Premium Episode 208: My Fellow Americans Movie Night (Sample)
To commemorate the indictment of Donald Trump, Jake searched high and low for a movie involving the arrest of a president. The closest he got was the 1996 film "My Fellow Americans." The screwball conspiracy road comedy stars Jack Lemmon and James Garner as rival ex-presidents, clearly stand-ins for George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, who are forced to team up in order to expose a frame job. Along the way they evade murderous NSA agents and meet ordinary Americans. Jake guides us through this mostly forgotten relic of the 90s which somehow combines a hokey, naive vision of American politics with a maximally cynical portrayal of deep state agents shaping history behind the scenes.
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Editing by Corey Klotz.
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Welcome, listener, to Premium Chapter 208 of the QAnon Anonymous Podcast, the My Fellow Americans Movie Night episode.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rokitansky, Julian Field, and Travis View.
Dearest listeners, as many of you know, QAnon supporters have an ever-growing library of films that tie into their conspiratorial belief system.
Hunt for Red October, The Godfather Part 3, and The Matrix, of course.
But with none of QAnon's prophecies coming true, and instead it is Donald Trump who found himself under sealed indictment last week, I had to wonder, could there have been a film that predicted this instead?
I searched for every movie that involved a president going to jail.
You know, conspiracy, perp walks, cuffs.
I wanted it all.
And at first glance, it was Slim Pickens.
Based on my Google search, most of the results were just articles about Trump getting arrested.
But then, I stumbled upon something that caught my eye.
A forgotten piece of artwork from a better time.
A time when I didn't care about politics in the slightest and would have never, ever seen this film.
That's right, folks.
I am talking about the 1996 Peter Segal film, My Fellow Americans, starring Jack Lemmon and James Garner, about two former presidents who team up to take down a corrupt one.
That's just such a funny idea in and of itself.
The Corrupt President is played by none other than Dan Aykroyd.
So holy hell.
Yeah.
I mean, look at this cast.
It's insane.
Lauren Bacall is in this.
Wilford Brimley is in this as the DNC chair, which we'll, of course, have to discuss.
It's very special what they did, but the actors are incredible.
That's true.
Yeah, the actors are incredible in this Esther role.
There's a young Bradley Whitford in this film with all of his hair.
And you already know James Reborn is in this.
That's the guy who plays the contract defense dude who's like in every single political thriller as like the smarmy weaselly guy.
Who's the guy, what's the actor, the Josh from the West Wing?
Wait, which one?
Wait, which guy?
He's the fixer for the president.
Oh, oh, that's Brad Whitford.
So he basically plays the role he would later play in the West Wing, which is very funny as well.
Yeah, he's also the bad guy in Tommy Boy, I believe.
I think it's the same guy.
Yeah, and this is the same director.
His movie before this was Tommy Boy.
Okay, but we're gonna get into all that.
As you may have guessed, Walter Matthau was slated to star opposite Jack Lemmon, but he dropped out and was recast with Garner, and it was the first time that James Garner and Jack Lemmon worked together.
Obviously, Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon from the Grumpy Old Men series, or the Odd Couple, I mean, as you know them.
I don't, but that's fine.
Yeah.
Travis, you've seen Grumpy Old Men or Grumpy Old Men, and they're more famous for something earlier than that that I don't know, because I grew up in the Grumpier Old Men era.
Yeah, yeah.
Classic, classic comedy duo.
Yeah, yeah, classic comedy.
It's bicker, bickering and schtick.
You know, we love this stuff.
Yeah.
So the whole movie I was trying, I don't know if you guys were too, but I was trying to decide that given the time period in which the film was released, 1996, which character was supposed to be which president?
I mean, they mentioned Jimmy Carter in the film.
No, no, no.
It's an obvious one.
It's in the middle of the Clinton presidency.
The Democrat is obviously Bill Clinton and the older man is George Bush Sr.
Okay, so, all right.
Yeah.
I mean, that's kind of what I thought as well, but also just, you know, the script could have been written, you know, in 1993 before Clinton was, I mean, you never know how long these things languish in development, so I didn't want to outright say that it's definitely Clinton.
I think it is.
I think it really is.
And it's also before, interestingly, it's right before the Lewinsky scandal.
So they had pegged Bill Clinton as a huge womanizer.
That was already like an absolutely defined thing.
There's a couple interesting prophecies in this movie, believe it or not.
What I really liked is that they made the Clinton character divorced after his presidency to make his lecherous behavior less offensive.
So they had to change him a little bit to make him more likable.
Yeah, and we'll get to that scene where he's served his divorce papers.
Oh yeah, and the Clinton family is never mentioned once.
They mention Reagan and all of these other presidents, and they never mention the Clintons, so that does give a little bit of weight to your theory, Julian.
Yeah.
So in the movie, Garner's character, President Matt Douglas, is a Democrat and a total ladies' man, sleeping with publicists, kissing women openly at presidential golf tournaments.
The director, Peter Siegel, his first movie was Naked Gun 33 and a Third, which I quite liked.
I liked that series.
His second movie was Tommy Boy, and My Fellow Americans was his third film.
So it's pretty crazy.
I like Tommy Boy.
I don't know if you guys were a fan.
Oh yeah, of course.
Classic movie.
Classic.
I have not watched it recently.
I would imagine it holds up still.
But yeah, so this was right off the heat of Tommy Boy, which is crazy.
It came out to sort of middling reviews.
People really liked the premise, they really liked the performances, but thought the script was a little bit too melodramatic.
Even James Garner in his memoir wrote that although he very much liked working with legendary comedic actor Jack Lemmon, that the director of the film was quote, a self-appointed genius who didn't know his ass from second base and Jack and I both knew it.
Oh yes!
Can you imagine?
The director of Tommy Boy comes in and he's like, okay, yeah, I'm going to do essentially like the next like, you know, Lemon Mappow comedy, but with James Garner.
And it's about like two former guys unraveling the caper of the current corrupt president.
I mean, it's wild.
Oddly enough, this film also has some pretty big budget action sequences, which some viewers thought were a little too much.
And as one critic put it, What drags My Fellow Americans down, however, isn't its reliance upon buddy movie conventions, but its failed attempts to inject embarrassingly trite melodrama and recycled action sequences into the story.
It's pleasant enough to watch Kramer and Douglas engage in verbal sparring matches.
That enjoyment evaporates when we're forced to watch them jumping off of trains, galloping around on horseback, or reflecting on how they never made the difference they wanted to.
I mean, it's fair.
It's kind of a fair assessment.
That's fair, yeah.
Yeah, I get that.
But I also, I disagree a little bit because I think that this film has potentially one of the best explosions in a comedy that I've ever seen.
Yeah, okay, fair enough.
You mean the helicopter?
Yeah, it came out of nowhere, and I'm not gonna lie, when I was watching it, my jaw was, like, on the floor.
Like, they have, like, the propellers, like, whooshing past camera, and the explosion goes off.
I mean, I clipped it, obviously.
I don't usually clip sound effects, but this was worth sharing with you, our dearest listeners.
So the film begins with Jack Lemmon's character, Russell Kramer, a Republican winning his presidential election.
And then, four years later, he's forced to concede in the next election to his hated rival, Matt Douglas, the smooth-talking Democrat candidate.
Four years after that, Douglas loses to Kramer's vice president, William Haney, played by Dan Aykroyd, and a very subdued performance from Aykroyd in this film, which I found very interesting.
I kind of saw him as, like, the Nixon character.
Yeah, I liked him.
He was very unlikable and he played it very well.
Like a guy who's barely paying attention except when something can profit him.
So we get a peek at both of our former presidents still trying to adjust back to regular life after each being King of America for four years.
Lemon's character is doing embarrassing speaking events for a Japanese insurance company and Garner is working on a memoir.
The guys are miserable.
Even the publicist that Garner is banging tells him his book is shit.
He doesn't care.
He's bored out of his mind.
And the inciting incident takes place when the two former guys, which I'm going to be calling them quite a bit throughout the episode, I hope you don't mind, are invited to speak at a general's funeral.
Not General Flynn, unfortunately.
While they're up at the podium, current President Dan Aykroyd is approached by his chief of staff inside the White House.
The Dems have caught wind of an old scandal that threatens his presidency.
They need encouragement.
Buy a new speech, Russell.
That dead general's a lucky one.
He won't ever have to hear it again.
Grab me a towel, will you, Carl?
You know, I don't like to be interrupted when I'm on the bike.
What's going on?
Mr. President, I'm afraid a situation's come up.
The Democrats may have some damaging information about... Olympia.
Sir?
Olympia?
We've had that buried for years.
Yes, sir, but I was thinking... When all this took place, Kramer was president.
There's a...
There's a possibility we could lay the scandal on him.
Yeah, but he didn't know anything about that little deal.
He could always make it appear that he did.
A little fiddling with the records.
Some judicious rewriting of history.
Oh, no.
I don't know, Carl.
That's tricky stuff.
You know, you get into that kind of thing, you open up a whole new bag of cats.
My honest opinion, if this matter isn't taken care of immediately, no less than the presidency is at stake, sir.
Don't worry, sir.
I think I can promise you this is the last you'll hear about it.
Hear about what?
Mrs. Sherman has told me that Charlie had a favorite song.
One that always cheered him when he was down.
Please, God, don't let him quote lyrics.
And I can't think of anything more fitting than to share with you the words from that song now.
Oh, Christ.
Muskrat Susie, Muskrat Sam, do the jitterbug out of Muskrat Land.
And they shimmy.
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