Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump

Year 13, Day 114 - 4/24/21 - Movie #3,818

BEFORE: Donald Trump carries over from "The Accidental President" and this is my last documentary on politics, I promise.  For now, anyway, I'm sure there are tons of docs in production on the Capitol Hill riots, the 2020 election, and the mishandling of the pandemic - those will have to wait for another time. 

The Oscars are tomorrow, so it's time to get last licks in, but I managed to avoid all the nominated documentaries, because the chain sort of demanded that I focus on politics for a bit.  Oh, well, time to transition back to fiction films, and it's going to take a few days.  But here's tomorrow's line-up for TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", which still has a week to go:

6:00 am "Shall We Dance" (1937) - SEEN IT

8:00 am "She Done Him Wrong" (1933)

9:15 am "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" (1949)

11:00 am "Ship of Fools" (1965)

1:30 pm "Show Boat" (1951) - SEEN IT

3:30 pm "Silverado" (1985) - SEEN IT

6:00 pm "Singin' in the Rain" (1952) - SEEN IT

8:00 pm "The Smiling Lieutenant" (1931)

9:45 pm "Somebody Up There Likes Me" (1956) - SEEN IT

12:00 am "Sounder" (1972)

2:00 am "The Spanish Main" (1945)

4:00 am "Speedy" (1928)

5:30 am "The Spirit of St. Louis" (1957) - SEEN IT

Finally, another 6 films seen out of 13 is a big day for me.  This puts me back up over the 40% mark, with 117 seen out of 291.  Decisions made long ago to watch all the films I could with Fred Astaire and Howard Keel are now paying off.

THE PLOT: An eye-opening and shattering analysis of the behavior, psyche, condition and stability of Donald J. Trump.

AFTER: It should come as no surprise to learn that Donald Trump cheats at golf. You can learn a lot about a man by how he plays golf, which is an honorable sport played by some very dishonorable people.  You might be surprised to learn HOW he cheats at golf, and how many different WAYS he cheats at golf, though. First, he keeps his own score, a lot of golfers do that, so probably fudging of scores runs rampant. Secondly, he usually plays alone, so there's nobody to call him on fudging his score, or witnessing whether the number he puts on the scorecard is even close to reality.  When he does play in a group situation, it's usually on a course that he owns, so even if anyone DID notice his errant score-keeping, they'd be afraid to call him out on it.  Then there's the golf carts - at each of his courses he's got a tricked-out cart that goes faster than every other cart, so he can get to the ball first, move it to where he wants to play it from, and nobody is the wiser.  Then, since he runs so many tournaments at so many courses, he's been known to call in to a tournament, report the score he (supposedly) got that same day at a DIFFERENT course, and claim victory in the tournament by default, even though he was never there, didn't play in that tournament, and maybe didn't even play golf that day.  So, has he ever played a true, honest game of golf, ever?  Probably not. 

This is very symbolic of how Trump runs his life, and business - everything's a scam, designed to benefit him.  Trump Air, Trump Steaks, Trump University, Trump Vodka.  All scams.  Remember that show he made a year or so into his presidency where he had this big pile of documents on display at a press conference, which was supposed to be all the contracts he'd signed, turning his businesses over to his sons while he was President?  As many have surmised, that was just prop comedy, most likely those folders were all empty, and the paper was all blank.  It's like a bad magic trick that had no point and mystified nobody in the audience. 

Decades of tax returns with (probably) falsified numbers. Gross over-estimations of his own wealth, used to secure more loans and more credit.  Two casinos that somehow lost money, basically the only casinos in history to ever do that.  That giant portrait of himself that turned out to be purchased with donations to the Trump Foundation, and most recently, campaign donations web-sites that started billing one-time donors monthly, then weekly, because they didn't "opt-out" of agreeing to more donations that they never officially agreed to.  The first, VERY FIRST, press conference of his administration was about the high attendance at his inauguration, which was all a bunch of B.S.  Photos clearly showed how sparse the attendance was, compared with Obama's inauguration crowd, but that didn't fit the Trump narrative, so "alternative facts" and "fake news" were created to dispel any reality that he didn't like.  

All those photos of him "working" in the Oval Office, with no paperwork on or near his desk, no office supplies, either, just engaged in some kind of phone conversation - but probably just listening to a dial tone, trying to look busy.  There's no THERE there, there's never BEEN any there there, just a big, sad empty man who told one lie after another, then five more to support those lies, and maybe even started believing in his own lies at some point.  He never really did anything but watch TV and tweet, I'll bet, he just put Mike Pence or Jared Kushner in charge of any project that he was expected to handle, so they could avoid handing it.  How's that Middle East situation coming, Jared?  Oh, right, it's not your problem to solve any more, because the clock finally ran out. 

In this film, a bunch of psychologists, historians, authors and ethics attorneys diagnose Trump from afar, which doesn't sound particularly kosher.  According to them, he's a sociopath, a racist, a sexist and a malignant narcissist. To be fair, are we supposed to believe Trump's doctors and medical "experts" who claimed he weighed just 239 pounds?  Maybe his left butt cheek weighs 239 pounds, come on?  Louie Anderson's in better physical shape than this guy, how much did he bribe his doctors to maintain the lie about his weight?  Remember, everything's a scam, including the President's official weight - you can't eat just Big Macs and KFC buckets and weigh in at 239, it's impossible.  He was 350 at least, that's like Raymond Burr status, or two Paul Rudds. 

This film is propaganda, sure, but in a way it was necessary propaganda - it's no coincidence that this was released at a time when certain factions were seriously considering having Trump removed from office, either by impeachment or via the 25th Amendment, over physical disability or mental instability.  Pointing out that these psychiatrists had some kind of moral obligation to speak up to protect the populace, that's just not going to fly, and overall it doesn't counter-balance the kind of remote diagnoses being handed down here, which itself is some kind of violation.  Just because I happen to agree with the verdict shouldn't excuse the methods used to arrive there.  If you want to prove this man is mentally unstable or unfit, we're going to need some hard evidence, because nobody removes a president lightly.  Sure, we GOT our hard evidence on 1/6/21, but this film came out in August 2020, clearly trying to influence the upcoming election. 

NITPICK POINT: You can't have it both ways, because Bill Clinton did have affairs, too - as did JFK, FDR, and many other Presidents.  One might draw the logical conclusion that this is WHY men want to rise to positions of power, so they can do whatever they want, at least sexually.  Therefore you can't diagnose one a serial abuser and another a slight egomaniac from a distance, perhaps just because of your political leanings. Let's just admit that most Presidents can't seem to keep it in their pants, except maybe Obama and Biden. Right? 

In the end, I think the best description of Trump comes from Anthony (The MOOCH!) Scaramucci who's no psychological expert, and doesn't claim to be, and still finds himself in the position of having to defend his old boss of what, 11 whole days? Scaramucci says (I'm paraphrasing here) look, Trump's not evil, he's not a sociopath, he's not a megalomaniac, he's not even a racist because he's terrible to EVERYONE, regardless of color, so he's just an ASShole.  Well, of course, but stop confusing me with all the technical jargon. Worse than being an asshole, he's OUR asshole, we elected him, so we created him, even though he's always been an asshole, and will always be an asshole.  We made that asshole President, all of us, we all played a part, and as we learned yesterday, it's partly Hillary's fault, partly the DNC's fault, partly the voters' fault, partly the RNC's fault, partly Twitter's fault, and partly the fault of previous administrations that created the socioeconomic conditions that allowed him to rise to power.  So let's FIX those leaky-roof problems, so this doesn't happen again, mmmKay?  The bigger question then becomes, how many people already knew about Trump's faults as a human, and voted for him anyway? 

I had a choice of Trump films, it was either this film or "You've Been Trumped", which is about some dispute he had in Scotland over a golf course.  Now I'm kind of wishing I'd watched that one, because maybe it would have been more fun, but I think this film is probably more important in the larger scheme of things.  "You've Been Trumped" had a sequel, though, and I just couldn't fit two films in here in place of one - plus that film would have cost me $1.99 on YouTube, but this one was free on AmazonPrime, so it won out.   The good news is, I learned about what a smart, reasonable and sensitive man George Conway is, I had him pegged all wrong, just because he was married to Kellyanne Conway.  But maybe these two are just a dysfunctional functioning couple that disagrees politically, like James Carville and Mary Matalin were, once upon a time. (Back in the day, they worked as strategist for opposing parties, Carville for Democrats like Bill Clinton and Matalin for Republicans like George H.W. Bush. Somehow, they made that work, I guess by not bringing political work home.)

Also starring Anthony Scaramucci (also carrying over from "The Accidental President"), Ruth Ben-Ghiat, George Conway, Lance Dodes, Ramani Durvasula, Justin Frank, John Gartner, Cheryl Koos, William Kristol, Suzanne Lachmann, Malcolm Nance, Richard Painter, Rick Reilly, Sheldon Solomon, 

with archive footage of Steve Bannon, Wolf Blitzer, Mika Brzezinski, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Kellyanne Conway, Ted Cruz, Steve Doocy, Lindsey Graham, Brian Kilmeade, Chris Matthews, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Mike Pence, Charlie Rose, Joe Scarborough, George Stephanopoulos, Howard Stern, Jake Tapper, Chuck Todd, Melania Trump (ALL carrying over from "The Accidental President"), William Barr, Daniel Day-Lewis (last seen in "Phantom Thread"), Alan Dershowitz, Rodrigo Duterte, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, Yecep Erdogan, Anthony Fauci, Erich Fromm, Barry Goldwater, Jane Goodall, Mikhail Gorbachev, Chris Hayes, Adolf Hitler (last seen in "Angela's Ashes"), Samuel L. Jackson (last seen in "Coming 2 America"), Brett Kavanaugh, David Letterman (last seen in "Whitney"), Monica Lewinsky, Mitch McConnell (last seen in "John Lewis: Good Trouble"), Ilhan Omar (ditto), Ayanna Pressley (ditto), Ronald Reagan (ditto), Rashida Tlaib (ditto), Steven Mnuchin, Benito Mussolini (last seen in "The House that Jack Built"), Joseph Stalin (ditto), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (last seen in "Knock Down the House"), Vladimir Putin (last seen in "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm"), John G. Roberts (last seen in "All In: The Fight for Democracy"), Paul Ryan, Sean Spicer, Tony Schwartz, John Spencer,  Fred Trump, Ivana Trump, Tiger Woods

RATING: 4 out of 10 mulligans

The Accidental President

Year 13, Day 113 - 4/23/21 - Movie #3,817

BEFORE: Nancy Pelosi carries over again from "Knock Down the House" and it seems that before I can go forward, politically speaking, I've got to look back.  Today I'm watching a documentary all about the 2016 election, and the circumstances leading up to it.  Again, the 2020 election documentaries have not been produced and released just yet.

Tomorrow TCM reaches the letter "S" in their A-to-Z schedule of Oscar-winning and Oscar-nominated movies.  The ceremony is this Sunday, so they're just not going to reach the end of the alphabet in time, but that's OK.  Here's the breakdown for tomorrow, April 24:

7:30 am "Royal Wedding" (1951) - SEEN IT

9:30 am "San Francisco" (1936)

11:45 am "The Sandpiper" (1965) - SEEN IT

2:00 pm "The Sea Wolf" (1941)

4:00 pm "The Search" (1948)

5:30 pm "The Secret of Santa Vittoria" (1969)

8:00 pm "Sergeant York" (1941) - SEEN IT

10:30 pm "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" (1954) - SEEN IT

12:30 am "7 Faces of Dr. Lao" (1964)

2:15 am "Shadow of a Doubt" (1943) - SEEN IT

4:15 am "Shaft" (1971)

Hitting big with 5 seen out of 11 tomorrow, that's almost half, and it raises me to 111 seen out of 278, or 39.9%, almost back to 40%.  I'm a bit embarrassed to say I've never watched the original "Shaft", just the remake with Samuel L. Jackson. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Fahrenheit 11/9" (Movie #3,279) (today is Michael Moore's birthday, BTW)

THE PLOT: In 2016, any poll you consulted pointed to a Hillary Clinton landslide, so this balanced documentary seeks to answer one question - How the hell did Donald Trump win? 

AFTER: This is one of those films that's 50% interviews, 50% archival footage, and about 125% Monday morning quarterbacking.  The hot thing now seems to be proving that you KNEW Trump was going to get elected, and you were able to say that in print or on TV before anybody else.  "August 2020, that's when I knew Trump was going to get elected."  "When the Access Hollywood footage came out and had no impact, that's when I knew Trump was going to get elected."  "April, that's when I knew..."  Produce the footage of yourself saying that, or it didn't happen...but how could everybody have known, if nobody knew?  OK, the polls got it wrong, what happened, did the polls just ask the wrong people?  Or were people saying one thing and doing another and how do we prevent it from happening again?  

This does come across as a rather comprehensive field guide to what happened in the months leading up to the 2016 election, from Trump riding that escalator down to announce he was going to run, right up to the late-night surprise results coming in, and the distressed Hillary campaigners leaving the Javits Center late on Election Night without any satisfaction.  I stayed up late, as I usually do, and I watched the results come in, which then presented me with a dilemma - do I wake up my wife and tell her the bad news, or let her have one last night of solid, untroubled sleep?  I chose the latter.  Four miserable years later, I repeated the process on Election Night 2020, with (ultimately, a few weeks later) better results.  

Here are the basic tenets this film postulates, as background for how we got there:

1) TRUMP NEVER WANTED TO WIN.  Not at first, anyway.  His candidacy wasn't meant to be serious, he'd sort of half-suggested many times before that he would run for President, but never followed through.  But with the failure of Trump Air, Trump Steaks, Trump casinos, and Trump University, he saw a way to increase his visibility and extend his "brand" into politics, but at the start of his campaign, nobody took him seriously, least of all himself.  However, once he started, and connected with large groups of people at rallies, it became a gratifying sort of feedback loop, where he fed off the crowds and told them what they wanted to hear in return, and that fed his ego in the most addictive way, making him crave more attention, and he'd do nearly anything to get it.

2) TRUMP CONNECTED WITH THE LOWER CLASS. This was a tough one for the pundits to figure out, obviously there was financial dissatisfaction across the country, and for Democrats, Bernie Sanders would eventually ride the same wave that resulted from economic disparity between the haves and the have-nots.  The film suggests that Sanders and Trump were like opposite sides of the same coin, which leads one to wonder what could have been if they'd faced each other in the election. But somehow, against all reason, the lower class came to admire the NYC billionaire who lived in a golden tower - perhaps it was because he ate buckets KFC on his jet and also loved McDonald's food.  Why, he's just like us?

3) HIGH VISIBILITY / SOCIAL MEDIA. All the other Republican candidates were starting nearly from scratch.  Sure, people in Texas knew who Ted Cruz was, people in Florida already knew Marco Rubio.  But EVERYBODY already knew Trump, he'd been around for years, on the NYC gossip scene, magazines, "The Apprentice", wrestling matches.  And somehow it didn't matter that he was a rich, rude pig, at least he was believable and honest, because that's who he was.  The other Republican candidates had advisers who told them how to dress, what to say, what to eat, and Trump didn't care, he just went on being his unapologetic self.  Then came the rallies, which often came to resemble WWE events - and you've probably seen how popular wrestling events were.  Trump-a-Mania was running wild.  Then came Twitter, and...

4) SAYING OUTRAGEOUS THINGS. Tweets that were misspelled and in ALL CAPS.  Making fun of a reporter with a disability.  The rude nicknames for his competition, from "Lyin' Ted" and "Little Marco" to "Sleepy Jeb" and "Crooked Hillary".  It became a giant game of "Trump can't really say that, can he?" Oh, but he could, and he did, and it didn't matter whether it was true or not. You throw enough mud at your opponents, and some of it's going to stick.  By the time the other candidates learned to throw it back, it was too late, and they were terrible at it.  Again, years of advisers telling the candidates how to act properly, and then Trump just cut them all down, one by one, ending both the Bush AND Clinton dynasties with his personal slams.  Degrading John McCain, making fun of Carly Fiorina's appearance, even going back to the classics, like calling Rosie O'Donnell a "fat pig", and each time people thought, "Oh, THIS time he's gone too far, there's no coming back from this..." and they were always wrong.  This was a reality show that people found fascinating, like "Cops" or "World's Wildest Car Crashes", and they kept tuning in to see how bad the next crash was going to be.

5) WHAT-ABOUT-ISM. Every time somebody tried to take him down, Trump just pointed the finger back at his accusers.  All those women who claimed sexual assault charges against him?  He'd just point out the similar bad record of Bill Clinton, during the debates with Hillary.  And it's not even her FAULT that her husband cheated on her, or did whatever with Monica or Paula, etc.  How could that possibly reflect badly on her?  Somehow, it did, and this brings up: 

6) THE HILLARY PROBLEM.  Hillary Clinton had waited years for this opportunity, so long that she felt she deserved the 2016 nomination (Joe Biden took a pass in 2016, so now we have to wonder what could have been...).  Sure, Hillary had years of service as First Lady, Secretary of State, a NY Senator, but that didn't make her a shoo-in for President.  There was still the matter of her husband's affairs, which, again, shouldn't reflect badly on her in theory, but what was up with that relationship?  Did they have an open marriage, or was she just the cheated-on spouse who forgave him?  And if that's the case, which played better with the public, forgiving her husband or throwing him to the curb and getting a divorce?  People probably say they understand option 1, because it preserves "family values", but I suspect more people would have respected her if she'd thrown Bill's ass out, filed for divorce and acted like the strong, independent woman she claimed to be.  Then there was her personality problem, even with her impressive resume that didn't mean people would automatically, you know, LIKE her.  She often came off as fakey, too rehearsed and therefore insincere, plus all attempts at humor didn't seem to work for her...

7) THE HILLARY PROBLEM, Part 2. Scandals, many of which were manufactured by the opposition, no doubt. Benghazi, which was a joke. The e-mail server, which was another joke, and nothing was ever proven to be wrong with the missing e-mails. The lack of evidence is not evidence, necessarily, but try telling that to Trump.  He strongly implied this had something to do with Russia, which it didn't.  And then Comey re-opened the investigation just weeks before the election, why?  Because he said he "didn't want to interfere with the election", which made no sense. If he didn't want to interfere, he should have done nothing, and once again, nothing came from this, but just re-opening the case in October was bad enough.

8) THE HILLARY PROBLEM, Part 3. That sense of entitlement, that feeling that came from being up in the polls, the illusion that her election was a "done deal" or was "in the bag", and allowed her to slack off a little bit, not visiting states like Wisconsin and Michigan, traditional Democratic strongholds, forming the "blue wall" with Pennsylvania included, and this turned out to be a huge mistake.  So she stayed home to prep for the debates, meanwhile Trump was holding rallies in those states that drew 10,000 or 20,000 or 30,000 people each. Where were the Hillary rallies? Nowhere, she preferred to meet with small groups of donors in places like the Hamptons, and that didn't help with the perception that she was part of the establishment. Trump's rallies, being some combination of prop/insult comedy, WWE-style taunting and Nazi-like propaganda, were events tailor-made for the common man. 

9) BERNIE SANDERS. There was a point where Bernie started gaining ground in the Democratic primaries, he came to the Democratic Convention with a fair number of delegates, only to be told that he needed to do "the right thing" for the party and endorse Hillary. Umm, why? Just because it's her turn? That's not how the system is supposed to work, we're supposed to let the people vote in primaries and treat those results as if they have meaning. If Bernie won a few states, those are his delegates and HE gets to decide what to do with them.  There were possible solutions, other than the one we got.  He could have joined the ticket as the VP candidate, for example, this would have kept his many younger fans in the fold. By making Bernie give up his delegates, do you think his Democratic supporters - 10%, 20%, whatever it was - would be more likely to embrace Hillary's message, or the similar anti-establishment message that Trump was broadcasting?  

10) ELECTORAL COLLEGE - this one's been covered at length before, because we have this crazy system where every state HAS to have a winner for some reason, and it was allegedly designed to help the smaller states, but honestly, I don't see how this system does that, it only seems to give more power to the bigger states.  Like, you just can't win without California and Texas plus three other states, so how is that fair?  Doesn't this mean that only the people who live in the more populous states are deciding the election?  Trump lost the popular vote, don't forget, by like A LOT, and instead put together the right combination of states that would give him an electoral college total that was over the breaking point.  Hillary's people knew how many electors each state had, were they counting differently or something?  

Trump was essentially able to say, "Ha ha, I don't NEED the popular vote, because the people who support me live in the right places." This all seems rather arbitrary and counter-productive, but it's one of those "leaky roof" problems, where nobody's going to try and fix it now because there's no election coming up, and then when there IS an election coming up, nobody's going to try and fix it because it's too close to the election.  SO, it will never get fixed.  I don't fault Trump for taking advantage of the electoral college, because it kind of reminds me of how I graduated early from college, and game recognizes game.  NYU told me I had to come up with an idea for a senior thesis film, but after my junior year, I realized that thanks to AP credits from high school, I had enough credits to graduate, thus saving thousands on tuition.  Senior thesis?  No thanks, but I will take that diploma, which I've earned.  I pretty much "electoral colleged" out of my senior year with 6 science credits, 6 math credits, 3 from art history and I think the results from Wisconsin and Arizona put me over the top.  

Anyway, the "winner-take-all" process in each state seems to be in conflict with the "one person, one vote" ideal that we were promised as U.S. citizens.  If you're a Republican in a blue state like California, or a Democrat in a red state like Texas, your vote just goes into the void, there's got to be a feeling that maybe your vote didn't count.  A couple times people have tried to game the system and "trade votes" with someone in another state, but then there's no guarantee that the other voter will honor their commitment.  Two states use a slightly different method, Maine and Nebraska, and they split the state's electors between the parties, whichever candidate wins an electoral district wins one electoral vote, and that seems fairer?  Maybe it's time to try this method with all the states, so if there are heavily Republican districts in California then it essentially becomes a "purple" state, and the Republican candidate might win a few of that state's 55 Electoral votes, and if there's a Democratic enclave in Texas, some Dem candidate might be awarded some of that state's 38 Electoral votes.  And this way more citizens might feel like there votes are making a difference, because the current system is just encouraging people to move to other states for their votes to count, and that kind of thinking ends with a Civil War, I bet. 

11) RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE. Honestly, we still just don't know about this one. Was Russia colluding with Donald Trump to take the American system down?  Or were they just buying Facebook ads and sending tweets with bad grammar to muddy the waters?  The only people proven to be in the pockets of the Russkis were Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort, and then the investigations just sort of...stopped?  I don't know, you never hear about this any more now that everybody who worked for Trump got a pardon, and there's no point in prosecuting any more.  So we know that the Russians interfered, but we don't know how effective it all was, did it sway the election by 5%? 10%? Just a few electors in swing states?  Still, that might have been enough, because of the Electoral College. 

12. GARY JOHNSON and JILL STEIN. Just kidding, these candidates couldn't have been less effective if they tried. Neither one got any electoral votes, so they didn't matter. Johnson got 3% of the popular vote, but that didn't matter either, Hillary won the popular vote, remember?  Anyway, that doesn't decide things because of #10.  If there has to be a #12 reason, it's because Trump told Americans what he thought they wanted to hear, and they believed him, even though it was all a pack of lies.  

My favorite comment on the 2016 election came from a stand-up special, I wish I could remember which comedian did this routine where he described the two candidates as very different cars available on a dealer's lot, with Clinton represented by the station wagon with wood paneling, or maybe it was a minivan with a high safety rating, while Donald Trump was best represented by an orange Ferrari.  You just KNOW buying the Ferrari is a bad idea, you'll probably end up with it wrapped around a tree, but still, it's flashy, loud, appealing and it sure gets your attention.  A lot of people maybe went into the voting booth knowing they should get the minivan, but secretly wishing they could buy the Ferrari.  A lot of them probably just went for it in the booth, said, "You know what?  YOLO, screw it, I'm voting for Trump.  What's the WORST that could possibly happen?"  Yeah, well, now we know.  Next time, get the minivan. 

Anyway, I knew back in summer of 2015 that Hillary couldn't win, I was saying that she had too much baggage and too many negatives before Trump even got into the race.  Ask any of my friends and co-workers, they'll confirm this.  But who listens to me? 

Also starring Scott Adams (yes, the Dilbert cartoonist), John Avlon, Molly Ball, Amy Chozick, Kellyanne Conway, Michael D'Antonio, Susan Del Percio, Mary Katharine Ham, Van Jones, Allan Lichtman, Frank Luntz, Richard Miniter, Piers Morgan (last seen in "Always at the Carlyle"), David Pakman, Deb Roy, April Ryan, Anthony Scaramucci, Matt Schlapp, Steve Schmidt, Aaron Sorkin, Jerry Springer, Joe Trippi, Jonathan Wackrow, 

with archive footage of Huma Abedin, Bret Baier, Steve Bannon, Adrienne Batra, Joy Behar (last seen in "Hall Pass"), Wolf Blitzer (last seen in "The Report") Jon Bon Jovi, Mika Brzezinski (last seen in "David Crosby: Remember My Name"), Jeb Bush (last seen in "Get Me Roger Stone"), Ben Carson (ditto), Ted Cruz (ditto), Chris Christie, Bill Clinton (last seen in "John Lewis: Good Trouble"), Hillary Clinton (ditto), Marcia Fudge (ditto), Barack Obama (ditto), Michelle Obama (ditto), Stephen Colbert (last seen in "Becoming"), Gayle King (ditto), Bill O'Reilly (ditto), Oprah Winfrey (ditto) James Comey, Anderson Cooper (last seen in "The Wizard of Lies"), Ann Coulter (last seen in "All In: the Fight for Democracy"), Steve Doocy (ditto), Brian Kilmeade (ditto), Rachel Maddow (ditto), Scott Pelley (ditto), Mike Pence (ditto), Donald Trump (ditto), Simon Cowell (last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Larry David (last seen in "Whatever Works"), Ellen DeGeneres (last heard in "Finding Dory"), Robert De Niro (last seen in "Drillbit Taylor"), Jimmy Fallon (last seen in "Fyre Fraud"), Jay-Z (ditto), Taran Killam (ditto), Charlie Rose (ditto), Carly Fiorina, Major Garrett, Willie Geist, Rudy Giuliani (last seen in "Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm"), Kim Jong-un (ditto), Whoopi Goldberg (last seen in "Top Five"), Lindsey Graham, Darrell Hammond (last seen in "Blues Brothers 2000"), Elisabeth Hasselbeck (last seen in "Made of Honor"), John Heilemann, Mike Huckabee, Wyclef Jean, Boris Johnson, Tim Kaine, John Kasich, Megyn Kelly, Larry King (last seen in "Fahrenheit 11/9"), Bernie Sanders (ditto) Beyonce Knowles (last seen in "The Lion King" (2019), Jared Kushner (last seen in "Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook"), David Muir (ditto), George Stephanopoulos (ditto), Melania Trump (ditto), Chris Wallace (ditto), Lady Gaga (last seen in "A Star Is Born"), Matt Lauer (last seen in "Whitney"), Barbara Walters (ditto), Don Lemon (last seen in "Warrior"), Bill Maher (last seen in "Between Two Ferns: The Movie"), Chris Matthews (last seen in "State of Play"), Bob Schieffer (ditto), Paul McCartney (last seen in "A Very Murray Christmas"), Seth Meyers (last seen in "Bombshell"), Tim Miller, Les Moonves, Norah O'Donnell, Rand Paul, Rick Perry, John Podesta, Ron Reagan, Harry Reid, Mitt Romney, David Rothschild, Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum, Joe Scarborough (also carrying over from "Knock Down the House"), Sherri Shepherd (last seen in "One for the Money"), Nate Silver, Howard Stern, Margaret Sullivan, Jake Tapper (last seen in "Late Night"), Chuck Todd, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump, Cecilia Vega, Meredith Vieira, Jeff Zeleny, Jeff Zucker, 

RATING: 6 out of 10 racist immigration bans

Knock Down the House

Year 13, Day 112 - 4/22/21 - Movie #3,816

BEFORE: Nancy Pelosi carries over from "John Lewis: Good Trouble" - and it seems that there's something of a lag when it comes to documentaries, after covering Michelle Obama's 2019 book tour, I'm now on the 2018 midterms.  This makes sense, it probably takes two years minimum to make a proper documentary, and then maybe longer if the news changes during the production period and makes the subject matter irrelevant - so the good documentaries about the pandemic and the 2020 election are still in the works, I guess maybe I'll get to them in a year or two.  TV moves faster, of course, so I've watched two docu-series about QAnon, one of which ended with the Capitol riots, that's probably about as current as could be where docs are concerned.  But my whole relationship with movies is about playing catch-up, and I guess it's always going to be that way. 

If you're catching up on classic Oscar-nominated films, here's the TCM line-up for tomorrow, Friday, April 23:

8:00 am "Rachel, Rachel" (1968)

10:00 am "Random Harvest" (1942)

12:15 am "Rashomon" (1950)

1:45 pm "Rasputin and the Empress" (1932)

4:00 pm "Rear Window" (1954) - SEEN IT

6:00 pm "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955) - SEEN IT

8:00 pm "Red River" (1948)

10:30 pm "The Red Shoes" (1948)

1:00 am "Rhapsody in Blue" (1945)

3:30 am "Romance" (1930)

5:00 am "Romeo and Juliet" (1937)

Jeez, just two seen today, out of eleven, taking me to 106 seen out of 267.  39.7% - and I know, I know, I should have seen "Rashomon" by now, it's near the top of like every classic film "must" list, but I've been focused on other filmmakers, most recently Bergman, so cut me some slack, I just can't be everywhere at once. 

THE PLOT: A look at the people involved with various political campaigns during the 2018 U.S. congressional election. 

AFTER: Well, unlike the other documentaries that have been part of this week, it looks like someone did a very thorough job of keeping track of who appeared in this film - and also the director did not rely heavily on archive footage, so there's really nobody for me to add to the IMDB listings today, what's there already seems very accurate.  This solidifies my decision over which two documentaries to drop from my line-up, which became overfilled after I added "All In: The Fight for Democracy" on Monday.  Sure, I could double-up and still hit Mother's Day on schedule, but I'd have to double up three times, so dropping the two films that are the least election-oriented makes more sense.  (I figured today's film would PROBABLY have uncredited footage of Obama, Trump or both, but it just doesn't.  So that limits my options a bit, if I want to keep the chain unbroken.)

Like many people, I've been watching MUCH more news than usual, starting in April of last year, because what else was there to do last year, with everything closed down, people out of work and no new movies and fictional TV shows getting released?  I made the choice to ride out the pandemic with MSNBC, usually with the repeats of "The 11th Hour with Brian Williams" and "All In with Chris Hayes", each night after my movie ended.  That's what turned me on to the John Lewis documentary, and also tonight's film.  But I somehow kind of got the wrong idea about this film, I thought it was about "The Squad", those four female freshman congresswomen, some of whom are people of color or Muslim, and therefore rubbed the right people the wrong way (or vice versa) just by their presence.  Nope, this is a film about four women running in the primaries for the 2018 elections, all progressive Democrats, all endorsed by two groups, Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress, all challenging other Democrats who were entrenched and perhaps not living up to what was expected from them. 

Only one young Democrat here is a member of "The Squad", and that's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or AOC for short.  She's from New York City, and her district covers part of The Bronx and part of Queens, only not the part I live in, so she's from my state but not my direct representative.  (The district I live in includes bits of Queens, Brooklyn and also Manhattan, which seems quite ridiculous...but that's gerrymandering for you.)  There was something about AOC that rubbed me the wrong way for quite a while, I think part of it was her voice, she sounded like an entitled teenager to me at first, and she used to say "like" and "umm" a lot, but I think she's gotten over that, to some degree.  Seeing her in this film, challenging long-time do-nothing Democrat Joe Crowley, I've gained some respect for her at last - Crowley didn't even live anywhere near his district, which I thought was illegal, and couldn't even be bothered to show up to debate AOC, not until she started gaining on him in the polls, anyway.  After running unopposed for several elections, Crowley finally learned, just a bit too late, that if you don't listen to your constituents, they may (eventually) vote for someone who will.  

Formerly a political activist, also a waitress and bartender, AOC went on to win the 2018 election for New York's 14th District, thus becoming the youngest woman to ever serve in Congress, at age 29.  Before that, she graduated cum laude from Boston University, with a double major in economics and international relations, and then in Congress became the proponent of the "Green New Deal" legislation, and I swear I didn't plan this tie-in with today's Earth Day festivities, but I'll take credit for it nonetheless.  Then during the recent Texas power crisis in February, AOC ran campaigns for the Texas food banks that raised $5 million in funds, plus she traveled there to volunteer with recovery efforts, so I think I've come around, she's growing on me. 

The other candidates seen in this film aren't so lucky, as you might expect, a political campaign is an uphill climb, just getting your name out there and your opinions heard might be easier now thanks to social media, but it's often not enough.  Cori Bush failed in her first try in 2018, as seen in this film, but she tried again, and as I learned when she was interviewed on MSNBC last night, she succeeded in 2020 against Lacy Clay, and is now the U.S. Representative for Missouri's 1st Congressional District.  She joined "The Squad", which rose from four members (AOC, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib) to six. Paula Jean Swearingen from West Virginia tried again in 2020, but lost to Shelley Moore Capito by more than 40 points, and I guess Amy Vilela from Nevada gave up.  

But they all led noble efforts, as with "John Lewis: Good Trouble" I'm impressed that some people who feel strongly about issues get out there and try to DO something about it, most days I can't even be bothered to do laundry or go grocery shopping, it's just too much effort.  Or it's raining, and I don't want to leave the house.  I swear that I really am applying for part-time jobs, three or four a week, but I'm just not getting any calls for interviews, so I don't know what's up.  But to other people it probably looks like I'm not applying myself at all, just going to the office three days a week, and the other days I'm still sleeping late and trying to trick myself into doing a few chores.  I'm thinking maybe if I had another part-time job I'd be more motivated, but it's also possible that then I'd be so exhausted all the time that I'd be even less productive at home.  Either way, I've got to get out of this funk, maybe watching political activists campaigning for a better tomorrow will spark something.  Probably not, if "Top Chef" or "The Masked Singer" are on.

Which is a valid point, the four women seen here had prominent motivations - AOC worked double shifts to save her family's home from foreclosure, Amy Vilela lost a daughter due to a medical condition that didn't get diagnosed because of lack of insurance, Paula Swearingen watched friends and family suffer from the environmental effects of the coal industry, and Cori Bush was moved to take action after the police shooting of Michael Brown and the Ferguson riots.  So that's something of a common theme here, from tragedies comes the need to take action, and these are the events that drove these women to politics.  I'm not entirely convinced at the end of the day that things are that simple, just because the story is ongoing and continues beyond the scope of this film - but at least it's an interesting look at the nuts and bolts of the process, even if it feels unresolved.

Also starring Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (also carrying over from "John Lewis: Good Trouble"), Cori Bush, Paula Jean Swearingen, Amy Vilela, Joe Crowley, Isra Allsion, Sagar Deshpande, Jo-Ann Floyd-Whitehead, Darryl Gray, Keenan Korth, Joe Manchin III, Blanca Ocasio-Cortez, Gabriel Ocasio-Cortez, Riley Roberts, Joz Sida, Patric Taylor, Shannon Thomas, Corbin Trent, with archive footage of Errol Louis, Joe Scarborough (last seen in "David Crosby: Remember My Name")

RATING: 5 out of 10 campaign brochures

John Lewis: Good Trouble

Year 13, Day 111 - 4/21/21 - Movie #3,815

BEFORE: Same link as yesterday, Barack and Michelle Obama carry over via archive footage, and probably several others do as well.

Set your DVRs today for tomorrow's Oscar-nominated films on TCM - Thursday is Day 22 of their "31 Days of Oscar" line-up:

6:15 am "Pride and Prejudice" (1940)

8:15 am "Pride of the Marines" (1945)

10:30 am "Primrose Path" (1940)

12:15 pm "Princess O'Rourke" (1943)

2:00 pm "The Prisoner of Zenda" (1937)

4:00 pm "The Private Life of Henry VIII" (1933) - SEEN IT

6:00 pm "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex" (1939)

8:00 pm "The Producers" (1967) - SEEN IT

9:45 pm "Psycho" (1960) - SEEN IT

11:45 pm "The Public Enemy" (1931) - SEEN IT

1:30 am "The Pumpkin Eater" (1964)

3:30 am "Pygmalion" (1938)

5:15 am "Quo Vadis" (1951)

Another 3 seen, but out of 13 films today, so I'm going to drop a bit yet again - 104 seen out of 256 brings me down to 40.6% seen. I'll be lucky to finish above 40% at this rate. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Selma" (Movie #3,650)

THE PLOT: The film explores the Georgia representative's 60-plus years of social activism and legislative action on civil rights, voting rights, gun control, health care reform and immigration. 

AFTER: It's just a coincidence that I'm reviewing this film about civil rights on the day that a major judgment got handed down in the Chauvin trial, the killing of George Floyd.  How could I possibly have known?  I couldn't have - just as tomorrow's scheduling was also accidental, but I'll deal with that tomorrow.  Minneapolis, New York City and other urban areas were braced for possible protests, which now are not going to happen.  Now, of course racism hasn't been solved, there will still be killings of black Americans by cops, so it's hard to say that anything's been solved, but in this one instance, some justice has been rendered - not that it should have been necessary in the first place, but, you know...

Almost a year ago, we had the Black Lives Matter protests going on, and I saw the need to make a pivot, change my schedule and watch "Selma" so I could understand more of the protest history, and now I've hit the same topic again, only harder this time, with a biographical documentary on John Lewis, who participated in the marches from Selma to Montgomery, and also was one of the original "Freedom Riders" who rode on segregated buses from Washington to New Orleans to protest racist seating policies.  AND before that he participated in the Nashville sit-ins to protest racist lunch counter service.  AND as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, he helped organize the 1963 March on Washington and spoke at the event. AND he wrote a response to JFK's Civil Rights bill, calling it "too little, too late" and also taking it to task for not protecting African Americans from police brutality.  Yes, this all does feel somewhat relevant, especially with the news of the day and of the last year.  

All of this, protesting, getting arrested, is what Lewis called "good trouble", causing trouble for the right reasons, for a noble cause.  Serving in Congress is also a noble cause, and he did that too, serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1987 until his death in 2020.  He was part of many major positive pieces of legislation, and earned everything from the Profile in Courage award to the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  He was awarded over 50 honorary degrees and was the first member of Congress to write a graphic novel - so, basically, he was no slouch. Watch this only if you want to feel somewhat ineffectual by comparison - like, I wish I had a cause that I felt strongly enough to protest and get arrested for.  My father did a lot of charity work, and I just can't find the time to follow in his footsteps, so I don't even bother, I just send some money to City Harvest when I can.  But damn, John Lewis was a busy, committed force of nature for over five decades.  

(Lewis also has the distinction of referring to Donald Trump as a "demagogue" way back in January 2016, before most other people figured this out.  Then after the 2016 election he called him an illegitimate President and refused to attend his inauguration. John Lewis knew what was up...)

The film does a better job, near the end of the film, of listing all the important legislation that John Lewis wrote, co-wrote, or introduced.  Just watch the damn film, it's the least you can do to honor his legacy...Lewis died last year, just two weeks after the film premiered, and at that time, he was the last surviving speaker from the historic March on Washington in August 1963.

Also starring John Lewis, (last seen in "All In: The Fight for Democracy"), Stacey Abrams (ditto), Eric Holder (ditto), Hillary Clinton (ditto), Bill Clinton (last seen in "Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook"), Colin Allred, Cory Booker (last seen in "Fahrenheit 11/9"), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (ditto), James Clyburn, Elijah Cummings (last seen in "Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook"), Antonio Delgado, Lizzie Fletcher, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Anthony Johnson, Mike Kelly, Bernard Lafayette, James Lawson, Sheila Jackson Lee, Ilhan Omar, Nancy Pelosi (last seen in "Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm"), Ayanna Pressley, Beto O'Rourke, James Sensenbrenner, Rashida Tlaib, Marc Veasey, Ruth Berg, Noah Bookbinder, Lonnie Bunch, Xernona Clayton, Michael Collins, Bettie Mae Fikes, Henry Lewis, John Miles Lewis, Samuel Lewis, Ethel Lewis-Tyner, Rosa Lewis-Tyner, Charles Neblett, Jamila Thompson, 

with archive footage of Julian Bond, Tom Brokaw (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton"), George W. Bush (last seen in "All In: The Fight for Democracy"), Lyndon Johnson (ditto), Martin Luther King (ditto), Ronald Reagan (ditto), Marcia Fudge (ditto), Andrew Young (ditto), Laura Bush (last seen in "An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power"), Stokely Carmichael, Jimmy Carter (last seen in "Steal This Movie"), Jamie Foxx (last seen in "Project Power"), Bryant Gumbel (last seen in "The Weather Man"), Vicky Hartzler, Robert F. Kennedy (last seen in "The Trial of the Chicago 7"), Jesse Jackson (also carrying over from "Becoming"),  Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, Diane Nash,  Maxine Waters, Paul Weyrich, Malcolm X (last seen in "Da 5 Bloods").

RATING: 7 out of 10 enthralled chickens

Becoming

Year 13, Day 110 - 4/20/21 - Movie #3,814

BEFORE:  It's an easy link today, both Barack and Michelle Obama carry over from "All In: The Fight for Democracy".  Once I had the list of political docs I wanted to see, there were probably a hundred different ways to organize them, because the same people keep popping up, again and again - but I was limited to those connections visible through IMDB, which are notoriously incomplete and therefore unreliable.  (I'm working to fix that, but these things take time...)

So the week will basically start with Mike Pence and end with Donald Trump, with a lot of other people in-between.  Me keeping track is sort of a full-time job right now, but it's got to be done, or else the chain could break, and my efforts will be for naught.  This is the harder documentary chain for me, the one planned for July is already set and looks pretty solid, yet it's also somewhat flexible, I keep finding new docs to add to it, and so far most of them have fit in without disturbing the chain much - hopefully HBO Max and Netflix will keep those docs available through summer time.  

It feels a bit like I'm taking a step back tonight by focusing on the Obamas - why didn't I do this back during Barack's term in office?  Did they not make any good documentaries about him, or was I just not into watching docs at that time?  I'm guessing it's the latter.  Anyway, I'm not really going back in time, because this film was released in 2020, and is all about the former First Lady's book tour in 2019.  

Let's check in with TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" schedule for tomorrow, Wednesday, April 21:

6:00 am "A Patch of Blue" (1965)

8:00 am "Penny Serenade" (1941) - SEEN IT

10:15 am "The Perils of Pauline" (1947)

12:00 pm "Period of Adjustment" (1962)

2:00 pm "Pete Kelly's Blues" (1955)

4:00 pm "The Philadelphia Story" (1949) - SEEN IT 

6:00 pm "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1945)

8:00 pm "Pillow Talk" (1959) - SEEN IT

10:00 pm "The Pirate" (1948)

12:00 am "Places in the Heart" (1984)

2:00 am "Poltergeist" (1982) - SEEN IT

4:15 am "Possessed" (1947)

I've seen another four out of 12, but only two of them were reviewed here on this blog - I saw "Poltergeist" in a movie theater in 1982, thinking it would be the next "E.T.", and it scared the crap out of me, didn't sleep well for a week.  Also, sometime in my pre-teen years I saw "Pillow Talk" on TV, with Rock Hudson and Doris Day - that ALSO scared the crap out of me, and I didn't sleep well for a week, but I'm thinking that was for different reasons. JK.  Anyway, I'm now at 100 seen out of 243, which is just over 41%.

THE PLOT: An intimate documentary looking at former first lady Michelle Obama's life, hopes and connection with others during her 2019 book tour for "Becoming". 

AFTER: I'll be the first to admit it, it's been a tough year.  Forget that, it's been a tough FOUR years, and you know why.  So today it was really nice to look back at a much simpler time, a happier time, eight years where we had a competent President, and an empathetic First Lady.  Unlike others I could mention (who "didn't really care", by her own admission) we had a Commander-in-Chief who spent the majority of his time playing on the golf course and eating fast food, and accomplishing absolutely nothing - go ahead, name ONE positive thing that came about during 2016-2020, I dare you. Don't worry, I'll be backing up this claim with a couple docs later this week, which I can easily assume will prove my point.  

Remember Michelle Obama, though?  How she not only listened to people's concerns, but also cared about what they had to say?  How she authorized growing vegetables in the White House Garden, like "America's Mom" or something?  Leading by example, speaking out on causes that meant something to her, and not decorating the White House with blood-red horror trees during Christmas time.  It's like she was a real person, one of us, and not some fakey-fake model from Eastern Europe who was proud to just be a trophy wife. (Seriously, how do you take a stand against immigrants after marrying one?  Just saying.)  Her causes were poverty awareness, education, women's rights, LGBT rights, physical activity and nutrition, and what did Melania have?  "Be Best"?  Give me a break, it's not even close.  In 2020 Michelle Obama still topped the Gallup poll of most admired women in America, because women know what's up. 

This documentary followed her around on her 2019 book tour, where she sold out stadiums (!!) instead of just appearing in bookstores.  Her replies to questions from a host of famous moderators are spliced together here, so it seems like she probably answered the same questions in each city, and the only detriment to the editing used here is that Michelle's outfit sometimes changes mid-question in order to produce the proper sequence of answers for the doc. Deal with it, I guess.  (Sure, she COULD have worn the same outfit in each city, but my guess is that the wardrobe department and the continuity department were just not on the same page, they had very different concerns.)

There's no question that the former First Lady is the poster child for achieving balance in one's life, it's just too bad that she had to put her legal career on hold just to be a better mother and wife.  (We STILL can't make it easy for women, in general, to figure this out, after all this time?)  This problem reared its ugly head again during the pandemic, when suddenly parents had to balance working from home with their kids' remote learning, and probably something had to give, somewhere, again and again.  And I wonder why the questions that teens ask Michelle Obama are still about achieving this balance, and becoming like her, instead of just wanting to become more like themselves.  It's YOUR road, Ms. Obama tells them, you've got to figure that all out for yourselves - she did it in a much nicer way than I could, obviously.  But essentially, why are girls still asking how they can marry a President, rather than asking how they can BECOME President?  (Look, I love the fact that Biden's in charge now, but he's no spring chicken, I have a hunch that we'll have a female President sooner than anyone thinks...)

But more than anything, this flashback to book tours and the before-times ended up being like a nice warm hug, and some small assurance that just maybe, everything's going to be (close to) OK.  Eventually.

Also starring Craig Robinson (not that one, Michelle Obama's brother), Marian Shields Robinson, Sasha Obama, Malia Obama, Kelly Robinson, Elizabeth Alexander, Stephen Colbert (last seen in "Fyre Fraud"), Valerie Jarrett, Gayle King (last seen in "The Boss"), Michele Norris, Conan O'Brien (last seen in "Fyre"), Phoebe Robinson, Tracee Ellis Ross, Oprah Winfrey (also carrying over from "All In: The Fight for Democracy"), Melissa Winter, Reese Witherspoon (last seen in "Home Again") 

with archive footage of Jill Biden, Joe Biden (last seen in "Bombshell"), Bill O'Reilly (ditto), Jesse Jackson (also carrying over from "All In: The Fight for Democracy"), Juan Williams.

RATING: 6 out of 10 Secret Service agents

All In: The Fight for Democracy

Year 13, Day 109 - 4/19/21 - Movie #3,813

BEFORE: I think I must have confused yesterday's film, "Rigged", with this one, but they came out in different years. "Rigged" was released in 2019, so it was amazingly prescient for a film that predated the 2020 election by a year, yet all of the tactics mentioned were used by the Republicans at some point during the election.  THIS film, "All In", was released in 2020, just before the election, and I remember it being publicized in October.  So here I am, watching it 6 months after the fact, but for me that's actually a quick response time, when you consider my blog was dark most of November and December, plus it can take me several YEARS to link to a specific film, so getting to it just 6 months after release is relatively prompt.  I think I got confused when Stacy Abrams was in the IMDB credits for "Rigged", and I just don't remember seeing her in that film, but her story is a big part of "All In", so either I missed her, or someone else was as confused about the two films as I was.  It's possible that both docs have the same exact information in them about voter suppression, but this is the one that got all the attention.  

At the very least, one interviewed person carries over for sure, Michael Waldman - but probably a LOT of people carry over via archive footage.  I saw Barack Obama in the trailer, so he's almost certainly seen here, and that allows me to connect to tomorrow's film, so I'm in the clear. However, this film wasn't part of the plan until just yesterday when I realized my mistake - so adding this one means I'll have to drop something else if I'm still going to make it to Mother's Day in time.  It's OK, I guess I'll drop some of the lesser Trump-themed docs, he certainly doesn't deserve any more attention.  I need to watch this one while it still counts as (semi-) current events, and I also don't want to have to circle back this way again.

First, a quick check of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" line-up for tomorrow, April 20:

6:00 am "One Way Passage" (1932)

7:30 am "Operator 13" (1934)

9:00 am "Our Dancing Daughters" (1928)

10:30 am "Our Town" (1940)

12:15 pm "Our Very Own" (1950)

2:00 pm "Pacific Liner" (1939)

3:30 pm "Paisan" (1946)

6:00 pm "Pal Joey" (1957) - SEEN IT

8:00 pm "Papillon" (1973) - SEEN IT

10:45 pm "A Passage to India" (1984) - SEEN IT

1:45 am "Passion Fish" (1992)

4:15 am "Pat and Mike" (1952) - SEEN IT

Just another 4 seen out of tomorrow's 12, so 96 seen out of 231, or 41.5% overall. 11 days until the letter "Z" and just 6 days until this year's ceremony.  

THE PLOT: A look at the history of, and current activism against voter suppression; barriers to voting that most people don't even know are a threat to their basic rights as U.S. citizens. 

AFTER: I feel a little weird, diving into American politics in April, rather than, say, around July 4.  But today, April 19, happens to be the anniversary of the start of the American Revolution, the battle of Lexington and Concord began on April 19, 1775.  OK, so that's not really the start of American politics, but it's the start of the war that made American politics possible, so that's something. There have been a few wars and many uprisings since, and the battle for civil rights is an important one of those.  This film ended up doing a deep dive into the civil rights battles, Jim Crow laws, everything going back to the post-Civil war times, the 13th through 15 amendments (it ignored the 19th, though, because women's suffrage is apparently a separate issue...)

And a lot of this ended up being about Stacey Abrams and the Georgia gubernatorial race in 2018, which is a bit weird because I read that at first she didn't want her story told in this film, and then relented because of what happened in that election - I don't think they would have had much of a movie without her participation, this film would have then been a carbon copy of "Rigged", mixed with material from "13th".  There's very little here about the 2020 election, which is a bit disappointing, but I guess it hadn't all happened yet, so that documentary is still forthcoming.  (One of the directors, Liz Garbus, also directed or produced that "I'll Be Gone in the Dark" mini-series I watched about the Golden State Killer, and she's now producing upcoming docs called "Gamestop", "Cousteau" and "Fauci".)

But the 2018 election for governor of Georgia - and the 2016 Presidential election - should have been taken as a sign of how things were going to go.  As if it weren't already enough that Republicans had gerrymandered the hell out of the U.S. after the 2010 census, and moved to restrict early voting and instituted all kinds of voter ID laws, and purges that removed hundreds of thousands of "undesirable" or "inactive" voters off the books, without their knowledge or consent - on top of ALL that, the election supervisor was also the Republican candidate!  That should never have been allowed, not in ANY election, there's just no way that an election supervisor is going to act impartially if his name is on the ballot!  So was anyone really surprised that there were voting irregularities, voting machines that didn't work in districts where his opponent was favored, and then missing ballots that turned up, thousands at a time, weeks after the election?  Yes, these are things that Republicans cited in (unproven) cases of election fraud in 2020, but they really happened in Georgia in 2018!  

So, Stacey Abrams did NOT become the governor of Georgia in 2018 - this douchebag Brian Kemp did, by the thinnest of margins, 50.2% of the vote. Previously, as Secretary of State, he had cancelled more than 1.4 million voter registrations, and held up another 53,000 registrations during the 2018 election, 70% of which came from potential African-American voters, then he won by just 55,000 votes, so you have to wonder what the totals would have been if he hadn't kept over a million people from voting. He probably would have lost, so how does he deserve to be holding that office now, and implementing new policies about (you guessed it) restricting voting rights.  Sorry, as he calls it "securing the integrity of our electoral process".  What a bunch of bull.  

Stacey, to her credit, did not concede the election, because of all the voter suppression tactics used that affected the outcome, and because there were so many outstanding votes that had possibly not been counted properly or were perhaps disposed of.  Unfortunately, this sort of made her a precursor to Trump not conceding - Trump apparently stole ideas and tactics from both parties in this Georgia election, but unlike Trump, Abrams had good cause to complain, while Trump and the Republican party was just making stuff up.  All that stuff they claim happened nationwide in 2020 really happened in Georgia in 2018, though - but remember how whenever Trump's lawyers filed a claim over voter fraud, they had NO evidence to back up their claims?  What they wanted was to gain access in order to GET evidence, and that's just not how it works, thank God. 

(Look, this sort of thing is above my pay grade, really, but just a quick look at the Wikipedia page on the 2018 Georgia election, and something just doesn't smell right.  Kemp's opponent in the Republican primary, Lt Gov. Casey Cagle, got 39% of the primary vote to Kemp's 25%. Since neither candidate got over 50%, this forced a run-off vote, and before the run-off, Kemp was polling at about 18 points above his opponent, but then he won the run-off by almost 40 points?  He jumped up from 25% to 70%, in a primary where he was also the election supervisor?  Where his opponent had tons of endorsements from other politicians and the NRA, and he had NONE?  This just doesn't smell right, something's rotten there.)

The film ends with celebrities speaking over Zoom from their homes, with advice on how to register and vote in the 2020 Presidential election, and to make sure that their vote is received and tabulated.  All of this is good advice for future elections, and should stand the test of time - show up early, don't get discouraged, don't let anybody tell you to get out of line, even if the polls close...  More people need to be aware of their rights, and also be aware that the voting process really begins a few months before the election, when voters need to register or check their registration to make sure they haven't been purged from the rolls.  Now the people in power are going to keep "securing the integrity" of the process which means making it more restrictive, disabling early voting, removing ballot boxes, challenging absentee ballots, and now they want to make it a crime to give food or water to anyone in line, with the idea that some people will get hungry or thirsty and bail.  These are the new challenges, and the vote restrictors are the weasels that need to be voted out of office, because think about it, if they were honest, competent people who were acting appropriately and fairly in office, then they wouldn't be so scared about losing the next election, now, would they? 

Our language is a funny thing, and sometimes there are words that have more than one meaning, maybe too many meanings.  "Democratic" refers to both a system whereby every citizen has a voice, and it's also the name of one of the two major political parties.  "Republican" is the other party, but the word itself refers to the political system of a Republic, where the power is in the hands of the people's representatives.  So the USA is both a democracy and a republic, it's a democratic republic.  But you have to wonder if the Republicans are confused about the meaning of the word "Anti-Democratic", which would logically also have two meanings, being opposed to the Democratic party, or it could mean being opposed to democracy itself.  Somehow I feel like they've been blurring the line between the two definitions, or choosing to ignore the possibility of there being a difference. 

Also starring Stacey Abrams, Carolyn Abrams, Robert Abrams, Debo Adegbile, Jayla Allen, Carol Anderson, Ari Berman, Kristen Clarke (also carrying over from "Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook"), Eric Foner, Marcia Fudge, Alexis Delgado Garcia, Alejandra Gomez, Lauren Groh-Wargo, Eric Holder, Luci Baines Johnson, Desmond Meade, Michael Parsons, David Pepper, Frances Fox Piven, Bert Rein, Barbara Semans, O.J. Semans, Neil Volz, Hans von Spaskovsky, Andrew Young, Sean J. Young.

with archive footage of Hillary Clinton, Lyndon Johnson, Brian Kemp, Kris Kobach, Martin Luther King, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Mike Pence, Donald Trump, Steve Doocy, Brian Kilmeade, Scott Pelley, the voices of John G. Roberts, Antonin Scalia and Sonia Sotomayor (all carrying over from "Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook), George W. Bush (last seen in "Official Secrets"), Nathan Deal, Terrence Floyd, Gerald Ford (last seen in "The U.S. vs. John Lennon"), Glenn Grothman, Richard Harrison, Jesse Jackson, Paul B. Johnson Jr.,  Coretta Scott King, John Lewis. Ronald Reagan (last seen in "Whitney"), William Rehnquist, Carl Sanders, Eugene Talmadge, John Bell Williams, Nikema Williams, Joe Arpaio, Jason Aubry, Tucker Carlson, Nancy Cordes, Ann Coulter, Lou Dobbs (last seen in "State of Play"), Trevor Noah (last seen in "Coming 2 America"), John Oliver (last heard in "The Lion King" (2019)), Diane Sawyer (also last seen in "Whitney"), Oprah Winfrey (last seen in "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood"), the voice of Rachel Maddow (last seen in "The Report"), with cameos from Vanita Gupta, Dolores Huerta, Joe Jonas, Kevin Jonas, Nick Jonas (last seen in "Jumanji: The Next Level"), Yara Shahidi (last heard in "Smallfoot"), Gabourey Sidibe (last seen in "Top Five"), Gloria Steinem (last seen in "RBG"), Jonathan van Ness.

RATING: 5 out of 10 endorsements from state senators

Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook

Year 13, Day 108 - 4/18/21 - Movie #3,812

BEFORE: Perhaps I should continue cramming for the Oscars, but with so few linking paths out of "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm", I saw the opportunity to transition over to documentaries.  This is one of the trickiest linking things I do, moving from fiction to non-fiction and back, as I have to look for either an actor being interviewed in a documentary (thankfully, they make some docs about actors, singers and such, or often use actors to narrate docs, as this one does) or I could find a historical fiction film that uses archive footage of political figures to set the scene, as "Da 5 Bloods" and "The Trial of the Chicago 7" did.  Sometimes I'm aware of this and I can turn it to my advantage, other times, I may only find out about the use of archival footage after the fact. 

A big issue for me is that not every filmmaker (or whoever's on staff) takes the time to keep a film's IMDB records completely up to date.  A film's budget may allow for the licensing of a ton of news clips, but then the record-keeping may fall by the wayside.  It's like Hollywood isn't concerned about the audience members out there who might be watching films in a linked chain. (OK, make that "member", I think it's just me.)  So I've resolved to take the time to update the IMDB records whenever I can, partially because it brings order to the universe, but also because anyone who speaks on camera or has their image used in a film deserves credit for that, dead or alive, whether they want it or not.  

If I stick a number of docs together on a similar topic (pop music, politics) I certainly increase my chances of keeping the chain alive despite improper record-keeping.  But then after I work my magic, there then tends to be so much overlap that I may wonder why I bothered - but bear in mind that this week's chain was put together before making alterations to the credits, so that's why the films appear in a particular order.  I had a hell of a time finding another movie where either Rudy Giuliani or Mike Pence (who carries over from "Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm") was credited, but once I did, things seemed to flow together all right. 

Historically, today's the anniversary of the Three-Fifths Compromise - April 18, 1783 was the first instance of black slaves in the U.S. being counted as 3/5 of a person, for the purpose of taxation, according to a resolution from the Congress of the Confederation, but this carried over to the U.S. Constitution four years later. 

A quick look at the TCM "31 Days of Oscar" for tomorrow, April 19, then we'll see how relevant that little historical factoid is:

7:00 am "None But the Lonely Heart" (1944)

9:00 am "Now, Voyager" (1942) - SEEN IT

11:00 am "Odd Man Out" (1947)

1:00 pm "Of Human Bondage" (1934)

2:30 pm "Of Mice and Men" (1939)

4:30 pm "Oh, God!" (1977) - SEEN IT

6:30 pm "The Old Man and the Sea" (1958) - SEEN IT

8:00 pm "Oliver!" (1968) - SEEN IT

10:45 pm "On the Town" (1948) - SEEN IT

12:30 am "On the Waterfront" (1954) - SEEN IT

2:30 am "One Foot in Heaven" (1941)

4:30 am "One Million B.C." (1940)

6 out of 12 seen, which is essentially a push, but it raises my percentage just a bit, 92 seen out of 219 is a solid 42%, I'll take that. 

THE PLOT: This documentary examines how, since 2008, right-wing groups have worked with certain states to make it harder to vote, particularly for minority groups and young people. 

AFTER: The other thing about documentaries is that the more I watch, the more it skews my stats toward politicians, newscasters, and late-night talk-show hosts.  Ex-presidents have a tendency to be the most-seen people of the year, if I watch too many historical docs, the way the Beatles keep showing up in archive footage if I watch too many music docs.  This year, I'm planning to do two documentary chains, one political and one music, so who will have the most appearances this year, when it's all over?  I'm thinking now it's going to be Donald Trump and/or Oprah Winfrey, but we'll see.  

This film confirms what we've long suspected, that there's been a concerted effort to keep people deemed undesirable from voting, and it's ongoing.  While it's been in the works for a long while, most likely it began when white Republicans realized that one day the minorities in the U.S. would become the statistical majority (but, but, what would we CALL them, then?) the panic that ensued left them scrambling for a way to hold on to power.  Sure, they could change their policies to appeal to a wider demographic, but that sounds like a compromise, plus a lot of work.  So instead they instituted policies to try to keep more people of color from entering the U.S. and becoming citizens, plus other laws that would disenfranchise certain people who were born here (jeez, it's not like there's a physical document that guarantees them the right to vote - oh, wait...) and then when that didn't work, they tried lying to them about having their best interests at heart, and then when THAT didn't work, they started telling "The Big Lie" about voter fraud.

According to this film, it's a 10-step plan, which includes everything from radical gerrymandering to the Voter ID laws, to claiming there are MILLIONS of instances of voter fraud when it's really more like tens.  One proven case of voter fraud per one million votes does not constitute an emergency, it's statistically irrelevant.  "But, but, how do you KNOW there isn't more voter fraud, if you can't prove that?  What about all the cases we don't know about?"  OK, sure, we can't prove a negative, we can't prove that there ISN'T more voter fraud, so ultimately we do need some kind of "better" system that will track U.S. citizens, but here's the problem - there are millions of them, and by the time you enter everybody into any kind of tracking system, you'll find that a bunch of them have died and a bunch more of them got born, so there's not enough computing power to keep track of everybody, something we're finding out through the vaccine stats, which are all estimated.  Secondly, that sounds very "Big Brother"-ish, to have some kind of tracking system to tabulate all U.S citizens, and it's the kind of thing that Republicans are usually AGAINST, with their cries to keep American government small, and out of people's private lives.  If minorities have to register for voter IDs, then so do all the doomsday preppers and conspiracy theorists, fair is fair.  

But here's the problem with Voter ID laws, they usually just require voters to have a government photo ID, to be part of the system, which most middle-class white people already are, via a driver's license.  For some people, who aren't as well-off, getting a driver's license is a big deal, there's a cost involved, they maybe have to take time off to stand in line at the DMV, they have to GET to the DMV (which could be a problem, if they can't drive there), and then to get that license they have to have a birth certificate or other proof, and some people just don't have that, or they lost it and don't know how to get another copy, which could involve ANOTHER cost.  So when you add up the travel costs, time off from work, cost to get the birth certificate and the cost of the license, some people just can't afford to get that all done, which then excludes them from voting - so votes in that state then get cast by only people at a certain income level.  But we have laws against poll taxes or there being any costs involved with voting, and then we've got a contradiction on our hands.  And then what about people who don't pass the driver's test, for any of a number of reasons?  If you can't drive a car, you can't vote?  That doesn't seem fair, either. Zero percent of the people who voted for George Washington could legally drive a car.

What is it about Republicans always wanting to game the system?  And why are the Democrats so bad at calling them out for it?  This is true, in North Carolina there's a state board of elections, which decides issues of availability, like early voting, and also oversees recounts and investigates cases of voter fraud.  It's comprised of five people, three from the Governor's party and two from the opposing party.  But in 2016 someone in the state senate introduced a bill that would create a bipartisan election board, with eight members, four from each party.  Sounds fair, right?  Except that the Democratic appointees would chair the committee in odd-numbered years, and Republicans would chair during the even-numbered years, which also sounds fair until you realize that EVERY Presidential election takes place during an even-numbered year.  So, essentially, the Republicans would gain control of any challenges to Presidential election results going forward - another power grab.

We're all still reeling from the 2020 election in many ways, when people recall how long it took to count the votes, how long it took to declare Biden the winner, and then we had Trump refusing to concede for MONTHS, which affected the transition time to a new administration, and the constant re-telling of the Big Lie is a direct cause of the Capitol Hill Riots.  How many times did they recount Georgia?  How many baseless challenges were filed in courts around the country?  Thankfully some Republican governors who were in charge of the recounts stepped forward and had a bit of integrity, and were able to certify that Biden won their states, placing personal integrity over party affiliation.  This could have easily gone the other way, and the future of the USA could have hung in the balance for longer than it did - all things considered, we got off lucky.  We could be in the first year of Trump's second term right now, with little or no progress made against COVID-19 or economic recovery...

This voter suppression really kicked into high gear in 2008, gee, umm, what happened that year that could have scared the Republicans so much?  Bunch of racist a-holes couldn't handle seeing an African-American president, right?  Babies...your party lost in 2008, suck it up.  And 2012, and 2020, and really, 2016, if you think about it.  I remember standing in line for hours to vote last October, which meant that people were coming out in droves, from everywhere, just to make sure Trump didn't get elected again.  Collectively we had to make sure that it wasn't even close, so there would be no dispute.  Still, there was dispute - unbelievable!  Biden won by 7 million votes, even though the results aren't determined by popular vote, can they really claim that 7 million Americans committed voter fraud?  They couldn't prove a conspiracy among 7 people in the Trial of the Chicago 7, how can anyone possibly prove a conspiracy involving 7 MILLION?  As this film points out, if there had been a concerted effort to commit fraud, if they somehow found people willing to put themselves at risk, put on disguises or impersonate a relative in order to vote, get them all around by bus to several different voting locations, which costs money, by the way, for the buses and the gas, and then pay them off to buy their silence?  7 million people?  No way, somebody would have cracked by now, or sold their story to the tabloids, so therefore it just. didn't. happen.

It's the same way with the vaccine - right now the U.S. has administered about 200 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine, and (this is an estimate because Big Government doesn't have a supercomputer tracking everybody) they say over half of all adults have been vaccinated now, or about 40% of the population overall (this second stat includes kids).  Great progress, but what about vaccine fraud?  Shouldn't we be more vigilant about people trying to game the system, jump the line, and get vaccinated too early?  Well, no, for several reasons.  First off, everybody who gets vaccinated is a plus, even if they jump the line, that's still one more person who's protected, who can't get COVID, and that protects everyone else in the long run.  Secondly, while there have been people caught trying to jump the line, it's like TWO people, those two Florida ladies who dressed up like grannies and got caught.  Two people (let's be generous, say maybe two hundred who snuck by across the country, or even two thousand) - what's that compared to the 200 Million doses administered in the last four months?  Statistically, it's darn near irrelevant.  Should we stop all people from getting shots until we have a system in place that will prevent fraud?  Of course not, because there's a damn pandemic going on, and we need as many people immunized as possible, in the long run.  

Yes, voter ID laws would prevent the statistically insignificant number of fraudulent votes from being cast - but they'd prevent THOUSANDS more people from being able to vote, people who are U.S. citizens, who are willing and able to vote, but just can't get it together to prove their identity and have a proper license by the day of the election.  Since it's believed that most of these people vote the Democratic party line, that's why Republicans are so keen on these restrictive laws.  With the Democrats in power right now, it's time to think long-term, reduce gerrymandering and start taking away these processes that are allowing those in power to remain in power unfairly. Should 10,000 Latinos who live near each other be made part of a district with 100,000 whites in it, so they can't vote as a block on issues that are important to them?  Didn't we JUST have a census, and can't it be used to make things fairer overall?  Like, why do we have square states and square counties, but voting districts in some of the weirdest shapes possible?  

This is another film that's available for FREE on Tubi and IMDB.com - and it couldn't be MORE relevant to our current political climate.  The U.S. elections have come to resemble a leaky roof - nobody needs to fix the roof when it's not raining, and then when it is raining, nobody is able to fix the roof.  There are FOUR DAMN YEARS between elections, and then for some reason everybody's too busy for three of them, and then in the fourth year nobody can fix it because there are primaries going on.  Voting machines that don't work, disputes over absentee ballots, early voting, and now all this shite over voter ID, purging the rolls and removing ballot boxes.  I can't go through this all again. 

Also starring Jeffrey Wright (last seen in "Only Lovers Left Alive"), Justin Alferman, Todd Allbaugh, Matt Angle, William Barber, Steve Bell, Randy Burkhead, Kristen Clarke, Mike Colona, Elijah Cummings, Jay De Lancy, Margaret Dickson, Rosanell Eaton, Pamela Elliott, William Frey, Cassandra Gould, Dan Gould, Jon Harris, Richard Hasen, Gerald Hebert, Dale Ho, Mike Hyers, Sherrilyn Ifill, Chris Jankowski, Ron Klain, Kris Kobach, Chris Kromm, Justin Levitt, Molly McGrath, Mark McKinnon, Jane Meyer, Zack Moore, Janice Patterson, Myrna Perez, Manuel Rodriguez, Mindy Silva, Darrell Volkman, Michael Waldman, Karen Wilson-McKoy, Michael Wines,

with archive footage of Bill Clinton (last seen in "Whitney"), Hillary Clinton (last seen in "Shine a Light"), Lyndon Johnson (last seen in "The Trial of the Chicago 7"), Martin Luther King (ditto), Brian Kemp, Jared Kushner, John McCain (last seen in "The Report"), Stephen Miller, Reince Priebus, Michelle Obama (last seen in "David Crosby: Remember My Name"), Barack Obama (also carrying over from "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm"), Donald Trump (ditto), Melania Trump (ditto), Gretchen Carlson, Fergus Cullen, Chris Cuomo, Steve Doocy (last seen in "Bombshell"), Brian Kilmeade (ditto), Alex Jones (last seen in "Get Me Roger Stone"), George Stephanopoulos (ditto), Chris Wallace (ditto), Aasif Mandvi (last seen in "Drunk Parents"), David Muir (last seen in "Whitney"), Lawrence O'Donnell (last seen in "London Has Fallen"), Scott Pelley (last seen in "Always at the Carlyle"), Gregg Phillips, Shepard Smith (last seen in "Fyre Fraud"), Samuel Alito (last seen in "Fahrenheit 11/9"), Stephen Breyer (ditto), Elena Kagan (ditto), Anthony M. Kennedy (ditto), John G. Roberts (ditto), Sonia Sotomayor (ditto), Clarence Thomas (ditto), Ruth Bader Ginsburg (last seen in "On the Basis of Sex"), Antonin Scalia (last seen in "RBG"), Amy Coney Barrett, 

RATING: 6 out of 10 Supreme Court rulings