Presidential parade on screen

Even the most inventive screen writers could not envisage the bizarre turn that the U.S. Presidential elections took. But as ANAND PARTHASARATHY discovers, the recent products on the big screen and small, come pretty close.

A RECENT opinion poll carried by the website of NBC, one of the prime American television channels was revealing. Asked to name whom viewers would like to see becoming the next U.S. President, they responded like this:

Al Gore: 26.7%; George W Bush: 18.3%; Josiah Bartlet: 55%.

Josiah who? The person whom a majority of the respondents favoured, was the fictional character played by veteran Hollywood star Martin Sheen in a prime time American television serial called ``The West Wing''. Currently being shown in the U.S., in a second season, on Wednesday evenings by NBC, the series which grabbed nine Emmy Awards earlier this year, has Sheen playing the American President in a storyline that tries to match the real life White House drama of recent years.

Sheen has played a real president in the past - in a notable television serial based on the life of John F. Kennedy, that has been shown more than once in India. Hardly surprising therefore that viewers in the U.S., found his comforting - if fictional - presence in ``The West Wing'' of the White House, more reassuring than either of the two aspirants who slugged it out in the courtrooms of the nation.

In other ways too, screen writers have homed in, of late, on the U.S. presidency, to pander to cinemagoers' interest in, and suspicion of, hanky panky in high places. But often their attempts at portraying ``daring'' fiction is overtaken by fact. Earlier this year, an otherwise unremarkable American film ``Deterrence'', had Kevin Pollack portraying America's first Jewish president, a possibility that was held out to be remarkable- till a real life Jewish candidate, joined Al Gore as his Vice Presidential running mate. A few weeks ago, the director of ``Deterrence'', Rod Lurie, saw another film released - ``The Contender'' - where he suggests that the president (played by Jeff Bridges), picks a woman ( Joan Allen) as his new Vice President, when the current incumbent dies.

There were some murmurs that the character played by Gary Oldman - the chairman of the Congressional committee that questions the candidate, digging out a lot of dirt in the process - was a hit below the belt at Republicans. But such mud slinging is now almost passe after the real life investigations in the 1990s, which provided so many prurient peeps into the presidency.

December 20 will see the U.S. release of yet another film portraying a real president. ``Thirteen Days'', directed by Roger Donaldson, recalls the anxious days of the Cuban Missile crisis of the early 1960s, with Bruce Greenwood playing President John Kennedy, with Kevin Costner as his aide.

Another real life president who was vividly brought to the screen was Richard Nixon. In 1995, Oliver Stone made a characteristically eccentric biopic ``Nixon'' with Anthony Hopkins in the title role. Comedian Dan Hedaya played the same role in a spoofy version of the Nixon saga, ``Dick''. Meanwhile, Englishman Hopkins seems to be in constant demand, playing American presidents: Spielberg chose him in 1997, for the key role of the former President John Quincy Adams who undertakes a spirited courtroom defence of the black slaves who escaped in 1839 from the Spanish ship, ``Amistad''.

Fictional presidents in the 1990s have tended to be all-action heroes. Bill Pullman as president in ``Independence Day'' resumes a career as a fighter pilot to save the world from alien attack. Harrison Ford is handy with his fists when ``Air Force One'' is being hijacked. And in a lighter vein, in ``My Fellow Americans'', former presidents Jack Lemmon and James Garner come out of creaky retirement and join forces to foil their successor Dan Aykroyd, who is up to no good in the White House.

One of the last in a long line of actors to put on a blue suit and assume the presidency was Michael Douglas who in the 1995 ``The American President'', is seen to woo a female employee, a widow played by Annette Bening and proposes marriage.The film is being screened by HBO satellite channel tomorrow (Dec.16).Two years earlier, in ``Dave'', a zany update of ``The Prisoner of Zenda'', Kevin Kline must substitute for his look alike - who happens to be the president - and even deceive his wife (Sigourney Weaver).

The road to the presidency is paved with hypocrisy and dirty tricks - if the 1998 film ``Primary Colours'', based on a best selling ``insider'' book, is to be believed. John Travolta plays the world-wise presidential aspirant with Emma Thompson playing his supportive wife.

In another age, the likes of Henry Fonda were automatic choices to play president. In 1964, he played ``The Best Man'' - a film version of a successful and gritty play by Gore Vidal about presidential party conventions . But his most memorable ``pre- presidential'' role had come a quarter century earlier when John Ford the veteran director, cast him in the charismatic title role of ``Young Mr. Lincoln''. It became a classic of its kind, a model for many other documentary-style films about future presidents, even if screen writers complained that such subjects were intense if not too exciting.

Not any more. Today, as bizarre fact overtakes the most breathless fiction, the U.S. presidency is the very stuff of ``filmi'' drama. You can bet the best and brightest of America's screen writing fraternity is watching current developments, to steal a good dramatic idea or two. And as they say down Hollywood way, ``You ain't seen nothin' yet!''

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Section  : Entertainment
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