It's been a while since we released an episode so, to tide you over, here's a bonus show, previously for patrons only. It's on the subject of the satirical mockumentary Bob Roberts (1992), written, directed by, and starring Tim Robbins (with Alan Rickman, Ray Wise, Giancarlo Esposito, Harry Lennix, Lynne Thigpen, Susan Sarandon, James Spader, Fred Ward, Bob Balaban, John Cusack, Gore Vidal, and Jack Black). Our patrons got this way back in March, so consider signing up to give one or both of us a dollar a month (or more, if you can) and get access to new bonus episodes and all the old ones. Daniel's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/danielharper/posts Jack's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4196618&fan_landing=true
I'm Jack Graham, he him, and in this podcast I talk to my friend Daniel he him, and in this podcast I talk to my friend Daniel Harper, also he him, about what he learned from years of listening to today's Nazis, white nationalists, white supremacists, and what they say to each white nationalists, white supremacists, and
Be warned, this is difficult subject matter.
Content warnings always apply.
Okay, so it's the third bonus episode of so it's the third bonus episode of IDSG, which for the benefit of people listening, potentially in the future, we're recording on the 22nd of March, At least it's the 22nd for me.
It might be the 21st for Daniel.
I don't know how that whole time thing works.
And it's timey-wimey as as they say and oh on the BBC I just imagine anytime time is mentioned on the BBC it is Pronounced timey-wimey.
I think that's that that's me as an American.
That's how I believe things work on the BBC so Yeah, well sadly it is these days.
There was a time when the BBC used to make decent shows, but now you just get David Tennant to say something stupid and the entire internet loves it, so they don't bother making good stuff.
Anyway, that's a very old grudge.
The whole of the BBC is just written by Stephen Moffat, which would explain Boris Johnson, I think, but we don't have to go there, it's fine.
Yeah.
But yeah, we're talking about another movie.
We're talking about Bob Roberts from, I believe this was released in 1992.
Yeah, a couple of months before the 1992 election.
Yeah.
And written and directed by Tim Robbins.
Starring a pretty amazing cast, to be honest, which we'll probably talk about a little bit.
And yeah, it's what they call a mockumentary, isn't it?
It's a pseudo-documentary.
Very much like Punishment Park, actually.
Although quite different as well, in many ways.
In very many ways, yes.
Partially inspired by... this is Spinal Tap from 1984.
Yeah, which I've never seen.
There's quite a lot of those cultural touchstone movies that I've never seen for some reason.
I've never seen Spinal Tap or The Princess Bride or Terminator 2.
Loads of them.
So basically I don't understand Twitter.
Yeah, or The Simpsons.
You've never been a fan of The Simpsons, I think is the big thing that prevents you from understanding Twitter, yeah.
Yeah, barely seen any Simpsons.
And I think the total amount of Buffy the Vampire Slayer I ever saw was about eight minutes.
So, yeah, I'm lost, really, in today's world.
Yes.
No, that's pop culture.
I have not seen even the Joss Whedon cut of Justice League, and I don't plan to watch the Cider cut either.
So I'm just being left behind by pop culture as we speak.
Yeah, I've never seen that either, left behind.
I have seen the Joss Whedon – let's not talk about this.
Yeah, I was going to do a joke about – the movie we're doing this week is, of course, the Snyder Cut, and then we got completely lost with all that, but it's fine.
Well, it's the Snyder Cut of Bob Roberts, isn't it?
Actually, I was thinking like, yeah, like a one of those like 30 Years Later sequels would be really relevant for Bob Roberts, which I think we can get into.
Yeah, that would be a good idea, wouldn't it?
You know, Bob Roberts today, what's he doing now?
I imagine he's a diehard Trumpist, you know.
I don't know.
Maybe he'd be... It just feels a bit weird, doesn't it?
Trying to transplant the satire from the 90s into actual events of the present day.
Because I think, as... This is a flawed movie, I would say, but it's very prescient.
But again, like a lot of things, it looks pretty mild compared to what actually happened.
Well, the thing is that this was made in 1992.
And I read – I actually found an interview that Tim Robbins did last year in 2020 talking about this.
And it's full of some kind of interesting tidbits.
And we can read some of it as things that he's saying in 2020 about the thing that he did in 1992.
But it is clear from his talking about it that it was based on, he basically was sort of like planning this in as early as 1985.
And so it speaks very much more to kind of late 80s, early 90s politics than it does to Later later eras But this movie was made four years before Fox News was even a thing because Fox News doesn't get started until 1996 and so It is this it is this kind of a little time capsule, right?
It is it's kind of like this moment in history and I and I've long thought that like 1992 there is a A sense of which what we need to do is talk about US electoral politics as sort of the long 1992.
And the fact that this movie happened to come out in that year is almost an accident because it has very little to say to that moment, but everything to say to sort of the context around it, right?
You know, so yeah, it's interesting.
Yeah, 92, of course, was the election that saw George Bush I become a one-term president, and Bill Clinton was elected, although how much of that is down to Ross Perot splitting the right-wing vote is arguable, I suppose.
I wouldn't want to comment on that, because I don't know, off the top of my head, whether Clinton would have been elected without Ross Perot.
I long believed that... You probably do.
I long believed that Ross Perot was the thing that allowed Bill Clinton to be elected.
I have seen some polling data, and, you know, there are some very clever political scientists talking, you know, decades after the fact, that, like, looking at, like, if you look at the data, Perot did kind of take equally from both candidates, and so, you know, maybe it's kind of a wash, but, like, it is certainly
It is important that Perot was in that campaign at that time in terms of, you know, it is an important political moment in the sense that it shaped the way the campaign was run, even though it may not have affected the sort of eventual results.
Anyway, that's completely beside the point of us talking about this movie, which there's a lot to talk about in the movie, so we should do that.
Yeah.
So, Where would you like to start?
Do you have an angle you'd like to start with?
I don't know.
We should talk a little bit about the movie itself, I think.
I mean, we don't tend to do that on these, but I mean, you kind of said, like, prescient, but, like, kind of fatally flawed, and I sort of agree with that.
I saw this, I don't know, sometime in the early 2000s.
I rented the DVD or whatever, And watch it for the first time or maybe I caught it on like Turner classic movies not Turner classic movies at that point But it would have been like on core one of the one of the paid cable channels one of the like kind of basic cable channels and I I rented this from a video rental store Sure, pretty much as soon as it was possible to do because that was the kind of 16 year old I was sure sure and I
Have to tell you sure but i was i was younger because i'm a few years younger than you and i was i was not old enough to know this movie existed although i was very interested in ninety two election.
When i was twelve.
No, but but did not know this movie existed and I didn't really discover it until I was kind of reading about it a few years later, so I'm pretty sure I caught this on like IFC the independent film channel had like a free preview or something like that a few years later And I kind of caught it on and what watched it and In that format.
And then I probably watched it one or two times in the 20 years since then.
And then I decided we were going to do the podcast, and I watched it like two and a half times in the last two weeks, because that's typically how I prepare for these movie episodes, is just kind of re-watching the film a couple of times and kind of solidifying it in my mind so that we have a So that I have enough of a background to really have things to say about it.
And it's funny, like in, you know, when I saw this in 2001 or whatever, 2002, it felt like, oh, this is a really, a really biting satire of the kind of political movement of that time period.
Because I was in my early 20s.
And like watching it now, it's like, man.
This is like almost almost silly and naive in terms of its in terms of the reality of the political of the politics behind it, but again, as you say is a prophetic in a lot of ways and I think the I also find that just as a film, and I'll just kind of put this out here now, it's not much of a film in terms of having a beginning, a middle, and an end.
It has a really fascinating premise, it really has some things to say, but I feel like it's often overstuffed and over-signified.
Like the fact that Tim Robbins is Bob Roberts, has political campaign staff who are also day traders and working in a mobile van and like it like puts his finger on like kind of the yuppie element but like it would actually make more sense if he had two vans one of which was the political operation and one of which was the day traders the fact that they're the same people
Like, I understand there's a budgetary constraint, and I understand, like, what he's going for there, but it feels a little bit tone-deaf to me, and I understand that might be, like, seen as, like, a nitpicky detail, but it also is, like, kind of that, like, it kind of brings me out of the satire a little bit, to sort of, like, have that thought of, like, well, no, they wouldn't be, they would be a separate thing, like, that's the whole, like, point is,
You know, the Bob Roberts character is kind of running this, what is it, Broken Dove program, which is simultaneously kind of funding the Iran-Contra affair and putting drugs into African-American neighborhoods in Pennsylvania.
And those are two separate groups of people, right?
And there's a duality there.
And I feel like that could have been better represented by the film.
But also, I kind of don't blame it because this is a super low-budget movie made as a passion project in, like, 1992.
So, you know.
But that's just kind of one example of sort of, like, the tone-deaf sort of problems that I have with sort of the structure of the film.
It's just a little too dense.
I wish it did a little bit more with its premise.
Yeah, you've gestured to several of the points that I would want to make about the film's problems.
This is Tim Robbins' first picture that he directed.
I think we have a touch of first novel syndrome about this, which is when somebody writes their first novel, they try to put everything in.
It's a well-known thing.
They try to put all their ideas into the first novel, which I always find that very endearing.
Oh, it's super endearing.
It's super endearing.
Yeah, no, you're right.
And it is, I mean, speaking as somebody who has been trying to write their first novel repeatedly pretty much his entire life, it is, you know, I get it, I really do.
But I think this has a touch of that about it, doesn't it?
Where he's trying to put everything into it, and kind of like the idea of having this Bob Roberts figure.
It probably seemed like a real stroke of genius, you know, I can have this figure who kind of contains everything I want to say, you know, about the problems with the American political system.
And that's really what you get in the film.
The film is, I mean, one of the problems with talking about it is that there's not really all that much to say in terms of explicating it or You know, or exegesis, or anything like that, because the film just... it just tells you, you know?
The film tells you exactly what's on its mind.
It just says, you know, this, this, this, this, and this.
Yeah, he wants to get it all in, you know?
So he wants to get, like, the national security state, CIA, drugs in inner-city neighbourhoods, the war on drugs generally, The cultural reaction against the 1960s, Wall Street day trading, a lot of the things you've mentioned.
You know, he kind of wants them all to be in there.
And while there is a certain, you know, there's something really spiky about the idea of this guy's campaign bus.
Once you get inside there, it's like a miniature Wall Street trading floor.
That's got a nice little, you know, sharpness to it on the edge.
You do nonetheless feel that it's all being crammed in together.
Well, and he's simultaneously a folk singer, so he's a politician, folk singer, day trader, self-made millionaire, quote-unquote self-made millionaire, etc, etc.
And clearly implied to be some kind of spook as well.
Right, right.
And that's it, really, isn't it?
Tim Robbins is trying to say, you know, I have an issue with this, this, this, and this.
I have an issue with right-wing populist politics.
I have an issue with the national security state.
I have an issue with the war on drugs.
I have an issue with Wall Street.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to talk about all of them, and I'm going to put them all in this one guy, which has a certain bravura quality to it.
It does make it feel overstuffed, I think, as you said.
Like it would make more sense if he was just a media personality, you know and like like not to not to blame Robbins for for like failing to understand the thing that was coming right, but it would make more sense to see him not as a politician if he was just a Like I'm a guy with a TV show like sort of like this like alternate reality version of network or something in which he's a guy who has like a TV show on
One of the burgeoning cable networks in 1992, who is pushing this right wing agenda, who's like selling a bunch of albums, and is pushing this right wing agenda without actually being a politician at the same time.
And almost, but he's the water for him to be all of it, all of it at once, right, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
Another problem we have, relatedly, I think, with this movie is that it is a little uncertain in terms of... not exactly uncertain of its tone, because I think the tone is quite finely balanced and quite consistent all the way through, but in a way, like the world building that the tone is based upon is a bit weird, because on one level you're being asked to absorb At certain points in the movie, and again, not in a particularly complex way, because it's just people telling you.
It's just Gore Vidal or Giancarlo Esposito playing their characters, looking at the camera, telling you, because it's the documentary conceit.
And that's fine, they're great actors, and it makes sense for their characters to be doing that.
But at the same time, you are just being told.
So it's not being told in a complex way, but you are being told quite complex things about America's national security state and about how the economy and the entire political system and media system is geared around Essentially imperialism, the word isn't used but that's what the film is getting at, whether it knows it or not.
So you're being asked to absorb quite a lot of this real world stuff, this quite tough and complex real world stuff, certainly for an audience to a Hollywood comedy film.
And at the same time, It all seems to be taking place in a world... I mean, like, the pastiches of Dylan, Bob Dylan, they're very, very direct.
Like, the albums are called The Freewheelin' Bob Roberts, you know?
And there's a direct... The times are changing back, which is like, you know... And it's funny.
It's a great... It's undoubtedly funny.
Yeah, it's a great joke.
I love it.
But yeah, you're right, yeah.
Does Bob Dylan exist in this universe?
You know, no, no, no.
I think I think that's the no.
So my my my thought is like, of course, Bob Dylan is this in this universe.
This is the right wing, like literally taking the iconography and using it to push their own agenda.
Like I've always kind of seen it that way.
Yeah, absolutely.
But you see what I mean about there being a problem of the film not being decided between metaphor and literalism.
Right.
Right.
No, no, no.
I get that.
I get that.
Yeah.
And another problem I think this film has, which marks it very much as of its time, is the conspiratorial stuff.
Which of course appealed to me at the time, as I say, when I first saw this I was 16, and at the time I was a fan of Oliver Stone.
I mean, I think you can be a fan of Oliver Stone and not accept uncritically everything that Oliver Stone has to say.
Talk radio is definitely on our list to cover in this series, for instance.
You absolutely can, and I would say in many ways I still am a fan of Oliver Stone without accepting everything, or indeed a great deal, that he says.
But at the time, when I was 16, I was pretty much an uncritical admirer of JFK, which is a movie I've talked about, and I thought, yeah, that's pretty much true, I expect, which I no longer believe.
And I think this movie comes out the same year, doesn't it? 1992.
It wasn't... JFK was in 91, I think.
Was it?
Oh, it was roughly the same time.
But it was released on Christmas Day of 91, I believe, so, you know, whatever.
Yeah.
Sorry, I'm being pedantic.
I'm being a pedantic asshole.
That's just a thing that I'm doing.
It's fine.
You do you, Daniel.
It's fine.
But it was the 90s, and the 90s were the great sort of resurrection of the paranoid style in American culture.
And, you know, because, of course, you have the X-Files.
Like a year or so down the road, I think, starting.
I think it started in 93, something like that.
That sounds right, yeah.
Oliver Stone's JFK.
It becomes a big thing in the 90s.
I mean, there's a really interesting, complex question about why that happens.
I don't know if we want to get into that here.
But it was a thing.
And this movie very much takes part in it.
And, I mean, part of the problem there, I think, is, like you said, the film doesn't really have a story.
So, it tries to give itself a story, or at least a narrative, by giving you the figure of the dissident journalist, Bugs Raplin, played by the brilliant Giancarlo Esposito.
And his being framed, it's clearly implied that he is framed and then assassinated by these people that are behind Bob Roberts.
Framed for trying to assassinate Bob Roberts, which, again, it's clearly implied that's a fake.
In a direct pastiche of the RFK assassination, Bob Roberts' then quote-unquote assassination attempt, etc.
etc.
Again, it's funny, and it's part of, I think, Robyn's trying to sort of cram everything in.
But at the same time it is a bit dated and I think it does show you some of the naivety that you were talking about.
Like as you say, what actually happened in the end is that this happened ten times worse and ten times more ridiculous and the guy wasn't, I mean as far as we know anyway, backed by the CIA or the National Security State or anything like that.
He was a game show host!
Who had his position in life because he inherited loads of money from his father.
Sure.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, and not even talking about Trump, but, you know, talking about the, uh, just the kind of the, the, the reality of politics at that time.
I mean, you know, it's, it's interesting in the sense of, because I remember, I mean, some of my earliest like political memories are like reading Time Magazine, which my family had a subscription to Time Magazine.
So I was, you know, 12 years old, 12, 13 years old, reading Time Magazine.
And that was some of my first knowledge of politics.
And, you know, that probably explains a lot about my history in some complicated ways, right?
You know, that says a lot about, you know, just like that was the thing that you have.
You were the kind of educated consumer in 1992 talking about politics, kind of pre-internet.
Like, it's not even about me.
I mean, I was a kid.
Like, you can't blame me for Accepting fairly uncritically the things I was reading at that time, but um, you know, even at that time, I do blame you.
Yeah.
Well, you know, that's fine.
You can do that.
Uh, you know, the Nazis certainly well, um, you know, but, uh, uh, there's an, there's an interesting kind of phenomenon in that, like that was the moment in which I became politically aware and, uh, that the way that the 92, uh, primaries and the 92 kind of general election, With Ross Perot kind of becomes this kind of like staging ground for what we're going to see kind of down the line.
And again, this is this this is kind of the last piece of political media in a way that exists prior to that, because Robbins describes and I have this interview that he did.
Which I will link to in the show notes in which he describes this kind of process of kind of coming up with this and a Robin spent like 10 years as this kind of indie stage director doing live theater and Rewriting the scripts and performing for indie leftist audiences in various places.
That's the thing he comes out of.
And this movie represents that, in which you write the thing that you need to write, you put it out there, and you take your criticism and then move on.
It wouldn't be hard to imagine.
If they did a stage production of Bob Roberts, which was sort of this basic script, and then performed that for three months, kind of iterating on it, then they could kind of hone in on some of these details.
But that was his process at the time.
It's kind of weird, looking at Tim Robbins' career, that I think of him as this kind of big-name actor, which he is, but he really only had about a 10-year You know, kind of period as kind of a big name star, and then he kind of goes off to kind of do indie stuff, and that's interesting, right?
You know that?
Yeah, it is interesting.
One thing I always find, kind of a bit beside the point, but you're a fellow fan of Orson Welles, so I always find there's a slight resonance between them, you know?
Because Orson as well started out doing, it wasn't indie theatre, but he started doing very innovative theatre.
He did, of course, the so-called Voodoo Macbeth, and he did his anti-fascist Julius Caesar, which made him very famous.
And then he sort of broke into movies and became a very big star and a wunderkind quite briefly and then spent the rest of his hit career essentially trying to scrape together money to do basically what he was doing before he had his big break in Hollywood because of War of the Worlds and all that.
Except in films, you know.
The rest of his career after Kane is like him in exile, trying to do what he was doing before on the stage in New York, later on in the cinema format.
And it's interesting in that respect that Robbins goes on to direct a film about Wells, putting on the... God, what's it called?
I can't remember, the musical, the radical musical that got, because it was funded by the New Deal.
I know what you're talking about, I can't remember the title, I'm sorry.
I can't remember it.
Cradle Will Rock?
No, it's alright.
That's it, Cradle Will Rock.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's, I think it's probably Robin's best film, that.
For all its problems.
I haven't seen it, honestly.
I mean, you know, I haven't watched The Shawshank Redemption in a lot of years, and that's for deliberate reasons, because I love it.
And I'd rather not not love it.
If that makes sense.
But I you know, I think I think this is one of his best performances.
Honestly, I think I think he's very good in this.
Yeah.
I mean, even beyond where he does the interview where he's talking to the documentary filmmaker, and he's just He's just talking to him ten to the dozen without pause completely smooth robotic and smiling the whole time It's it's it's it's chilling, you know, it's obviously meant to be a total Sociopath, right?
I mean and he's just got it one of my it's funny that like a lot of the so so the the history of this film I was trying to get there and then I yeah, I kind of drifted off a little bit.
No, no, it's fine It's fine, but the history of all my awesome No, no, we could talk.
I've long thought that, like, if we didn't have to talk about Nazis, you and I could do both an Orson Welles podcast, just talking about various Orson Welles properties, but also, like, American electoral politics movie podcast.
You and I would be great at that.
So Nazis, if you want to make us broke, just stop doing what you're doing.
Jack and I have plenty of other things we can talk about.
It's fine.
Broker.
Broker, right.
Now that one of us are wealthy, we'll get to that at the end of the podcast.
I'd much rather be alternating between Cradle Will Rock and then Primary Colors and Chimes at Midnight and then The Candidate.
I'd much rather be doing that.
Yeah.
No, no.
Yeah.
And all those HBO, uh, HBO, like, uh, you know, electoral politics, movies, game change and all that sort of thing.
It'd be great to sit and watch those.
Um, they're mostly very bad.
Anyway, um, Tim Robbins, uh, kind of comes up in the theater in the early eighties.
His father is a folk singer, which I didn't know until I was researching for this podcast.
And which explains a lot of Bob Roberts, right?
It does, doesn't it?
And Tim Robbins' brother did a bunch of the music for this.
So Tim Robbins is actually singing, but the songs were written and produced by Tim Robbins' brother.
I think David Robbins is his name.
But Tim Robbins left his home, left his New York neighborhood in 1980 to go to Los Angeles and You know, try to make it as a creative person.
Comes back in 1985 and sees like, oh fuck, this whole neighborhood is gentrified.
And that was kind of the genesis of this.
He's like, I could see even at the time, there's a McDonald's on the corner all of a sudden, and this is like the Reagan era.
This is, you know, the SNL scandal.
This is, you know, the brokers.
And it's also part of the Iran-Contra thing, which was happening around the same time.
And like that's the that's sort of the source that's the source material for him is this very personal recollection of like kind of going back to his own neighborhood and seeing it was being taken over by By the capitalist class and I Don't want to get off the movie but like so many of the Nazis that we follow along sort of the main thread of this and kind of tell
A similar story and superficial details of, and then I came back to my neighborhood and these things have changed.
And they point to, and then there are suddenly all these immigrants in my hometown, et cetera, et cetera, and like kind of make it into this like kind of racialized thing.
But really the thing they're talking about is like, no, we didn't have the opportunities we didn't have, we used to have.
Rust beltification of like all of middle America etc etc and so there is this kind of sense of loss and this loss of something that is very real in your neighborhood and I will never disagree with that if you feel like we used to be we used to be people who had like some degree of comfort and we could live our lives and you know have families etc etc and now we can't because
Poverty that I'm completely on board with you blaming the poor immigrant people for that is the problem because ultimately that's not the issue the issue is the Is capitalism and that's not the juice.
That's not the juice, but it's worth noting that Tim Robbins saw that and then built Seven years later.
He makes Bob Roberts about this sort of phenomenon that he has in his personal life in his real life about Seeing his neighborhood, and that's the sort of genesis of this project, versus these Nazis, and what they do is they see, oh, there are brown people living near me who don't speak my language, and despite the fact that those people are as tormented as any people in my everyday experience, they're the ones that I'm going to blame for the problems in my life.
And I think that it speaks to Robin's experience, and like, what An actual like sort of like even vaguely leftist, although I think Ramos is himself just more of a New Deal Democrat, but even a vaguely leftist perspective in a systemic perspective, gives you the tools you need to sort of understand this phenomenon as opposed to, you know, you're not, you're not as opposed to being preyed upon by demagogues, by racist demagogues, fascist demagogues, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
The question of Robin's own politics is interesting.
I think the choice to draft Gore Vidal in to represent the antithesis of Bob Roberts is probably quite telling.
Because Gore Vidal is far from... I can't even remember if he's still alive.
He might have died.
I can't remember.
But, Gore Vidal, you know, very acute and non-illusioned commentator, I would say, of American politics.
And yet, of course, very much of that sort of Camelot-Kennedy idealizing, you know, Kennedy-Democrat sort of approach to things.
And I think that's probably a clue as to where Robin's sympathy goes.
Although I think there's a lot in the film, and I want to give it its due, there's a lot in it that's quite sophisticated for somebody of that kind of left-democrat In, you know, normal mainstream left Democrat, I mean, not like DSA.
Persuasion, you know, you have to give the film credit for being quite clear-eyed about a lot of things, like, you know, the national security state, and the CIA, and stuff like that.
Well, it's funny that almost anything that even references that gets, like, bonus points, because, like, nothing in mainstream film ever references that.
This is it, yeah.
Yeah, it's just not acknowledged.
Gore Vidal.
Gore Vidal died in 2012.
I just looked it up just to be sure.
Yeah, but another thing, I think you have to give it credit, like you were mentioning that a lot of the people you listen to kind of have a similar origin story in terms of their political awakening, although, you know, I would not call it an awakening, to Robbins coming back and finding this gentrification.
Well, I mean, we're talking about the crashing wave of neoliberalism, aren't we, at this point in time in the 80s?
We're starting to see The late 80s and the 90s, we're starting to see the real beginning of the signs of the long-term effects of the massive shift that's been going on since the 70s.
And nevertheless, the film... I mean, again, the film is quite clear-eyed about the fact that there is a common strain between neoliberalism and mainstream reactionary party politics, Republican politics, And then fascism.
I mean, one of the reasons this is prophetic is that it shows you how, as indeed we are seeing with Trumpism, genuine fascist movements can grow within mainstream right-wing politics and how that is directly linked to the economics of neoliberalism.
I mean, this is why, although I do think it is kind of crammed in and a bit on the nose... I mean, this film couldn't be more on the nose if it was a pair of spectacles.
But I do kind of appreciate the whole sort of campaign bust also being a Wall Street flaw, because it does lay it on the line.
And yet, despite the fact that the film sees that very clearly, it sees, it predicts fascism growing in that way out of the existing liberal democratic system through the reactionary side of it and its connections to state power and neoliberal finance, etc.
It nevertheless remains pretty clear-eyed about the class basis of it, because you have some lines about how Bob plays really well in the depressed areas, and Bob does some lines about how we have to give these people hope, etc.
etc.
But the film repeatedly shows you the polls being pretty much neck and neck.
They swing back and forth from A matter of one, two points, you know?
It's one minute, Paste is in the lead, Brickley Paste, he's the funny name.
He's the Democrat Senator who's in office.
There are a lot of funny names.
Pinchonian, almost, funny names.
Almost as if there was a...
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
But yeah, the polls swing back and forth.
It's pretty evenly balanced.
And what we see of Bob's core support, the actual movement behind him, it's very recognisable.
I mean, I don't know about you, but I was watching it on this rewatch.
First time I've watched it in ages.
And I was thinking, I was looking at like the people camped outside the hospital when he's supposedly in there injured and the people following him around and you get like the funny stuff with a very young Jack Black playing this Manson style fan and stuff like that.
I'm thinking, yeah, look, these look familiar, don't they?
You know, I was watching these people storm the Capitol just a little, just a little while ago, even down to like dressing up in Revolutionary War uniforms, et cetera, et cetera.
Yeah.
And the class basis, they're like those three boys that become his obsessive fans and start following him around.
They're the mayor's sons, if I remember right.
Yeah, something like that, yeah.
Because we're introduced to them.
These are clearly not poor people living in depressed areas.
This is a petty bourgeois movement.
So, you know, I have to give the film major props for that.
It gets an extraordinary amount about the politics right in a way that mainstream movies just don't.
You know?
And there's a reason behind that, which you could explicate at some detail and a half in the past, you know, why capitalist production cannot actually encapsulate, you know, a true leftist vision.
That said, Jack Black's character and the trenchcoat mafia, as we might call them, Yeah.
In a slightly different metaphor.
It's worth talking about, though.
This is Jack Black's very first film appearance, which I think is interesting, because if you didn't know that was Jack Black, you'd just kind of think, Yeah, like like now we recognize a Jack Black just we're not gonna get into this But like this is a little bit of like, you know There you could watch this film five times and still not find all of the and then that person went on to be super famous
There are a ton of amazing people in this movie, among which is the woman who plays Leslie Knope's mom on Parks and Recreation, is one of the news anchors, and I like to think that this is part of a shared universe in which
She left her position as a news anchor and moved to Pawnee, Indiana became a powerful local local elected politician and then Parks and Recreation exists in the universe in which Bob Roberts is a senator in Pennsylvania That's that's that's how I like to think about this film.
Anyway, um, but but Jack Black's character and the the trio like I don't remember if it was I I don't remember if it was they're like the mayor's, like she's the mayor's wife or whatever.
I think that's it.
I would trust that you remember it better than I do, but it is like, well, this is a person that you need to meet.
This is a person of some kind of power and prestige, and they're literally reviewing footage, which is essentially like what campaign ads are going to run.
And like hints of the Willie Horton ad in certain in certain bits of that, right?
and even the documentarian is kind of coerced into Being a part of this process, which is kind of a family.
I love that man.
Yeah, where you know, they ask the documentarian Do you agree with this and then the camera like tilts up and down which is yeah, it's fascinating.
It's fascinating That's great, because one of the repeated refrains you get from Bob Roberts whenever anybody in the media challenges him is, you're betraying your responsibilities as a journalist.
You're supposed to be objective.
Right.
He says that repeatedly.
He says that in the very early scene with the wonderful Lynn Thypen as an interviewer.
Yeah.
She pops up and then disappears again.
She's amazing.
She's amazing.
She's brilliant.
That might be my favorite scene in the movie, honestly.
Anyway, continue.
I think my favourite scene might be the bit where the production assistant on the SNL rip-off pulls the electrical cables and stops the show.
I love that bit.
I just want to, you know, I just cheer for that woman.
Oh yeah, yeah, no, no.
Yeah, that is a great little moment because, I mean, very much like Punishment Park actually.
Punishment Park was interested in the ways in which the documentarian is made complicit.
And this is doing something similar because, again, Bob Roberts repeatedly has this refrain to journalists, you're supposed to be objective, by which he means don't challenge me, be completely neutral, don't point out stuff that I don't like, which is what these people always mean.
Again, very acutely observed.
And then he's got these people following him around, and they're actually working, I mean, firstly to hide stuff from them that they don't want them to see, and secondly to bring them in and try to make them complicit, try to treat them like they're members of the team.
And they, as you say, the bit where the camera nods, I think that's really clever.
Right, right.
And even if that's like, well, I'm telling you, I'm nodding the camera as a way of indicating to you That I'm on board so that you'll continue to talk or what, like, there's so much subtext, right?
And there are different ways of interpreting it, right?
And you can think of that as the documentarian, the cameraman, ultimately, because, you know, the British man who's running, who's actually doing the documentary is not the person operating the camera.
And so there's someone operating a camera who's just kind of going, yes, yes, I agree, move on, like, fuck off.
Or someone agrees.
And I think we're allowed a certain degree of ambiguity in that moment, right?
And it'd be fascinating if the film did anything with that.
But ultimately, again, the film is kind of overstuffed.
And it just kind of does the thing and then moves on.
But then Bob Roberts meets the mayor's wife.
And, like, her son and his two buddies, who are, like, just open fuckin' fascists, right?
Oh yeah.
Like, when they're first introduced, they're doing the, like, the Sieg Heil, the Roman salute, but in this kinda lackadaisical way, which is very, very 2016 to me.
Yeah.
Like, it's so, like, no, no, we're doing the Sieg Heil, but we're doing, we're waving, look, look, we're waving, like, it's a thing, you know?
No, no, no, Daniel.
It's it's a Roman salute the fact that the Nazis appropriated it That's just yeah, and that makes it very unfair of you to compare And even the fact that they're all dressed in like a shirt and tie like a white shirt and a tie They have the like the close cropped haircuts They didn't quite anticipate the like the fast haircut with the long on top thing But in the trench coats like that's the thing if only the Nazis at the United right rally had thought to buy trench coats
That's the thing they were missing, that we would live in a fascist America if only they had thought to buy trench coats, right?
And, like, Jack Black is, like, I mean, he's chewing the fucking scenery in this, right?
He is pitched too high, but in that way of... that's kind of...
Really adorable and I love it.
You know, it's bloody funny the last time you see him.
He's just staring He's basically doing the Kubrick stare.
He's copying Vincent D'Onofrio from Full Metal Jacket And he's just talking in a monotonous voice like a robot and he's got a Manson style in in common with the film He's literally got an iron cross on his forehead The film constantly sort of takes the piss out of Well, it's not taking the piss out of the 60s, it's taking the piss out of the way these people are obsessed with reacting against the 60s.
And in the process, it brings in loads of 60s references.
Right, yeah.
And then, he just looks like Manson at the end, and he's doing it in this robot voice, and the stuff he's saying is just the most, it's just, you know, fascist pap.
It's just that he doesn't make you feel guilty about being rich like all these liberals, but he's talking like a robot.
I mean, I've got to admit, I lolled.
Yeah, sure.
No, Jack Black is, I mean, it is like, you know, eight years later he'd go on to do High Fidelity, which Tim Robbins also was a guest star in.
He was the boyfriend of the ex-lover who jilted John Cusack, who's also in this movie, we should probably talk about that.
God, man, maybe that's a two-part, maybe that's a doubleheader we should watch at some point.
Bob Roberts in High Fidelity.
I've never seen High Fidelity.
It's another one of those cultural touchstones I've never seen, like Parks and Recreation.
It's pretty bad.
High Fidelity is pretty bad, but also worth a watch.
It's based on a novel by a British novelist.
By Nick Hornsby.
By Nick Hornsby, which I've read the novel.
Either read the novel or watch the movie, your preference.
I've read the novel, I've seen the movie.
They are very, very similar.
I don't intend to do either.
That's fine.
Because Hornby is just insufferable.
Yeah.
Cusack was in a fairly decent movie in the, I think in the War on Terror era called War, Inc.
Have you ever seen that?
I don't think I've seen that one, yeah.
No, that's a movie I might, I dare say when I look at it now I'll be annoyed by it, but at the time I liked it.
That might be something to look at.
Well, we can pick movies to do as bonus episodes.
I mean, you can pick the next one if you want, it's fine with me.
Yeah, but yeah, Jack Black, there is the implication, I think, that these are the people that murdered the journalist, the indie journalist at the end.
Yeah, because you get the scene where they rampage through the streets and just attack somebody at random.
Right, right, or like kind of people in their orbit, and this is the kind of thing where I feel like the movie, you know, the limitations of budget, and the limitations of production, and the limitations of
You kind of had one pass at a script and did the thing kind of kind of let you down because it would be Interesting like like we get like close-up shots like we are introduced to the Jack Black character Very early and he's like talking directly to the camera and this is not to the documentarian camera.
This is to the like a newscast camera right like a live Shot at some scene and he says, you know, I love Bob Roberts.
He is the greatest politician in America and we love him or whatever like it's it's this very kind of blank stare kind of thing and yet we don't see anything that justifies like that level of
Devotion right like we don't see the sort of the backstory and yet we know at this time in the early 90s I mean, this is You know Ruby Ridge is a year away You know like this is this is the point at which we know that like Republican politicians, you know Ron Paul is doing his racist newsletters around this time you know far-right politicians are absolutely a
A wink and a nudge away from legitimate neo-Nazis, right?
And that's a thing that I wish we had a little bit more context on in the film.
A thing that I wish was explored more, or at least had a little bit more perspective on, because we kind of were introduced to this trio.
And we're given at least the implication that they are involved in the murder of the journalist.
And yet, it's just kind of a thing that exists in the film.
And that's, I mean, ultimately, like, look, you know, this was built on, Tim Robbins did a short film about this character and, like, got SNL to fund it for a few thousand dollars in 1986.
And then he gets to make the full movie in 1992.
Then all the really interesting stuff is kind of in the first 30 minutes in a way, you know, like it's all set up and it would be nice to see the the sort of the finish like the thing that that actually like it like the movie that actually.
lived up to that opening and really gave this character something to do and really narrowed down on the two ideas that it really had on its head, as opposed to the 10 that are sort of represented here.
But it's kind of fascinating to see this version.
And I do recommend that people listening to this should see this movie.
If you haven't seen this movie, you should check it out.
And I will tell you how to check it out here at the end.
So, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, we've been fairly critical, I think.
But, you know, I would say I'm very critical of it within the context of thinking it's generally pretty great.
I'm less impressed with it now maybe than way back when, but yeah, it's pretty good.
Pretty damn good.
On the specific point with those three young fellows, I think the background to that is meant to be basically that they come from a family of Christian fascists, because... Oh yeah, yeah.
Which was the total thing in 92.
Oh yeah.
In 92, the sort of the Jerry Falwell era of Republican politics was, that was the height of it, ultimately.
So yeah, no, absolutely.
Sorry, not trying to interrupt, just agreeing with you, yes.
Please continue.
That's fine, because you get that line from the mayor's wife, their mother, or the mother of one of them at least, I'm not entirely sure.
I thought they were all brothers, but maybe not.
They all play guitar and they're in a band together, and that's all you really need to know, right?
Yeah, but you know, she's okay with them listening to his music, even though the guitar is the instrument of the devil or something like that.
Right, right.
And she even listens to Bob Roberts' music when she's alone.
And, uh... Don't tell my husband.
Don't tell my husband.
Wow.
So, these kids, they come from- What a moment, like, what a moment in cinema history that is!
Like, Jesus Christ!
They come from a background where, you know, if they were ever caught listening to Nirvana, there'd be an exorcism or something.
Right, right, right.
Not that they would.
I am not disinclined to believe that any person should be punished for masturbating at all.
That is perfectly fine with me.
The idea of that woman sitting and masturbating to Bob Roberts' records fills me with a slight distaste, shall we say.
Oh, I see.
I didn't get that.
Innocent that I am, I genuinely didn't get that.
Yeah, no.
Sometimes I'll listen to them when I'm alone, when my husband isn't around.
You know, Jerry Lewis tugging on his collar moment.
I think that's the intended message there.
I see.
Well, thank you for opening up a new and slightly disturbing vista in a movie that I thought I knew.
Or maybe I just have the filthier mind than anyone involved with making this film.
It's entirely possible.
It's very likely.
It's very likely that I do have the dirtier mind.
Anyway, please continue.
Well, I don't know.
I feel like I've said most of it, to be honest.
I think I want to give this film... I mean, that again is an example of the thing we were talking about.
You get the throwaway line that suggests that the deal with this family is that they are extreme Christian fascists, right?
And it's funny, but it's a throwaway line.
And it's in there because it's another thing that Tim Robbins wants to get in, because it's part of his...
His overall thesis, you know, it's because the film is basically like a thesis statement.
As I was saying, you don't really need to explicate it at all.
It just tells you what it thinks.
And it's like it's got a checklist of things that it needs to mention, you know, the NSA, Christian fascism, etc.
You know and it's got to put them all in so what you get is is that and it's funny and it's necessary to talk about that and it's a real thing etc etc but it doesn't go any further than that and you just get this feel like the the tick box has been has been ticked you know but I think, for all that, I want to give it credit for getting so much right.
It gets the essential fascistic potential within even mainstream right-wing politics.
It gets that right.
It gets the neoliberalism thing right.
It's correct about talking about things that just aren't mentioned elsewhere, like the Like the National Security State and their involvement in coups abroad and their involvement in drugs while hypocritically covering it in the war on drugs.
It gets the racism of the war on drugs.
It gets the racism of right-wing politics who dog whistles.
It gets all this stuff.
And, you know, the whole manoeuvre of the rebel conservative, the obsession of American reactionary politics from the 80s onwards with countering and rubbishing and opposing and blackening the 60s, you know, neoliberalism as a cultural counter-revolution.
And the absolute obsession of the American reactionaries and the establishment generally with countering stuff like the Vietnam syndrome and the cultural legacies of the 60s.
It's still going on.
It's all in there.
So while at the same time you're watching it and you're not really watching anything very coherent or anything that's very satisfying as a story, and it does feel a bit jumbled and a bit crammed in, At the same time, as it goes down, as the movie goes down that checklist I was talking about, I'm kind of watching it do that, and I'm thinking, well, yeah, you're right!
I mean, that's another thing!
That's not something I'd hear about somewhere else!
Well, and a thing that's made in 1992 has all these things on its mind, which just illustrates how much what's kind of Left out of the conversation at that time.
And again, if we had been talking about this stuff in 1992, you know, if we had had this conversation for real, and that had impacted Democratic politics, like Democratic Party politics, maybe we wouldn't have gone the DNC route.
Maybe Clinton doesn't get elected.
Maybe we have a better candidate.
Maybe, you know, with all the flaws of electoral politics, and I'm not trying to be... I'm not trying to pretend that that would make everything right or anything, but, like, maybe we wouldn't be in this situation had Clinton not...
Double down on that shit as a way of maintaining his own political power During his first term, you know, I think there was there's a moment.
There's a moment in this interview that Tim Robbins did that again everyone listen to this should read it's a fascinating interview, but apparently on one of the talk shows because this came out a few weeks before the 1992 election and in one of the interviews He apparently implied, like, well, there's also a lot of Bob Roberts and Bill Clinton, and, uh... Oh, it would have been nice if that had made it into the film, Tim!
Well, yeah, but, like, you know, if he's producing that in, like, 1991 or whatever, you know, like, it's kind of hard to know, because...
Bill Clinton wasn't the candidate until April 1992.
It's not like that problem with the Democratic Party began with Bill Clinton.
Well, let's put a pin in that.
I'm going to come back to that in a second, right?
But to say that this is kind of a two-party problem, or to say that this is a problem that transcends a... it's not a phenomenalistic problem, let's say.
Systemic problem, I think, is kind of lost by just sort of the very process of making a film of this kind.
Right.
Because the whole thing is...
Well, like, we make a film, and a film has to be about personalities, it has to be about people, it has to... you point a camera at someone doing something, and you're trying to implicate something based on that, and it's very hard to kind of talk about systems in that format.
Like, it's kind of built into cinema and cinematic language, and unless you're fucking, like, Eisenstein, Um, it's very hard to transcend that.
Um, I'm not, I'm not trying to justify Robbins and all that sort of thing, but it is just sort of the nature of what you're saying.
Just, just briefly, I agree with what you're saying.
And I think Bob Roberts does better than pretty, you know, most other political films I can think of.
It sacrifices some things that we've talked about in, in return for that.
But it does, you know, even within what Peter Watkins, we talked about before, what he talks about as the monoform, you know, this is still sort of within that.
And it does a pretty good job of talking about systemic problems.
And I think that's maybe why you then notice where it falls down when it just fails to cover another part of the systemic problem, like the Democratic Party.
Well, and this is the other thing, which, again, in the interview, I should, like, again, I wish you had been able to read it ahead of time, and we could have talked about this in a little bit more detail.
I only found it a few hours ago.
But it is an interview in which Robbins kind of was interviewed about the process of the movie, right?
And one of the things that he says is, like, part of the origin was Like, kind of the idea was to contrast this Bob Roberts character with an old school democratic politician who had been, who had like lost his way, right?
Who had kind of come in in the early days full of vim and vare, trying to work for the working class and had been kind of corrupted by the process.
And there's one scene That no one who talks about this film talks about, and so we're going to talk about it right now, and that is in the hearings of the Alan Rickman character.
And we have not even talked about fucking Alan Rickman is in this movie, because he is the reason this movie got made, as Tim Robbins indicates in the interview.
They needed another star.
Tim Robbins was a star because he was in The Player, and he had a couple other things.
But they needed one more star, and they cast Alan Rickman two weeks before the movie was about to start filming.
And so Alan Rickman is in the movie, and that's why this movie got made, in case you wonder about capitalist production of films.
Yeah.
So this movie happened because of Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.
And Die Hard, like he was coming off of Die Hard.
So Alan Rickman decides, I'm gonna do this, then they'll give you a few million dollars to make it happen.
Anyway, there's a scene, there's a sequence, again in the first 30 minutes, in which it's like a Senate hearing in which Bradley Page is questioning Alan Rickman, and I forget the name of his character, but he's questioning Alan Rickman's character.
Lucas Hart III.
Lucas Hart III, yes, about the drug running and about the downed plane, et cetera, et cetera.
And so you get a scene in which there is some kind of harsh questioning, and Lucas Hart III Indignant pounds his fist on the table and, you know, does the, like, crocodile tears and whatever and says, I am indignant that you would think that I would be that.
We were only trying to help people, etc, etc.
And then you cut away to another, like, news segment and then come back and And Bradley Pays is saying like, well, we do deeply apologize to Mr. Hart III for impugning on his character, etc, etc.
And we think he is a good man or kind of whatever is actually being said there.
I didn't like quote the actual thing, but.
The point being Within the system.
He is required to do that and whether Page in the film is meant to believe that or whether he's forced to believe that by the structure is left unsaid because we don't spend enough time with him because the movie isn't that it doesn't have the ability to be that because of Various factors but
I think this is the thing that even our hero in the film, the New Deal Democrat, whose politics are kind of fundamentally broken to begin with, but who would be a much better person to be kind of in the system, is ultimately also complicit in the forgiveness of these war crimes.
And this is never referenced anywhere else in the film.
It's a little moment.
It's like 90 seconds in the overall movie, but I think it really portends both what the movie could have been and what it fails to be in a weird way.
Yeah, no, that's really good.
I don't think it's actually Paste that makes that speech, is it?
I think it's somebody else on the committee.
But Paste is shown sitting there silent.
He's obviously not happy about it.
But he is, as you say, complicit.
And what that shows, I think, is the guy just, you know, he knows better.
He's been leading the aggressive questioning.
He obviously knows better.
But there he is on the committee, and in the end, he just has to sit there while the leader of the committee, or the chairman, or whatever, just lets the guy off and apologizes.
And he doesn't really do anything about it.
And the other thing, of course, is that, you know, Paste has all this nice rhetoric.
I mean, it's, you know...
Bob Roberts kind of has a point, doesn't he?
When he's talking to the voting public and he's saying, you know, these problems still exist.
He's couching it in the way that's designed to appeal to his base and his audience through that worldview, which is, you know, why can't you get ahead?
Why can't you have a nice car?
Why can't you have a holiday?
Well, you can vote for me and, you know, I'll take the The social programs away from the lazy scroungers, etc.
But he is talking about deep social problems that Brickley Paste, for all his lovely Camelot and New Deal Democrat politics and his clear disillusionment, in the good sense of disillusionment, about the world, He's been in that senatorial seat for a very long time and he hasn't got it done.
You know, nothing's happened to the point where the same social problems that he is aware of and complains about and talks nicely about, you know, if we work together and we make sacrifices, I do believe we can change... You know, how long has he been talking like that?
And those same social problems, they've just continued to linger and fester, haven't they?
And it's almost like Bob Roberts is kind of like the ultimate punishment on Brickley Paste for just, you know, trying and failing within the confines of this fundamentally limited vision.
But I think I think that's a good way to read the film, but I think that's us reading the film against itself, to an extent, because I do think the film presents Brickley Paste as a voice of moral authority, doesn't it?
I think the film, and this is, again, not to try to give the film or Robbins or whatever, you know, kind of undue credit.
I do think that this is another case in which the sort of the production of the film butts up against the sort of like what they're trying to say because I think there is a kind of a two-part thing with the Brad with the with a paste character right in which they're both trying to present him as like someone who has the right ideas who is sort of like morally just at least in terms of Sort of the two party politics.
He's the better choice, obviously, than Bob Roberts, you know, like, of course, hold your nose and vote for the best.
But also they give Gore Vidal the ability to sort of speak his mind in terms of his real politics.
Like, a lot of those sequences in which Gore Vidal is speaking in the movie are just, you know, them pointing a camera at him and going, yeah, just answer the questions as you would yourself.
Like, they weren't prescripted.
And so we are kind of getting, like, sort of the idealism of a Vidal who doesn't have to answer to voters.
As opposed to, sort of, a structural critique.
And yeah, a lot of that does... there is a paradox here, and there is a dichotomy there.
But I think it's also kind of built into, yeah, this is made in four weeks, and I think you look at this movie, it's not... it doesn't look like it's made in four weeks.
I mean, it is...
Well-produced it is, you know, you know within the confines of what it does, but ultimately The the failures almost speak to the problems of kind of dealing within the system as a filmmaker in a way and again, that's not to to defend Robbins or to defend the product as much as to say like imagine what the good version of this could be right, you know and
Yeah, and I think one very simple thing, I mean, I hate to say it, you know, because I think Vidal is very good in the film and I have a lot of admiration for Vidal, you know, but I think one very, very quick and easy way to partly remedy the problem there would be to just cast somebody else as that character.
Somebody less impressive, you know, because Vidal is first he's Gore fucking Vidal.
And secondly, he's a he's a, you know, he's a charismatic figure.
It's a strange thing to say about somebody who's so sort of calm and slow and quiet, but he is he's got that voice, and that face, etc.
And imagine if Brickley Paste was played by I'm trying to think of an alternative, but you know, you can picture the sort of actor I'm, I'm imagining, you know, Bradley, Bradley Whitford shows up and he sees Sure, sure.
Or the guy that played the cigarette smoking man in the X-Files.
Somebody who looks tired and exhausted and dead inside and kind of ineffective.
Somebody like that.
Yeah, no, no, I agree, you know, somebody somebody gets kind of going through the motions ultimately.
Yeah, yeah, no Again, I think I mentioned at the beginning of this that this would be one like I'm generally opposed to the 30 years later Remake or sequel I apparently there is news that King of the Hill might get a 30 years later and later sequel in which it takes place 12 years after the end of the original and wow
i am imagine an adult bobby hill as like a father in i was just gonna say i'm very nervous about that because if they get bobby wrong i'll be very upset yeah no no bobby is bobby is one of the most amazing characters in tv history and uh fuck you if you get it wrong i I really hope Greg Daniels has a greater influence.
Honestly, I would just love I don't like I like the fact that news comes out and I'm just like This could be really good like this might be one of the the big things that might actually work But more likely it's gonna be complete shit, and I don't want to shit on the history of King of the Hill But on the possibility that it's good, I'll kinda stroke my shoulders.
It could be a Twin Peaks The Return.
It could be good.
But I think Bob Roberts might be another property that I could see Tim Robbins coming back in 2021 and doing a version of this character and saying, Yeah, I worked in the Senate for for 12 years and look at all the accomplishments I made and like kind of look at the
Uh, the way that media and the way that this sort of like inoperability of, uh, the legislative branch of the government, uh, stymied his efforts in a way, you know, despite, uh, you know, politics kind of moving in his direction.
I think a, I think, uh, I think a three decades letter sequel could be really interesting.
And I would like, I would like Tom, uh, Tim Robbins to do that if he chooses to, you know.
Yeah, he should just do what he wants to do.
Good old Tim.
I mean, he's a New Deal Democrat, but that's way better than... Hey, there's worse!
I mean, look, if every Democrat in the Senate was a New Deal Democrat, we'd be in a much better place.
So, yes.
Please.
Yeah?
Yeah.
Yeah, no, I mean, he made Dead Man Walking and Cradle Will Rock.
He's got some credit with me.
Those are good movies.
And Arlington Road, which he only- And Arlington Road, which I literally just remembered that and scribbled it down as a possible bonus episode, because that's an interesting movie.
I actually haven't seen that movie, so we need to do it.
Really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I have seen that one and that's quite, I don't think it's good exactly, but I think it's interesting to talk about.
Sure.
No.
I remember seeing the, uh, the trailers at the time and thinking like, well, that looks interesting because I love Tim Robbins cause I loved, uh, Shawshank Redemption.
And then, uh, you know, never saw it in the last 20 years.
And that's probably the way most people, uh, who are alive at the time experienced that movie.
So, you know, I expect so.
Yeah.
I don't remember it setting the world on fire.
No, it didn't.
I don't know, have you got anything else you want to talk about?
The only bit that kind of suggests itself to me as a possible avenue of conversation is the pseudo-SNL bit, where Bob is invited on as a guest to, what's it called, Cutting Edge?
Cutting Edge Live, which I think is, at least in name, a reference to Spitting Image.
It's very clearly SNL.
It's a pretty generic satire show name, isn't it?
It's a pretty generic satire show, and it's very clearly SNL.
It's very, very clearly SNL.
To the point of having really stupid bits.
Uh, and inside jokes that only if you are like Tim Robbins shows up and Bob Balaban is the, uh, what's his name?
Lorne Michaels, uh, figurehead.
Yeah.
And, uh, he's little like going like, Oh, I love the thing with the line.
And then everybody laughs because it's the thing that was going on on SNL in 1992 or whatever.
It's the Hans and Franz of that show, and if you're not involved in the SNL lore.
And SNL was, it's funny to think that even in 1990, SNL was 15 years old, right?
Even then it was kind of like, maybe this show is showing its seams and maybe it should end.
Maybe that would be the good thing.
And then 21 years later, 31 years later...
We're still we're still Still trotting it out.
We still have to have it exist why?
But Yeah, no, it is interesting to see like I It is kind of making fun of SNL, despite the fact that the bit started on SNL, and in fact, Tim Robbins went on... I think it's savage!
Oh no, it's savage to SNL.
Yeah, yeah.
Very much in contrast to what that ridiculous thing Aaron Sorkin did about the... The Studio 60 show.
Which I never watched, because I don't watch anything.
It's fine, it's fine.
Yeah, no, no, it's it's it's savage it does kind of do the and then one of the actresses just goes and like pulls all the plugs and suddenly they can't do the show anymore.
It's a great bit, but it's you know she ruined her career to spend 90 seconds and You know with it with a test pattern or whatever like I don't know like it feels like I The better version would be, like, she's convinced out of it by Bob Balavan or whatever, right?
You know?
Look, I understand, you know?
Yeah, the bleaker but more realistic version is she's bullied or convinced out of it, yeah, pressured to smother her convictions.
Very much the way the host played by John Cusack has been, I mean, he's obviously sort of attacking With the bit he does.
They say, oh, you can't do that, it's self-hating.
You know, the routine he does about SNL itself.
But he's not quitting his job.
He's doing it within the company.
Ultimately, this guy is not going to walk away.
This guy is going to make his little protest and make his little noise.
And then he's going to say, well, I did what I could.
I spoke up, but he's not going to quit the show or anything like that.
And he would, and he would get accolades within, you know, sort of the, at least today on like a, you know, liberal Twitter, it'd be like, you know, I'm here, I'm the guy- You know, Colbert doing the White House Correspondents Dinner and chaffing Bush about weapons of mass destruction, like, that makes a fucking difference.
Not even on that level, but like the sort of, you know, the Imagine video that happened at the beginning of COVID and so many liberals kind of going like, oh, this is great, you know, isn't this phenomenal.
I mean, you know, I don't know.
I have a residual appreciation for the Stuart Kohlmeyer Bush years because it meant a lot to me at the time.
That's about all you got in the US at that time, unless you were like deeply involved in leftist politics.
And so, you know, I grant them a lot of slack, but really- For old time's sake.
But also Colbert is very bad.
Colbert is very, very bad.
And all you have to do is look at the fact that Kamala Harris went on his show, and he asked her the question.
Well, what did you mean?
You are now trying to be Joe Biden's VP, and yet you called him out for his position on segregation back in the day, and she goes, it was a debate!
What do you want?
And he's like, oh yeah, that's great, I understand, it's fine, wah wah.
Of course.
Of course nothing matters or means anything, and there's no such thing as principles, and you don't really care about him being involved in Yeah, of course, you know.
And it's a media environment which Bob Roberts would wholly secede.
Imagine Ted Cruz, but with charisma.
Yeah.
Yeah, no.
And yeah, no, we're all terrified for that.
So.
We're winding up now I think, but I do want to mention in connection with the SNL bit, maybe my favourite bit of the entire movie, the bit that made me just klopps when I watched it this time.
One of the most brilliant things in the movie is that Bob's wife is there throughout the entire thing and she's a total non-character.
She's just this complete Smiling, waxwork, sort of blonde politician wife robot thing.
She's barely got any lines of dialogue.
The lines of dialogue she does have are like reading a child's letter to Bob or whatever.
And she's just presented as completely blank.
Like a Stepford Wife, you know?
But, there is this little bit, when they arrive at the studio, Bob Roberts is talking to the comedians or the writers or whatever, and he mentions, he says, I can't remember what her name is, I think it's Polly.
Polly loves something that they do.
It's obviously one of those running jokes you were talking about, something to do with lobsters.
And it's just a passing, like, you know, you don't think it means anything, it's just a bit of bullshit he's giving them or something.
But after the bit where the production assistant pulls the cables out and blanks the screen and he storms out after being apologised to by Bob Balaban as pseudo Lorne Michaels and all to it, you get this bit, just as the camera's following them, there's just this throwaway bit where you hear Bob Roberts say, where's Polly?
And somebody says to him, oh, she stayed to watch The Lobster.
Which I think is fucking genius.
Yeah.
No, it's great.
It's great.
No, I'm with you.
I don't even remember that bit, but I believe you that it exists, and it sounds hilarious.
So, apparently I get to rewatch at least five minutes of Bob Roberts before I go to bed tonight.
Yeah, no, that's that's lovely and I think that's a good place to end it.
Um This is a good movie Jack and I have spent a lot of time Criticizing it but we criticize it because it's very good Like this is the criticism you get by making something that is interesting and intricate That is doing something that is worth doing but that like fails on
some levels and like this is the like we're engaging the film in conversation as opposed to trashing it which i don't think either of us are trying to say don't watch the film or the film is actively encouraging some like kind of awful politics or whatever like this is an interesting film and it's worth watching uh you It's very much a thing that if you want to understand the politics of pre-internet era U.S.
electoralism, you should check it out.
It is absolutely worth your time.
That's my opinion anyway.
Totally agreed.
Okay.
Yeah.
No, I totally agree.
I think it would be better if it was four hours long and all the color was drained out and it was very po-faced.
I would actually recommend, if you're gonna watch it, watch it alongside the documentary The War Room, which was released in 1993, and which was a, I think it's like barely 90 minutes documentary that had deep
Inside access to the Clinton campaign and like compare and contrast the sort of fictionalized version that Tim Robbins is presenting as opposed to the kind of actual real-life version of the person who became the president Looking back at that in 2021 Really fascinating really fascinating two-part series.
I don't know.
Have you seen the war room?
I haven't no it's yet another thing.
I haven't seen well nobody remembers it because The world is terrible.
I need to get on that, obviously.
So, we should thank people.
I have had, and I want to make sure this is said, and I wanted to put this at the beginning of the episode, but we'll do it at the end.
If you're listening to this shortly after it's released, then you are a Patreon subscriber of the both of us.
A backer, yeah.
A backer, and I cannot thank you enough.
I had severe, if you listened to the last episode, the Slate Star Codex episode, you can tell that there were some issues with the recording of that episode, and that was my laptop was slowly dying, and it has been slowly dying for a while, and ultimately it affected my ability to even record that episode, and I do apologize for that, but my laptop died.
And I have upgraded my setup, and now we have a much better setup.
And I spent about $700 on computer equipment in the last week, and I could not have done that without your support.
And it's gonna mean much, much better stuff in the future, in terms of our ability to produce content.
Yeah.
It's gonna mean we can do things like play clips of Heather Hying being awful and kind of stop them and talk about what she's saying as she's saying it and that'll be a lot of fun.
And believe me, I spent that money not on, like, one really nice piece of equipment, but, like, discount hardware that I got off of, like, various places.
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Thank you to all our backers.
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Yeah, echoed very much.
That was I Don't Speak German.
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