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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
NIA: Hi, Aughie.
Aughie: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
NIA: Well, I'd be fine if I could tell time, I have time problems these days.
Aughie: Do we need to go back?
NIA: I'm struggling seasonally I think, a good way to put it. Not so much with hours on the clock but so much with seasons.
Aughie: We need to go back to maybe kindergarten or first grade where we were we learned the seasons.
NIA: We learn to put the podcast episodes out in order of the season. Yes. Go ahead, Aughie.
Aughie: You're about to listen to or read the transcript for a podcast episode that we recorded a couple of months ago. Our intention was to have a sum or a favorites, where each episode would be a discussion of some of our favorite things related to government and politics. They weren't our normal fare of government documents or political science or facts.
NIA: They were facts, they were pretty much fact-free in most instances in terms of how the government runs or based in government documents which are generally what we do.
Aughie: Yes, and our intention was to record a number of these episodes and then release them during the summer.
NIA: For a get to know you summary of our summer favorites so that you can get to know us a little more personally of what we think of when we think of favorites. All good plans.
Aughie: The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray, right?
NIA: Yeah, and in this instance one of us man, no one of us is a mouse. I didn't want to take away your manhood by saying we were mice, we're both mice.
Aughie: The quote though is from Dickens, right?
NIA: Right.
Aughie: Anyways, so were recorded these episodes, our intention was to go ahead and release them during the summer. However, we received a bunch of emails from faithful listeners who wanted to know if and or when we were going to have podcast episodes, about the recently completed Supreme Court term that finished up the last week of June.
NIA: The reasonably non-controversial, completely boring nothing else after in the whole thing US Supreme Court.
Aughie: Yes.
NIA: That's so when you mean, right?
Aughie: Yes, exactly.
NIA: Several of our readers slash listeners were on fire basically it were like, oh my God you have to address this.
Aughie: What we did listeners is we scrapped or summer of favorites. But we didn't scrap it we delayed release of those episodes so what follows is one of those episodes.
NIA: Thank you for your patience for us with our timing, and let's work through our fall of favorites.
Aughie: Yes.
NIA: We'll come back with regularly scheduled episodes of normal list.
Aughie: Yes, where are we focused on government documents, government processes, things in the news.
NIA: Facts and figures and all the things that are true.
Aughie: Yes.
Aughie: Instead of all the things that are our opinions which you may or may not be true.
Aughie: True
NIA: Thanks, Aughie.
Aughie: Thank you, Nia.
Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I'm good. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm good because we get to talk about movies.
N. Rodgers: Even though the summer of favorites, it's especially favorite for you. You must have watched all the movies.
J. Aughenbaugh: For listeners if you don't understand the Genesis, when I was a boy and my folks' marriage was dissolving, I had two places of refuge. One was the library. I mean, come on now, you know with a library card I could get access to any damn book I wanted.
N. Rodgers: Librarians are awesome.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. In the summertime, it was nice and cool and then in the winter or was it nice and warm. What a great place. But the other refuge was the movie theater.
N. Rodgers: That's when matinees were actually cheap.
J. Aughenbaugh: Matinees were cheap.
N. Rodgers: Popcorn didn't cost $10,000 a box.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Because we had a movie theater downtown in my small hometown, which was only a 10-minute walk from my house. Again, I lived in a small town, so I mean, my mom would have gotten phone calls if I deviated from the prescribed path from our house to the movie theater. But I would spend hours just watching movies.
N. Rodgers: There's something magical about going to the movies. There's something magical about sitting in a dark theater with other people, having experience. It's almost akin to church in some ways.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's very communal.
N. Rodgers: Having this group experience. I don't know if audiences do this now because I haven't been to a theater in a long time. But it used to be when I was a kid, if something particularly wonderful happened people would clap involuntarily. I promise you at the end of, I can't remember which whether it's Friday the 13th or one of the others, when he comes out of the lake to get the girl at the end, the screaming in the theater, writhing involuntary screaming. All of that. That's people interacting together.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: In this experience, it's not only just like church, but also like sports, other things where you have this communal reaction to what you're seeing. There's something to be said for that, that's very powerful, I think.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's not only powerful. Again, we talked about this in a previous podcast episode. Motion pictures are just extremely powerful agent of socialization in terms of politics, society.
N. Rodgers: Who you're supposed to be and how you're supposed to act.
J. Aughenbaugh: I mean, if you can see yourself up on the big screen as portrayed by an actor and they're doing stuff and you're just like, hey, I do that stuff and that's not all that unusual and that can be cool. I mean, that's so affirming.
N. Rodgers: You and I are talking about it in positive ways, but it can also be a, we will show you films that indoctrinate you into believing of certain things.
J. Aughenbaugh: That this is acceptable. I mean, because it's words backed by images. That's a really powerful way to socialize you. It can be used as propaganda by the government, by elites in society. This is a favored relationship, this is not. This is a group you should be a member of, or this is a group you should not be a member of.
N. Rodgers: One of the things that you and I have talked about in film is how over the years the bad guy has taken on whoever the bad guy is politically in the United States. In the '30s and '40s, the bad guy was always German.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Then in the '50s and '60s, the bad guy was from Asia.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: But then '60s, '70s, you're getting Russia.
J. Aughenbaugh: Every bad guy had a bad Russian accent.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. Then after 9/11, every bad guys' Arabic.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: It's a way to reinforce this idea of that's them and we are us and they are the bad guys.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Although, the British have regularly played bad guys in our world from the very beginning of film till now. Which I think is fascinating, reflects our odd relationship with England. We still have a little bit of leftover trauma from the Revolutionary War where we've held onto this. But the British guy, he's probably bad. I mean, sometimes these cool when he's James Bond, but a lot of times.
J. Aughenbaugh: But even Bond is a misogynistic prick. Right. But nevertheless, today what we're going to be doing is we are going to be looking at our favorite motion pictures that have some political theme to them.
N. Rodgers: If we had left it at favorite film, we'd be here.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, good Lord.
N. Rodgers: That would be 50 episodes easily.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh my God.
N. Rodgers: We can have a whole separate podcasts for that. Maybe we'll do that someday. Second podcast of Nia and Aughie talk about films in general, but these were political films. Also keep in mind, they are political films that in three of the cases are from our youth/age. One of them Aughie, is not old enough to have seen Casablanca in the movie theater. See it in the theater because that's 1942.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm not that old.
N. Rodgers: He's not that old. Do keep in mind that we are talking about from our age.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's one of the elements of socialization.
N. Rodgers: What influenced us.
J. Aughenbaugh: Scholars identify the fact that many of us develop our lifelong beliefs and values at an early age. That's one of the reasons why media, particularly movies, can have such a powerful effect on how we view politics.
N. Rodgers: Right. I let the cat out of the bag. I want you to go first and talk about Casablanca because I did not not even consider it. Then when he put it on his list, I was like, oh man, that is a perfect political fit in the sense of talking about it.
J. Aughenbaugh: The basic plot for those of you who have not watched Casablanca.
N. Rodgers: Spoiler alert. We're about to talk about the plots of four films.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Anything else that comes up in as part of that discussion. Don't listen to this if you have not, and we will try to tell you the name of the film so that you can either skip.
J. Aughenbaugh: Casablanca was made in 1942, and it's considered even to this day, one of the best American films ever made. The basic plot is that you have a cynical American expatriate cafe owner and the location is Casablanca, who struggles to decide whether or not to help his former lover and her fugitive husband escape the Nazis in what was then known as the French Morocco.
N. Rodgers: Which is where Casablanca is. Casablanca is in modern-day Morocco.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Now, the reason why I love it.
N. Rodgers: Of all the gin joints in all of the world.
J. Aughenbaugh: It has classic lines of dialogue. The movie is chock-full of them. Round up the usual suspects. Here's looking at you kid. We'll, always have Paris. I'm shocked that there's gambling going on in this establishment. Of course, the one that Nia lead off with, what is it?
N. Rodgers: All the gin joints in all the world, she walks into mine because this is a former lover.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. The love of his life.
N. Rodgers: Then you forgot one here.
J. Aughenbaugh: What's that?
N. Rodgers: We just played it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Play it again.
N. Rodgers: Which is always misstated as play it again, Sam. But he says play it. Play it, Sam.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Which means their song.
J. Aughenbaugh: In the song by the way is, As Time Goes By. Which is one of the reasons why I love this movie. Because I get to hear that song. I love that song. But there are other reasons why I love it. Rick, the cafe owner, played by Humphrey Bogart, is an isolationists. The movie also talks about dangers of nationalism versus the positives of nationalism. It's got, for me the classic, if you will, balance and trade off of nationalism.
N. Rodgers: The negative is the Third Reich.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, the negative is the Third Reich. But the positive of nationalism is all the exiled French living in Casablanca.
N. Rodgers: Right. All the people who ran from France when it was invaded but who still believe in France and still love France.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. That's nationalism. Then the last reason, it has some of the best actors of that time, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Henreid, the list goes on and on. I mean, at any point in that movie, you're just like, wow. You've got to watch the movie like four or five times not to be awed by just the sheer talent that was assembled for that movie.
N. Rodgers: It's amazing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. The movie's got great political and social commentary of the early days of World War II. For instance, it's got anti-fascist propaganda. It criticizes the United States for being isolationist as represented by Rick, at least Rick early on in the movie. For me, one of the great lines of the movie is Rick is being questioned by a German officer who says, what's your nationality? Rick's response was, I'm a drunkard. I love it. He was just like, I'm not even going to cop to being an American. I'm just a drunkard. It employed if you will tenets of the US government's guidelines for using film. The United States had already come out with guidelines to be used by Hollywood to rally American support against the Nazis. It talks about the sacrifices of war. There are subplots in this movie like human trafficking, trying to get papers to leave Casablanca. People who can't go back to their home countries. People who are exiled for various reasons, not all of them related to war. It's just got chock full of this stuff. The diversity of the cast, there were Americans, there were non-Americans, there were Jews, there were French. Greenstreet was British. It's all over the map.
N. Rodgers: Showing you the unitedness of them against the Germans.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. For those of you who are Catholic or are religious, the location is purgatory because it's neither heaven nor hell. That's like a thematic element in most film noir movies which is where you are located may not be where you want to be but it could be worse and that's what Casablanca is. It could be worse.
N. Rodgers: It's not home but it can be a lot worse.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. I already mentioned human trafficking. It's got a discussion of the cost of remaining isolated in neutral which for listeners, if you don't know, well into the early 1940s before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, an overwhelming majority of Americans wanted to have nothing to do with the war in Europe.
N. Rodgers: You see that with Rick. He doesn't want it but then by the end of the movie, he's invested in.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's an analog to what happens to the United States. The metamorphous of Rick is just a great analog. It has portrayals of the Third Reich designed to show how powerful the wars enemy actually was. How if one resists, one can be resurrected. Rick, Laszlo, Renault are all examples of how even though you might have failed earlier in your life, if you keep on trying you can get resurrected into somebody or something good. Then the course of Rick and Ilsa's relationship. She breaks his heart but he does something at the end of the movie, and this is a spoiler alert. He basically gives up his opportunity to leave Casablanca so his former lover and her husband can leave. You want to talk about an heroic act from a character who for most of that movie was not heroic. I know I ran through a lot there but it's just got so much good political stuff there. When I show this movie in my politics and film class, my students reaction is a lot like yours Nia. Which is they watch the movie and they're just like, this is a love story. I'm like, really?
N. Rodgers: Then the more you think through it you're like no, this is almost nothing to do with a love story. Well, this was in my opinion an encouragement to get involved in the war, and an encouragement to say, you are not alone in the world and America cannot be alone and you can't just say, well, we're just off here doing our own jam.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. We can't be on the sidelines.
N. Rodgers: We're too big, we're too powerful, we're too involved in the rest of the world.
J. Aughenbaugh: The threat is so severe that we can't just look away. We just can't go head and say, I'm a saloon owner.
N. Rodgers: I don't have to have an opinion.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, there are so many Americans even today who are like, I don't want to have an opinion. Well, you live in a democracy. At some point in time something in your life is going to force you to have an opinion.
N. Rodgers: If you're not voting we'd like to put in a plug that you should be voting which is an opinion.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's right.
N. Rodgers: I've forgotten that you had another film from the late '40s because I had remembered your third film which is from our lifetimes. Again, listeners remembering that Aughie was not born in 1949. He had not yet been born. But he does like these historical films for a good reason and the next one is also very appealing. But this one is much clearer about its political.
J. Aughenbaugh: The name of the movie is All the King's Men. The original was made in 1949. It was remade more recently with Sean Penn but I recommend the original which is in black and white. The basic plot of All the King's Men is the rise and fall of a corrupt politician who makes his friends richer and retains power by being a populist. I'm the every man. I'm going to represent you. Not based on anybody of recent vintage, that's right.
N. Rodgers: It's not based on Donald Trump obviously. He was born in 1949. Anyway, but it's not based on him. It's actually based on someone else.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. The movie was adapted from a book that was based loosely on the life and career of Huey Long, the infamous Kingfish.
N. Rodgers: Of Louisiana.
J. Aughenbaugh: He was the governor and at one point, governor and senator at the same time.
N. Rodgers: Because why not?
J. Aughenbaugh: In Louisiana. Louisiana, you can do that.
N. Rodgers: I love Louisiana. It's its own special thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now what is it?
N. Rodgers: There's 49 kinds of law in the United States. There's right two kinds of law. There's 49 states and then there's Louisiana. Which is Napoleonic law.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Because Louisiana follows Napoleonic law, whereas the other 49 states basically are derived from British common law. There are so many themes in this movie, but one of the dominant themes is the connection of populism to fascism. Populism is this basic idea that the systems in a society, particularly government systems, don't work for you and people like you.
N. Rodgers: They work for the elites.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. The elites control everything and the systems don't work for you. A populist candidate says I'm not one of those elites. I'm one of you.
N. Rodgers: I'm going to clean up the swamp.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm going to clean up the swamp. I'm not going to make this system work for you. That's the appeal of a populist, right?
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: But the problem is, the populist basically is making an argument that only they can solve the problems. Everything in government becomes about them.
N. Rodgers: Which is what we see, and I'm not by the way, connecting Trump to Hitler, but it's what we see with Hitler. The first thing Hitler says is, I can solve our starving because there were huge problems
with people going hungry and people not having jobs and all stuff that was going on in Germany after World War I. We get him saying, I can solve this problem. Then eventually it turns into, I am the government. The government is me, not a democracy, not a group of people to whom I have to listen or be held accountable.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, it's no longer the institutions. It's me. Anybody who speaks against the government speaks against me. Anybody who disagrees with me is by default disagreeing with you because I'm your savior.
N. Rodgers: They are the bad guy.
J. Aughenbaugh: They are the bad guys.
N. Rodgers: Thus, it's okay to do anything we want to them.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. In what this leads to is in the movie, you see in the character of the main character is played by a great actor, Broderick Crawford. He basically ends up being so corrupt that it begs the question, does populism lead to fascism? In today, unfortunately, we see both sides of the ideological spectrum refer to their opponents as fascists. But and that's usually incorrect. Because fascism is not the purview, is not the domain of just one side of the ideological spectrum or the other. But the movie does beg the question, are the excesses of democracy, do they lend themselves to fascism? And this gets at the constant struggle between individual rights and the collective. Its one of the reasons why I love this movie because if democracy left unchecked leads to populism, does populism inevitably lead to fascism? In this movie, the king represents the second type of political leadership as identified by Max Weber, the charismatic. We're supposed to be living in an era of the third type, which is bureaucratic. The power rests with the position, not the person.
N. Rodgers: We deleted out the first type, which is hereditary.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Those dynasties.
J. Aughenbaugh: Those dynasties, those are monarchies, etc. But we have this tension even today, between the second and third types. Trump is an easy example. But you can even go ahead and make the argument that occasionally the Biden administration basically acts like the second type. Congress isn't going to act. I'm just going to go ahead and issue an executive order. Well, what if you don't have the authority to do it? But I'm president.
N. Rodgers: What is the authority? If the president does it, according to President Nixon. If the president does it, that makes it legal.
J. Aughenbaugh: That makes it legal because I'm the president. That was Nixon. That was in the early 1970s. When I show this movie, I have my students who are just like, wow, so this is not brand-new
stuff. I'm like, no, this stuff has been going on throughout American history. It points out the issues of democracy. As I mentioned, I said, there might have been a good reason why the framers didn't trust the masses. Many students were just like, oh dude, that's so cynical, so harsh, and I'm like, but is it?
N. Rodgers: Well, what's interesting is the year is 1949.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: You're getting the Cold War. The Cold War is starting. You're getting this whole idea of fascist leaders that become-
J. Aughenbaugh: Larger than life. I alone can go ahead and solve your problems because I'm one of you.
N. Rodgers: Right. It's how Stalin portrayed himself.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sure. Mao Zedong in China. Pick an authoritarian leader or a dictator from a third-world country.
N. Rodgers: Exactly.
J. Aughenbaugh: Should I go ahead and do my third movie?
N. Rodgers: You should. We move to the 1970s for the third movie. For those who are looking for a spoiler, Chinatown.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: 1974.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. The basic plot, you have a private detective a character by the name of Jack Guinness. He's hired to expose an adulterer in 1930s Los Angeles. But in the process, he finds them caught up in this complex web of deceit, corruption, the Los Angeles water wars, and murder. It has all my favorite stuff. It was made in a style that's known as neo-noir. The genre that is the successor to my favorite type of genre known as film-noir. Film-noir movies were made in the '40s and '50s. That basically challenged the dominant, if you will, style or ethos of Hollywood film-making of that time. At the time, good guys always won, women were always virtuous, and society would eventually be positive, optimistic. In film-noir movies were just like, no, it isn't. Good guys often have bad qualities or have done bad things. Women were sometimes femme fatales. They were as deceitful, as evil as men. By the way, the good guy doesn't always win. Society isn't this happy, joy, place.
N. Rodgers: Can I just mention the two actors in this? Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good Lord. Yes.
N. Rodgers: Both of whom are really good actors you believe them in this movie. You believe them?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Sometimes in movies, even movies I love, you could tell somebody's acting.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, but in this movie.
N. Rodgers: You get quickly drawn into.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: All of it as a, whoa, whoa.
J. Aughenbaugh: You can believe Jack Nicholson was a private detective in 1930s Los Angeles.
J. Aughenbaugh: But this movie does have some common elements with film noir. The world is dark, unsavory. You have a disillusioned hero. The law is often corrupt and when it isn't corrupt, it can be manipulated for corrupt purposes. You have a victim who is both innocent and compromised. That would be played by Faye Dunaway. Those who are evil and corrupt are oftentimes stronger and bigger than the "hero". It definitely has a David versus Goliath, if you will, theme running throughout. But one of the reasons why I like this movie politically is that it exposes a number of fundamental tensions that you see in 20th and 21st-century modern and post-modern democracies. You got the wealthy elite played extremely well by John Huston. What's his name? Noah Cross. Versus the public interest. You have wealthy influence over elected officials versus the working poor in communities. Then it has these excellent sustainability issues before its time. Land ownership and usage, water, energy, farmers, all the things that we're still talking about, Nia, today.
N. Rodgers: Well, and 1974 would have been three or four years after the first Earth Day.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Polanski is the director, is reaching into those themes as well because that was a big thing in the early '70s as people, especially in California, were saying, hey, what's up with this water thing?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Even the director, I'm glad you mentioned the director, Roman Polanski, is controversial.
N. Rodgers: He's a complicated figure.
J. Aughenbaugh: Complicated figure because he had to leave the United States. He left the United States after he was convicted of raping a minor, what? In the later 1970s.
N. Rodgers: She was 13.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, she was 13. He was clearly an adult male. He gets convicted and then he leaves.
N. Rodgers: Moves to France.
J. Aughenbaugh: Moves to France. But there are other political themes in this movie. How some individuals don't fit the rules, the regulations of large organizations. Because Gittes used to be a member of the police department, but he just couldn't comply with authority. I'm like, hello, that's me. But how outsiders struggle to fit into a fast-moving, growing society. Because you see this, there are various scenes in the movie. The movie is called Chinatown, but there's hardly any discussion or any roles for Chinese Americans. Chinatown is viewed as a place where you don't want to go because you don't know how things are done in that community of Los Angeles.
N. Rodgers: Well, and one of the most famous quotes from this movie is, it's Chinatown.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Basically a cynical wrapping up of it's just how it works here.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: There's nothing you can do about it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, it's a more modern movie, but it's a movie that uses a genre from the past to go ahead and highlight political issues that are still plaguing, if you will, Los Angeles in California even today, which is, are we going to have enough water to be able to live? Because when you build a community in basically what was then originally a desert, you're going to need water, and if you take water for residential and commercial purposes, you're going to take water away from farmers.
N. Rodgers: Then you have food problems. It's all intertwined.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Basically what he's told in this film is you can't solve it.
J. Aughenbaugh: You can't solve it. You shouldn't even bother challenging it. It's cynical. It's somewhat depressing, but I showed the students to go ahead and say, guys, these are issues that we have been struggling with. I like it because it's a movie that in some ways starts off as your standard private detective who's supposed to be investigating an adulterous affair and it ends up being about so much more, where at the end of the movie you're just like, I'm exhausted.
N. Rodgers: Chinatown is a bit of a slog.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: For those who are wanting a popcorn, it's not a popcorn film.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's not a popcorn film. I almost picked L.A. Confidential.
N. Rodgers: You want to call that a special mention? L.A. Confidential is such a good film.
J. Aughenbaugh: L.A. Confidential.
N. Rodgers: Early Russell Crowe, Kevin Stacy, Kim Basinger.
J. Aughenbaugh: Kim Basinger, James Cromwell's in it. It was written and directed by Curtis Hanson and it was adapted from a well-known James Ellroy book. But if you want to delve even more into Los Angeles and politics of the 1940s and '50s, good lord.
N. Rodgers: That was good.
J. Aughenbaugh: But that's also a taxing movie.
N. Rodgers: Yea. A lot of moving parts in that movie and a lot of subplots to keep up with, but also it's just emotionally taxing, that film.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Nia, you have two movies.
N. Rodgers: My films are less taxing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I will say that my films are easier. If you want to start easier, folks, you might start with my films. My films, I'm going to start with Dave, 1993.
J. Aughenbaugh: Starring the great Kevin Kline.
N. Rodgers: Oh my gosh. The main plot of the story is that the president has a stroke.
J. Aughenbaugh: While he's having an affair with one of his staffers. Yes.
N. Rodgers: They find a lookalike, a guy who looks just like him to stand in for him.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Kevin Kline plays both of these parts. At the beginning, he's playing the president.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: His thang as it were.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Then he plays Dave coming in and they don't tell the first lady. They don't tell anybody.
J. Aughenbaugh: The chief of staff who devises this plot listeners.
N. Rodgers: It's Frank Langella.
J. Aughenbaugh: Is played by the great Frank Langella.
N. Rodgers: He cannot be a better bad guy.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Sigourney Weaver plays the wife.
J. Aughenbaugh: The first lady.
N. Rodgers: She and her husband are so distant from each other that they're pretty sure they can get away with not telling her that they've got a lookalike.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: They do get away with it.
J. Aughenbaugh: They get away with it.
N. Rodgers: Close to the end of the film.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: When she's like, wait, why are you being so nice? Then all of a sudden she realizes there's no way my husband would be this nice.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Then through the plot of the film, he's an every man who's now.
J. Aughenbaugh: Trying to run the government.
N. Rodgers: Has the power to be the president. Now Frank Langella does a lot of the work because he's the chief of staff and because he wants to run the government himself, but he's not popular enough to get elected.
J. Aughenbaugh: Hold up right there, Nia. That's actually one of the great, if you will, points of analysis this movie is making, which is that over time, the chief of staff for many presidents has assumed more and more responsibility.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, inordinate power. On one hand, in a previous podcast episode, we discussed the West Wing in the chief of staff played by the great John Spencer, Leo McGarry, and Leo is great. But he's doing it to further the aims and wishes of the president. But in this movie, the chief of staff is this power hungry.
N. Rodgers: Oh my gosh and everybody else on staff as afraid of him.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. I mean, like he is a monster Frank Langella plays really well because I think he likes this deliciousness that comes with-
J. Aughenbaugh: Sure.
N. Rodgers: being bad guy right here that with actors a lot, especially when they consistently played relatively good characters or relatively benign characters, that when they get to play somebody bad, when they get to play Dracula, gets to play Nixon.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They get more nuance out and the bad guys then they do out of the good guys. But this film also basically highlights for me the question of who's really prepared to be president?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Like nobody really knows how to be president. When you get there the first day and they start telling you things you're like, wait, what, this is how this runs? Like this is crazy balls because what they're really should be is the way chairs and vice chairs, work in committees.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The year before you are president, you shadow the president and you get this introduction. But that's not what happens. What happens in this movie is that because Dave doesn't know what he can't do, he does stuff.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Because there is no guideline to that, here's how you do the job president, the scene, and I loved the most is the budget scene. He needs to find money for a priority of the first lady, because he really likes the first lady and he wants her to be happy so he needs to find money so he calls a friend.
J. Aughenbaugh: Played by the great Charles Grodin.
N. Rodgers: Who comes in and he says, we've got to find this much money in the budget and the guy is like, are you kidding me? They sit there all night and they go through the budget until they find a way to get the money to do this thing that she wants done.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: It so speaks to me that scene because there's a part of me that wants to sit down with the budget and say and draw lines through things and write other things in and do it. Like I totally understand that desire. I understand the desire of why not? Why can't we do that?
J. Aughenbaugh: It's so unrealistic because the last time we had a president who had probably the detailed knowledge about the budget was President Jimmy Carter.
N. Rodgers: Was just going to say it was President Carter and everybody hated that he had such detail.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, right. I mean, because they were just saying he's losing the forest through the trees.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: But at the same time, we have a federal government budget that is probably for 99.5 percent of most Americans unintelligible. We can't make sense of it right. There is so much that's in the federal government budget that if we called in our really smart accounting friends, they would say, are you nuts? Like the character played by Charles Grodin.
N. Rodgers: We can't just cut that out of the budget and Dave's like, why not?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. You don't want his friend was just like, I don't understand how you guys budget. Budget that way for a small business. Yeah, it would fail, it will go belly up.
N. Rodgers: The other thing you see in Dave is this desire to do the right thing, the desire to look good thing, and the political pressures that come to bear on that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That often prevent a person from doing the right thing. I think that Americans tend to be rather cynical and say that our presidents are all one. It's just their level of criminality. It's not whether
they're criminals or not. It's just how much of a criminal they are. I think that a lot of presidents honestly believe they are doing the right thing or want to do the right thing. The system is set up to be antagonist. The system is set up for hostility.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. In the juxtaposition between Dave as one of your favorite political movies and my three favorite political movies. I mean, my three or very dark, very cynical, very untrusting.
N. Rodgers: I'll get there.
J. Aughenbaugh: No. But even with your other movie, there are still heroes and we'll get to the movie in just a few moments. But again, one of the reasons why I liked you picking Dave, was the fact that this represents the flip side of how many Americans would hope their president acts.
N. Rodgers: This is really the guy you want to have a beer with.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, that's right. And think about presidents in our lifetime Nia. I would easily put in you and I have discussed the personality types of presidents in a previous podcast episode. But I would put, for instance, Ronald Reagan, Bush 41, Bill Clinton, to a certain extent, Bush 43. But even Barack Obama, they were generally hopeful people they wanted to do good. We could disagree with their policies, but I don't think anybody would go ahead and say Barack Obama was not an optimistic person. He wrote a book, for instance, The Hope of Our Fathers. Or think about Bush 41, the first President Bush. That guy had seen some of the most despicable stuff had been shot down in World War II. But he still believed in government service and thought he could make a difference and he could make the United States safe for its citizens. I mean that requires a level of hope that, okay. I think to a certain extent you see in a character like Dave in this movie where he was just like, this is important to the First Lady and I want to make her happy.
N. Rodgers: There's no reason I can't. You just sit down and find the money. Which I see similarities because they just do.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Right. They work all night and they find it in for any of us.
N. Rodgers: The next day all the cabinet members come in and he's like, I think we found the money and he starts describing what they're going do, will you give up this? This person says, sure and then it ends up being like he gets.
J. Aughenbaugh: This becomes a collective because it has momentum. Because they don't want to disappoint the president.
N. Rodgers: They catch on to his enthusiasm.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: He starts with a notepad. He starts writing down the amount of money so he gets to where it needs to be in which I just think is awesome.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, and I want to go ahead and show that to every single kid who is forced to learn, longhand multiplication, addition, and subtraction. Unlike here guys, here's the reason why you do this. Because if the president in this movie is going to go ahead, find a couple of million dollars, for a special project. You too can do that simply because you learn long subtraction than long addition. But anyways.
N. Rodgers: Klein is just like part of it is that he is a likable.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Because his job before he gets recruited by the chief of staff is he's a director of a job placement service, right?
N. Rodgers: Right. He is optimistic.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Right. I mean, his job is to go ahead and turn people's lives around. Right?
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: The chief of staff probably pick the wrong person to go ahead.
N. Rodgers: It can be a cynical stand-in for.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, right.
N. Rodgers: He is actually is told that it's because the president had a stroke, but he'll be coming back.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: But the president is not coming back. Not yet. There's a whole subplot there and Frank Langella's true evilness. But I would recommend that and my other recommendation and saying the title now All the President's Men so that you know spoilers are coming.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Basic plot to Washington Post reporters tracked down the start of the cover-up of the Watergate scan.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I first of all, I honestly do not know. I mean, when you said best political movie or your favorite not best your favorite political movie. I didn't go to anything else first, because All the President's Men is one of my all-time favorite movies in general. But especially about politics.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: I love that the Post went out on a limb and follow the story.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Because Nixon was not a person you wanted to make an enemy of.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: If they had not gotten the story, the Washington Post would have gone under like it would have been a nightmare for Graham. What was her name?
N. Rodgers: What was her first name?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Catherine Graham?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, Catherine Graham.
N. Rodgers: She was the owner of The Washington Post.
J. Aughenbaugh: Owner, publisher of The Washington Post. Her husband had been the previous publisher and he had committed suicide. Before him, her dad owned The Washington Post. The Washington Post was struggling financially in the early '70s. Many question whether or not she could successfully lead The Post. But she had assembled.
N. Rodgers: An amazing group of people, Ben Bradley.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, Ben Bradley as the Editor in Chief, and the head of the newsroom, the head of the domestic desk, because they basically refer to domestic versus foreign news desk. They had been given carte blanche to hire reporters. This movie is about those two reporters and their process to expose the White House's involvement in the cover-up of the break-in of the Watergate hotel and office complex.
N. Rodgers: Woodward and Bernstein were the two reporters.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Played by?
N. Rodgers: Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford who at that time, was one of the prettiest people on the planet. Dustin Hoffman, who is not particularly pretty, but who is a brilliant actor. They're both brilliant actors.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They pulled it off beautifully. They pulled it off so well that I think that there are people who don't actually know what Woodward and Bernstein looked like. Their image of Woodward and Bernstein is Redford and Hoffman.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: If you put out as play-dough pictures and you said pick out Woodward and Bernstein, people would point to Redford and Hoffman and say there they are, and you'll be like, not quite. But what happens is, at the beginning, Woodward goes to court because there is a hearing for a bunch of Cubans that were caught in an office in the Watergate. When he goes and he sees who the lawyers are, the lawyers are these big time.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, they're lawyers in a very well-known Washington D.C law firm.
N. Rodgers: No way they're a bunch of Cuban janitors.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Which is what these guys are portrayed as, could have afforded these lawyers. There's no way. Something in the back of his brain tickles him.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Like this can't be right. There's got to be something else here.
J. Aughenbaugh: One of the reasons why I showed this movie in my politics and film class is that I show how there has been at various times in our country's history, a very prominent role where the media was not considered biased. It was considered essential for the functioning democracy. Because how else would we have known if not for a couple of reporters. By the way, a big chunk of this movie guys is, I would not say is boring, but it's about the process.
N. Rodgers: It's boring. It's boring because the process is boring.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: You have to go through and fact check, you have to find all these people, you have to try to connect this person to this person, how would they be associated? You had all of that work that journalists do in order to be able to present the story is not the flashy, exciting part of journalism where the person sits down in front of the camera and actually tells you the story. It's the background that goes in to that to make sure that you're fact-checking everything. At one point they got something wrong.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That is a nightmare because how if they've gotten that wrong, what else did they get wrong? There's all these other questions that come up.
J. Aughenbaugh: How many times you got to call up people only to have them decline your phone call.
N. Rodgers: They have a great source played by Hal Holbrook, who you don't see in the film.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: He's in shadow the whole time. He has the best line I think, in any political movie ever.
J. Aughenbaugh: Woodward has a source at the FBI?
N. Rodgers: That's Deep Throat.
J. Aughenbaugh: Deep Throat.
N. Rodgers: Which is a take off on a porn film.
J. Aughenbaugh: Porn film, yes. Woodward and Bernstein are at a point to where they've run out of leads. They know there's some connection to at least Nixon's re-election committee from 1971 and '72.
N. Rodgers: But they can't quite argue out what it is.
J. Aughenbaugh: Woodward has a meeting in a DC parking lot, deserted DC parking lot.
N. Rodgers: By the way, parking deck.
J. Aughenbaugh: Parking deck.
N. Rodgers: It's full of shadows, it's creepy.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The scene is marvelously filmed.
J. Aughenbaugh: By the way, the movie was made by a really good 1970s filmmaker, Alan Pakula. Deep Throat knows that the Nixon re-election committee hired these burglars. But he doesn't want to come out and say it because it would indicate that the FBI has actually done some investigation. He basically is playing a game of cat and mouse with Woodward.
N. Rodgers: He's trying to lead him there without exposing the FBI's rolling things.
J. Aughenbaugh: Finally, Woodward's getting frustrated. Deep Throat is like this guy is a freaking idiot. You could tell it in the tone of his voice. But then Deep Throat, gives probably one of the most sage pieces of advice ever uttered in a movie.
N. Rodgers: It's true in every situation in politics. Follow the money.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's the quote, follow the money.
N. Rodgers: Follow the money. If you do that in any situation in politics, you'll find out who the real players are.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, for that matter, I know plenty of cops who are detectives and they will tell you. They will frequently follow the money because a lot of people do a lot of bad things because of money.
N. Rodgers: Money greases the wheels of a lot of things.
J. Aughenbaugh: Particularly in politics, yes.
N. Rodgers: In this particular instance, the campaign for Nixon's re-election also paid for the lawyers.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Then he starts to find all the checks. Who the checks are being written to and all that stuff. It's marvelous. But, for me, is a reminder of the importance of journalism, a reminder of the importance of outside observation on politics.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Because without that, Nixon would have gotten away with it. If we don't have reporters hunting around and asking questions and saying, wait, that doesn't add up, how is that?
J. Aughenbaugh: That's why you have a freedom of the press in the First Amendment. Because the basic idea is to have an informed citizenry, you need a bunch of professionals who can report on what the government is doing. Because Nia, most of us, nearly all of us, don't have the time, the energy, the resources.
N. Rodgers: The expertise.
J. Aughenbaugh: The expertise.
N. Rodgers: You got to know people.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That's the thing. You've got to have sources, you've got to know people, you have to have time to cultivate those sources.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: That's why when you see local newspapers going under, that's why it's such a tragedy because how else do you keep your city council flying right? How else do you keep the mayor from doing crazy stuff? How do you keep any of that from happening? Local reporter.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Remember for The Washington Post, this is local reporting.
J. Aughenbaugh: That was their local beat.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. That's why he's in there in the docket of the courthouse. It's a local issue and he supposed to report on it. Then he's like, wait, is this isn't right?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: You get that local reporting. I think people think, that was a national. No, that was a local paper.
J. Aughenbaugh: That started off with an article that was buried in the second section of The Washington Post.
N. Rodgers: Way down.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. That was the metro section. It wasn't national politics. It first started off in the metro section of The Washington Post.
N. Rodgers: Turns out to be one of the largest, if not the largest, presidential scandal.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, in our country's history.
N. Rodgers: Or at least so far. I should say so far because somebody will at some point make a better scam. Then they'll make a film about it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Foreshadowing, speaking of political scandals, one of our future podcast episodes will be about our favorite political scandals.
N. Rodgers: No doubt we will revisit The Watergate.
J. Aughenbaugh: Gratuitous self plug. Sorry listeners, but I couldn't resist.
N. Rodgers: Thank you Aughie. It's been a lovely discussion of film. We would encourage everybody to see these films.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, very much so. If you want to know some of the other films that almost made our favorites episode, again, don't hesitate to reach out to us. We'll be happy to go ahead and interact with you all. Thanks Nia.
N. Rodgers: Thank you Aughie.
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