Category: political

Primary Colors (1998)
Written by Elaine May
Directed by Mike Nichols

Henry Burton is a young man working his way into the political scene, but almost everyone he meets knows him as the grandson of a great civil rights leader. Henry ends up under the radar of the campaign to elect Governor Jack Stanton president. Stanton is an incredibly charismatic Southerner with a headstrong wife, Susan, who wants nothing more for her husband to attain this high office. As Henry says, Stanton seems like the real thing, and before he knows it, the young man is swept up into the momentum of Stanton’s ascendancy. As the campaign drags on though, Henry begins to learn more about the man at the center of things, about his infidelities, indiscretions, and lies. Henry is forced to face the hypocrisies that are unfolding before him and decide if this is the path he wants to continue down.

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The American President (1995)
Written by Aaron Sorkin
Directed by Rob Reiner

President Andrew Robinson is looking for support on a crime bill, having dropped the gun control pieces much the chagrin of an ideological staff member. While his people work on the crime bill, Robinson meets Sydney Ellen Wade, an environmental lobbyist with her bill to push. She accidentally insults the president to his face, and they proceed to spar with Robinson feeling very charmed by her lightly. He’s been a widower for several years, going between being president and raising his daughter. Robinson and Wade develop a mutual attraction and eventually being a relationship that becomes impossible to maintain privacy with as the media swarms. Conservative politician Senator Rumson sees this an opening for presidential election bid and begins to frame this relationship as antithetical with American family values. What throws another wrench in things is that support for the crime and environmental bills is becoming a tug of war in the Senate.

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Dave (1993)
Written by Gary Ross
Directed by Ivan Reitman

President Bill Mitchell is a no-nonsense executive with a messy personal life, cheating on his increasingly estranged wife. He employs a double to help hide his escape with his mistress and this time around he picks the uncanny doppelganger of Dave Kovic. Dave runs an employment agency in Georgetown and impersonates the president on the side. Everything is going smoothly until Mitchell has a stroke while he is with his mistress. The quick thinking and insidious chief of staff Bob Alexander persuades Dave to help them cover up this tragedy by continuing to impersonate the president. Dave does so hesitantly but quickly falls for Mitchell’s wife Ellen which complicates matters.

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