BEFORE: Tim Robbins carries over from "Tapeheads", and so do two other actors in smaller roles. Well, I did say I wanted to get more political this year, and I've done that - but this is perhaps my last attempt to add to that topic, with just six more films to watch this year. Unless Snoke is seen in "The Last Jedi" wearing a red baseball cap and starts talking about "Making Alderaan Great Again".
THE PLOT: A right-wing folk singer becomes a corrupt politician and runs a crooked election campaign. Only one independent muck-raking reporter is trying to stop him.
AFTER: I'm not the only one who sees the connection here - the internet is now calling this "the 1992 film that predicted Donald Trump", despite some obvious differences. The character of Bob Roberts was running for U.S. Senator, not President, for just one example. Also, Roberts used folk music as his platform for becoming famous before launching his political career, not reality TV. But aside from those things, it's another case where a movie seemed to function a bit like a crystal ball for the election of 2016.
Both Bob Roberts and Trump are rich right-wingers, and both are very willing to talk about their wealth (though Trump seemed to adopt right-wing politics after being a Democrat for a very long time, and still won't release his tax returns, so we don't REALLY know if he's as rich as he claims). But both used racial divisiveness and catchy slogans to get elected - for Roberts those slogans were in the form of songs, and for Trump they were in the form of three-word phrases ("Build the wall", "Lock her up", and so on...). And both, of course, would say just about anything to get elected.
Another telling moment is what seems to be a predictor of Trump's appearance on "SNL" during the 2016 campaign. In this film, Bob Roberts travels to New York City to appear on a comedy show called "Cutting Edge Live" and perform a song. We see him meeting with a very Lorne Michaels-like producer (named "Michael Janes") and the guest host of the show, John Cusack (possibly playing himself) is not happy about sharing the stage with a right-wing politician - and neither is one of the female staffers, who knocks out the power during Roberts' performance.
Roberts is also a slick businessman, who went to military school as a teen, is a manipulator of the media who displays any negative press as "fake news" and there are rumors of a connection to failed businesses (savings and loans) in his past, while his political opponents all call him a "con man". Sound familiar? Bob Roberts might as well have been hash-tagging "MAGA", only we didn't have Twitter back then. Oh, plus we see him hosting a beauty pageant in Pennsylvania - and as the election draws near, protestors start appearing at Bob Roberts' rallies, only to be roughed up by security and yelled at by the candidate on the stage. Watch it yourself if you don't believe me, that's all in the film. The signs were there, we chose to ignore them - I took my time getting to this film, so I take on some of the blame. But in 1992, this was considered an outrageous satire, and looking back on it in 2017, it's very close to our current reality.
The prophecies only go so far, of course - Roberts chooses to imply that his opponent, incumbent Senator Paiste, had an improper encounter with a 14-year old girl, while the Senator claims she was just a friend of his granddaughter, who was in the back-seat of the car, and he was giving her a ride home. (If this were truly predictive of Trump, he'd probably support a candidate for dating a 14-year old, like he's doing for Roy Moore, rather than criticizing him for it...) And in the film there's only one diligent reporter trying to take Bob Roberts down, while in our reality there are probably hundreds of them trying to get the dirt on Trump, and it doesn't seem to be making a difference, at least not yet.
This is a fascinating peek inside the playbook of the things that politicians will do or say to get elected, promising everyone everything while campaigning, while knowing that it will be mathematically impossible to both cut taxes AND increase military spending, to create jobs AND reduce the deficit, to maintain peace AND keep us out of war. But some people keep believing in those contradictions, don't they? Last year at Christmas, my (younger) cousin kept telling me what a great President Trump was going to be, and if I see him this year and the FIRST thing he says to me isn't "Boy, was I wrong!" then we've got nothing constructive to talk about.
Also starring Giancarlo Esposito (last heard in "The Jungle Book"), Alan Rickman (last seen in "Sense and Sensibility"), Ray Wise (last seen in "Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie"), Brian Murray, Gore Vidal (last seen in "Gattaca"), Robert Stanton (last seen in "Jason Bourne"), Harry Lennix (last seen in "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice"), Rebecca Jenkins, John Ottavino, Merrilee Dale, Kelly Willis, Tom Atkins, David Strathiirn (last seen in "Godzilla" (2014)), Jack Black (last seen in "Orange County"), John Cusack (also carrying over from "Tapeheads"), Lee Arenberg (ditto), Bob Balaban (last seen in "Catch-22"), Lynne Thigpen (last seen in "Sweet Liberty"), Bingo O'Malley (last seen in "Out of the Furnace"), Kathleen Chalfont (last seen in "Perfect Stranger"), Anita Gillette, Matt McGrath (last seen in "The Anniversary Party"), with cameos from James Spader (last seen in "Supernova"), Pamela Reed (last seen in "Eyewitness"), Helen Hunt (last seen in "Bobby"), Peter Gallagher, Susan Sarandon (last seen in "Moonlight Mile"), Fred Ward (last seen in "Masked and Anonymous"), Fisher Stevens (last seen in "Hail, Caesar!"), Jeremy Piven (last seen in "The Crew"), Robert Hegyes.
RATING: 5 out of 10 local news anchors
No comments:
Post a Comment