Presidential Movies

Presidential movies

George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush – W. (2008)

We kick off with a real double-whammy in Oliver ‘Mad Dog’ Stone’s surprisingly gentle dissection of the man perhaps best described by Russell Brand as ‘that retard cowboy fella’. Not only do we get Josh Brolin’s expertly mannered turn as Dubya, but there’s plenty of room left over for James Cromwell – who plays Lyndon Johnson in both the 2002 TV Movie ‘RFK’ and the upcoming ‘Flying Into Love’ as well as fictional presidents in ‘The West Wing’ and the latter-day jack Ryan romp ‘The Sum of All Fears’ (‘02) – to steal the show as George Snr. Both manage the extraordinary task of making a pair of shitkicking warmongers seem somewhat sympathetic*.

* Lefty website slams Bush administration – Stop Press!!!

Bill Clinton – Contact (1997)

Media-shy shut-in Bill Clinton played himself Robert Zemeckis’s drawn-out cosmic think piece about extra-terrestrial communication. He only has his chubby, red face onscreen for a moment or two during a television address, and even that – to be fair – could be easily mistaken for stock footage, but he is the only president to have played themself (or, indeed, anyone else) on the silver screen. Rumours that Richard Nixon has an uncredited cameo in Woody Allen’s ‘Bananas’ (’71) remain unsubstantiated.

Ronald Reagan – Airplane II: The Sequel (1982)

It says much about the mood of the time that the only celluloid outing for the Rocket Ronnie was left on the cutting room floor of the harebrained, scattershot, anything goes sequel to cinema’s most enduring spoof. Essayed by world-class grouch Rip Torn – best known for playing Larry Sanders’ boss on TV and Will Smith’s boss in the ‘Men In Black’ films – we can only speculate as to the result, but as Reagan himself was a B-movie actor of note in projects as varied as Don Siegel’s vicious caper flick ‘The Killers’ (1964) and bizarre monkey business ‘Bedtime for Bonzo’ (1951), perhaps the man himself had already done enough to earn his big screen stripes.

Jimmy Carter and Gerald R. Ford – Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993)

More spoofery is afoot in the unasked for sequel to Charlie Sheen-starring ‘Rambo’ send up ‘Hot Shots!’ (’91). Passable look-alikes Ed Beheler and Larry Lindsay are required to do little more than stand on the White House lawn and allow Lloyd Bridges to whale on them with a rusty shovel. That Carter was also a farmer and Ford is slapstick godhead Homer Simpson’s favourite president lend the scene a sly post-modern wit much lacking in the rest of the film.

Richard Milhous Nixon – Secret Honour (1984)

Currently being fleshed out by Frank Langella in Ron Howard’s ‘Frost/Nixon’, the most complex and compelling 20^th Century American president has been played by such diverse actors as grandstanding Welsh garbler Anthony Hopkins (who also delivers the world’s longest, most hand-wringing speech of all time as former prez John Quincy Adams in Spielberg’s ‘Amistad’ (1997)) and hirsute Brooklyn Jew Dan Hedaya – best known as Carla’s scumbag husband in ‘Cheers’. But it is Philip Baker Hall who takes the laurels for revealing the full extent of Nixon’s mania in Robert Altman’s ‘Secret Honour’. Pacing around in his study armed with a revolver and a bottle of hooch, Baker delivers a ninety-minute monologue that reveals the true ends of power.

Lyndon Johnson – The Right Stuff (1984)

Plymouth’s favourite son Donald Moffat is no stranger to the Oval Office. He memorably warned Harrison Ford not to ‘come in here and bark at me like some jumped-up junkyard dog’ in ‘Clear and Present Danger’ (’94), played Roosevelt in ‘Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years’ (’77) and is a regular visitor to ‘The West Wing’. But it was as then Vice-President Lyndon Johnson in Philip Kaufman’s majestic history of the ‘Mercury 7’ astronauts that he really caught the eye. Stentorian in his Stetson and righteously miffed not to be allowed to press the flesh with John Glenn’s nervous wreck of a wife, LBJ descends into a fit of childish pique and starts smashing the place up.

John F. Kennedy – Thirteen Days (2000)

Enduring liberal icon or the serial philandering son of a mobbed-up bootlegger? – JFK seems more divisive as the years go by. Onscreen he is usually a scion of hope and a touchstone for well-intentioned ideals, but Kevin Reynolds’ superb 2000 drama ‘Thirteen Days’ gives a far more complete picture of the man who somehow steered America – and his own administration – through the Cuban missile crisis. The redoubtable Bruce Greenwood (who also played the Chief Exec in Nicolas Cage howler ‘National Treasure: Book of Secrets’ (2007)) lets a natty haircut and mercifully gentle Boston accent do the spade work and gets on with an investigation of moral courage in which Jack doesn’t come up smelling entirely of roses…