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Haysbert, Ford, Kline and Fonda are among our favorites in Oval Office
By Rich Heldenfels
Beacon Journal popular culture writer
Published on Sunday, Jan 11, 2009
''I'm a movie guy,'' President-elect Barack Obama told CBS' Katie Couric during the campaign. With him less than two weeks from inauguration, presidents and movies have been on my mind. Obama's favorite movie, according to the Couric interview, is The Godfather. ''One and Two,'' he said to Couric. ''Three not so much.'' So he also has taste.
While he also praised Lawrence of Arabia and Casablanca, you can look at his take on The Godfather — ''this combination of old world gentility and ritual, with this savagery underneath'' — and wonder if he's describing a world view.
What, for example, did he learn about being president by watching movies and television?
For one thing, he could have seen a fictional world in which his run for the presidency was far less implausible than in the real one.
Movies and TV have long embraced the broader possibilities for an American president, whether it's women (Geena Davis in Commander in Chief, Glenn Close as the vice president in Air Force One) or people of color (Dennis Haysbert on 24, Morgan Freeman in Deep Impact, Jimmy Smits on The West Wing).
Although Smits' character, Matt Santos, was elected president in 2006, West Wing writer-producer Eli Attie told England's Guardian newspaper that the character was inspired by Obama. ''Some of Santos' insistence on not being defined by his race, his pride in it even as he rises above it, came from that,'' Attie said. The show even pitted Santos against a maverick Republican played by Alan Alda.
An even more telling example for Obama may have been Haysbert. While he has a place in local folks' hearts for playing Pedro Cerrano, the power-hitting Cleveland Indians player in Major League, he has become something of a TV icon thanks not only to 24 but his work in insurance-company commercials. Both of those roles convey authority and avoid stereotyping.
But there are other presidential models on the big and small screen to consider as the inauguration looms. Twentieth-century politicians alone provide a rich field. And since this is supposed to be a time for at least guarded optimism, let's look at some of the more positive screen scenarios.
• The Common Sense President. 1993's Dave was a modest success when it first came out, but it's hard to find anyone now who has seen it and doesn't love it. Kevin Kline plays an accidental president — a stand-in for the real guy who takes more and more initiative to get the country on the right track. When he firmly persuades his cabinet to cut some needless items from the federal budget, you can't help but think, ''If only life were like this.''
The movie is also noteworthy now because it includes Frank Langella, currently getting raves as Richard Nixon in Frost/Nixon. In Dave, he is the president's chief of staff, and you can see some of the foundation for his Nixon in this hilarious but terrifying performance. There is no exaggeration evident when the exasperated Langella declares how powerful he is: ''I can kill an ordinary person. I can kill a hundred ordinary people.''
You may also take note of a cameo by a future governor of California.
• The Action President. ''Get off my plane,'' Harrison Ford snarls near the end of Air Force One, and it's the most memorable moment in a film where the president fights terrorism with his fists as well as his wits.
In Independence Day, Bill Pullman is both president and a former fighter pilot whose response to an alien invasion includes getting back in the air himself. He also gives a stirring speech, including the still timely claim that ''We won't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests.''
• The Thoughtful President. Henry Fonda alone embodies the thinker in politics. He plays a presidential hopeful who is very clear-eyed about politics in The Best Man — and a contrast to a Nixon-like politician played by Cliff Robertson. (The movie is not yet on DVD, but VHS copies are around. And Turner Classic Movies will air it early Feb. 28 as part of an overnight lineup of political movies also including Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the original All the King's Men and The Manchurian Candidate.)
Fonda is also the president who faces a nuclear crisis in Fail-Safe, and only an enormous personal sacrifice will solve it. But when I think about the presidency onscreen, I also imagine someone like Fonda's juror in 12 Angry Men, a man who believes that, if we just open our minds and talk things through, we will get to the right answer.
• The Real Presidents. While there have been dramatizations of the lives of various presidents, you'd be best served by the marvelous documentaries about 20th-century presidents made for PBS's American Experience series. There's even a box set of 10 of the programs — about Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, the Kennedys, Lyndon Johnson, Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush — which in total runs about 35 hours. Reagan, Truman and FDR get more than four hours each.
You may question the time spent on some subjects, with Bush getting almost as much time as Johnson, even though Johnson's era was much more pivotal for the U.S. But they're consistently engrossing; even just re-sampling the Reagan and Nixon documentaries, I had to stop myself or I would have kept going through the entire production.
Beyond the presidents, of course, there have been looks at their men and women. The detailed if uneven West Wing is a prime example, with its focus on the tacticians around Josiah Bartlet and the way they shaped (and sometimes misshaped) policy. Another, more recent example is Recount, the HBO film about the battle for Florida following the presidential vote in 2000.
And sometimes presidents take their screen inspiration from film counterparts who are not running a country. Nixon famously watched Patton over and over. As the challenges of 2009 and beyond face Obama, I have to wonder in which productions the ''movie guy'' will find inspiration. And hope that it's not just The Godfather.
Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal and in the HeldenFiles Online blog at http://heldenfels.ohio.com. He can be reached at 330-996-3582 and rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.
''I'm a movie guy,'' President-elect Barack Obama told CBS' Katie Couric during the campaign. With him less than two weeks from inauguration, presidents and movies have been on my mind. Obama's favorite movie, according to the Couric interview, is The Godfather. ''One and Two,'' he said to Couric. ''Three not so much.'' So he also has taste.
Get the full article here.
Comments
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Posted 12:03 PM, 01/11/2009
I'll bet Haysbert is still haunted by the evil spirit, and can't hit the curve ball! Joboo is failing!
Posted 02:02 PM, 01/11/2009
Completely neglected mentioning Paul Giamatti's performance in the HBO miniseries about John Adams.
Posted 10:26 PM, 01/11/2009
I like Peter Sellers.
Cuyahoga Falls, Oh
Posted 07:28 PM, 01/12/2009
And you folks have neglected the satirical wisdom of SNL why?
Posted 12:34 PM, 01/24/2009
Fredric March, who played the president in Seven Days in May.
