Be that as it may, the Republican reign we now live under soon followed, abetted by the free pass given to Bush and company by the media, not to mention the movies, after 9/11. Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 (2004) opened up the president as fair game, but only in documentaries that for the most part preached to the already converted. In contrast with the movies of the Watergate or Monica Lewinsky eras, no mainstream feature film has dared mine the growing resentment against the ruling regime — until now.
Wag the Dog |
Bush and the box office
The first real attempt at taking on Bush, Paul Weitz’s American Dreamz (2006), didn’t seem likely to encourage imitators. Dennis Quaid, aping George W., plays the president as a loveable dolt whose only flaws are credulousness and ignorance, and who allows his unprincipled handlers (Willem Dafoe plays a fusion of Cheney and Rumsfeld that is more disturbing than his Max Schreck in Shadow of the Vampire) to manipulate him into folly. His nemesis is a terrorist named Omer, an endearing bumbler with a love of show tunes who’s manipulated by unprincipled Osama-types. They will meet on an American Idol–like TV show: will Omer assassinate the president or will they get along?Perhaps Weitz lost some of his satirical edge when terrorists struck the London subway system in July 2005 while he was in the midst of production (he has denied this in interviews). Whatever the reason, his lampoon proved too limp to please the anti-Bush crowd, too pointed for the president’s supporters, and too boring for those in between. Worst of all, it alienated American Idol fans, perhaps the only demographic that matters. It was a dismal failure.
So too was All the King’s Men, Stephen Zaillian’s remake of the 1949 Oscar-winning adaptation of Robert Penn Warren’s doorstop of a great American novel. Based on the rise and fall of Depression-era Louisiana demagogue Huey Long, it’s the story of Willie Stark, an idealist who learns pragmatic politics, acquires near dictatorial power, and grows correspondingly corrupt. Maybe the prospect of seeing Sean Penn as Stark deliver speeches for two hours put people off. Maybe it was the lack of any attempt to establish topical relevance (the first version played off the specter of Joseph McCarthy, with look-alike Broderick Crawford in the lead). Looking back, Zaillian blew a big opportunity for a contemporary hook, though he could hardly have known about it at the time. Just months after he finished shooting on location in the New Orleans area, Hurricane Katrina struck, laying waste to the region and to Bush’s poll ratings.
Although it was a bust with audiences and critics, All the King’s Men set up a paradigm repeated more successfully in other films. Unlike American Dreamz, which posed the president as a Candide-like character undone by bad men, in Zaillian’s film the leader himself chooses evil, misleads his or her innocent followers (or cynical reporters, like Jude Law’s Jack Burden), and betrays them.
