INAUGURATION DAY

INAUGURATION DAY #7: WAG THE DOG (1997, dir by Barry Levinson) Today in honor of a new president's inauguration, we wanted to take a look at 7 very different American movies that each come at the US Presidency in different ways. Taken together they form a kaleidoscopic x-ray of the good and the bad, the inspiring and the cautionary in politics and the Presidency. First up is the Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman starring, Barry Levinson directed, David Mamet co-scripted hilarious satire WAG THE DOG. A surprisingly on-point and continually hilarious comedy about a behind-the-scenes operation to get a President re-elected despite a potentially damaging scandal (involving misconduct with girl scouts!) by essentially staging a war to distract the American public. De Niro's political insider hires Hoffman's Hollywood producer (modeled partially on 70's Paramount head honcho Bob Evans) to "produce" the war and all the media surrounding it. What's so unsettling about this movie is that it essentially warned all of us that "politics as entertainment and distraction" was a thing. But we seem to keep falling for it again and again.

INAUGURATION DAY #6: ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (1976, dir by Alan J Pakula) The movie about journalism that every other movie about journalism seems to be chasing. This movie adaptation of the book by Washington Post journalists Bob Woodard and Carl Bernstein describing their articles about the Watergate break-in during the 1972 Presidential election which eventually revealed a cover-up by and eventual resignation of President Nixon. The problem with the movie (if you can call it that) is that it's so damn well written (script by William Goldman), directed (Alan J Pakula in full on 70's mode), shot (Gordon Willis of THE GODFATHER), and performed (Hoffman as the ambitiously ladder-climbing Bernstein is particularly hilarious) that you can't help but watch it as cinema. You have to remind yourself throughout that this actually happened. It's bittersweet in a way to see how fractured we've become that we now choose the journalism we want to believe (whether it's rigorously sourced/researched or totally fabricated). And to see how too much journalism is meant to agitate, pander, and sop to the politics of its intended readership. This movie still stands as a lighthouse to how necessary good journalism is to a thriving democracy. It holds everyone to account and is blind to the politics of its time. Facts are facts. No matter who tries to tell us otherwise.

INAUGURATION DAY #5: DR. STRANGELOVE (1964, dir by Stanley Kubrick) Kubrick's pitch black comedy of nuclear brinksmanship, military psychosis, and the cold war is so brilliant, we almost forget the great "straight man" comedic performance by comedic chameleon Peter Sellers as US President Merkin Muffley. Sellers plays three roles of course (he was even originally slated to play a 4th-Major Kong but eventually that went to Slim Pickens). Sellers completely "straight" portrayal of a clearly well-meaning, intelligent, beleaguered president trying to stall the nuclear apocalypse is a stunning stroke of genius. Sellers is hilarious of course-the scene where he tries to talk to a clearly drunk Russian premier over the phone is always LAUGH OUT LOUD. But what's unsettling is the realization that President Muffley may be the only truly sane man in the war room. Sellers and Kubrick decided to base Muffley on 1950's Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson who ran twice unsuccessfully against Dwight D Eisenhower. Stevenson was known as an extremely intelligent, even-tempered man who just didn't have the star power Eisenhower (the D-Day WWII General after all) had. What STRANGELOVE makes brilliantly clear is that there are two situations in American politics that are probably equally dangerous. #1: A wildly erratic President who won't listen to any of the wise advisors around him. #2: a wise President who isn't listened to by any of the wildly erratic political and military actors around him.

INAUGURATION DAY #4: YOUNG MR. LINCOLN (1939, dir by John Ford) Fascinatingly, Ford's YOUNG MR LINCOLN has nothing to do with Lincoln the President. As its title suggests, we follow Lincoln from young adulthood to one of his first major cases as an Illinois Lawyer clearing two brothers of a murder. While the movie is clearly reverential of Lincoln, it also makes clear Lincoln knew that politics, law, winning cases is about "performance". Ford shows us that Lincoln is fully aware he's playing an "Aw Shucks" kind of lawyer so he can win over the jury and then blow them away with a devastating argument. Henry Fonda's understated performance perfectly compliments Ford's just slightly poetic direction (this movie was a favorite of both Orson Welles and Sergei Eisenstein). But Ford, like Lincoln, saves his most devastating direction for the "closing argument". After the case is done, Lincoln walks up a hill towards an incoming lightning storm. The wordless poetry of this final scene in how succinctly it conveys Lincoln's future is one of Ford's greatest moments.

INAUGURATION DAY #3: LINCOLN (2012, dir by Steven Spielberg) One surprisingly easy and simple rule for a movie's greatness is if you want to see it again. Some movies are more fun to talk about than to re-watch. But other movies somehow get better, deeper, richer with each successive viewing. Spielberg's LINCOLN, for this programmer, is very much the latter. As Spielberg has aged, his later movies show more and more the influence of master filmmaker John Ford. It's a no-brainer to pair this movie with Ford's YOUNG MR. LINCOLN which clearly influences the proceedings here. But what makes LINCOLN so compulsively watchable yet so artistically profound is the symphonic synchronicity of its contributors. Spielberg makes sure Tony Kushner's screenplay of Doris Kearns Goodwin's book gets truly "heard". Daniel Day Lewis inhabits Lincoln rather than mimics him. Tommy Lee Jones is hilarious, bitchy, yet captivating in his supporting turn as abolitionist and Republican House leader Thaddeus Stevens. Even James Spader in a small but memorable role as a proto-lobbyist employed by Lincoln to "buy" votes makes the most of his screen time. What Spielberg and Kushner brilliantly do here is focus on just one thing: the passing of the 13th amendment which abolished slavery. By watching how the "sausage gets made" in politics, how Lincoln has to lie, dodge, persuade, seduce, growl, joke, twist arms in his singular focus, we see what it really takes to accomplish something in politics. And we realize how much true talent is needed to understand what to do (and when to do it) to get the desired political outcome. One of Spielberg's least "flashy" movies is also one of his best. His brilliance is quiet and humble here. Working to mirror the same traits that made Lincoln such a great president.

INAUGURATION DAY #2: JFK (1990, dir by Oliver Stone) JFK isn't so much an expose of the JFK assassination as it is the replacement of one kind of mythology (American exceptionalism) with another (American conspiracy theories). Almost certainly Oliver Stone's greatest movie, JFK is filled with virtuoso editing, cinematography, performances, music, pace. It's just a master class in a kind of epic moviemaking we just don't see much of these days. But its faults are plentiful too. It answers many thorny questions surrounding the JFK assassination with alternate fictions that didn't happen either. When one looks into the actual facts, it still seems just as likely (if not probable) that JFK was assassinated by sole assassin Lee Harvey Oswald as any other potential conspiracy theory (the Mob, the Russians, the Cubans, etc) that floats around. But what the movie does get absolutely right is the human predilection towards believing conspiracy theories because it gives us the (possibly illusory) sense that we have an inside scoop into what's "really" happening. Conspiracy theories of any political stripe help to make us feel some kind of power in a world where we often feel unjustly powerless. The gravitational pull of conspiracy theories will always attract large swaths of us. But it may be just as important to maintain a healthy skepticism of BOTH the official line and the conspiracy theory born to challenge it if we're to maintain a premium value on truth and facts to inform our democracy.

INAUGURATION DAY #1: THE CANDIDATE (1972, dir by Michael Ritchie) Actually a movie about how a political campaign manager cajoles a lawyer to run for an open Senate seat, THE CANDIDATE is one of those rare movies that actually illuminates a truth about politics most of us would rather not investigate too closely. How many folks who run and get elected for office are running because they actually want to do something? How many are running just because they are told they are "electable"? How many are running because they want to feel the thrill of winning but don't necessarily thrill at governing? The movie is a very entertaining, quirky look at a political campaign and how one has to learn to "play the game" to get across the finish line. Still, the final scene and final line of the movie act as the perfect question every newly elected politician must ask themselves. Running a successful campaign is one thing. Actually governing effectively and moving the ball forward is a completely different beast. At this start of the 46th Presidential administration, as we should at the start of every new presidential administration (until they prove themselves unworthy) regardless of our political stripes, let's hope and pray the ball gets moved forward.

Written by Craig Hammill.Founder/Programmer Secret Movie Club