It would be easy to get the impression - not least from this website - that global warm-monger Michael E Mann is an insecure litigious dweeb whose principal skills are blocking, banning and hysterically shrieking that Amazon.com crack down on any reviewers insufficiently fawning in their reviews of his book.
So he would not seem the obvious candidate for a career on the silver screen. Hitherto, his biggest action role was running around with Jessica Alba looking very fetching in a tree-ring bikini (Jessica, not Mike) in James Cameron's Years Of Living Dangerously. Cameron is the big-time director of Titanic and Avatar, but, alas, the minute he cast Dr Mann as Jessica Alba's personal climatologist the audience fled in terror and Years Of Living Dangerously tanked. One shudders to think what the opening-weekend numbers would have looked like had it been Mike instead of Kate Winslet on the prow of that ship.
So that seemed it for Michael E Mann's Hollywood career. Characteristically, he declined to answer whether he is still on speed-dial terms with Miss Alba.
Nevertheless, Dr Mann is now back on the screen in his greatest role yet! I'm taking my boys to Interstellar tonight, and I've been careful to avoid any plot-revealing reviews. Yet a certain intriguing theme has emerged. Steve Sailer:
You're not supposed to give away spoilers about Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar," such as the name of the movie star who plays "Dr. Mann," a celebrated climate scientist and humanitarian who reports back to Earth that the alien planet he has discovered is quite warm. Nor am I supposed to tell you what happens next involving Dr. Mann.
But let's just say, as a couple of my commenters have pointed out at Taki's, that Mark Steyn will likely get a kick out of the Nolan Brothers' portrayal of Dr. Mann.
Hmm. From The Weekly Standard, here's John Podhoretz on the movie's political themes:
For those of us sunk deep into the roots of American conservatism, the signs are all there: the crunchy-granola teacher, the politically doctored textbooks, the anti-American theory, even Cooper's quietly enraged and knowing response. And what the signs say is this: Christopher Nolan reads The Weekly Standard.
Or if not The Weekly Standard, then National Review. Or Reason, even: The movie is anti-authority in a libertarian/Randian way. Government bureaucrats are bad; lionized experts are not deserving of their lionization. (There is one line about how it's better that government is using metal to build a spaceship rather than to make bullets, but it's a throwaway.) But—my God—he might even listen to Rush Limbaugh. Why do I say this? Well, Mark Steyn is one of Limbaugh's key guest hosts. And the name of the movie's villain is also the name of Mark Steyn's antagonist in a libel-and-slander war over climate change.
Whoa. This next review is full of spoilers, so click at your peril, but is does have the tantalizing headline "Let's Talk About Dr Mann In Interstellar":
I understand that Dr. Mann isn't mentally well, but he is at least mentally stable enough to fool everyone else for a considerable amount of time.
Indeed. I think that's what they call at Variety a "money quote".
Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth:
Michael Mann Committed Fraud
Warning: Plot spoiler. He did.
~Don't miss the thrilling sequel to Interstellar: Dr Mann returns in Interlocutory, which opens at the DC Court of Appeals at 9.30am on November 25th! I'll be selling popcorn in the lobby, and all profits from sales of autographed copies of The [Un]documented Mark Steyn and my other books and our exclusive range of Steyn vs the Stick trial merchandise and our SteynOnline gift certificates will go toward funding the lavish CGI effects of my legal defense. Any surplus monies will be invested in the upcoming Bond film You Only Warm Twice, in which Dr Mann will be played by Donald Pleasence.
