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Among the Intellectualoids
Ho-Hum for Hollywood
My friend Ken, the innkeeper at my favorite bar, is a big movie fan as am I, but while 99% of my favorites were made before 1950, he still forks over big bucks to sit in tiny theaters and have his ears blown out watching what passes for modern entertainment. For this reason, I am forced, year after year, to watch annual ego-massaging, snore-fests like last week's Golden Globe Awards as the price for enjoying a few Sunday night drinks.
Although I paid little attention to the TV while discussing the real upcoming Hollywood fantasy production -- the Obama Inauguration -- I was prodded to watch the Best Picture segments. One of the nominees was Revolutionary Road, a dreary and depressing effort to depict life in 1950s America as, well, dreary and depressing; a flick crammed with Hollywood's favorite ingredients: bored housewives, adultery, alcoholism, and abortion. Yawn.
But what really stirred up the barroom conversation was all the attention paid to Frost/Nixon, a film by Ron Howard, of whom an anonymous Internet poster riotously said, "Here's a guy whose career peaked at the age of eight." What, I asked Kenny, could this movie -- an admitted "fictionalization" of the story behind the interviews themselves, which have been and still are available for public consumption -- add to the sad saga of a man dragged through the liberal wringer for the past 30 years. His answer? "It's part of history."
Well, should we accept my bartender's erudite explanation and agree that the lives of American presidents should indeed be grist for the Hollywood movie mill? It seems that Tinseltown has already answered that question in the affirmative; at least when it comes to Republicans. A cursory search on movies about Nixon returns over a dozen feature-length films, including 1999's Dick, a ditzy comedy and the only one worthy of the third-rate burglary that brought down our 37th president.
Obsession with Richard Nixon, even after three decades, is a pillar of liberal elitism. His head on their trophy wall is a symbol of their greatest triumph; one they have tried to repeat without success through the years, most recently with George W. Bush. In their frenzied minds, they have even connected the two men. An example from popular film critic, Roger Ebert:
Obviously, Hollywood did not spare the sitting Republican president, making several insulting flicks and even an insipid TV show called That's My Bush! even while he was engaged in defending our nation from grave peril. Now, some might say that the most powerful man in the world is deserving of critical attention, that it is the American way to lampoon our leaders, and maybe they're right.
One thing we do know is that one of our most recent presidents has escaped the slings and arrows of the Hollywood harpooners who have taken such glee in skewering his GOP counterparts. Save for a few episodes of Biography with sugary titles like: "Bill Clinton: Hope, Charisma and Controversy," or documentaries with ironically appropriate titles such as Bill Clinton: Rock & Roll President, our 42nd president has escaped with no cinematographic scars.
Yet surely, the Clinton presidency was the stuff Hollywood dreams are made of. So many movies have gleefully depicted the saga of a man who was nearly impeached; where is the story of one who really did suffer that humiliating rebuke? So many accusations of graft, greed and corruption surrounding Reagan, Bush and Nixon; where are the tantalizing tales of Buddhist monks and Indonesian bagmen splashed across the screen?
And where oh where, in the land of sex, lies, and videotape is the Monica Lewinsky scandal? She, the innocent lamb, caught in the clutches a powerful wolf whose cast of victims would have scintillated movie-goers across the nation. Sadly, Bill Clinton does not meet the number one Hollywood requirement for cinematic abuse and scorn; he's not a Republican. Neither is the new occupant of the Oval Office, but it's also unlikely that he'll get the Tinseltown treatment. After all, they say Biblical epics are passé.
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Robert Nowall| 1.21.09 @ 6:23AM
There was a claim that the producers of "That's My Bush" were ready to go with a show called "That's My Gore," but, to tell the truth, given Hollywood's track record, I found it hard to believe such a show would have actually gone on the air.
P. Aaron| 1.21.09 @ 8:19AM
Frost-Nixon will tank...like Air America or (P)MSNBC. It is a fantasyland for liberals who have no real imagination to craft original fiction. So they fictionalize what is easily available fact. Much like they interpret the Constitution.
ValricoJoe| 1.21.09 @ 8:31AM
The producers, directors and actors are the progressive elite who know what is good for the people. They want to take your money and give it away, while keeping their millions. I wonder how many actually claim residency in California, so they can pay their fair share.
HarryBeard| 1.21.09 @ 8:56AM
One correction - Bill Clinton WAS impeached. He just wasn't convicted.
Michael Crites| 1.21.09 @ 10:14AM
HarryBeard, the author was referring to President Nixon as "a man who was nearly impeached" and President Clinton as "one who really did suffer that humiliating rebuke."
No correction necessary.
Charles Perry| 1.21.09 @ 10:37AM
You know what president would make a dramatic movie? Carter. A riveting tale of vaulting hopes, colossal vanity and failure on a vast scale, ending in terrible smallness: denial and disfiguring spite.
Bilwick| 1.21.09 @ 10:51AM
I came of age in the Sixties and early Seventies, when calling Nixon a "fascist" was de rigeur among campus "intellectualoids." Interestingly, Nixon's most fascist action (using the textbook definition of "fascism" instead of the semi-literate "liberal" definition), imposing wage and price controls, raised no ire.
To the Hive, Nixon, Agnew, Bush and other Republican betes-noires a re useful decoys. A "liberal" State-shtupper can point to them with one hand, shouting "fascist!", while lifting our wallets with the other hand.
Jacob Morgan| 1.21.09 @ 1:38PM
If Nixon is to be condemned, it should be for making those two pesky departments OSHA and EPA, for opening relations with Red China (why a reverse policy of non-containment?), and winding down the Vietnam war. If a democrat had done any of the above he'd have been the second JFK.
I guess it goes back to putting Alger Hiss in the slammer, where he, Soviet archives clearly show, belonged. That, or the nihilists they are, liberals can only deconstruct and Nixon was an easier target than Eisenhower and Hoover was so nineteen twenties.
JoshFranklin| 1.21.09 @ 1:42PM
The Hollywood rule of thumb is pretty straightforward. Impeachment of a Democrat is martyrdom. Impeachment of a Republican is criminal justice.
Jared Mummaw| 1.21.09 @ 1:46PM
The 1998 film Primary Colors was a thinly veiled homage to the Clintons. It stared John Travolta and Emma Thompson as the presumptive first couple on the campaign trail. The Clinton character is revealed have cheated on his wife with the teenage daughter of one of his friends.
The film was meant to be complimentary.
Marc Jeric| 1.21.09 @ 3:20PM
Nobody has explained the reasons for that botched Watergate burglary. The Democrats had on their staff a Chilean communist with close ties to Castro and the burglars wanted to document that treachery.
Michele San Pietro| 1.21.09 @ 3:22PM
Bill Clinton was the most terribly disastrous president in U.S. history. When he left office, it was really the end of a nightmare for the American people.
Alan Brooks| 1.21.09 @ 3:52PM
how bout a flick about Jimmuh?
Opie Cunningham can smell the next In-thang, babe.
balding Hollywood hacks. (Rob Meathead Reiner too)
sex sells. cutsie Splash. but lets not get TOO exploitive; that would be capitalistic. were just trying to "liberate" people to rut like mink in april. its the marketplace (pigpen) of lib ideas.
we want to HEEELLPPP.
i just want to HEEELLPPPPPPP
Alan Brooks| 1.21.09 @ 7:05PM
Richie Cunningham.
SIT ON IT
ruth| 1.22.09 @ 2:21AM
Alan, funny! Whenever I see 'Opie' I'm so disappointed that I have to look at the man. Cute kid, very odd looking man.
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