BEFORE: It feels so weird, not having watched a movie in five days - I was going to put this one off until the weekend, but then that would be EIGHT days without a movie, and that seems even harder, to go that long. But I've only got five films left for 2023, and there are still 24 days until the end of the year, so that means there will be LONG spaces somewhere, especially between Christmas and New Years. That's when I really need the break, to write my year-end wrap-up and also figure out the movie-watching schedule for January.
I'm picking up as many shifts at the theater as I can, though, before the whole campus shuts down for winter break. I'm working every day this week at one job or another, but still it feels like one job's about to shut down for two weeks and the other job's about to shut down forever. Maybe. It's hard to tell, but if you think about it, the life expectancy of every job or company over time is zero, every store or restaurant or film studio WILL close at some point in the future, so maybe the writing's on the wall, but you never really know until some debt ceiling has been reached, it's impossible for that company to continue, and then you have to pack up your personal things from your desk drawer and just head home. We'll see.
Hope Davis carries over again from "The Daytrippers".
THE PLOT: A dramatization that traces former UK prime minister Tony Blair's relationship with Bill Clinton.
AFTER: Nothing is permanent in life, that's my point, and that includes presidencies. Eight years is the legal limit - actually it's 10, did you know that? With the exclusion of FDR, who served for like 14 years, the rules of the Constitution are special for, say, a vice-president who became President after the death of the previous guy, or say, Gerald Ford after Nixon resigned. If that former VP served for under two years as President, he (or she) would be allowed to serve two full terms AFTER a partial term, so the real limit isn't 8 years, it's 10, somehow I remember that from U.S. history class. This is in the 22nd Amendment - but if the successor serves two years or over, he (or she) could only run for ONE full term after a partial term. (I wish Biden the best, of course, but if something happened to him tomorrow, VP Harris would take over, and she would be legally allowed to run for President and serve two full terms, because we're under a year away from the next election.)
Of course, this assumes that a President would FOLLOW the rules listed in the U.S. Constitution, and from recent history, that's all a bit doubtful now, isn't it? Jesus, how did we all get here, does anybody remember? The last Presidential term was such a blur because I just wanted to put my head down, not make any waves and just get through it - but Trump just won't go away, he's still the front-runner for the GOP next year and still drawing support despite 17 ongoing court cases and visions of his next term that are all apocalyptic and doomsday-oriented at best.
If you look at the progression of things, we kicked things off with George Washington, who had the reputation of never telling a lie, which might be a lie in itself, it's a bit tough to say. Still, there's the reputation of honesty, which was important back then, and then you hit President #3, Jefferson, and suddenly there's scandal involved where he's got at least one mistress who was one of his slaves, illegitimate children and such, yet still he ranks as one of our five greatest Presidents, author of the Declaration of Independence, champion of liberty and warrior against tyranny. So somehow we have to separate the personal life from the professional one? And then you follow the progression up to World War I & II (Wilson, FDR, Eisenhower, they all had affairs, right?) and through JFK, the biggest horndog of them all, and then you run into Clinton who had several affairs BEFORE becoming President, and at least one (probably more) during.
OK, so it's not a direct linear progression, but there are enough bumps in that road that we feel that these guys were all human and bound by desires for something more outside their marriages. Do we give them all a pass or do we lump them all together as serial cheaters? And then we get to Trump, the biggest liar of all, the biggest cheater of all since he cheated on THREE different wives and was faithful to none of them - I'm not sure he even knows HOW to be faithful when his every whim has been catered to since the jump. And in terms of lying, the Washington Post kept a running total of Trump's false or misleading claims over the years, and came up with 30,573 - and that's JUST during the four years of his administration. How many before that, and how many after?
So we got all the way from Washington, who "could not tell a lie", to Trump, with over 30,000. Well, the good (?) news is that if Trump gets elected again, he wants to be our last President and our first dictator, so there's that. I saw the quote from the new "Napoleon" movie where Napoleon says, "I am the first to admit when I make a mistake. I simply never do." Yep, that's a special privilege that dictators have, they get to be "right" all the time, because they kill or imprison anyone who disagrees with them. OK, so our Democratic country had a good run, I mean, 46 Presidents is a good run, I'll be sorry when it ends, but what can I possibly do about it.
Anyway, we're looking at Bill Clinton tonight, who's definitely on this spectrum somewhere between JFK and Trump, if you want to judge the President according to their honesty, and yes, that takes into account the personal life as well as the professional. You can still like and admire JFK and Clinton and overlook their affairs, or you can lump all three together as guys who couldn't keep it in their pants, that's up to you. But then we also have to discuss whether scandals rightfully followed Clinton around, or if it was all one big right-wing conspiracy. Then there's the issue over whether Clinton's womanizing was a personal issue, something to be dealt with between him and Hillary, or whether the public had a right to know about it. Perhaps this was a watershed moment in history, because a decade later we had the "Me too" movement that took down a lot of people in media and broadcasting who were in positions of power, and used that power to gain sexual favors. Clinton had an affair with an intern, and there could be no greater divide than between the "leader of the free world" and someone who's just trying to break into the scene. Even if they were both willing participants in an act, you can't ignore the difference in their positions, and that's what makes it wrong according to the new rules.
After serving as First Lady, Hillary Clinton went on to become a U.S. Senator from New York, and then as Secretary of State for four years during the Obama administration - that's fine, I'm guessing she was glad to get out and accomplish something, building up that resume, serving her state and country in Washington and around the world. But she was also getting ready for her Presidential run, and I remember talking with someone around 2015, and I predicted she would never get elected as President, because of all the scandals from her husband's administration. And not just her husband's affairs, remember Whitewater? More importantly, she didn't connect with women because she was still married to Bill, a serial cheater. Half the women in the U.S. probably thought she should have divorced him after he cheated, and the other half of the women in the U.S. wouldn't forgive HER if she did. Why they're still together, I have no idea - how awkward must that be? Now I'm still waiting for that person I spoke with in 2015, when I said that I liked Hillary Clinton and I would vote for Hillary Clinton, but she would never be President, to tell me that I was spot-on correct.
Then the whole e-mail server thing broke, and the Benghazi thing, and I knew she was done. But still, she WON the popular vote in 2016, but lost the electoral college, and that's happened five times in U.S. history, apparently. You can't just have the most votes, those votes need to come from the right states, and that's everything, because we had four years of disaster and lies and poor pandemic response and a whole bunch of fail under Trump. But I digress.
What about Tony Blair? I really don't remember much, but this film at least served to remind me that he became friends with Bill Clinton (who was running for his second term when they met) and because of this "special relationship" between the U.S. and the U.K., their fates were sort of tied together for a while. Then four years passed and Blair had to work with George W. Bush, and that was probably a whole different thing, right there. Initially this film was going to cover both Presidents, but then chose to narrow the focus to just Blair and Clinton, and W. appears only briefly at the end.
I remember the Clinton years, and I remember how frustrating it was that Bill's first four years got bogged down in vainly trying to straighten out the American healthcare system, and then this whole thorny issue about gays in the military came along to slow down any progress that got made. Then, of course, the second term sometimes felt like it was all scandal and impeachment preventing anything from getting done. Then, of course, came the dreaded Bush v. Gore election, the recounts and the lawsuits and the re-recounts and the hanging chads, the butterfly ballots and then when it was all over it was Bush's brother, conveniently the governor of Florida, who found a way to stop the recount when W. was ahead, and somehow it came down to just ONE county in Florida that decided the election, and Gore was the bigger and better man who stopped fighting for the Presidency, so naturally I think he would have made a better President, according to the wisdom of Solomon. He loved the country more because he put aside his own ambition to run it, for the sake of the process. I always say, show me a guy who's smart enough to NOT want to be president, and I'll vote for him, but I seem to be in the minority on this point.
So then we got four years where the U.S. was run by a real idiot who'd failed at countless other jobs before, only come on, that wasn't really the case because it was all a distraction, the real mastermind was Cheney running the country and George W. Bush was just the figurehead, it was all an illusion, like every magic trick. You're watching the "President" have dinners with other world leaders and read school books to children in photo ops, but the real governing is being done over THERE, where you can't see it, and Cheney's in charge of some real nasty shit that you'll never find out about. Boy, it's hard to believe it, but that now seems like the "good old days" when compared with four years under the Trump regime, where Donny didn't actually DO anything, especially where the pandemic was concerned, he just golfed every day (more than any other President) and ate fast food and sometimes traveled around the world, or went to throw paper towels at hurricane victims - yeah, that'll fix things.
Look, a lot can happen between now and November 2024. Trump could serve time, or lose enough court cases that he'd be discredited as a convicted criminal. Attitudes could change, the economy could get better, or we could have a recession or a depression. A new Republican front-runner could gain support, or a new Democratic front-runner could gain support. Trump could die, Biden could die or get sick, VP Harris could take over and immediately become the most electable person in 2024. Anything is possible, or we could just get a re-do of the 2020 election if nothing else changes from now. Then either Biden wins or Trump wins - and if Trump wins he either pardons himself and then goes on vacation for four more years, or he becomes a dictator and the U.S. ceases to exist as a democratic entity. I think that last situation is quite unlikely, but also not impossible - so the question then becomes, if that scenario comes to pass, what is the most appropriate response? Move to Canada, or stockpiles weapons, fuel and clean water and hide in the basement for another four years? We'll see.
Also starring Michael Sheen (last seen in "Kingdom of Heaven"), Dennis Quaid (last heard in "Strange World"), Helen McCrory (last seen in "Their Finest"), Adam Godley (last heard in "The People We Hate at the Wedding"), Marc Rioufol, Mark Bazeley (last seen in "The Bourne Ultimatum"), Kerry Shale (last seen in "Final Portrait"), Matthew Marsh (last seen in "The Informer"), Chris Wilson,
with archive footage of Gerry Adams, Tony Blair (last seen in "Iris"), Barbara Bush (last seen in "Nothing Compares"), George H.W. Bush (last seen in "The Devil's Double"), Dick Cheney (ditto), George W. Bush (last seen in "Respect"), Bill Clinton (ditto), Jimmy Carter (last seen in "Elvis"), Lyndon Johnson (ditto), Winston Churchill (last seen in "The Good German"), Dwight Eisenhower (last seen in "Lucy and Desi"), Al Gore (last seen in "Irresistible"), Edward Heath (last seen in "The Lady in the Van"), Lady Bird Johnson, Jacqueline Kennedy (last seen in "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists"), John F. Kennedy (last seen in "The United States vs. Billie Holiday"), Monica Lewinsky (last seen in "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer"), John Major (last seen in "Pavarotti"), Slobodan Milosevic, Richard Nixon (last seen in "Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood"), Nancy Reagan (last seen in "Cocaine Bear"), Ronald Reagan (last seen in "Blinded by the Light"), Franklin Roosevelt (last seen in "Where's My Roy Cohn?"), Harry Truman (ditto), Margaret Thatcher (last seen in "The Lady in the Van"), Boris Yeltsin.
RATING: 5 out of 10 press conferences
