A politician who’s funny on purpose

AT the Polo Lounge on a weekday afternoon, half the tables on the back patio are occupied by folks describing movie deals and every third woman looks like Nicollette Sheridan. If you happen to be a famous person, there are two ways to cross a room like this -- embrace it or ignore it.

Barry Levinson opts for the former, amiably greeting friends (one of whom turns out to be the actual Nicollette Sheridan) as he saunters along in his black tracksuit. Two minutes later Robin Williams arrives. Shoulders up, eyes down, he moves at a pace that in any other environment would be described as “scuttling.” “Is Barry here yet?” he asks, sliding into a back booth; he had moved so quickly, so intently that he didn’t even see his friend as he passed him.

The two are in town promoting their new film and third collaboration, “Man of the Year,” opening Friday, which chronicles the accidental election of a comic talk show host to the presidency. And just like many past candidates, Williams is dealing with personal publicity issues of his own -- in August, he announced through his publicist that after 20 years of sobriety he was checking into an alcoholism treatment center.

“Look at you,” he says when Levinson approaches, “in your tracksuit, Mr. Sporty.” “And look at you,” Levinson replies.

“All dried out and everything,” Williams finishes for him, making the point perhaps so no one else has to make it first, or, even worse, go out of their way not to make it. The dark humor is reminiscent of many recovering alcoholics but the alternating voices are pure Williams -- “The first drink is the enemy, my friend.” “Are you sure? Are you sure I can’t just learn how to, I don’t know, do it better?” It is, of course, precisely the kind of conversation that separates an actor from a politician. Still, for all his trademark zaniness, Williams is as relentlessly ambitious as a public official, a man clearly driven by, if nothing else, the need to constantly participate in his craft. At 55, he has been in more than 50 films -- five of them hitting theaters this year alone.

Some have been huge hits (“Mrs. Doubtfire,” “Aladdin”), some critical successes (“Good Will Hunting,” for which Williams won an Oscar, “Insomnia”), but many have flopped. Over the years, he has been criticized for trying to do drama, for being too sentimental or simply for his ubiquitousness. Still he maintains his Teflon-coated rule -- despite “Patch Adams,” “Death to Smoochy” and even “RV,” he remains among audiences a beloved figure -- and if any comedian had a chance of becoming president, it would probably be Robin Williams.

Yet when asked if he has ever considered what would happen if he were elected president, or even governor, the actor laughs so hard he slides sideways.

“That’s interesting. Remember Gary Hart? I make him look Amish. They start digging into my past, it’s all over.”

The story of comedian talk show host Tom Dobbs (think Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert) who, prodded by fans and Internet traffic, decides to run for president and then accidentally wins, “Man of the Year” is being called a “gentle satire.”

As with “Good Morning, Vietnam,” the first project on which Williams and Levinson collaborated, the narrative allows the actor opportunities to do what amounts to stand-up while still following a dramatic arc. For Levinson, “Man of the Year” is a return to a familiar political arena: 1997’s “Wag the Dog,” in which a political operative teams with a producer to save a president from scandal, was his last critical directorial success.

Those who are expecting the same sort of biting satire of “Wag the Dog,” however, may be disappointed. It’s not the director’s sentiments that have changed but the mood of the country.

According to Levinson, “Man of the Year” is very much a movie of its time, both in topic -- a computer glitch is behind Dobbs’ unexpected win -- and tone. Part thriller (the computer company responsible for the glitch is trying to stop its whistle-blower, played by Laura Linney) and part love story (Dobbs and said whistle-blower become quite fond of each other), as a political satire, “Man of the Year” is surprisingly upbeat. Intentionally so.

Levinson, who wrote and directed, wouldn’t categorize the film as a satire at all, he says, because the times are frankly too dark for satire.

“When we did ‘Wag the Dog,’ it was a more optimistic period,” he says. “Now we are in an astoundingly cynical period, a period of absurdity that seems almost out of control. You can’t top that absurdity.

“So you don’t go in that direction. So you might as well be optimistic. Americans,” he adds, “are basically optimistic.” “Which is why so many Europeans think we’re crazy,” says Williams.

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Campaigning gets its close-up

RATHER than posit that a comedian could run the country as well as, or better than, a politician, “Man of the Year” uses Williams’ comedic talents to hold the electoral process up for ridicule. “Yes, I did inhale because I thought, ‘What the hell,’ it was lit, it was in my hand and I’ll inhale,” Dobbs says, answering charges that he was busted for pot use in his youth.

“When I was a young boy I use to look at pictures of naked ladies.... I just farted a little while back. If you find any other nonsense you’d like to talk about I’d be glad to discuss it. I’m at full disclosure.” In doing so, the film also explores the effect of comedy and, by extension, the entertainment industry, on politics.

“It has a huge role,” Williams says. “Especially now that they’re tracking all these people who are getting their news from people like Jon Stewart and Colbert.”

At its best, Williams says, comedy acts as a mirror -- “sometimes a funhouse mirror” -- for society. “A comic should use every bit of intelligence and honesty to tell people the truth. The funniest people are the ones who are brutally honest.

“I mean people actually believe Dubya is Texan,” he adds, as if this last sentiment is a bit too personal at the moment. “When in reality he’s from Connecticut.” Suddenly Williams the comic hits a lock-jawed WASP cadence somewhere between William F. Buckley and Katharine Hepburn. “If he spoke like a Connecticut person against Kerry it would have been ‘God, we met last year at the club.’ I remember when Kerry went off to the Nam, I said, ‘Where’s Dubya? In the same unit as Bigfoot. The same amount of sightings.’ It’s crazy.”

Brutal honesty, Levinson says, is what is missing from the current political conversation -- politicians are programmed to say meaningless things and the voters are, increasingly, programmed to ignore them and cast their vote based, too often, on the media manipulation of the candidates.

“That’s the reason there is so much political comedy on television these days,” he says. “It’s out of frustration. People need an outlet; we see people debating on television and we say, ‘Well, this is absurd.’ ”

One centerpiece of the film is, in fact, the typical televised presidential debate, which becomes less typical when Dodd begins to say the sort of things disgusted viewers might say to one another. The scene takes on issues such as campaign finance and moral hypocrisy, but mainly it sends up the sound bites that pass for political discourse in the United States these days.

“You see Blair and the British politicians debating on television,” Williams says, “and they have the ability to deal with the hecklers. They have to think on their feet. Thatcher was great at that. ‘My worthy opponent,’ ” he says, summoning up not only the Thatcherian arrogance but somehow that terrible thin nose as well, “ ‘if you put his brains in a dish, it would not be enough to feed a small child.’ But they have to be able to react; it comes out of the tradition of debating at school. What do people remember from our debates -- who sweated the most?”

“More and more people feel disenfranchised,” says Levinson again. “Everyone knows politicians will just say whatever they have to say to get into office. And we can’t really have true representation because it costs too much; you can’t afford to run for office in this country if you aren’t very rich.”

There is something strange and yet iconic about the conversation as it moves deeper into political territory, with Levinson deconstructing campaign finance law and Williams extolling the virtues of Teddy Roosevelt (he did a lot of reading in preparation for playing a wax figure of Roosevelt in the upcoming film “Night at the Museum”). The mutual fascination between Hollywood and Washington is seemingly eternal, as is the struggle between popular culture and politics. But at the end of the day, only a few have been able to straddle the two.

Here in the Polo Lounge are two men certainly rich enough to run for public office, certainly ambitious enough, seemingly passionate enough. They are obviously in earnest but undeniably doing publicity. Still, the idea of the citizen politician has been kicking around for centuries -- so, why wouldn’t a well-informed political pundit, comic or not, be a viable candidate?

“The idea would be fresh ...” says Levinson. “For the first month,” Williams interrupts. “But then they would actually have to do something, like appoint a Cabinet.”

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A different end game

AFTER years in the business, Williams has no illusions about the crossover potential of humorists and politicians. The actor was drawn to the film because it allowed him opportunities for kick-out comedy and also to show a man with a conscience -- after Dobbs decides to run it takes the concerted efforts of his manager (Christopher Walken) and main writer (Lewis Black) to persuade him to be funny during the campaign.

Presidents, he says, are usually not terribly funny, at least not in public, because humor is, by its very nature, dangerous.

“Dubya has a certain frat boy humor,” Williams says. “Like ... ‘Look at that, look at that son of a bitch, what’s wrong with him?’ ” And, he says, there is a famous bit about trying to teach Richard Nixon to tell a joke. “Two Jews walk into a bar ...” he says, sounding like Rich Little doing Nixon.

But politics and real humor will always be at loggerheads, he says, because while a comedian’s secret weapon may be honesty, his or her main goal is not social justice but to make people laugh. And that can be just as damning as any sex scandal or even a stint in rehab.

“The wrong joke at the wrong time will bring you down,” Williams says. “Even if it is a very funny joke. Look at Whoopi,” he adds, referring to Whoopi Goldberg’s use of the president’s name two years ago. “And she’s a professional comedian.”

“It’s the Achilles’ heel of the comedian,” says Levinson. “If I’m not serious, then you’re not going to take me seriously. But if I’m not funny, then I’m not giving you what I have, what you need from me.”

And while the point of the film, says Levinson, was to show how absurd the political system has become, with debates that aren’t really debates, a campaign finance situation that essentially allows only millionaires, and the possibility of a national computerized voting system that would leave no paper trail, it’s a movie, not a manifesto.

“You try to make a movie based on things that are going on,” he says, “and you try to entertain an audience. Past that you can’t do anything; it goes wherever it goes.”

The only thing the realms truly share, says Williams, is the danger of trying too hard to anticipate what will please other people, be they voters or audience members, something he has learned in his own life. If the sequences in which Dodd’s advisors chastise him for being too serious, for abandoning the comedy that made him, seem to hit a little close to home, Williams brushes it aside.

“If you’re reading polls, you’re just a chameleon,” he says. “Market research will kill you. Can you imagine,” he says, his voice quiet and at last only his own, “if Lincoln were alive today? He’d be polishing the Gettysburg Address and his advisors would say, ‘It’s too short and why are you saying “four score,” no one knows what that means. Give it up, you know, because it doesn’t test well.’ ”

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mary.mcnamara@latimes.com