Playing politics is today's name of the game; Fact is stranger than fiction - and Hollywood loves it, writes SIOBHAN SYNNOT.
THEY'RE the ultimate in big turn-offs, the movies a cinema manager dreads - the political pictures.Yet film-makers keep coming back to the campaigners and babykissers for stories about power, corruption and scandal, even though fans vote with their feet and stay home.
Hollywood's recent rush to make movies about the President is down to market research.
When Clinton arrived at the White House, a survey of American women revealed that a surprisingly large number of them had dreams about him.
This sparked off a rash of pictures about the problems of a man in the seat of power who wanted world peace and the love of a good woman.
Or else he's transformed into a sort of Oval Office Action Man.
In Air Force One, President Harrison Ford personally headbutted the Russians, Bill Pullman's have- a-go-hero barely paused to wipe away a tear when his wife became the First Lady to be bumped off by aliens in Independence Day. Within seconds he was strapping on his helmet to take on the little green squirts personally.
You can't help noticing, by the way, that when a modern world crisis threatens, British politicians disappear like snow off a stove.
Tony Blair is glimpsed on TV as the comet hurtles earthwards in Armageddon. In Independence Day, all we see of the House of Commons is Big Ben being reduced to Big Bricks.
Meanwhile, some of the other political pictures are tinged with a new irony.
What about Dave, where mild-mannered Kevin Kline is drafted in to fill for the real President (called Bill) because he looks just like him; tall, grey- haired and handsome. The reason he has been upgraded to international power- politics is because Bill suffered a stroke - while canoodling with a White House aide.
A couple of years later, in 1995, Hollywood's best known sexaholic, Michael Douglas, was playing a widower President who was trying to keep his approval ratings, while luring Annette Bening into the First Bedroom.
Wag The Dog has the press caught in a sex scandal, so a war is invented to divert public attention. And now there's Primary Colors, where grey- haired, blow-dried southern-fried Jack Stanton is unable to keep his fingers off the doughnuts, or the staff.
Worst of all for the Presidential publicity machine was President Gene Hackman in Absolute Power, an adulterer, a murderer and a thoroughly nasty piece of work.
Suddenly the White House has become a cross between the Playboy mansion and a Hong Kong action set.
Yet in the past, the figure of the American President was treated with respect.
In 1942's Yankee Doodle Dandy, when James Cagney met Franklin D. Roosevelt, the actor playing the President was shown in shadow from behind, delivering wise advice like Solomon to Cagney's awe-struck song and dance man.
In those days, no-one would have dreamt of making a movie about FDR and his mistress Lucy Mercer Rutherford.
But while politicians are a turn-off for audiences, some of the actors decided that ruling a make-believe world was not enough. So they jumped ship.
Glenda Jackson swapped crown and sceptre as Elizabeth I for the House of Commons. Shirley Temple became a US Ambassador. And, of course, Ronald Reagan got his first taste of being President Reagan as President of the Screen Actors Guild.
And when Clint Eastwood became the mayor of Carmel, Dirty Harry sprang into action, making his home town a better place by allowing people to eat ice cream in the street.
This led to jokes about the Magnum being the "most powerful ice-cream in the world".
And even "do you fell licky, punk?"
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| Title Annotation: | Features |
|---|---|
| Author: | Synnot, Siobhan |
| Publication: | Daily Record (Glasgow, Scotland) |
| Date: | Oct 30, 1998 |
| Words: | 602 |
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