He is handsome, crowds love him. She is an older woman with allure and the whiff of power. They meet… And thoroughly dislike each other. That is the opening scene in my movie account of Hillary and Barack, a movie, I should hasten to add, that has been neither written nor commissioned, at least not by me. But the point is that the Democratic primary season last year, with its tempestuous, momentous plot line, and its Shakespearean characters (enter Bill, stage left), is the stuff of drama and the stuff of the dramatic arts. It will be a movie. So will the election of 2008. After all, the presidency of George W Bush already is, in Oliver Stone’s W.
Escapism they are not. But perhaps thclinat’s why they are popular. Perhaps that’s why political movies have always been popular in America, because American politics requires such extraordinary determination, such inhuman self belief, as to render its central characters every bit as satisfying as Shakespeare’s finest. Think Nixon, with Anthony Hopkins.
The timing has to be right though. You can sell a movie about politics when the moment is right but try competing with it, and you can fall flat on your face. That is probably why Swing Vote, actually rather a good movie, did no great box-office business. The problem was that it came out last summer while the real deal was still on TV. So Kevin Costner, starring as a loveable loser who is thrust into the spotlight with the two main-party candidates seeking his backing, gets nowhere. He is blown away by Hillary and Barack and John McCain and even Sarah Palin.
The point is that you have to pick the moment that the theme of the political movie seems attractive or, if it is based on real life, seems once again interesting and relevant. Primary Colors – the fabulously illuminating story of Bill Clinton’s coming to power – did not get into cinemas until halfway through his second term, just as the wheels were beginning to come off the wagon. You could watch it and be horrified, or watch it and be saddened, or indeed watch it and leave with renewed respect for the guts of the Clinton political machine. But the point was, you would be likely to watch it. The timing was right.
The same could be said of another political movie of that generation, the wonderful Wag the Dog, with Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro. A film about the distraction of public attention from a presidential scandal by the creation of a fictional Hollywood war, would really not work now with so many real wars to think about and such suffering associated with them. But in 1997 it was just what the spin doctor ordered.
Similarly, All the President’s Men, the classic rendition of the Woodward and Bernstein Watergate investigation for The Washington Post, did not come out until 1976, when the events were sufficiently historical for the nation to be interested but capable of some detachment. I watched a bit of the movie on a plane the other day with my eight-year-old son and he loved it. Living in Washington, he was fascinated by the depiction of the city. But what really stood out for him was the drama – the film still crackles with life. It was brilliantly written, to the extent that some of the great lines (‘follow the money’) have gone into history as being associated with the real-life Watergate drama although they were entirely fictitious.
