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NIXON
IS LAMPOONED; HIS SECRETS ARE EXPOSED BY FEMALE FORREST GUMPS
Who was the "deep throat" who informed Washington Post reporters
the secrets about Watergate? Who caused the 18½ minute gap
in President Richard Nixon’s tapes? Since nobody in Washington
is likely to divulge the answers any time soon, the puzzles
are fair game for Hollywood. This is the context for the low-brow
farcical film Dick, directed by Andrew Fleming,
in which the answers to both questions are two fifteen-year-old
airheads with Valley Girl accents attending a high school
in the Beltway. After accidentally running into G. Gordon
Liddy (played by Larry Shearer) in a stairwell during the
Watergate break-in, Betsy Jobs (played by Kirsten Dunst) and
Arlene Lorenzo (played by Michelle Williams) go with their
class on a White House tour, where they are spotted by presidential
aides, and are escorted into the inner sanctum of the White
House in order to debrief them on what they might know about
the break-in. Checkers, from an office across the way, bolts
from President Richard Nixon and runs toward them, driven
by an animal’s keen sense of good and evil, and then Nixon
(played by Dan Hedaya) follows the wagging dog. Fearing that
they may know too much, the most powerful man in the world
tries to buy them off by assigning them as "official White
House dog walkers" and later as "secret youth advisers." One
day, while in the White House to assume their new duties,
they ask Nixon to end the war in Vietnam, and shortly thereafter
he does! They also bake some of their special "Hello Dolly"
cookies for Nixon, who in turn offers them to Leonid Brezhnev,
whereupon the Cold Warriors break into the "Hello Dolly" title
song, and soon the girls learn that the Soviet Union and the
United States have signed a major peace accord! (Betsy’s Vietnam-protesting
brother stashed marijuana leaves into the jar of ingredients,
unaware that they would put them into the cookies.) Next,
Arlene falls in love with Nixon and imagines that she will
marry him after he divorces Pat. However, they eventually
find out about Nixon’s attempt to cover up the Watergate burglary,
see the shredding of documents, and hear and record over the
foul language and anti-Jewish remarks of the hitherto secret
tapes. Betsy is Jewish, so the two are so angered by Nixon
that they decide to inform Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
(played by Will Ferrell and Bruce McCulloch), and the information
that they supply brings down the Nixon presidency.
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Although
the dialog and plot may be teenagerish, all actors chosen
to play White House and Washington Post roles have such a
cartoon resemblance to the real persons—and to those who play
them in All the President’s Men (1976)—that
mature filmviewers will bellylaugh the first time they parade
onto the screen. Moreover, Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp
are themselves cartoonized by Arlene and Betsy, whose innocence
saved them from talking or even thinking about sex with the
president. The one important insight of the film is that Nixon
did not fall because of his tricks in a Washington where machiavellism
is par for the course, but rather that Nixon lost popularity
because of something that Arlene and Betsy (playing female
Forrest Gumps) as well as Checkers grasped reasonably quickly—that
Nixon lacked simple human decency. The Saturday Night Live
imbecility of all the adults in the film is an indictment
not just of those trapped by the Nixon presidency but of the
absurdity of much of American politics ever since. Future
generations will now be absolutely certain that "deep throat"
was Arlene and Betsy, Cliff Notes notwithstanding. The tagline
of the film, released approximately twenty-five years to the
day when Nixon resigned, well summarizes Dick:
"He was tricky. They were better." And as Nixon helicopters
away from the White House after his resignation, Arlene and
Betsy have the last say—a banner that they hold up, as the
helicopter flies over Betsy’s house, which says, "YOU SUCK,
DICK." MH
POLITICAL
FILM SOCIETY INVITES NOMINATIONS FOR AWARDS
Members of the Political Film Society can nominate feature
films released in 1999 for awards in the following categories:
democracy, exposé, human rights, and peace. Nominations close
on December 31 each year, and voting will take place in the
first two months of the year 2000 for the film that best raises
political consciousness in each of four categories.
NOMINEES
FOR 1999
EXPOSÉ:
Bastards, Three
Seasons
HUMAN RIGHTS:
The
General's Daughter, Hard,
Xiu Xiu
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