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Forty years on, All the President's Men seems a little quaint.
The political thriller about the 1972 Watergate break-in, starring young, handsome Robert Redford and young, handsome Dustin Hoffman as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, is still a top-notch procedural that renders the grind of investigative journalism righteously compelling through the seedy gloom of '70s America. Which is why you should see it at the Mission Theater this week to mark the film's 40th anniversary.
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All the President's Men comes from a time when a president—or in our context, presidential candidate—fucking up in a major way had a meaningful impact on American politics. In this interminable slog of an election, with a grossly unqualified candidate still seeing a fighting chance at the White House, it'd be nice to have a movie that reflects the asininity of our national predicament: Mike Judge's Idiocracy if we're playing it safe, or to better capture the current national mood, a mashup of hardcore pornography, CCTV footage of adults weeping in public and Liveleak streams of ISIS executions.
How will American cinema remember the current collective waking nightmare? Not with a dignified prestige picture affirming the goodness of hard work and the American press, but with something else entirely. Here are five film treatments of the 2016 presidential election.
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Trump
In his gilded penthouse in Trump Tower, an elderly Donald Trump (Sir Anthony Hopkins) is on his deathbed. Holding a tattered Make America Great Again hat, he utters one final word, "pussy," and dies. Trump's death makes headlines around the globe. A reporter (Jake Gyllenhaal) is tasked with discovering the meaning of Trump's mysterious last word, learning about the man's life through his friends and associates.
Manafort and Me
A buddy comedy about Paul Manafort (Danny McBride) and ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych (Seth Rogen). A three-day bender at Yanukovych's opulent Mezhyhirya mansion leads to the two sleeping through the start of the Ukrainian revolution. The unlikely duo have three days to escape Ukraine to Russia before Euromaidan protesters led by young firebrand Vitaly (James Franco) and a mysterious American interloper (Craig Robinson) catch up and force them to smoke all of their confiscated weed out of a gravity bong made from a gold toilet.
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Pandering Express
Robby Mook (Jim Parsons) and Hillary Clinton (Meryl Streep) slowly bond over Mook's frustrating attempts to market the presidential candidate to a woefully indifferent people of the United States. As Mook bumbles through each attempt to make the professional, steel-hearted policy nerd more appealing to a cynical, sexist America, he eventually discovers the secret to making Clinton the next president of the United States: run against Donald Trump.
Milo! The Movie
This mockumentary follows controversial alt-right journalist Milo Yiannopoulos (Sacha Baron Cohen) across battleground state America as he shocks and offends "regressive liberals" and "social justice warriors" with his edgy, transgressive antics. Note: Script may or may not be Cohen's Brüno, with minor changes.
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All the President's Emails
In this riveting, eight-hour procedural thriller, Wikileaks' Julian Assange (Martin Freeman) releases thousands of hacked emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign. Two young investigative journalists (Kristen Stewart and Kate Mara) race against time, combing through each and every one to get to the bottom of a deep, dark secret that threatens the very heart of American democracy: Clinton is employing a modern, professionally run campaign to get elected president.
All the President's Men screens at Mission Theater. Nov. 2-7. $4.
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