American Politics in Hollywood Film

273 Pages·2011·1.885 MB·English

by  Ian Scott

Ian Scott
American Politics
in Hollywood Film
Second Edition
AMERICAN POLITICS IN
HOLLYWOOD FILM
2nd Edition
Ian Scott
Edinburgh University Press
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© Ian Scott, 2011
First edition published by Edinburgh University
Press in 2000
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh
www.euppublishing.com
Typeset in 11/13 Palatino Light
by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne
A CIP record for this book is available from the
British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 4024 9 (hardback)
ISBN 978 0 7486 4023 2 (paperback)
The right of Ian Scott
to be identifi ed as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Published with the support of the Edinburgh
University Scholarly Publishing Initiatives Fund.
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements v
List of Illustrations vi
Introduction: ‘We’re Living Your Scripts’ 1
1 Film, Ideology and American Politics 11
Hollywood and the Portrayal of American Political Ideas 19
The Iconography of Hollywood Politics 24
2 Political Films in the Classic Studio Era 34
Inside the Corridors of Power 44
Symbolism, Iconography and the Movies of Frank Capra 53
3 Hollywood on the Campaign Trail 80
Hollywood and Early Election Campaigns 91
The Boys on the Bus 97
Contemporary Election Movies 103
4 Action, Conspiracy and Paranoia in Hollywood
Political Films 114
The Pre-Cold War Thriller Films 120
Post-1945: Cold War Conspiracy 124
Alan J. Pakula and the Classic Paranoia Style 137
Political Thrillers in the Contemporary Era 146
5 Political Biography in Film 158
Origins and Evolution 166
Drama and Politics: The Biographies of Oliver Stone 178
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iv AMERICAN POLITICS IN HOLLYWOOD FILM
6 Hollywood and America in the New Foreign Policy Era 190
Trust No One 196
Decoding the Documentary 210
Conclusions 214
7 Hollywood and Contemporary Domestic Politics 218
Who Took the Politics out of Political Movies? 218
Political Films in the 1990s 223
The 2000s and Beyond 243
Conclusions 247
Index 255
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my friends and colleagues in the Department of
English and American Studies at Manchester for their continuing help
and support as this project moved towards completion. My colleagues
in the British Association for American Studies have offered tireless
assistance and advice over the years and in particular I would like to
thank Simon Newman, Marina Moskevicz, Jon Roper, John Dumbrell,
Iwan Morgan and many more who have all heard or commented on
parts of this book at some time or another. I also want to thank count-
less numbers of students on my Film and Politics course over the years
who year on year have always contributed something new, illuminat-
ing and inspiring in their work for me to go away and think about. I
want to thank my family and friends for their support, especially Rick,
Kevin, Dave, Steve and Chris, all of whom I have known for more years
than any of us would care to mention but who have always been there
to support and offer good advice, usually involving trips to the pub! I
want to acknowledge the hard work and constant encouragement of
all the staff at Edinburgh University Press, including Esme Watson and
especially Vicki Donald for her patience and perseverance with this
second edition of the book.
v
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Josiah Bartlet is succeeded by Matt Santos as The West Wing
series draws to a close. Image supplied by Warner Bros
Entertainment/Getty Images. 3
Frank Capra, Hollywood’s leading fi lmmaker of the 1930s.
Image courtesy of US Federal Government. 55
Jeff Smith pays his respects at the Lincoln Memorial in Capra’s
iconic political movie. Image courtesy of Columbia/The Kobal
Collection. 61
Long John Willoughby contemplates his fate at the climax of
Capra’s Meet John Doe. Image supplied by Hulton Archive/
Getty Images. 70
Bob Roberts turns into the ‘rebel conservative’ in Tim
Robbins’s fi lm. Image courtesy of Columbia/Tri-Star/The Kobal
Collection. 81
Willie Stark addresses the masses in All the King’s Men. Image
supplied by Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images. 92
Bill McKay on the campaign trail in The Candidate. Image
courtesy of Warner Bros/The Kobal Collection. 98
Tom Dobbs entertains the voters in Man of the Year. Image
courtesy of Universal/The Kobal Collection/Gerlitz, Ava. 109
Noir photography in Carol Reed’s classic, The Third Man.
Image courtesy of London Films/The Kobal Collection. 127
Raymond Shaw, brainwashed in The Manchurian Candidate.
Image supplied by Archive Photos/Getty Images. 132
vi
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List of illustrations vii
Political imagery in Pakula’s The Parallax View. Image courtesy
of Paramount/The Kobal Collection. 143
Professor Woodrow Wilson gets ready to embark on a political
career. Image supplied by Hulton Archive/Getty Images. 160
Plotting and collusion within the White House are the
hallmarks of Oliver Stone’s Nixon. Image courtesy of Illusion/
Cinergi/The Kobal Collection. 186
Senator Irving and reporter Janine Roth confront each other
in Lions for Lambs. Image courtesy of MGM/UA/The Kobal
Collection/James, David. 206
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For Helen
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INTRODUCTION:
‘WE’RE LIVING YOUR SCRIPTS’
As the 2008 presidential primary election season began to kick into
gear, the Democratic campaign quickly drew attention to itself: not just
for the war of attrition that was starting to unfold between Senators
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, but also because news pundits and
casual watchers alike seemed to be hit by a wave of déjà-vu about
the ensuing battle. Here was an election that seemed very familiar.
Haven’t we seen this campaign somewhere before? they cried. This
sense of recall did not, however, emanate from another time in
American political history. This was not a rerun of 1960 when John
F. Kennedy defeated Hubert Humphrey; nor a similar scenario to
1976 when Jimmy Carter emerged from obscurity before the primaries
began that year to claim the nomination and then the White House.
No, the similarity about this race came from television: specifi cally the
seventh and fi nal season of the acclaimed NBC political drama, The
West Wing, in which aspiring but largely inexperienced Latino con-
gressman, Matthew Santos (Jimmy Smits), beats Vice-President Bob
Russell (Gary Cole) to the Democratic nomination before going on to
triumph narrowly over a moderate Republican from the West, Arnold
Vinick (Alan Alda), in the November general election.
If all of this were nothing more than the coincidental coming-together
of art and life, it would be pretty interesting to begin with. The fact
that one drew inspiration from the other, however, shows the reality
of the Hollywood/entertainment/Washington nexus within American
political culture in the early twenty-fi rst century. For when Elie Attie,
a former speechwriter for Al Gore in 2000 and then a writer and pro-
ducer on The West Wing, approached Obama aide David Axelrod in
the summer of 2004, asking about the background and life of his boss,
the two men set in train a sequence of events that saw the fi ctitious
show uncannily predict the real-life action as it unfolded two years
after the fi nal season of the series had been screened in the United
1
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