apprentice every week when donald trump sat in the conference room table, manned up, looked a contestant directly in the eye, and said, in that voice, would you kindly submit your letter of resignation? [laughter] the four u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york delivers a lecture at the cooper union grand hall in dierks city. watch tuesday night at 80:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> next from the national review , institute, a look at how conservative viewpoints are represented and expressed in film, television and popular culture. this is 50 minutes.

>> thank you, everyone, for being here today. this great morning. i'm so excited to be here with my friends, molly hemingway, and andrew claichb who i don't think need need an introduction. two of the smartest writers. we have so many wonderful writers blessed with having among us during these two days, but on culture, you two are some of the best, so thank you so much for being here. and one thing i found when i'm traveling is people keep saying to me and these are people who may or may not have voted for donald trump depending on what state they live in, in some cases, but the key thing, especially from in the middle of the country or not on the coast, the northeast especially, people will say things like, donald trump is president. and they don't say it, again, to dismiss him or anything, but it's coming from this place,

like, he used to be the host of "celebrity apprentice," you know? how does that happen? what does that mean? it's a question. it's not a dismissal. it's not a criticism. and so, how are you processing that when people expect you to have the answer to that question? how does it happen and what does it mean about us and are there lessons to learn there? is that? >> i do have this thing about where once a day, it hits me that donald trump is president and it feels like you're in a 1980s movie where like, oh, yeah. that makes sense. but there was a really good book by tebby troy who has written for the national review like when watched and obama tweeted and goes through a history of presidents in terms of what was instructing them. it looks at libraries the early presidents had and the transition to television where that kind of informed how we

viewed presidents and then this age of social media that obama was very good at figuring out and using to his advantage. so i do think that the rise of celebrity has a lot to do with donald trump being president and i always think about how jonathan lastz said he's pretty sure oprah will be our next president, she's very good at that celebrity stuff. and there are things that are concerning about that, but more than that, i think it's that donald trump is a master of media in general and he spent decades learning how to navigate a hostile media environment and using it to his advantage and figuring out how to make it work for both the media and for him, and that happened at a time when i think a lot of people on the right had just frankly given up on the shot that they would get a fair break from the media. so these coincided at the right moment and i also think it has worked out to some extent at least to the benefit of both of

those groups. >> i think the second half of that, i really think is important because i think a lot of the things about donald trump that disturb we gentle folk are actually his strengths. he has a pinpoint sense of how information travels, its timing, and how to deflect the narrative. so you watch the media, which after all, has become at this point, he's right. it has become an opposition party, and you watch the media build up this narrative. he's a russian spy. the election was not hacked. all of these things that actually didn't happen, it wasn't hacked and there is no evidence of this and he let it build up to a certain point and then gave the press conference where he just slapped those people silly and a lot of my friends were going, oh, this is terrible, this is awful. i thought it was genius. i thought it was genius. the next morning, the narrative was, we're so hurt. he's hurt us. we're damaged.

what did he do? i feel bad. and like, that's smart. that is, when you look at what the media did to george w. bush and then you look at how he has fought back against them, it may make us uncomfortable as people who speak more politely and don't like the bullying, all of that stuff but it works. it's a treat and amazing to see. >> it tracks with a lot of what we heard during the election. i wasn't surprised he won. i thought it was a high possibility. in part, because i was just listening to people when i was traveling and i'd listen to the mexican cab driver and the mexican waiter probably and the sikh cab driver but everybody, the muslims, everybody telling me, i'm voting for donald trump. i would say, but, you know, you've heard what he said about us or why. they said, but he's not a politician and he's going to do something different ask thend the politicians aren't working.

you heard it from everybody. he's following through on that much, on sort of giving it to the people that are the sources of frustration for a lot of people. >> a lot of times, he says things and everybody jumps on him because he's unclear and he's vague and he kind of is like a blunder bus but the people understand what he's saying and he talks like the people talk. and i think that's a benefit. >> our friends, obviously, we hear on the news all the time, breitbart, but he was a man named andrew and a trendfriend to us. the history of "national review" is jonah and i used to have long instant messaging on aol conversations and occasionally talk on the phone and long in-person conversations once in a while too. i remember one night, him instant messaging me because i never have my phone ringer on, and so he would send me a text message and say, pick up your phone and then he said his son was just born, the youngest, he

named him after william buckley jr. so andrew always had a love for national review and i bring him up because andrew, you wrote a piece about the crisis in the arts and you quoted andrew as saying, the people who have money, every four years, the last possible second are told, you need to give millions of dollars because these four counties in ohio are going to determine the entire election. i'm saying, andrew would say, why didn't we invest 20 years ago in a movie studio in hollywood? why didn't we invest in creating television shows? why didn't we create institutions that would reflect and affirm that which is good about america? his point being there's this overwhelming narrative that the media and the culture create and it's hard to speak into that or have a differing opinion than that. on the other hand, that all being true, molly, you've written jon stewart elected donald trump. did it backfire at some point, all the left-wing sort of

emphasis on hollywood, to the extent people were overwhelmed by it? >> well, yeah, it is very interesting how we've had decades of people running rough shod through her institutions. the academy, our cultural institutions and now everyone is surprised we have donald trump as president, you know, and very concerned about how he doesn't speak clearly and truth but it's funny or sad to think about how there have been all of these, for decades, it seems like people on the left have really questioned the very notion of truth and reality and whatnot and everything is relative and we're sort of reaping what we've sewn through decades of letting our educational institutions rot from the inside and i actually have a much more positive take on hollywood or visual arts in part because i think that they

are intrinsically tied to telling stories that are true and beautiful and that that pulls, that's a great bias to have and it benefits everybody, but it certainly is not hostile but it certainly is not hostile to conservatives that if you're going to tell a good story, it has to be based in truth and has to tell something beautiful or it just doesn't do very well. but to the jon stewart point, i think that when you look back, i don't even remember when he got his start but it was during, i'm getting so old i just don't remember what years. >> adam sandler films? >> no, like the "daily show." moderate audience loved it and he would do that sort of very snarky approach to the news and lots of sarcasm and as you

watched it, you might have picked up he wasn't being fair, taking clips out of context or manipulating interviews to make it seem like people were idiots or whatnot. and at his best, at "the daily show's" best, it was a good engangen engagement with contrary ideas. there was one with cliff may where they talked about something to do with the war, which it is like a nice give and take. jon had an interesting discussion on torture that changed my mind on what those torture memos were, but then other things like his interview with jonah goldberg where he just ranted and raved and

couldn't contain himself and the end result was like this horrible, horribly edited thing that didn't even make any sense. anyway, somehow, this became like the primary way people got their news, snark, not getting a fair shake to other people and other comics have taken it and run with it. samantha bey is probably the best example of that. no difference with her and jon stewart in terms of manipulating information and whatnot. but i think it reaches a breaking point where people just can't take it anymore and instead of engageing with ideas are like, screw it. i'm out of here. and i think that in general, there was this approach with so much of our media and cultural elite that was so antagonistic toward conservative viewpoints or even just like common sense vooupt viewpoints that people just stopped listening and i think that jon stewart was kind of the big reason for that. >> before i go to andrew, you brought up samantha bey, so i

have to go here. you heard about the crassness of women comics but also abortion. some of the comedic sketches, so-called comedic sketches on abortion are just straight out of hell. just really horrifying to watch. an and i think they're supposed to be funny. >> that's a big topic. that's what i say about truth and beauty being a strong aid for keeping culture going off the deep end. there's been a massive push to make abortion comedies or abortion cha dradramas, funded in part by planned parenthood. and not always turn out just bad but horrible. like how christian film makers do this real preachy message and the art suffers, imagine that but like that you are advocating killing unborn children. you don't even have the benefit

of an underlying good message to carry you through. so a lot of these things are .written by pro-abortion groups and it shows. and comedy has to, in order for comedy to work or good art to work, it has to be more honest an and can't be so partisan. so humor in particular had struggles with making abortion comedy funny, but it's a difficult thing to pull off unless you're truly engaging with the topic and if you're truly engaging with the topic, it's hard to keep your pro-abortion message, basically. >> i so agree with what you're saying about the true, the good, and the beautiful. these things tend to be good stories. and i, like you, you do it more now. i used to try to watch primetime tv and find the good and it would be amazing. you would have some of these shows that are shonda rhimes show, she's on the board of planned parenthood, i forget which.

one was a drama about a reproductive health clinic but once in a while, an amazing pro-life message, maybe by accident but maybe a writer in the room that nobody knows is a pro-life conservative, we know these people exist. i remember being at breitbart, being out in hollywood, and such a skewed view of los angeles because when i go there, i visit andrew and i see all the conservatives, right? so i remember one of these gatherings where i very memorably have a colleague asking, who is hercules? because kevin sor bowbo and he's quoting from the corner and goes up to one of the colleagues but then look around and see all the character actors and meet these camera guys and script writers and everybody behind the scenes and so many conservatives out there and that's going to make a difference if you're just in a room trying to tell stories. you're skeptical about that. go for it.

>> first of all, i want to say it is true that annoying celebrities can alienate people and get a guy elected but narrative consciousness changes over decades and we're suffering from a narrative deficit. to your point, you're right all good stories tell something true and beautiful. and that's helpful to conservatives and not helpful to leftists for some of the reasons. but good leftist artists have learned to get around that by changing the premises by making up facts. if you have a picture like "avatar," one of the most successful anti-war and terror, virtual propaganda, they simply changed the native population to innocents, the native population science fiction film, they have plants that light up at night, they have dragons that fly, equality of choice with women

and men. those are all things that native populations don't have. we have them because we have oil. and oil, you can have a light at night and have the technology with more choices. you can actually say something that feels true and beautiful in the world of the movie, but isn't in fact. to the point of, in mainstream hollywood, there is still a tacit blacklist and the way it works is this. i have worked a lot in hollywood. you walk in and trying to sell a script and there are assumptions made in a room. it's just a friendly conversation, right? trying to sell something. the odds are fantastically against you all the time. i walked many during the romney obama election. it was an old script, optioned

numerous times. he said, i like this script. update it. would you meet with me? i walked in to meet with him and within 2 to 3 minutes of the meeting beginning, he said to me, you know, republicans don't really care about mitt romney. they just want the "n" word out of the white house, but didn't say "n" word so that's me in the position of either sitting there and letting him assume that i am a person who thinks like that, or politely as i did, correcting him and ending effectively any chance of a sale. that happens about 30% of the time. other quick stories, a great tv idea called a famous show runner to pitch it and said, great, i'm on my way to a hillary fundraiser and pitch it on the way over. those assumptions create an atmosphere atmosphere that make it difficult. arts are a difficult profession.

i've lived it for 30 years, it's a tough job. everything that lowers your odds makes it that much harder. the good news is that hollywood is fracturing a little bit, mainstream hollywood is no more a solid force than mainstream media is anymore, but in that mainstream which is still very powerful, there is a very powerful anti-conservative bias. >> you make an important point. people don't watch movies like they used to. in talking about this panel, in fact, two of us mentioned we hadn't watched all that many movies this year and representative most, actually going out to a movie theater and watching the movie.

>> the movies themselves are at a late stage of development, the tv which is the new narrative art form is still doing quite well and there are other things that come out of hollywood that are more important. the thing that we lack is we lack the infrastructure that gives artists a safe place to speak, so lena dunham made that show "girls." if you went to new york when "girls" was on, everyone was watching "girls." " "girls" got 600,000 viewers, which is statistically zero. everyone was watching "girls" between 57th street and maybe 68th. we don't have. and same thing true of jon stewart. he had under a million viewers when he was on the cover of "time," i think it was. they know how to do this stuff to make people seem much more important than they are and to make people seem much less important, a show like blue bloods with conservative values, no press, and that went about the minister with the seven children, i can't remember what it's called, seventh heaven. no press. one of the most popular shows on

tv for years. they have an echo that actually reverberates, makes everything louder than it is. >> but then still the shows are on the air and people watching them. they have long runs. so they're successful. you have people like patricia eaton and jim able to get a primetime show after blaplay playing jesus and people said with mel gibson. are they exceptions? >> no, it is simply that we don't have the infrastructure to play them out. there was a movie by the kone brothers "hail caesar" which was conservative porn. i have no idea where those guys stand, but it was an amazing anti-communist statement and pro-jesus statement. it was an amazing movie that the critics loved because i don't think they understood it. this picture of logan.

wolverine, the x man. it was a wonderful movie. i don't know what the guy's politics are, but religiously. and you say two things. encourage and reward. because artists work for long and anybody who tells you that hollywood is all about money has never worked for hollywood. hollywood is not. >> but there is a lot of money. there is. >> no matter what happens in a movie, even if it bombs, they make money. but artists, i'm not talking about the producers but the artists, they work to get "girls," awards, invited to parties, all those things. that's the kind of thing we lack and the second thing is talking about rewriting the facts. hollywood and hbo is chief among these. has been rewriting history now for 40 and 50 years so that you have kids who think that jfk was killed by a conservative kabol because they've never seen the oliver stone movie.

most great cartoons are costume dramas. dark knight trilogy, toy story, but we don't write history the way we see it at all. >> what do you see that encourages you? >> i'm very encouraged by the cultural internet. wrote a book in his basement basically called reasons to vote for democrats. it's blank. the book is blank. over a week. this guy will make up over $100,000 off a blank book. >> that sounds like an expensive notebook.

>> trolling, memes. it really is a wonderful thing to behold and that, of course, is becoming, you know, the major place where culture lives. that is a wonderful thing because -- >> can you measure that like blockbuster movies? sfwl >> you can if something goes viral like the knowles show less text kathryn jean lopez story. the other day, a friend brought a couple over to my house and weren't culturally sophisticated, she's a homemaker, a mom, and she said i feel bad because everybody on facebook tells me i'm doing the wrong thing by being a homemaker, feminist. and i said, they're wrong. and she said, i never thought of

that. if we don't live on that, that's when you get. you get people who don't know that there's another opinion out there. so i'm really very encouraged about the fact that we're just funnier funnier, cooler, they keep talking about the resistance. we're the resistance. we're it. even donald trump in his weird way is the resistance and that makes us cool and it makes us cool online. >> and you get to a point that's so important. this panel is about hollywood and culture and in many ways, we really have to re-think and define what culture is because it's never always been hollywood. it's great books and arts and all these other things that, i think, maybe conservatives haven't focused so much on in being sort of outraged by hollywood and all of these things, but it's actually show

less text mollie hemingway the engagement and, you know, i think we have this bipartisan problem where we're looking for the federal government. and even service sort of looking for a savior in politics and not appreciating you've got all this power, actually, especially in a weird way, donald trump showing you how to use it, i guess, with twitter and all the rest. even listening to kellyanne today, you know, he's not being handled as some politicians let themselves be handled and maybe that's a good thing too. in this context of what we're talking about especially here in sort of appreciating that there's a power that you don't appreciate you have, mind you, he has more followers than you have, but yeah. >> that matt is a political journalist with the truth about the gary heart campaign and has a high view of gary hart i don't share as a colorado native but how journalism changed in that time. a 24 hour news channel,

technological advances that allowed news to spread more quickly and that there had been, that people had kind of continued this real interest in people, in politicians' personal lives that created a very stifling political environment where politicians, instead of sitting down with reporters and kind of freely talking about what they were thinking about ha to be really packaged and managed and whatnot. and the gary hart scenario where he gets busted for shenanigans on the monkey business only confirmed that for a lot of people, the need to lock down and not be open to talking to people and whatnot. it is a wonderful change that you have this barrier coming down between people and politicians and you're seeing more people do it than just the president and i think that trend

will continue and that's a good thing. but i just wanted to make a show -- make a point real quick about what you're optimistic about. i do think people are more critical about the media that they're receiving and that's a requirement for a functioning people to think through the messages and whatnot that they're receiving, but i am worried that our show less text mollie hemingway education systems are so bad people aren't knowing how to think deeply and sort of passive receivers. too many people are just passive receivers of whatever they're getting from media, whatever media they happen to get whether that's news media or hollywood or books or anything. >> you wrote my, you were writing in the context of the "saturday night live" funeral for hillary clinton's career. i could tell you this is going to get you started which is my intention. you wrote near the end of the piece, wouldn't it be great if our lead artists understood we

were a large nation but weak and need to light a match so we can locate one another. what did you mean by that? >> "saturday night live" the weekend after hillary lost, i want to mention, on election night, i was with a bunch of people who were not fans of either of the presidential candidates. i was not prepared for how happy those people would be upon hillary losing. i mean, i don't know if they were prepared for how happy. and there's the thing like, waking up and read raelzlizing how great it is hillary is not the president but that was not shared by everybody and "saturday night live" was sad and had kate mckinnon, talent comedian, come out and not do comedy. she sat down at a piano, leonard cohen had also died that week, great songwriter, truly great songwriter and she played, not actually one of his best songs, "hallelujah" but you hear it when someone dies at age 16, this mournful song, "hallelujah" and you wait for the jokes to come.

there's a line in that song about telling the truth which made my husband and me laugh she's playing it in hon who areor of hillary clinton an we bustd we bust up, and it was meant as a deadly serious tribute to hillary clinton and at the end, she turns to the audience and says, i'm not giving up and neither should you. it was like, what happened to "saturday night live"? you're here for laughs and it's this totally serious thing. leonard cohen had once been at something like, they do this big festival shows in the uk and there was one, i think, to like late '60s, early '70s that devolved into a riot and nobody wanted to go on stage. big names. but he goes out on stage and he just speaks very quietly and

tells a story about how when he was a kid, his parents used to take him to the circus and there was a favorite part he had where the ring master, whatever it would ask everybody to turn on their lighters or light a match and look around at the audience around them and see each other in the dark lit by matches and somehow gets these people to do this and they all, because he's so quiet and telling this story, they all calm down and stop throwing beer bottles and look at each other and then goes on to perform for like an hour and a half and it's a beautiful thing. and i was thinking, at this moment when the country is so divided, wouldn't it be great with artists, instead of how, i mean, such a parochial exclusive thing to sort of say, screw you to half of the country that vote for donald trump so you can do this tribute manipulating leonard cohen and instead, we could look at each other and see why we voted different ways and come together as a country but that's not what they wanted to do. >> some of that may happen and i'm hopeful about this.

>> thank you for being hopeful. >> one of the problems with trump is he's given the left this excuse to say, like the news media and hollywood to say, we were fair before but now, now we really, and that's a lie. they were, the coverage of george w. bush and of trump, only louder. but no more, you see. but there is a little bit of a feeling in some of the producer groups, not obviously the actors because they have to be on the one train but in some of the rooms where people produce

things and make things that maybe, we ought to be talking to these people and call them racist and always depicting them in heat of the night. this is one of the funny things. whenever i think of the narrative deficit on our side, i frequently think of paul ryan and i know he's coming, i may be, i am a big paul ryan fan, i like paul ryan. that makes me alone at some times. [ applause ] thank you. >> you're warming the room for him. >> but when paul ryan introduced he wanted to reform social security and politics and does what all republicans do, points at charts and said the differential and the left makes a commercial of him pushing an old lady in a wheelchair off a cliff and that's the difference between theirnarrative and fact. this is inherent in our philosophies. we believe in the facts.

in the truth, that the truth is sometimes too much. we believe the truth is made of facts. the left show less text kathryn jean lopez openly believes that openly believes that narrative is everything, that narrative establishes truth. there's no truth. who has the power to establish the narrative? so what i see as hopeful is that trump is actually one of them. he's an old democrat. he geltts that, and i think that if we start to, if that starts to spread and we're able to tell stories like that, we may come back. there may be an opening for us, even in where they start to think, who are these people who just elected this guy? are they all fascists? they can't all be fascists, some of them must be ok. and it might happen. >> lindsey craig told me a story after after the electionthe election, there was a series on cnn with vann jones, talking to real americans who voted for donald trump and stories of like, they're hunting and putting the animal in the refrigerator and he's like, wait, i don't understand what you're doing. don't you kill for fun because you're crazy people? no, no. we actually are down and out right now and that's a really good way to feed the family. and like, that had never occurred to him.

>> i have to tell you, they say that hollywood is in a bubble. it's an iron lung. it's like, absolutely. to me, the lowest point hit was wars on terror when they started to make movie after movie after movie about how evil americans were. they had movies where we raped iraqi women and people came home and turned into serial killers. and they all bombed. if you think hollywood is about money, it's not, but they kept making them. "variety" ran an article that said, americans just aren't interested in these wars. they don't want to see movies about these wars. so clint east wood makes "american sniper," i think the fifth highest box office rated ever.

a wonderful movie. an it's a complex, interesting movie but in it, the americans are the good guys and the people who are the bad guys are the bad guys and of course, thing's a hit. and thought, maybe enough time has passed where they're interested. it's like, you wanted to slap them. no, they're not interested in watching a bunch of barbarians portrayed as the good guys while our guys are in the field getting shot at by those barbarians. they just don't know. they really don't know. if you think it's malevolence, but it's really ignorance and stupidity. >> and not knowing what you don't know, not appreciating there's a whole big country out there. so what andrew said, do you think this is true on things like marriage and family and now we have to have a conversation about disney movies and transgender characters and are we going to be able to sort of win that narrative part of this picture? >> oh, you know, i walked out here thinking i was optimistic about everything and asking a

question like that, it's like, oh. so i have two daughters who are elementary school age. they're prime "beauty and the beast" age, but i never liked that story to begin with, the disney version and everything came out a couple of weeks ago, like the big exciting thing about this "beauty and the beast" is that it has a strong political message and one of the things is that one of the minor characters is like flamboyantly gay and this was supposed to be exciting somehow, i was like, it's so expensive to go anyway, i don't even like this movie, so it was the thing that changed my husband and my mind for taking our kids to see it to not seeing it. it's always sort of like interesting how people mark at things in a way that's dangerous but i think there are these, there's an eternal story about marriage that comes out and i think a couple of really good examples of that recently. one is like a real life story and one that may or may not be a real life story. one is that jennifer garner and matt damon had this like beautiful hollywood marriage, three kids, they were divorcing a couple of years ago.

>> ben affleck. >> sorry, i get them confused. there was a great joke that ricky gervais said that he said to matt damon, how does it feel to be the only person ben affleck has been faithful to? yikes. anyway, they do their movies together. so they're divorcing jennifer garner, a scandal with a nanny and this week, turns out the husband has successfully completed rehab, they are not divorcing, which is not the same thing as saying the marriage is healed or whatnot but watching a high profile couple go through marriage couples and try to work it out, i think for good or for ill, we do look to celebrities

for how to live lives and nice to see something like that. and another thing is beyonce, who people just worship for some reason, very talented, i like beyonce, but the love of her is something that is overkill but she put out a concept album "lemonade" about a husband cheating on a woman and then coming through it and restoring their marriage. i don't know if that's true or just the album, but it was a huge splash and it sends a good message about like the importance of working on marriage even when you face these horrible problems and there is something about that that people like. you see this in movies all the time. i jokingly call it divorce porn where the the whole movie is about them restoring their marriage or whatnot. so good messages, but the sexual revolution is so completely overtaken this country and hollywood that was like an early indicator of that and the

message it sends are so bad and continue to be promulgated throughout every medium. i mean, i think it's really bad and i don't know what can be done to stop it unless it's gone so far in one extreme that you're starting to see a pendulum swing. >> i think conservatives haven't quite figured this out yet because the sexual landscape changed with birth control and it's going to change again in fairly short order with births that take place out of people's bodies and maybe even created in test tubes and what technology does is it transforms physical imperatives into values. in other words, before you could say to a woman, don't have sex before marriage because you'll get pregnant and then you'll be stuck with this baby and then they've done everything they can to eliminate that narrative. so we're arguing from a position of values that this is still a good value even in a world with this technology. wonderful movie. i'm not sure i can sell this to this audience but this movie

"logan" is basically about that. it's basically about a world of an apocalyptic world trying to restore and find the mythologies that will bring him back to christ and in the middle of the movie, a scene where the x man and the thepeople he's trying to save stop in a home that's a christian family, you know, father, mother, son, i think, and they pray over dinner. one scene where all the bloodshed stops and the killing stops and killing stop force one scene. you see that this i the life that has been left behind. the picture actually asks -- it's a very -- sophisticated movie, very violent, lots of curse words to warn you, it's a examination of how to keep these values alive when the rules have changed. >> the benedict option. >> i think conservatives pretend

the rules haven't changed, the values are the same. you have to admit for a young person coming up today he or she can have sex as much as she or he wants and not get pregnant. there are other dangers and we are selling values now and we used to have those physical imperatives to back us up. that's a different conversation. >> can you give the two second explanation what the option is? >> there's a great writer who has a new book out called "the benedict option" how christians can exist in a hostile cultureal environment, very practical tips how to handle education, culture, family formation and all that. it's great. i got to read it. >> a big part of his point is some of what we're talking about before, a lot of people in this

nation have more power than they realize. how can you restore and renew by looking around you rather than looking for apologyies to fix things. >> it's understanding how the culture does not share your value values. for a lot of people, conservatives have the idea that america is a pretty conservative place, even as everything changes, they keep show less text mollie hemingway this understanding of what the culture is like. it's actually not true. so, if you understand where your values differ from the prompt culture -- predominant culture it makes it's easier to raise children in that environment. >> we live in a time that needs culture, i'm a big fan of that, maybe not the benedict option that entails a little bit more withdrawal but the idea culture will become each culture and then our culture wins because it works better.

>> if you do believe culture is more important, this breitbart quote is great at that, what people should be careing about rather than last minute political changes. you have to engage the culture in order to deal with it. i group in a very traditional family, my dad is a pastor and mother a schoolteacher. they welcomed culture in our home and watch things together and talk about it together. when we watch a you havevy, they'd say, should they be doing that? is that a good drug to try? i'm now with my own children i hear my parents' voice when i'm watching movies and i love it. it gave me good armor to watch whatever without falling prey to

the underlying message. >> i think, appreciateing, too, the culture isn't just the movie you brought into your home, supporting things locally. even the culture of the school, i have a thousand conversations a week with moms who are dealing with the school board or what the teacher said, trying to have influence on that world, too, not just the -- i didn't ask either of you your opinion on this so it's not entirely fair, i'll do it anyway, i'm sure you have opinions. martin scorcese, that movie "silence," it was a bomb for him relatively speaking. what do you think accounts for that? >> i haven't seen the movie, i can't comment on it. the reason i didn't see it, i will see it, it's not a movie that makes you -- there's a lot of suffering and pain and you have to prepare for it. and my friends made "the -- and i sat mollie hemingway

down in a bar and he had a depleted look and i knew the picture hadn't done that well and i said, let me guess, people don't want to spend saturday night watching somebody get stoned to death. it's not a happy movie. >> but martin scorcese does films that are not happy films. >> but he does action and crime. >> i am inclined to agree with your reasoning. i read about religious persecution, it's not fun by any stretch of the imagine nation. nobody wants to know what's going on in sudan or other places, you feel powerless. >> i don't know. it was a complicated and nuance film as religious films always are. it works better for him when they can seem more controversial than they are. this one didn't. this one was generally well received but not in a way that

caused people to fight over it. sometimes when you want to have a big blockbuster you want people to take sides. >> be outraged by it. >> i notice we've fallen into talking here, this happens when conservatives discuss the culture. one thing conservatives get wrong they think the culture should look conservative, not have curseing in it, not have sex in it and violence and things like that. i completely disagree with this. first of all, conservatives know that's not true when they go to old stuff and watch king leer and see somebody's eyes put out on stage or somebody get torture tortured but when it happens on "the sopranos," this is no good. one of my favorite films called "this is the end," a raunch comedy about the apocalypse. a bunch of egotistical guys play

playing themselves and the apocalypse hits and it was pure raunch and somebody says, if this is apocalypse, there must be a guy, who saw that coming? and the guy say, everybody but us. i thought that will reach people like "god's not dead," he's not going to make it. >> wasn't that the case where you see these things about -- >> the doesn't know he's a conservative. >> don't tell him. >> sorry? >> don't tell him. >> don't tell him. keep doing what you're doing. the reason i brought up "silence" is because i did see it. i was so struck by -- two things. one of them was first of all the person i saw it with said at the end of it, he had never encountered god's mercy like that. his reasoning was -- this is somebody who has never gone to like confession.

so this was -- the idea you could be a priest and reject god and still be forgiven for that because there are signs at the end, without give going? away, was justmlming to him. i thought, maybe scorcese did something really brilliant here. the second thing that struck me was the number of people upon knowing i saw it, one of the reasons i don't understand how all the distribution goes, so many people inclined to see the movie couldn't see the movie because they live in hillsdale, michigan and you have to go to ann arbor. and say, is it ok to see it with my kids or safe to wash with a parent? if you can sit around and have a conversation about it, most things are probably ok unless it's over the top. there's a lot of stuff that maybe wouldn't fall on safe and secure category that actually probably would make for a fascinateing conversation and you'd be better off for in the end.

>> what you want it to do. >> then there's the critical think thinking. >> my colleague, david, kept recommending "pole dark" this show about a british revolutionary who returned -- a british army guy who returns to great britain. i watched it -- i just was not into it at all. i was fighting with him about it. it's like one of the only shows i can watch with my daughters ok and safe and appropriate for them. it is a concern. you don't want to be flinging

these highly sexual messages at your children. it's hard to find show less text end good -- even in the recent term like the 1980s, there were movies that had messages that worked for adults and children and you could go together and watch these things, like "raiders of the last arc." there's not that many and is so great. on the other hand, this is what's so great about technology opening things up whether they live in hillsdale, michigan, now that movies are on the decline and we're in this golden age of television you can get great art delivered to your house no matter where you live and it >>thank you very much everyone. [applause] c-span's washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact here. come have tuesday morning, 50 our political reporter daniele

will talk about an article she wrote looking at the state of the affordable care act. relationsl on foreign and john hannah of the defense of thecracies and some challenges facing the trump administration when they deal with syria. be sure to watch c-span's washington journal live at 7:00 eastern tuesday morning. join the discussion. remarks from the congressman from massachusetts. topics include foreign policy, , life with the consumer federation of america starting at 8:40 a.m. eastern on c-span two. now, the institute summit with a look at the conservatism and trump supporters.

this is 40 minutes. welcome back, everybody. i'm here with my name is david french, i'm fellow at the national review institute. and i'm here with two people who really don't need any introduction. let's start on the far side, this is j.d. vance who practically redefined the term right time, right book. with hillbilly elgie, a beautifully written book, a fantastic work and trying not to hate him for that quality on his first ever book. he's also -- he just wrote yesterday, going back to ohio, columbus, ohio, where unfortunately he'll be doomed to watch second tier football for the rest of his life.