FLYP Flicks: Filming the Campaign Trail

Revisit fictional and real campaigns of the past with our unique double features.

Surely you jest: watch the trailers for Wag the Dog and Man of the Year

Wag the Dog & Man of the Year
In this Barry Levinson double feature, the audience is challenged to decide for themselves what is or isn’t real when it comes to “politics as usual.”
In the 1998 satirical comedy Wag the Dog, the White House is forced to turn to Hollywood for help after the president is caught in a sex scandal only weeks before the upcoming election.
Playing with themes like the manipulation of the mass media and public opinion, the film focuses on the collaboration between the two sides as they fabricate a phony conflict to divert the public’s attention away from the president’s dalliances. Dustin Hoffman was nominated for a best actor Oscar for his portrayal of a Hollywood producer enlisted to create a false program with the sole purpose of misleading the American public.
In another Levinson film that mixes laughs with serious intentions, Man of the Year stars Robin Williams as a popular political talk show host who runs for president as a lark. After he ends up winning, it quickly becomes clear that he’s not any more unqualified for the job than the other life-long politicians he defeats.
Taken as a pair, the films prove that poking fun at the system can sometimes be just as effective as skewering it with documentaries and exposés.

Clintons v “Clintons:” Watch the trailer for Primary Colors

The War Room & Primary Colors
Bill Clinton’s 1992 race, despite a blitzkrieg of media coverage, managed to remain compelling enough to serve as the subject of both a documentary and a star-studded fictional narrative.
Acclaimed documentarian D.A. Pennebaker and partner Chris Hegedus closely followed Bill Clinton’s campaign staff, lead by James Carville and George Stefanopoulos, to film The War Room.
In doing so, they create a fascinating peek into the new breed of strategists that helped speed Clinton to victory. The film attempts to pull off the public masks of a political team more interested in championing their candidate than merely churning out slogans.
Primary Colors also attempts to provide insight into the Clinton’s historically unconventional campaign, while changing everyone’s names to take liberties with the facts. Directed by Mike Nichols, the film stars Emma Thompson and John Travolta as John and Susan Stanton, an ambitious couple facing the battle of campaigning while dealing with John’s incessant infidelity.
The film also stars Billy Bob Thornton as the Carville figure, alongside a boisterous Cathy Bates. Nominated for Academy Awards for best supporting actress (Bates) and best adapted screenplay, the film looks at the chaos that erupts during the uphill battle of a presidential campaign.

Convention Going: Watch the trailer for Medium Cool.

Tanner & Medium Cool
Political conventions give documentary-style narratives an extra boost of reality in Robert Altman’s sardonic Tanner series and Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool.
Superbly executed, Robert Altman’s made-for-TV political opus, which centers on fictitious presidential candidate Jack Tanner, lampoons the election process from the inside out.
Tanner ’88 follows the candidate, played by the unflappable Michael Murphy, in and out of the war room and onto the actual political scene as he interacts with various real-life figures such as Kitty Dukakis, Studs Turkel and Gary Hart.
Tanner on Tanner from 2004 chronicles Tanner’s daughter, Alex (Cynthia Nixon), as she makes a documentary about her father during the 2004 Democratic National Convention. The four-part series, made for the Sundance Channel, takes jabs both at politics and the media as Alex must decide whether or not to discard footage of her father in favor of his political career.
Groundbreaking for it’s use of the highly charged 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention as its backdrop, Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool fused fact and fiction into a statement on the role of the media.

Primary & The Last Party
Using lightweight, portable cameras and sound equipment—new at the time—Primary covers the 1960 face-off between John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey with astounding intimacy.
With their ability to crowd into cramped hotel rooms and offices with the candidates and closely observe their expressions as election results were revealed, cinematographers Richard Leacock and Albert Maysles were able to give a different kind of attention to the political sphere.
It’s a style of filmmaking that would become a movement called Direct Cinema and influence many filmmakers to come. Editor and photographer D.A. Pennebaker would go on to use this style to document musicians Bob Dylan and David Bowie, as well as his 1992 documentary, The War Room.
Also attempting to tap into the heart of politics, The Last Party features Robert Downey, Jr. as a sojourner of political truths traveling across the country in 1992 to question the crippling malaise of American society.
It touches less on personal insight and more at a glimpse into his own dysfunctional lifestyle that, in turn, serves as a microcosm for society’s ills.
Both films demonstrate the power of documentary filmmaking in bringing the personal and the political together.
 
D.C. Honesty: Watch the trailer for Head of State.

State of the Union & Head of State
These two comedies tackle the idealistic honesty and optimism of two unlikely candidates on the road to Washington.
In State of the Union, Spencer Tracy plays Grant Matthews, a patriotic industrialist and businessman with strong opinions about solving the country’s many problems but no actual interest in politics. Nevertheless, he reluctantly enters into a dark-horse campaign for the presidency that leaves him caught between his estranged wife and an ambitious heiress.
Filmed in 1948, the film examines the disenchantment of those who love the system, but feel disillusioned about how it actually works.
Giving a much lighter treatment to a similar theme, Chris Rock both directs and plays the presidential hopeful Mays Gilliam in the raucous comedy Head of State. After the initial presidential and vice presidential nominees die in a plane crash, the possibilities of victory for the party seem slim. Mays is chosen as a likeable, yet surefire loser so that his candidacy may pave the way for victory four years down the line.
What ensues is a wild procession of unbridled opinions in the face of imminent defeat. Mays’s unconventional tactics beat the odds and win over the public, showing that perhaps honesty really is the best policy in Washington.