Make My Whittaker Chambers Film Happen!

We have the chance to do something great.

Recently in this space, I wrote about my new documentary project, Witness: the Story of Whittaker Chambers.

Chambers was an American author who joined the communist party in the 1920s. He worked his way into the underground and passed secrets to the Soviets. He then left the party in 1938 and became an editor at Time magazine. After World War II, Chambers saw the threat that the Soviet Union posed to the West, and he fingered Alger Hiss, a well-known government official, as a communist. The resulting trial was one of the most explosive and controversial in American history.

Yet the story of Whittaker Chambers is about much more than geopolitics and espionage. It's about the human soul.

When Chambers published his 1952 autobiography Witness, it was highly praised, even as some people, even a few conservatives were puzzled. Why was Chambers talking so much about God? Witness was about not only communism, but what happens when people, even Western people, sever their connection to God. He argued for the value of limits and human suffering, things that even some conservatives forget about. Chambers also warned those on the right not to work with Senator Joe McCarthy.

I have formed a production company, Right Hammer Films, and our first project, if we can get it off the ground, will be the story of Whittaker Chambers.

His story is the most compelling to have never made it to the screen. This is largely due to the liberal tilt in Hollywood and the rest of the arts culture.

Chambers once wrote this: "The simple fact is that when I took up my little sling and aimed at Communism, I also hit something else. What I hit was the forces of that great socialist revolution, which, in the name of liberalism, spasmodically, incompletely, somewhat formlessly, always in the same direction, has been inching its ice cap over the nation for two decades. ...[T]hough I knew it existed, I still had no adequate idea of its extent, the depth of its penetration or the fierce vindictiveness of its revolutionary temper, which is a reflex of it struggle to keep and advance its political power."

This is not a story that Hollywood, or the mainstream media, is eager to tell.

The good news is that we live in an age of technological marvels -- marvels which have allowed conservatives to level the playing field with the media, and perhaps even Hollywood.

In 1989 Michael Moore made Roger & Me for $200,000. Today you could make a documentary for a fraction of that -- and it would not only be more intellectually honest but look a lot better. In the 1980s punk rock pioneered the Do It Yourself (DIY) ethic. Bands, many of whom would go on to become famous and produce masterpieces, created their one records, their own packaging, their own labels. The technology has gotten to the point where independent filmmakers can compete with the major studios.

The 2007 independent film Paranormal Activity was made for $10,000. The film has earned $300 million.

It is in that independent spirit that I have formed Right Hammer Films. I named it for the rightward tilt the films will have, and also partly out of my love of Hammer Films, the British studio that produced, for small budgets, fantastic horror movies in the 1950s and 1960s. Our first project will be Witness: the Story of Whittaker Chambers. We are attempting to raise $20,000 to make this happen. You can find the Kickstarter page for the project here.

The expenses are for an upgrade to my filmmaking equipment, the contract for a colleague who is a professional documentary filmmaker, promotion and some travel costs. Most of the action will take place in my hometown of Washington, D.C., so the expense there should be small.

In the last few years if not decades, conservatives have been complaining about Hollywood and the culture, and with good reason. But the fact is, the technology has almost leveled the playing field.

If you want to have nightmares, then do a thought experiment: imagine that Al Gore had never invented the internet. Imagine the media was still comprised of three networks and three major newspaper. Imagine the list of things we would never know about.

A small example: a few years ago, the Washington Post ran a story about Alger Hiss, the man Whittaker Chambers named as a spy. The story claimed that Hiss had been exonerated; in fact he had been convicted of perjury. I uploaded a YouTube video pointed out as much. Within two hours the Post had put a correction on the story.

Twenty years ago I would have mailed a letter to the editor -- a letter which would have never been published.

Imagine a world with no Drudge, no Breitbart, no Daily Caller, no RealClearReligion.

The truth is, the world has changed. It's on us now. We can keep complaining, and indeed should complain when there are things to complain about. But we should also be proactive.

We're not talking about sinking tens of millions of dollars into a project that may never make back its investment. We're talking about creating something beautiful subtle and long-lasting. Imagine in 50 or 100 years, there's a school kid who is being tortured by some politically correct professor. The professor makes a passing and sneering reference to Whittaker Chambers. The student goes to YouTube or Vimeo and finds a film about Chambers. And it's not junk. He begins to change his thinking, and challenge his indoctrination at school.

For that moment alone 200 people should be able to write $100 checks.

Of course, we aren't opposed to shooting past our goal. Maybe we can get Sarah Palin or the Koch brothers involved.