Brian Anderson, the author of South Park Conservatives looks at the ideology that dare not speak its name in Hollywood:

When a trendsetter like [producer Gavin Polone] (subject of a glowing 2004 New York Times Magazine cover story) can observe that “we live in a much more conservative country than the entertainment industry had thought it was, and it would be much smarter for them to move in that direction,” it’s a pretty safe bet that the new Hollywood establishment will indeed be very different from the one that it soon will replace.

There’s a simple explanation of why Tinseltown churns out so many commercial duds. Elite filmmakers want to make moola, of course—and they still do, lots of it, though not nearly as much as they could be making. But giving the public what it wants isn’t their prime motivation. More important is their wish for recognition as artists from peers, critics, and the liberal elites, says Emmy- and Oscar-nominated writer and director Lionel Chetwynd, one of Hollywood’s most vocal conservatives. “And it has been true from the late sixties on that if you wanted to be seen as an artist, you have to be a liberal—you have to rail against the government, be edgy,” he adds. Having the right artistic vision can mean other social advantages, too. “Making something commercially successful and appealing to a broad public, like The Incredibles, is less likely to get a Rebecca Romijn look-alike to sleep with you than making dark, hard-hitting, critically acclaimed material like Million Dollar Baby,” says longtime Hollywood watcher Medved.

Further reinforcing Hollywood’s leftish leanings are liberal interest groups that monitor script content for “offensive”—read: politically incorrect—content. This pressure can utterly transform a film project, as Tom Clancy will tell you. In his novel The Sum of All Fears, Muslim terrorists explode a nuke at the Super Bowl. When Clancy optioned the book and the film went into development, the Council on American Islamic Relations got to work. The 2002 film villains: white neo-Nazis, not Muslim fanatics. Some Hollywood production companies actually have outreach offices that contact advocacy groups ahead of production to vet potential film scripts. “Keep in mind [that] one of the reasons why the FBI or the government or business are the villains is because everyone else has a constituency,” former Motion Picture Association head Jack Valenti points out.

The PC concerns, internalized in scriptwriters’ heads even before any advocate complains, can produce bizarre incoherence. Novelist and screenwriter Andrew Klavan’s True Crime is about an innocent white man on death row, railroaded because officials needed to prove that the death penalty isn’t racially biased. “The only one who figures this out is this politically incorrect journalist who can see through the B.S.,” Klavan relates. The gripping 1999 movie version, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood as journalist Steve Everett, transforms the innocent death-row inmate into a black man (played by Isaiah Washington). The movie works, even if it takes the anti-PC edge off Klavan’s novel.

But the screenplay leaves in a sequence depicting a black woman confronting journalist Everett for caring only about injustices against whites and not blacks—even though the movie now revolves around the reporter’s relentless quest to exonerate a wrongly convicted African American. “That scene no longer makes any sense,” Klavan laughs. “The screenwriter apparently found the original politically inappropriate.”

Even so, jolted by The Passion’s huge success, Hollywood seems to be catching on that it is neglecting a large part of its potential audience. “When something does nearly $400 million in U.S. box office, and it isn’t in English—it makes an impression,” says former Universal Pictures boss Frank Price. The New York Times reported in July that studios have hired “newly minted experts in Christian marketing” to help sell movies with religious or family themes to red-state America. After cold-shouldering Gibson when he shopped around The Passion—he famously had to finance it himself—the studios lined up for the chance to distribute his next movie, the Mayan-language Apocalypto, with Disney landing the deal.

Update: Welcome City Journal readers! For most posts in a similar vein, scroll through our "Hollywood, Interrupted" archives. And for my interview this past summer with Brian Anderson, City Journal's senior editor, click here.