Bill Berkowitz
December 1, 2005

The movie, the media, and the conservative politics of Philip Anschutz

"Greediest executive in America" teams up with Walt Disney Pictures for film about Christ's "resurrection"

On December 9, "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," a $200 million dollar film adapted from C.S. Lewis' children's book of the same title, will open on several thousand screens across the country. If it performs well at the box office, Disney and conservative billionaire Philip Anschutz -- whose company co-produced the movie -- could have a "Lord of the Rings"/"Harry Potter"-type franchise on its hands, as six other Narnia-related titles are waiting in the wings.

"The Chronicles" -- which many have called the most eagerly anticipated film of the holiday season -- is a joint production of Walt Disney Pictures and Anchutz's Walden Media, his "family friendly" entertainment company.

For Disney, it is all about the money; Anschutz, however, has other things on his mind. The release of "The Chronicles of Narnia" will likely usher in another skirmish in America's ongoing culture wars; fought out at cineplexes around the country as well as on the 24/7 cable news networks. As long as it does not get out of hand, it surely will advance Anschutz's conservative Christian agenda.

While it is unlikely the movie will spark as huge a dust-up as "The Passion of the Christ" -- actor/director Mel Gibson's ultra-violent portrayal of the last 12 hours in the life of Jesus Christ -- Lewis' book has "a frankly religious element," New York Times reporter Charles McGrath wrote in the November 13 edition of the Times Magazine. The book contains "not just an undercurrent of all-purpose, feel-good religiosity but a rigorous substratum of no-nonsense, orthodox Christianity. If you read between the lines -- and sometimes right there in them -- these stories are all about death and resurrection, salvation and damnation."

Disney's partner, Walden Media is owned by Philip Anschutz, an oil magnate, media mogul, the owner of the Regal Entertainment Group (website) -- the largest motion picture exhibitor in the world (it operates nearly 20 percent of all indoor screens in the US) -- and a growing force in Hollywood. While Anschutz certainly does not want the negative publicity attached to his new movie, he would benefit greatly if it became the 2005 version of Gibson's blockbuster.

In the late winter of 2004, "The Passion of the Christ" embodied "buzz." Fundamentalist Christian leaders, privy to a series of pre-release private showings arranged by Gibson, fully embraced the film. Local churches gave away thousands of tickets to parishioners. Jewish organizations, worried that the movie emphasized Jews as the killers of Christ, voiced concern that film would cause an uptick in anti-Semitic violence.

At the Vatican, a sermon by Father Raniero Cantalamessa, said that the film deserved to be criticized if it "spread the belief that all Jews were responsible for Christ's death." However, "if it restricts itself to showing an influential group of Jews' were to blame, then it could not."

In the end, there was no rash of anti-Semitic incidents. "The Passion" was credited with reviving a moribund box office in taking in more than $370 million in the United States and $200-plus million overseas. It currently ranks in the top 10 of all-time "Box Office Blockbusters."

In early November, the Christian Post reported that "several influential Christian organizations" including Dr. James Dobson's Focus on the Family, "have endorsed and promoted" the movie. Abram Brook, editorial writer for Leadership Magazine, pointed out that, "the marketing machine for the big C.S. Lewis Narnia movie is just getting cranked up." Brook voiced his concern that Disney may be using Christians merely to promote its film: "There is a ponderable difference between supporting a movie about the Crucifixion that had input from a broad range of Christian scholars, and endorsing a film that will be seen by some as Christian allegory, or, eventually, nice movies that have vague Judeo-Christian underpinnings."

In the run-up to the premiere, 'Narnia Sneak Peek' events have been held in churches around the country, the Christian Post reported: "At the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., members of the 20,000-plus congregation viewed exclusive clips, received free gift bags full of outreach material, and were treated to a special live performance by Steven Curtis Chapman. In addition, C.S. Lewis' stepson and co-producer of the film, Doug Gresham; Walden Media President and film's visionary Michael Flaherty; and other Narnia filmmakers discussed the making of the movie."

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that, "the Los Angeles County Probation Department [had] put together" a series of "Narnia"-related events "for its juvenile centers." "In addition to reading the book, exercises included making crumpets in cooking class and recreating the movie sets in construction class. The grand finale: seeing the movie after it comes out on Dec. 9."

Pre-release marketing efforts have reached out "to a panoply of special-interest groups, from the Coast Guard Youth Academy to Ronald McDonald House, wooing them with invitations to glitzy presentations on the studio lot and lavishing them with posters, snow globes and other promotional gear."

Walden and Disney claim that, "they have sent out 'Narnia' materials to every elementary and middle school in America. That includes posters, educational guides and more than 90,000 copies of the novel. The guides include suggested lesson plans for teachers on topics ranging from the Blitz to the art of writing music lyrics."

Taking steps to avoid potential controversy, Disney -- the company that made, but refused to release, Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" last year -- "is hedging its bets and has, for example, already issued two separate soundtrack albums, one featuring Christian music and musicians [playing music inspired by the film] and another with pop and rock tunes," the New York Times' McGrath reported. EMI Christian Music Group released its album in early October to promote the film.

Covering all its bases, Disney signed a deal with America Online Inc., a unit of Time Warner Inc., to promote the movie across the AOL network, including Moviefone.com and AOL Music and Television. According to TechWebNews, the deal "include[d] the movie's new theatrical trailer, which debuted on AOL's Moviefone" in late October, and "AOL plans to offer fans the first look at behind-the-scenes video features, extended footage from the movie, an extensive production gallery, interactive character guides and more."

Anschutz in Hollywood

Anschutz has already made his mark in Hollywood. "No one seems better positioned to move Hollywood right than Anschutz ...whose Anschutz Film Group oversees two studios: Walden Media and Bristol Bay Productions," Bruce C. Anderson wrote in a long piece called "Conservatives in Hollywood?!" in the Autumn 2005 edition of City Journal, a quarterly magazine of urban affairs published by the conservative New York City-based think tank, the Manhattan Institute (website):

Owner of everything from oil fields to railroads to newspapers, and a major contributor to conservative causes, Anschutz decided not long ago to begin a career as a twenty-first-century Louis B. Mayer. His agenda: producing humanistic, family-oriented films. 'We expect them to be entertaining, but also to be life affirming and to carry a moral message,' he told a Hillsdale College audience last year. Anschutz sees a golden market opportunity in such movies. 'Hollywood as an industry can at times be insular and doesn't at times understand the market very well,' he explained. But he also 'saw a chance with this move to attempt some small improvement in the culture.'

Like an old-time film mogul, Anschutz has nailed down the distribution side. His Regal Entertainment is the nation's largest movie-theater chain, with about 18 percent of all U.S. indoor screens. He keeps a firm hand on the creative process. 'Many things happen between the time you hatch an idea for a movie and the time that it gets to theaters -- and most of them are bad," he told his Hillsdale listeners. 'So you need to control the type of writers you have, the type of directors you get, the type of actors you employ, and the type of editors that work on the final product.'

Anschutz demanded, for instance, that director Taylor Hackford revise the 2004 Ray Charles biopic, Ray, toning down the film's focus on the performer's drug problems and sexual exploits. After initially threatening to quit, Hackford came around to Anschutz's more family-oriented vision. The resulting movie is an honest -- there's no effort to whitewash the drugs and womanizing -- but ultimately inspiring narrative of Charles's successful perseverance against the great odds of his own blindness and moral flaws and society's racism. The movie -- funded entirely by Anschutz, after every major studio had rejected it -- garnered six Oscar nominations, winning two, including Best Actor for Jamie Foxx, riveting in the title role.

Anschutz is off to a gangbuster start, and not just because of Ray. This year's bittersweet Because of Winn-Dixie, based on the children's novel by Kate DiCamillo, tells the story of ten-year-old Opal (newcomer Annasophia Robb) and her preacher father (Jeff Daniels), who've just moved to a lower-middle-class Florida town as the movie opens. Opal's mother, hating being a preacher's wife, had abandoned the family several years earlier. The film unsentimentally captures the pain and loneliness that divorce causes children to feel. Portraying both small-town America and the Baptist faith with unpretentious sympathy, Winn-Dixie made back most of its modest $14 million production budget on its opening weekend and is currently one of the top-selling DVDs in the country.

Anschutz's most ambitious effort yet is the forthcoming $150 million adaptation of C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, a Walden Media--Disney co-production opening in December -- the first in what Anschutz hopes is a long-running franchise. The Narnia books -- an extended allegory of Christ's resurrection--have sold 120 million copies worldwide, 'more than either Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings,' Anschutz notes, suggesting the eye-popping box-office potential. Walden will work closely with Christian organizations to market the film.

'Family-Friendly' philanthropy?

Between 1995 and 2000, according to OpenSecrets.org, the website of the Center for Responsive Politics, the Anschutz Corporation, and assorted members of the Anschutz family, donated nearly $700,000 to the GOP and its candidates.

Last November, Anschutz was ranked number 33 on Business Week's 50 Most Generous Philanthropists List. In addition to a gift of more than $50 million to the University of Colorado Hospital to build the Outpatient Pavilion and the Cancer Pavilion, over the years, Anschutz-related entities have helped bankroll a number of ultraconservative political organizations, including:

Colorado for Family Values (CFV) -- the organization behind Amendment 2, Colorado's notorious anti-gay constitutional amendment approved by the voters in 1992 and later overturned by the US Supreme Court.

The New York-based Institute for American Values (website), which campaigns for marriage and against single parenting;

Enough is Enough (website), whose President and Chair of its Board of Directors is Donna Rice Hughes (the major figure in the sex scandal that ended the 1987 campaign of Gary Hart, in the Democratic presidential primary). Enough is Enough claims that it is "Lighting the way to protect children and families from the dangers of illegal Internet pornography and sexual predators."

Morality in the Media (website), established in 1962 "to combat obscenity and uphold decency standards in the media."

Anschutz's name also came up last spring when the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy gave a report to House staff that called for legislation barring people under investigation for, or accused or convicted of, corporate crimes from serving on boards of private foundations.

Up from Kansas

Philip Anschutz was born in Kansas in 1939. His father, according to Wikipedia, "was a land investor who invested in ranches in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, and eventually went into the oil-drilling business." Anschutz graduated from the University of Kansas and moved to Denver, Colorado, where in 1965, he started The Anschutz Corporation, and began operations in the oil business. According to a bio published at HoratioAlger.com -- the website of The Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, "by 1976 he owned oil fields in Montana, Texas, Colorado, and Wyoming. He also bought uranium and coalmines, and cattle ranches."

Later in the decade, Anschutz "put his knowledge of new seismic technology to work on prospective lands in northern Utah. His instincts paid off in one of the largest oil discoveries since Alaska's Prudhoe Bay. He sold a large part of his find to Mobil Oil, and promptly began further diversification out of the oil business into other businesses."

He also heads Clarity Media Group, owns the San Francisco Examiner -- a shadow of its former self -- purchased in 2004, and a free tabloid in the nation's capital called the Washington Examiner. In early February, a posting at Think Progress, a project of the American Progress Action Fund, pointed out that the "new tabloid has a decidedly right-wing slant to its editorial page, with conservative opinion pieces like "Social Security robs future to pay for past" and "Abortion isn't a game, so stop playing." In mid-October, the company announced plans to launch the Baltimore Examiner in the spring. (Clarity has trademarked the Examiner name in 69 cities.)

According to NewsMax.com, a conservative online news service, Anschutz "may be poised to create a publishing tsunami with the purchase of the Knight Ridder newspaper chain," the second largest newspaper publishing company in the U.S., which owns 32 dailies including the Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald and Kansas City Star.

When Anschutz "was negotiating the purchase of London's Millennium Dome, the BBC dubbed him a "corporate vulture," Nathan Callahan reported in the OC Weekly on May 2, 2003. According to Callahan, Anschutz is "part owner of the Los Angeles Lakers, the Los Angeles Kings and the Staples Center. The Union Pacific Corp.; the Forest Oil Corp.; Celine Dion's Las Vegas production company; a dozen professional ice-hockey teams; and more than 335,000 acres of agricultural land in Colorado, Wyoming and Texas are also part of the Anschutz portfolio."

Anschutz is also the founder of the telecom company Qwest Communications International Inc. According to the OC Weekly's Callahan, "Early in 2000, the fiber-optics giant encouraged employees to keep their retirement savings in company stock even as senior executives were bailing out, selling shares worth hundreds of millions of dollars. According to SEC filings, Anschutz unloaded 6.1 million shares during that period. Qwest peaked at $64 per share. Six months later, the same share was valued at $1.95. During that time, Anschutz netted $213.5 million in profit" Anschutz "was branded the greediest executive in America by Fortune magazine ... topping a list that included ... Gary Winnick, founder of Global Crossing."

Qwest eventually reached a settlement that required a $4.4 million payout to charity.

Anschutz, who Wikipedia points out, "is known to be extremely guarded about giving personal information out to the press," also "owns one of the best collections of Western art ever assembled."

"We expect them [movies] to be entertaining, but also to be life affirming and to carry a moral message," Philip Anschutz told an audience at the conservative Christian Hillsdale College last year. While "Hollywood as an industry can at times be insular and doesn't at times understand the market very well," he also "saw a chance with this move to attempt some small improvement in the culture."