Abramoff produced movie "Red Scorpion," "fantasia on right-wing themes"

[DeepModem Mom]

LAT, Michael Hiltzik: Abramoff Took Shot at Making Movies

The world has heard much about the many facets of Jack Abramoff, the disgraced Washington lobbyist currently assisting federal prosecutors in a widening bribery probe.

There's his Beverly Hills upbringing, his founding of a string of right-wing political groups beginning in college, his apotheosis as an uber-lobbyist funneling cash and favors to GOP members of Congress, and his coda as an admitted felon and Justice Department songbird.

Less well-known is his brief, if baroque, career as a Hollywood producer. Two movies bear Abramoff's name as a producer, but only one was genuinely his product: "Red Scorpion," a 1989 vehicle for the Swedish actor Dolph Lundgren, who plays a Soviet commando ordered to assassinate an anti-communist rebel in a land resembling Angola, which was then mired in civil war. Lundgren's character discovers that the revolutionaries are really good guys, which provokes him to wreak vengeance on the Soviet officers who so cynically led him astray.

Plainly, the scenario is a fantasia on such right-wing themes as Commie deceit and the saintliness of anti-communist guerrillas. Lundgren's target is an avuncular rebel meant to idealize the real-life Jonas Savimbi, a noxious character whose prolongation of the Angolan war cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

Indeed, the movie was born in Abramoff's dalliance with Third World rebel groups. In 1985, he organized a powwow in Angola for anti-communist guerrillas from around the world on behalf of Lewis Lehrman, a right-wing millionaire. Afterward, however, Lehrman broke with Abramoff, reportedly over financial irregularities....

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-golden16jan16,0,5618829.column?coll=la-home-business

[TygrBright]

1. I dunno, calling Dolph Lundgren an "actor"...

...makes me question the reliability of this source.

snarkily,
Bright

[NaturalHigh]

2. He was okay in Rocky IV.

Of course, he didn't have to talk much.

[Lerkfish]

3. "reportedly over financial irregularities"

:rofl:

[DeepModem Mom]

6. The guy must not have an honest bone in his body! nt

[robbedvoter]

4. Was this tripe in theatres?

I always suspected that much of the mindless action hero crap in Hollywood comes from puny freeper minds - we know most of the muscle for brains so called actors tend to be GOP anyway.

[KharmaTrain]

5. Supposedly Abramoff Made Money On This Scam

Imagine the casting call ad in the Hollywood Reporter for this flick :rofl:

I think it was Josh Marshall (appologies if it was someone else) who traced Beverly Hills Jack's movie days. Remember, he's a SoCal boy and grew up in the Jaguars and cocaine of Mullholland Drive. The pattern appears here, as it does in other Abramoff ventures...of taking corporate money and tying it to come cause or slush fund or other activity that lines his pockets along the way and gives him additional cash to buy off others.


As any film and Hollywood business watcher knows, there's many ways for a movie to make money for its principals without ever showing on a screen or selling a paid ticket. Surely Abramoff used this opportunity to learn the many "creative financing" deals that have made movies for decades and found a way of using that in the world of power politics.

[bleedingheart]

7. You can rent Red Scorpion on NetFlix...

I won't...sounds really stupid...

however check out the reviews on imdb.com there are some people who really loved it and others who hated it...rather funny..

[warrens]

8. Savimbi was head of UNITA

An artificial "revolutionary" group financed by the CIA to attempt to combat MPLA. He basically sat around in remote jungles, collecting CIA cash and every now and then wiping out a local village.

This is what these pricks are trying to do, turn a CIA sock-puppet into a revolutionary hero. The day Savimbi died, the entire world yawned and said, good riddance.

[Up2Late]

9. I heard that he tried acting in one or to films too...

...but I can't find anything now. Might have used a slightly different name.