it was made in 61, was Barabbas.
I thought that held up really well.
And more because of Anthony Quinn's performance, but also they capture an eclipse on film.
It's an amazing moment and at the right and perfect dramatic moment for the movie.
And I read up on it and they planned it that way.
And it's extraordinary.
That's cool.
I haven't seen that in a long time.
So let me ask you this.
Do you mean, did you, do you set out to be controversial?
Did you mean to have this career where every two minutes we're sort of afraid for your life?
And, you know, I mean, I don't know.
I think to my parents and maybe a lot of my friends in high school, I was a constant pain in the ass.
I think that I like controversial, spicy stuff.
I mean, if you're looking for something, I mean, I like to go see it.
I like to watch those kinds of movies.
I didn't, on Path to 9-11, we were blindsided.
I did not expect the firestorm that erupted.
On Stoning of Sarai Am, I expected the Iranian government to condemn and ban the film as they did.
You know, I'm touching on subjects there, though, that fascinate me personally.
It's not about, okay, where can I rustle some feathers?
It's all about what grabs me, my attention in terms of something that I want to work on.
What's a movie that I would like to see?
That's how I approach it, but it just seems to be that way.
And maybe there's something else there that I'm just, you know, denying.
Just a slight, just a slight urge to annoy people.
Do you think the Path to 9-11 will ever be released on DVD?
Wow, I hope so.
I mean, maybe when Bob Iger leaves Disney, I heard a rumor that he was threatening to run for governor.
So, you know, maybe that'll happen.
And that maybe someone else will come in and they'll probably do a very quiet release, but at least it'll be available.
It's shocking.
I mean, it may be the only film of the last 40 years that isn't out on DVD.
Now, if Hillary Clinton is president for the next eight years, it won't be released then.
You're done.
Yeah.
Amazing.
Amazingly powerful.
The Young Messiah, Cyrus Narasa.
Thanks for coming on, Cyrus.
I appreciate it.
Thanks, Drew.
Terrific film.
Appreciate it.
Bye-bye.
It's an excellent Easter film to go see.
All right.
It's time to end this week.
I hate to leave you guys alone with this country because I don't know how we're going to sweep up on Monday, but we will try.
Stuff I like.
I don't think we've done this before, and I can't believe it.
One of my favorite groups of all time, The Drifters.
Have we done The Drifters before?
Let me just read to you a list of a partial list of their hits.
Under the Boardwalk, There Goes My Baby.
Save the Last Dance for Me.
Up on the Roof, Saturday Night at the Movies, on Broadway, some kind of wonderful.
I mean, this is an amazing list.
I mean, they were just so good.
That Saturday Night at the Movies, nobody ever plays that anymore, but that has one of my favorite optimistic lines, one of my favorite just like lines of energy.
What is it?
Saturday night at the movies.
Don't care what picture they show.
Don't care what picture we see because he doesn't care because he's in the back seat with his girlfriend, which I just think is a great condensed line.
It tells you everything you need to know.
I would call this my personal favorite, except the truth is I listen to these guys so often, the drifters, that every now and again, my personal favorite changes.
Magic Moment00:01:06
At the moment, this is my personal favorite, this magic moment.
We will go out with that.
I will see you again on Monday if you survive, but I can't vouch for it.
But if you do, we'll patch you up and send you into the week ahead.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is the Andrew Claven Show.
See you on Monday.
This magic moment, so different and so new, was like any other.
Until I kiss you and then it happened.
It took me by surprise.
I knew that you felt it too.
By the look in your eyes, sweeter than wine.
Softer than the summer night.
Everything I want, I have.
Whenever I hold you tight, this magic moment while your lips are close to mine, will last forever.