Our second entry of Films and Politics looks at two pictures made more than 3 decades apart. Also, as an aside, Disinterested Spectator picked up the ball and did a far more thorough review (beware of spoilers if you can spoil a 60 year-old movie) of The Last Hurrah, a movie I looked at last time.
My primary interest here is to catalogue political films with an emphasis on how film handles elections. However, I will look at films that cover politics in the broader sense, such as Seven Days in May.
First up:
The Best Man: (1964).
Based on Gore Vidal’s Tony Award-winning play of the same name, The Best Man tells the tale of two men vying for their party’s presidential nomination during the National Convention of an unidentified party. Yet, once we meet the two main contenders, we know that this is the Democratic party circa late ‘50’s early 60’s. We have an “egghead” liberal and his opponent, representing the blue dog wing of the party.
William Russell (Henry Fonda) is a former Secretary of State. A liberal, Russell’s public life is fairly spotless. He did have an extra-marital affair and also hides a past nervous breakdown (shades of Thomas Eagleton).
Senator Joe Cantwell (Cliff Robertson) is a southern populist, a bigot and a hardcore anti-communist who, like JFK, campaigns on closing the non-existent missile-gap with the Soviet Union. Robertson is an interesting choice for Cantwell as he had played Kennedy the year before in PT-109.
Russell and Cantwell, in addition to hating each other, battle for the endorsement of a popular former President, Art Hockstader (Lee Tracy). During the course of the convention Russell’s psych records materialize as does a witness to Cantwell’s alleged homosexual activity during the war (perhaps Cantwell is a Republican after all).
Many people point out that Russell is partly based on Adlai Stevenson, the former Illinois Governor and two-time Democratic candidate for President (1952-1956). Cantwell is an amalgam of Nixon and Kennedy and Cantwell has a brother/campaign manager quite like Robert Kennedy. Former President Hockstader is essentially a Harry Truman stand-in.
In a 2000 Theater Talk interview available on YouTube Vidal denies any direct, one-to-one comparison with his characters and any actual person. Instead, he sees each character as an amalgam of personalities and political archetypes. Indeed, if one thinks Cantwell, the ruthless amoral politician is a thinly-veiled Kennedy, one should know that JFK and Vidal were friends (however Vidal disliked Bobby). We, the audience, see a finished product and sometimes make connections where none, or few, exist. The creation of a good product is always more complex than just slotting in a real person with a fictitious name.
This is a solid movie with some good performances. Never having experienced a brokered convention it feels more unrealistic now then it may have in ‘64. Again, if older films, especially the older acting style, don’t work for you, don’t bother. I don’t know if a remake would work (although the play has been revived a number of times). Few of us, perhaps none of us, has lived through a brokered convention (I am not sure when the last one occurred although Stevenson did throw his VP selection to the delegates in ‘52) despite the threat of one every four years. The system isn’t designed for a brokered convention, not now, with campaigns so money dependent and that dependence hinging on primary success.
Where would one stage a play or movie that addresses the selection of a presidential candidate today? A series of early primaries, a boardroom, the offices of a national party? Did someone in the back just say The Kremlin?
Worth a watch. The Best Man, Last Hurrah and All the King’s Men would make a good triple bill if you enjoy black and white films. Gore Vidal’s writing is always smart and always sprinkled with sharp humor.
In the play (1960) and the film, the media is a target of criticism and accused of what we now know as...fake news. The more things change...
Primary Colors: 1998
Based on the Joe Klein’s roman a clef novel of the same name, this is one of the best known political movies of the last quarter-century. Most of you know this film by name, many of you have seen the movie.
While undeniably entertaining, I have mixed feelings about Bill Clinton (aside from the personal stuff) which could bias my take on this movie. While arguably the most gifted presidential-level politician in my lifetime, I am never enamored of the awe-shucks, golly-gee, southern populist-style politician. While for many this style was one of Clinton’s greatest political gifts, for me it fell flat. My maternal grandmother was a Massachusetts Lodge and based on that, even at a young age, I was always more sympathetic and interested in the old-school, blue-blood, noblesse oblige style, of those 1950-1960’s liberal New England Republicans that helped to pass the Civil Rights Act. The mythical Rockefeller Republican, now shrouded in the mists of time. As an aside, despite the connection, my Grandmother voted for Kennedy because she detested Nixon so much that she didn’t care who was on the ticket with Tricky Dick. To her the Kennedy clan was preferable despite being “new money.” She on the other hand was old money, even if that old money had been mostly dissipated by the time I arrived on the scene. This is just to say, I never totally bought-in on Clinton’s southern charm schtick and that is what Stanton is selling. I voted for Clinton twice without hesitation but was much more inclined towards the Browns or Bidens in 1992.
Primary Colors is really about the longshot campaign of an initially obscure southern governor, Jack Stanton (John Travolta), seen through the eyes of high-level campaign staffer, Henry Burton (British actor Adrian Lester). Burton is an outsider, brought into the inner-circle after the primary season has begun. At first skeptical of Stanton’s downhome style, as well as his politics and electoral chances, Burton begins to fall under the spell of the charming Jack Stanton. Although in truth, I believe it is Jack’s wife, Susan Stanton, played brilliantly by Emma Thompson, that convinces Henry to join the campaign.
Then, of course, Burton sees the warts. Stanton is a womanizer and just about everyone knows it except Burton. But, I do not think it is the affairs that are the true problem for Burton. Stanton has a sincere desire to help “the people” but treats actual individuals, people he knows, poorly. What he wants for those struggling in the movie’s 1992-era economy is real but Stanton is also a narcissist and a liar.
The cast is terrific. Billy Bob Thornton is great as a brilliant but eccentric political strategist. Maura Tierney is great as a smart, likeable campaign aid. Kathy Bates chews the scenery as an old college friend/former chief of staff who is equal parts crazy and brilliant, tasked by Stanton to do opposition research on Stanton so they know what they will be up against. I think Emma Thompson really shines as a smart, tough political spouse.
There are some very good scenes with liberal doses of humor. One of the best lines occurs when Stanton, Thornton’s character and the proprietor of a rib joint start talking about their mothers and become teary-eyed. Susan, Henry and another strategist are about to talk strategy and Henry asks if Jack should be involved. Susan says, “They’re talking about the Mommas. It could last for hours.”
I love the reference to Governor Ozio and Ozio’s son (wonder who they are). Larry Hagman portrays former Florida Governor Fred Picker as sympathetic, likeable and frankly, someone who would be a better President than Stanton. There is a suicide that is over the top.
Travolta’s performance is problematic. He is not a particularly strong actor overall. He is fine in some roles but overall, lets face it, Travolta is a middling talent for the most part. For me, his portrayal of Jack Stanton soon becomes almost cartoonish. He is passable, but doesn’t shine like Thompson or Thornton.
While entertaining for political geeks, I am skeptical about how well this film has aged. I recently re-watched it (available for rent on Amazon Prime) and it is so on-the-nose with the Clintons it is very dated. I doubt people will be talking about this movie fifty years from now. That is the problem with a roman a clef work. If you lived through it, the work seems cheap. It lacks, by its very nature, originality if it stirs too close to reality. I never think I’m watching Jack Stanton. I know who I am watching. A guy I voted for twice. I suppose if you know nothing about the politics of the ‘90’s and stumbled across Primary Colors, it could work much better.
The blatant womanizing by Stanton doesn’t age well. In Particular, in an early scene, Alison Janney, a school administrator who had just shown Stanton an educational program, leaves a room in a hotel suite looking disheveled. She is followed by Stanton, looking equally disheveled. Stanton’s staff accepts this as Stanton being Stanton. It is not that this scene is unrealistic. It is just a bit jarring to see after the societal shift the past two years. There is, of course, no hint that these affairs are anything but consensual (there is a distastefully close brush with the age of consent, I believe it is sixteen in Arkansas, in one instance).
Kathy Bates, who will perform opposition research on Stanton (for Stanton) hand selects a campaign staffer to aid her endeavors. Here too, Bates’ selection of the staffer has a predatory aspect to it and Bates and the staffer end up having an affair.
On the other hand, I often find that fiction based on fact can often convey the spirit of an era or person more succinctly than any documentary. If a person born in 1996 asked me about the nature or personality of Bill Clinton one could spend hours recounting the Clinton years. Or, as shorthand, Primary Colors will give them a good feel for Clinton’s style and persona.
Despite its flows, it is, in the end, an entertaining watch. Primary Colors did well with the critics but bombed at the box office.
Both The Best Man and Primary Colors address the ethics and morality of using damaging personal information against an opponent. A rather timeless political dilemma often used in drama.
Both also ask, perhaps indirectly, whether or not the best person to be president is the one that is least idealistic. The one ruthless enough to win.
Quick aside. Although he has worked consistently in film and television, I always thought Adrian Lester (Henry Burton) would have had a bigger career than he has had, more leading man type roles. Perhaps he has and I missed it. He was real good as Burton and this is Burton’s story, not Stanton’s.
