Political Intrigue

If there is truth to the adage that the voting public always elects the president it deserves, then is it also true that filmgoers get the political films they merit? Or more precisely, as film scholar Joseph McBride puts it, “Do each era’s political films reflect the president in office?”

An argument could certainly be made for that. The rather startling parallels between director Barry Levinson’s current “Wag the Dog” and the current White House imbroglio (complete with military action) will be followed March 20 by director Mike Nichols’ “Primary Colors” (based on political writer Joe Klein’s “anonymous” novel), starring John Travolta as a politician with a rather pronounced libido with Emma Thompson as his take-no-prisoners long-suffering wife.

But another offshoot of the current White House troubles is larger and more universal. While the media are fascinated with the president’s alleged sexual peccadilloes, the public seems to be starved for the discussion of issues of substance and, even more, for that slippery eel, the truth.

Later in the spring, Warren Beatty will unveil “Bullworth” about a politician who, through a close encounter with the underclass, decides to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but, a week before the election. “Bullworth” would seem to complement “Wag the Dog” and “Primary Colors” as an expression of the nation’s collective unconscious (or maybe not so unconscious).

Beatty, for one, applauds the way in which Levinson’s and Nichols’ films tackle their subjects.

“I wouldn’t minimize the fun of taking a look at sexual hypocrisy,” he says. “The dramatic values of sex are fairly clear, and we tend to think we understand them even if we don’t. But the real socioeconomic nature of the social structure is not so clear. It’s more difficult to deal with.”

All three films, like the many politically themed films that came before them--”The Candidate” (1972), “The Best Man” (1964)--are at least on the surface about “the horse race,” according to Beatty. The battle of winners and losers is by its very nature the essence of dramatic entertainment. And it also mirrors the growing entertainment content of most political elections.

“I would say that part of what is wrong in American politics is that so much attention is paid to the horse race nature of politics,” says Beatty, no stranger to presidential races over the past three decades, “that people rarely address themselves to real issues. And, unfortunately, I think movies fall into that same category.”

Even a filmmaker like Frank Capra, who delved into the machinations of the American political system in films like “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” (1939) and “State of the Union” (1948), said very little about his characters’ political affiliation “or what they really felt about government or what the responsibilities of government really were,” according to Beatty.

It was even difficult to discern exactly what political party Capra’s characters belonged to. “Can you tell me from his movies whether his characters are liberal or conservative?” Beatty asks. (McBride, in researching his recent Capra biography, discerned that Mr. Smith was a Democrat from his seating position in the Senate.)

Hollywood’s reticence to dramatize thorny political questions emanates from “an unwillingness to alienate half the audience,” according to Beatty. “If your character takes a point of view and someone [a potential ticket buyer] has the opposing point of view, that person would be disinclined to buy a ticket.”

Selling or creating a political image is different from dealing with political issues--questions about the haves and have-nots, with which the character of Bullworth must come to terms after he has spent some time residing amid the poverty and turmoil of inner-city Los Angeles.

Curiously, such a concept, at least in movies, could be seen as subversive--though probably less so than Beatty’s own Oscar winner, “Reds” (1981), probably the only major (or minor) studio film to present a Communist, journalist John Reed, as a sympathetic figure. It doesn’t get much more subversive than that.

But Capra claimed he didn’t make movies about politics, he made movies about people. And both Levinson and Nichols say their films are as much about us (the audience) as them (our elected officials).

Levinson has chosen to tackle the art of spinning political news and taken it to absurdist heights. But the underpinning is rooted in reality. At the same time as “Wag the Dog” was being compared to the current White House crisis, the president was importing his former campaign handlers to help him deal with the situation and using the polls and the media to “spin” the situation.

But it’s just as much about the audience’s awareness of the art of spin-doctoring. “[The public is saying] I don’t know what to believe anymore,” according to Levinson. “We show in our fun fashion that we no longer know what’s real or produced. Politicians run on the same themes over and over again and we know that it’s more and more manufactured. Does he really believe that or is he just saying that to get our vote?”

So too, despite the roman a clef nature of “Primary Colors,” Nichols says it’s less about the Clinton election than about questions on the mind of the electorate--”who are the leaders we want, who are the leaders we deserve, who survives the process and how.”

Both Levinson’s and Nichols’ films, however, also address the public’s (seemingly) endless fascination with the private lives of public figures. In “Wag the Dog,” the incumbent president is accused of molesting an underage girl, and his handlers deflect public attention from it by manufacturing a war. In “Primary Colors,” a governor’s sexual infidelities threaten his election to higher office.

Again, the parallels are obvious. “Why are Clinton’s alleged character flaws so interesting to people?” asks McBride, who recently published a biography of Steven Spielberg. In Capra’s films, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was “treated like Jesus. We only saw him in shadow, never full face, and he was always doing something monumental.”

In “Primary Colors,” however, a thinly veiled President Clinton will be seen full face, warts and all, portrayed by Travolta (though reportedly some changes softening the character have been made, at the president’s request). “We’ve lost the idea of a politician as role model, which is a sad commentary,” McBride says. “Or maybe it’s healthy.”

Nichols ascribes to the latter assessment. The enormous public response to the novel “Primary Colors” could at first appear to be an unnatural prurient desire to constantly peer into a politician’s bedroom. But it might also be seen as a need for catharsis in matters of “sexual hypocrisy.”

Certainly, many European countries like France have reconciled a politician’s political record with his private life. And the latest Clinton scandal indicates that America’s tolerance in these matters is changing. Still, says Nichols, “we often hear, ‘He’s such a great man if he could only keep his pants zipped,’ as if it was a weakness or an unfortunate flaw.

“We’ve never asked the question, What if [the great man] comes with [the flaw]?’ Our puritan assumptions have not permitted that question. But I think we’re beginning to wonder whether we shouldn’t grow up. Americans are sort of like teenagers who discover that the lady who was always hanging around with Dad wasn’t after all just his secretary.”

In his upcoming book “Life: The Movie,” social commentator and film historian Neal Gabler posits that “life itself has become an entertainment medium. And it’s certainly true of politics. I’m not the first person to say this, but if anyone were to create a metaphor for modern American politics, it’s that an actor could become president of the United States--in other words, the role of a lifetime.”

As he sees it, “Wag the Dog’s” appeal can be attributed to the public’s awareness that “what the press is fascinated by is how successfully a politician can manipulate the process. We know about spin-doctoring and we judge a candidate on how well he’s spin-doctored [a situation].”

Similarly, Gabler says, “Primary Colors” deals with the difference between the projected image of a politician and the reality--”and how the image displaces the reality. People vote for the image and they know they’re voting for the image.”

Such a postmodern sentiment could be viewed as the height of cynicism. Not that that’s a bad thing, Levinson says. “Cynicism is not a bottomless pit. We’ll come through that to a new realization and move on. Or maybe I’m just an optimist at heart.”