Last month, American Thinker wrote about the amazing life of Merian C. Cooper.  Cooper was an aviator in World War I, an anti-Bolshevik who helped save Poland after the Russian Revolution, an escapee from a Soviet concentration camp, a hugely successful Hollywood producer, and one of the brains behind the Doolittle Raid.  Those accomplishments should have made him a natural for a Hollywood biopic, but Hollywood ignored him.  That may be changing, though.

The problem with making a film about Cooper's heroism is that the radical left took control of Hollywood beginning in the 1960s and has never let go.  With the exception of Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge, they will not produce any true, inspirational patriotic stories honoring America, its history, and its greatest heroes.  Along with others on the left, their goal is to denigrate America not to elevate it.

In recent years, leftist control over Hollywood has only gotten worse, to the point that now they are blacklisting virtually all conservative talent.  A perfect example is Italian-born Antonio Sabato, Jr, who'd had a slow but steady career in Hollywood following a regular role on Melrose Place.

However, in 2016, Sabato openly supported Donald Trump.  After that, Sabato was blacklisted.  It wasn't simply that his work dried up.  He was, instead, openly abandoned:

"All my representatives left me, from agents to managers to commercial agents. I literally had to move, find a new job to survive and take care of my kids," the former Calvin Klein model said in an interview this week with Variety.

"It's been terrible. It's mind-blowing. It's a disgrace. It's tough, because if you're in that environment in Hollywood and you have something to say that they don't like, they're going to let you know," Sabàto said.

The 48-year-old former "Melrose Place" actor was one of a handful of entertainers to vocally support Trump's 2016 White House bid, and spoke at that year's Republican National Convention.

"I was the first celebrity to come out and talk about the president, and he had my vote from day one," Sabàto told the magazine.

To make a living, the man who was once an A-list TV actor — and who never had a drink, drugs, or a sex scandal — found himself doing construction work.

However, Sabato has refused to give up on Hollywood.  He's created a conservative film studio in Florida, Conflix Studios, that's dedicated to making movies the old-fashioned way: "We're all about God, Country and Family Values."  This is the right time for that effort.  The Daily Wire has also gotten into the movie business and its first effort got good reviews.

Sabato's reinventing himself is perfect timing when it comes to getting Cooper's story to the big screen.  My Foundation to Illuminate America's Heroes has already named Cooper as the Greatest American Hero of the 20th Century.  That matters because the Foundation has a cinematic arm, Genesis Productions LLC.  Genesis has joined forces with Conflix to finance and produce a film about the larger-than-life Merian C. Cooper.  With luck, the film will inspire America and the world and help give people the courage to defeat the latest Marxist surge.

Because Cooper's story is so dynamic and mesmerizing, we hope to be able to attract big names to the project.  As noted, Mel Gibson is big enough that he can take on directing a conservative project.  So too can directors such as Clint Eastwood, Randall Wallace, Joseph Kosinski, and John Milius.  Likewise, we believe that any actor who takes on the job of playing Cooper in a movie will inevitably come out looking good.  That's why we're reaching out to actors such as Chris Pratt, Bradley Cooper, Matthew McConaughey, Milo Gibson (Mel's son), Ryan Gosling, and even Tom Cruise.

This movie will even have international cachet: because Cooper is a great hero in Poland, the Polish government, which has already seen the screenplay (so it knows what it's getting into), says that if we can obtain big-name talent, it could contribute as much as $50 million to the project.  There is absolutely no reason it cannot be another American Sniper, which cost $58 million to make and grossed $547.1 million, with a profit of $243 million — making it the second highest grossing film of 2014.

It's long past time to break the leftist chokehold on Hollywood.  Hollywood's cheap, pathetic, ideological offerings serve only two purposes: to denigrate America and to penetrate the vast Chinese entertainment market.  We believe that audiences are hungry for uplifting, entertaining, pro-American content — and that the beyond amazing life of Merian C. Cooper is the way to prove that we're correct.

William Ciosek was Co-Chair of Polish Americans for Trump, is a founding board member of the Foundation to Illuminate America's Heroes, and the co-founder of Genesis Productions.  For more information on the Cooper project and/or to communicate with the principals, visit the Foundation to Illuminate America's Heroes website.

Image: Merian C. Cooper after escaping from a Soviet POW camp.  Public Domain.

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