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Has Hollywood abandoned the political movie?
Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” … Frank Sinatra in “The Manchurian Candidate” … Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in “All the President’s Men.” Big political movies with big stars have long been part of the Hollywood playbook.
Playing the chief of staff to President Michael Douglas, Martin Sheen got his first taste of a fictional White House in 1995 in “The American President.” Four years later, Sheen became the small screen’s most famous commander-in-chief, as President Jed Bartlett on “The West Wing.” He described the role as one of the best moments of his life, “as an actor, as an American.”
“The West Wing” premiered 25 years ago this month. But getting it on the air in today’s contentious political climate would be tricky. “Today, with where we are in our, you know, divided politics, sure, it would be very difficult,” Sheen said. “You have to tell the truth. And nowadays there’s all these questions about, ‘Whose truth?'”
Despite the intense interest in this upcoming election, Hollywood appears to have largely stopped making political movies. “If they’re making them, they’re not showing them to me,” said Michael Lynton, a former studio executive (he ran Sony Pictures Entertainment for 13 years). Show business, he says, is a bottom-line business that today is more risk-averse than ever, relying on big-budget global franchises to drive profits.
Running a studio, Lynton said, makes him answerable to his bosses and his shareholders: “Very much so. And, you know, they want a return, understandably. And that’s a huge piece of the equation. They want a financial return.”
What they don’t want is controversy. Consider “The Apprentice,” the new film tracking Donald Trump’s rise to power in the 1970s and ’80s. It took months for producers to find a distributor. No one wanted to touch the film, especially after the Trump campaign threatened to sue.
Watch a clip from “The Apprentice,” featuring Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn and Sebastian Stan as his protégé Donald Trump:
Producers and studios have long had an obsession with the bottom line (plus a healthy fear of political controversy). But that didn’t stop them from making films with bold political themes, like 1957’s “A Face in the Crowd,” starring Andy Griffith as a folksy entertainer who manipulates his way to the top.
“I think ‘A Face in the Crowd’ is an excellent film, and terribly relevant for our own times,” said Columbia University film professor Annette Insdorf. “We actually get to see the rise of someone who assumes power, and it is not because he is particularly gifted, idealistic, or has a vision; it’s because he’s plucked from a certain kind of obscurity and managed, until he ends up managing the others.”
Mankiewicz asked, “So, does that leave us in a bad place, where we are absent Hollywood churning out [political] films?”
“The relationship between Hollywood and Washington is not a static one; it swings, back and forth,” Insdorf said.
Michael Schulman, who writes about culture and the arts for The New Yorker, said, “I think most of the time, politics comes through in movies through metaphor. Movies refract more than they reflect.”
He says robust political messaging still thrives in the subtext of great movies. “One of my favorite movies from the ’50s is ‘High Noon,’ a western about a sheriff in a small town who has to face his enemy alone because all of his allies abandon him. This is a movie about the blacklist, about the cowardice of people in Hollywood during the Red Scare.
“‘Planet of the Apes is,’ of course, about a planet of apes. But it’s really – surprise! – about how humanity is destroying itself and the threat of nuclear annihilation,” he said.
Many of the biggest hits of the last five years, says Schulman, convey deeply political ideas: “What’s more political than ‘Joker,’ which kind of captured the white male disaffection and isolation of the Trump era? What’s more political than ‘Barbie,’ which, you know, is about feminism, and how difficult it is to be a woman?”
“Movies are always, even subconsciously, capturing something about the politics of their age,” said Schulman
Michael Lynton, the former studio boss, misses those daring films of the past (like the ’70s thrillers “The Conversation,” “The Parallax View,” and “Three Days of the Condor”), though he understands the current challenges of making and marketing politically-charged movies. “I ran a business, and I understand why business would be fearful of it,” he said. “And I’m not advocating, by the way, that businesses should change their practice. I’m just observing what’s going on.
“On the other hand, it’s just a shame, I think it’s shame that right now we’re not hearing from some of the people we really should be hearing from,” Lynton said.
Martin Sheen agrees. He wants to hear from those filmmakers, too: “I think we’re entitled to different opinions, and to the courage of writers, producers, directors, actors, all the creative people to say that they declare or that they reflect the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in what they’re doing.”
Mankiewicz asked, “So, you think maybe this is the exact time to start making a political story?”
“This might be the most critical time,” Sheen replied.
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Story produced by Gabriel Falcon. Editor: Joseph Frandino.
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LaMonica McIver wins special House election in New Jersey for late Donald Payne Jr.’s seat
TRENTON, N.J. — Democratic Newark City Council President LaMonica McIver has defeated Republican small businessman Carmen Bucco in a contest in New Jersey’s 10th Congressional District that opened up because of the death of Rep. Donald Payne Jr. in April.
McIver will serve out the remainder of Payne’s term, which ends in January. She and Bucco will face a rematch on the November ballot for the full term.
McIver said in a statement Wednesday that she stands on the “shoulders of giants,” naming Payne as chief among them.
She cast ahead to the November election, saying the right to make reproductive health choices was on the ballot as well as whether the economy should benefit the wealthy or “hard working Americans.”
“I will fight because the purpose of politics and the purpose of our vote is to give the people of our communities and our nation a bold voice,” she said.
Bucco congratulated McIver on the victory in a statement but said he’s looking forward to the rematch in November.
“I am not going anywhere,” he said in an email. “We still have a second chance to make district 10 great again!”
Who are LaMonica McIver and Carmen Bucco?
McIver emerged as the Democratic candidate in a crowded field in the July special election. A member of the city council of New Jersey’s biggest city since 2018, she also worked for Montclair Public Schools as a personnel director and plans to focus on affordability, infrastructure, abortion rights and “protecting our democracy,” she told The Associated Press earlier this summer.
Bucco describes himself on his campaign website as a small-business owner influenced by his upbringing in the foster system. He lists support for law enforcement and ending corruption as top issues.
The 10th District lies in a heavily Democratic and majority-Black region of northern New Jersey. Republicans are outnumbered by more than 6 to 1.
It’s been a volatile year for Democrats in New Jersey, where the party dominates state government and the congressional delegation.
Among the developments were the conviction on federal bribery charges of U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, who has denied the charges, and the demise of the so-called county party line — a system in which local political leaders give their preferred candidates favorable position on the primary ballot.
Democratic Rep. Andy Kim, who’s running for Menendez’s seat, and other Democrats brought a federal lawsuit challenging the practice as part of his campaign to oust Menendez, who has resigned since his conviction.
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Sean “Diddy” Combs at same Brooklyn detention center that held R. Kelly, Sam Bankman-Fried, other high-profile inmates
A second judge refused to grant bail to Sean “Diddy” Combs on Wednesday and he could remain in federal custody at a Brooklyn detention center until his trial for sex trafficking charges. Combs joins other high-profile inmates, such as singer R. Kelly, fallen cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, rapper Ja Rule —even Al Sharpton served a brief stint— who were held at the same federal detention center.
Notorious for its horrible conditions —inmates won a $10 million class action settlement after enduring frigid conditions during an 8-day blackout in 2019— the waterfront industrial complex, MDC Brooklyn, houses 1,200 inmates.
Violence and corruption have long plagued the facility; U.S. District Judge Gary R. Brown of the Eastern District of New York wrote the detention center had “dangerous, barbaric conditions” in a recent sentencing opinion. Two inmates were stabbed to death in recent months and several correction officers have been convicted for smuggling contraband and accepting bribes.
Combs joins a list of high-profile personalities that have landed at the MDC Brooklyn, partly because the city’s other federal detention center, MDC New York, closed in 2021, also due to horrible conditions. The disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in his cell there in 2019. “Numerous and serious” instances of misconduct among corrections staff gave Epstein the opportunity to kill himself, a subsequent federal watchdog investigation found.
Kelly sued the federal detention center in 2022 for wrongly putting him on suicide watch after his sentencing. Kelly sought $100 million because he said the detention center knew he wasn’t suicidal after he was convicted in 2021 for racketeering and violating the Mann Act, which bars transporting people across state lines for prostitution.
Former crypto billionaire Bankman-Fried survived on bread, water and sometimes peanut butter when he was in the MDC Brooklyn, his attorney said, because the detention center continued to serve him a “flesh diet” despite requests for vegan dishes.
Ja Rule stayed at the MDC Brooklyn for a brief time before being released after serving most of his two-year sentence for illegal gun possession. Most of his prison time was spent in a state prison in New York.
Sharpton served a 90-day sentence in 2001 and went on a hunger strike for protesting the U.S. Navy bombing of the island of Vieques, in Puerto Rico.
Combs was taken into custody on Monday and according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday he was charged with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution.
His attorney Marc Agnifilo told CBS News, “It’s impossible to prepare for a trial from where he is,” after a first federal judge denied Combs bail on Tuesday.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky agreed with prosecutors who argued the hip-hop mogul, who is accused of using his business empire as a criminal enterprise to conceal his alleged abuse of women, is a flight risk and poses an ongoing threat to the safety of the community.
Agnifilo said the part of the detention center where Combs is being held is “a very difficult place to be.”
contributed to this report.