The show goes on: Mastriano film gets home for premiere

In what its producers are celebrating as a win over “wokeness,” a film celebrating the populist strain of conservatism that reached a new pinnacle in Pennsylvania with state Sen. Doug Mastriano’s win in the Republican gubernatorial primary has found a home for its Saturday night premiere.

“The Return of the American Patriot: The Rise of Pennsylvania” will be screened at Christ Community Church in Lower Allen Township, Cumberland County, after the owners of a Lancaster County theater and a nearby conference center backed out of their earlier plans to show the film in the wake of protests from left-leaning grassroots group Stand Up Lancaster.

The film comes from the production shop of Stephen Turley, a conservative author and commentator whose Web site heralds the rise of a “new conservative age” marked by people — in many countries — reasserting their religion, cultures and nation against what Turley calls “the dehumanizing tendencies of secularism and globalism.”

Turley, a Delaware resident, said the film is a celebration of grassroots conservatism in Pennsylvania “where defenders of faith, family and freedom are absolutely changing the political order in the Keystone State.”

He has identified Mastriano as a case study, and the film is expected to prominently feature the retired Army colonel’s pandemic-fueled political rise.

Mastriano, a state senator from Franklin County who was an early leader in the pushback against coronavirus shutdown orders, cruised to a big win in May’s Republican primary, trouncing eight other candidates despite a late attack ad push by state party leaders.

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They were concerned that Mastriano’s cheerleading for former President Donald Trump’s challenges of the Pennsylvania presidential vote count — including his personal participation in the march to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — will severely hamper his electability in the general election. Mastriano has acknowledged participating on the march to the Capitol after Trump’s speech that day, but he has said he never entered the building, and never participated in any criminal acts.

Turley and Mastriano are also headliners for a pre-screening meet-and-greet with attendees who paid for VIP seats Friday.

The film also profiles Toni Shuppe, the leader of a group called Audit the Vote that began with a quest for a full forensic audit of Pennsylvania’s 2020 election results; and Tabitha Valleau, a co-founder of Free PA, which led early grassroots opposition to many of Gov. Tom Wolf’s coronavirus restrictions and is now recruiting “constitutionally conservative” candidates for state and local office.

Turley’s staff did not respond to PennLive’s requests for comment on the evolving situation this week.

But claiming on a recent edition of his podcast that the new venue seats twice as many as the IMAX theater he’d originally hoped to use, Turley said “the premiere that woke activists thought they cancelled is not only a go, but it’s now even bigger and better than before.”

That may have been a reference to the Wyndham Lancaster Resort and Convention Center in East Lampeter Township which also subsequently cancelled a showing of the film, according to reporting by Lancaster Online.

In any event, Turley is celebrating the premiere as a victory over left-wing “cry-bullying” that he said he hoped will be an ongoing example — especially for business owners like Penn Cinema, the theater owners who cancelled on him — to stand up in the face of political pressure campaigns.

“When it comes to woke cancel culture, your stance has to be courage, not cowardice. And this goes especially for business owners… Your business is not going to be adversely affected by a sad group of moral midgets whose bark is far worse than their bite. And this is essential because cancel culture doesn’t happen with the rabid ideologues. It requires the compliance of cowardly business owners,” Turley said.

As of Friday evening, Turley’s Website showed 128 general admission seats remaining at $20 apiece, though there was also a buy one get one free offer available.