Unclear and Present Danger - Bulworth (feat. Vinson Cunningham)

Episode Date: May 27, 2026

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John are joined by Vinson Cunningham of the New Yorker to discuss Bulworth, the 1998 black comedy (no pun intended) written, directed by and starring Warren Beatty. After working through their initial shock at the sheer weirdness of the film, Jamelle, John and Vinson explore its politics, its vision of American society, its critique of American media and the fact that the character of Bulworth is, himself, highly prescient. They also explore the strange racial politics of the film, as well as the extent to which it stands as a kind of modern parable.This is a strange film folks! And we had a great time discussing it.On our next episode, we will discuss Roland Emmerich’s 1998 disaster thriller Godzilla, something of a misbegotten attempt to Americanize the storied franchise. But there is a lot to talk about and we are looking forward to doing so.

In 1996, Bob Dole and President Clinton had locked up their party's presidential nominations. And while California approached its primary with little fanfare or attention, Democratic Senator Jay Billington Bullworth embarked upon the final weekend of his re-election campaign. You promised us federal funding to rebuild our community. What happened? Well, you haven't really contributed any money to my campaign, have you? Hey, are you saying I can't take... Isn't that obvious? I mean, if you don't put down that malt liquor and chicken winks

and get behind somebody other than a running back who stabs his wife, you're never going to get rid of somebody like me. That was really good. Yo. Yo, yo, yo, yo to you. Later. I was hoping for sooner. Senator, what is this news strategy?

Just tell me a little bit. Senator Bullworth. Excuse me, Senator. Do you think it's wise to see? the support of the entertainment industry when you have such low opinion of our product. My guys are not stupid. They always put the big Jews on my schedule. Excuse me?

Murphy put something bad about Farrakhan in here for you. Let me look. You'd be really honest with me and don't spare my feelings. Do you have any more of the little crispy crab cakes? Hello and welcome to Unclear and Present Danger, the podcast about the political and military of the 1990s and what they say about the politics of that decade. I'm Jamal Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. I'm John Gans. I write the substack newsletter on popular front and I'm the author of When the Clock Broke, Conman Conspiracists and how America cracked up in

the early 1990s. And we're joined today by a guest, Vincent Cunningham of the New Yorker magazine. He's a staff writer at The New Yorker. And Minton, if I remember correctly, you also have a book. Yes, I wrote the novel. Great expectations. Not the one you're thinking about, but the other one. Welcome to the show, Vinton. Thank you. It's so great to be here, man.

This is like a thrill. All right. So on this week's episode, as we've been teasing, it's been like a month since we've had an episode. Apologies. You know, things are crazy in the world. We have jobs. Kind of. Jamel has a job.

A lot is going on So we apologize for the delay. But this week, we are, we covered, we watched the movie we've been teasing for a little bit. That is the 1998 comedy satire and Bullworth, co-produced, directed by and starring Warren Beatty, noted Hollywood star. And I'll talk about Beatty later, but I'm kind of a guy with a strange. cinematic persona given given just sort of like his looks and you know given everything about him uh bullworth also stars holly berry don chito oliver platt paul sorvino jack warden and isaiah washington as well as a ton of other character actors there's christine branski

as constance bullworth's wife there's amy baraka as a homeless man who uh who kind of ends movie with some enigmatic and enigmatic admonition that we can talk about later. Josh Molina, Sean Aston, Helen Martin, Laurie Metcalf, Wendell Pierce, even Michael Clark Duncan shows up. Like this movie has a lot of people in it. It was shot by Vittorio Stortaro, who we've talked about before. we talked about with on the actually on the Patreon podcast because he also shot Apocalypse now

and he worked frequently with Bertolichi. He shot the conformist. Yeah. So he shot this and I'll say this is a good looking movie. I mean this this this is a it's a Hollywood production. Real money was put into it. Music by Ennio Morricone. So the legendary film composer. And and yeah. So a quick synopsis, I feel like if you are younger, like, not younger, if you're like in the 30 and up range, you probably have like a vague memory of this movie if you didn't see it. I did not see it as a kid, but I did have a vague memory of it. But here's a quick plot synopsis.

Warren Beatty plays Jay Bullworth, a U.S. Senator from California and the Democrat was currently in the midst of a primary challenge. Bullworth, we learned at the very beginning, is a political liberal, but in order to win this primary, he's been adopting more conservative politics, kind of usual bromides. You don't have to, we don't have to go through them. We learn at the beginning of the film that Bullworth is in the midst of some sort of existential crisis. He is making plans to kill himself, and he both negotiates a contract hit on himself and a $10 million life insurance policy. with his daughter as a beneficiary.

He's negotiating this life insurance policy with Paul Sorvino's character. Paul Sorvino, who they cast to play a southerner, which is strange. But Paul Sorvino's character is an insurance company lobbyist, and there's kind of an exchange. I'll give you this life insurance policy if you stand in the way of some bill that might harm the insurance business. So what follows, it's basically sort of like a knight. It's sort of a night for Bullworth, a dark night of the soul, you might say. It's sort of interesting to think about this movie as being in conversation with like eyes

eyes wide shut. But Bullworth is being followed by C-SPAN cameras. It's the night before the primary. So he's kind of just out there in the world or two nights before the primaries out there in the world. And what transpires is. he kind of has a mental break. He goes to a Los Angeles campaign event at a church where he basically tells the black audience that the Democratic Party doesn't care about them, that he doesn't really care about them, that they don't contribute enough money for anyone to care about them. And then also, you know, they're culturally deficient.

He then goes to a club brought to brought there by three ways. women who he meets at this church where he smokes weed, gets drunk, and starts rapping in public. This all kind of makes him a subject of media fascination. The next day, he has a televised debate where he derides insurance companies, he's drinking from a flask, and he's also rapping again. he goes to the home of one of the women. This is Holly Berry's character, Nina, whose family lives in South Central, Los Angeles. He goes there, he kind of gets to know them somewhat. He ends up having this encounter with racist cops who are harassing a group of kids,

who happened to be selling crack, but he stands up for them. Eventually, he goes to this television appearance that had been arranged by his campaign manager, this Oliver Platt's character, where, he again wraps his kind of populous critique of American society and its repeating statements that both Nina and Don Cheadle's character, LD, has told him about the lives of poor black people and their views of various American institutions. Eventually, he offers the solution that, quote, everybody should fuck everybody until everyone is all the same color and leaves. Oh, while this is happening, Bullworth, who's convinced he's about to be assassinated because he did hire someone

to assassinate him, is trying to evade this man who he thinks is the assassin. This man turned out just to be a paparazzi. And it's Holly Berry's character who's the assassin. She reveals this to him, but he's like, listen, I'm not going to kill you. I don't want to do it. He falls asleep for the first time at Nina's home. He's been awake for days. And then when he wakes up, We learned that he won the primary in a landslide, that he's been nominated for the presidency, an independent campaign. And as he goes to accept this campaign for the presidency, he is suddenly shot by the Paul Sorvino character or an agent of the Paul Sorbino character, who is afraid of Bullworth's push for single payer health care. The movie ends. Buller's fate is ambiguous, but you don't really know if he lives or dies.

Amiri Varaka's character who's been kind of like a Greek chorus throughout the film shows up and exhorts Bullworth to not be a ghost but to be a spirit. And then in the final shot, he asked the same of the audience. And that is Bullworth. The film was a box office bomb. I'm that really surprising. I don't at all. Okay. I mean, based on my memory of.

of what a cultural touchstone it was. I'll say that. Totally a cultural touchstone. Yeah. Yeah. But I think it did not do well at the box office. The critical response was it was basically, I put this. There are people who are like, this movie is not great and kind of incoherent.

And then there are also critics who are like, this is a very ambitious take on, um, on race and politics and economic life. And although the movie isn't perfect, it's trying to do something interesting. And that was kind of the general consensus between. And not sure how this works, but also it's quite ambitious. What else?

The tagline for Bullworth, that Bullworth have a tagline. Let's find this out. It probably did. It has to have had a tagline. The whole movie is like a tagline. Just spilled. Title line for Borworth is,

Brace yourself. This politician is about to tell the truth. Boreth was released almost 28 years ago to the day, May 15th, 1998, and we've been really on schedule with the Hollywood release schedule this year. Yeah, it's really uncanny. You think there's some kind of rational explanation for this?

No, I think it's just a weird coincidence. Oh, okay. There just happens to be a lot of the kind of movie that we are talking about in this year. Yeah. And they're being released at a healthy clip. Let's check out the New York Times front page for May 15th. Okay.

Let's see. What do we got? Well, there is something about the China gate scandal, which is totally forgotten by history because it really wasn't really a big deal. Democrat-fired Republicans tried to make it a big deal. Democrat fundraiser said to detail China-tie. A Democratic fundraiser has told federal investigators he funneled. tens of thousands of dollars from the Chinese military officer to the Democrats during President Clinton's 1996 re-election, according to lawyers and officials with knowledge of the Justice Department's

campaign finance inquiry. The fundraiser Johnny Chung told investigators that a large part of the nearly 100,000 he gave Democratic causes in the summer of 1996, including 80,000 to the Democratic National Committee, came from China people from China's People's Liberation Army through a Chinese Lieutenant Colonel and Aerospace Executive, whose father was General Liu Ha Ching, the officials and lawyers said, you know what? It's, I mean, that's not legal, I'm sure, but that's such a tiny amount of money. And even then for campaign finance? I mean, like, what was this guy expecting to buy if this was corrupt?

It's an odd story. Microsoft seeks accord with U.S. and Dodgers suit. software. This is around the time that antitrust laws were still being enforced. Less than an hour before state and federal governments were set to file sweeping antitrust suits against the Microsoft Corporation. The company announced today they would postpone the release of its new operating system, Windows 98, for three days so that settlement talks could proceed. Eventually, the Justice Department had scheduled in noon moose conference to announce its suit. And attorneys general from this several of the 20 states that were going to file a joint action had flown to Washington,

to stand with Janet Reno, the United States Attorney General for the announcement. Politician statements had been drafted and press releases have been printed. Anti-trust suits and not criminal stuff, but antitrust suits were eventually brought against Microsoft. They were found to be in violation of antitrust laws. And at the time, Bill Gates had a reputation as a real evil tyrant who was swallowing up other countries and doing unfair things to his competitors. Now he had laundered his reputation through charitable giving, and now it's back to being bad because of Jeffrey Epstein. Hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein, apparently, well, we're not going to go into the details of what he did or what he's alleged to have done, but it's pretty gross. Nine Palestinians die in protest marking Israel's anniversary.

Again, I mean, kind of a passive way of putting this. Palestinians today marked the 50th anniversary of the creation of Israel, an event they call the catastrophe, the Nakba. They don't say this in the times, with two minutes of silence and several hours of violence during which Israeli forces fired on crowds and nine Palestinians were left dead. It was the worst. No connection between the bullets and who was left dead. It was the worst of Arab-Israeli violence since September 1996. In the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces open fire with live. ammunition on Palestinians pressing towards Jewish settlements killing eight Palestinians, two of them

eight-year-old boys. One man was killed by a rubber-coded bullet in the West Bank and Ramallah. Exactly what led to the shooting is not clear, but the Israeli army said it fired at rioters at three locations and that Israeli forces had been fired out two of them. Scores were wounded the West Bank and Gaza, none of them Israeli forces. This tragic conflict. continues in much worse ways in the present day, as we all know. I'm really struck by the Israeli forces getting cop tents. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, they do this last, but they still do this. Yeah. I mean, it's really incredible. Like, I'm always like a little bit like,

oh, you know, media criticism that looks at headlines or like the way an article is written. I'm like, come on. Give me a break. I mean,

any adult who can read can put this story together. But yeah, in this case, I'm like, dude, come on, this is crazy. There's a Indonesian capital engulfed by rioting. Indonesia's capital descended into chaos on Thursday as rioting and looting broke out in virtually every quarter of the city. People swept up and down Jakarta's main streets, setting fire to cars, shattering windows and office buildings, and burning and pillaging stores. There's not a lot on the front page about what the context.

of this was because the New York Times, the newspaper was still a source of just what was going on. I think now it would more quickly get into some kind of political context of it. Iran arms smuggle take the Canadian route, a shadowy, a reigning effort to smuggle American-made jets and sophisticated military equipment across Canada and to Iran, was recently exposed by United States secret agent. You know, Iran and has a lot of U.S. military. technology from when Iran was a U.S. ally. They have trouble getting spare parts for them. So this is always their effort to try to get spare parts for the airplanes and equipment that they have. Anything else look interesting to you guys? Not really. This is, this is a, you know,

middle of the 19, or we're getting to the end of the 1990s. Oh, this happens to be that May 15th was the finale of Seinfeld, the controversial finale of Seinfeld, which a lot of people didn't like. and it wasn't very good. So yeah, the same day that Bullworth came out. I guess that's it for the times. That's it for the times. John, Vincent, have you guys seen this movie before? No.

You know, it's so funny. It was so ubiquitous culturally, partially because of the song. Right. Of Superstar. Maya and ODB. Maya and ODB. The music, it was on the soundtrack. And the music video, I'd be,

leave had Warren Beatty in it. And there was like a sort of extrapolation upon one of the bigger scenes of the film where he's giving a speech at a big fundraiser. These all these red, white and blue balloons behind him, the video sort of takes off on that. And so I thought that I understood the tenor and tone of the movie so well because of that music video, I was realizing this, putting it back together after watching the film. It was like, oh, I think I thought I saw this movie. And then once I saw it, I was like, there's no way that I saw it. And so it's interesting the way that sort of a film's ephemera works its way into your mind, even if you haven't seen it. So I was really happy to see it.

But no, I hadn't. Yeah, I had a really similar experience with it because I had really, I think I had started it once and not and got distracted or something. But because I was like, oh, I should actually watch Bullworth. But yeah, I mean, I remember it as a kid because of its marketing campaign and also, yeah, pros of the Fuji's and the, you know, the all. of the hubbub about it. It was like, you know, I wasn't, it wasn't early in hip hop's general cultural adoption, but it was definitely like a not as ubiquitous as it is now. So this movie was kind of notable in that regard as being like, oh, this is kind of like a moment for hip hop. But yeah, I just thought it was like, there were ads for it everywhere that I was watching MTV. The music

video was on. It was like, everyone seemed to be talking about it. And then I, I thought this movie was like a massive hit and something that everybody knew about and talked about. And then to see that it kind of flopped was kind of interesting to me. Um, because it, to me, I thought this was like a very culturally significant movie. Maybe it was in its own way, but it was discussed more than it was watched. Um, so yeah, I, and I watched it and I was, I mean, it has not aged gracefully. Let's put it that way. I, I don't exactly. I mean, I was. I was pretty like, wow, that's pretty racist. That's like watching this movie.

And like, you know, he just, it's just not like obviously to the standards of our time. But I feel like even in the 90s, it would have raised some eyebrows. And I guess it was trying to be a little cheeky and provocative. But I was pretty surprised. I was like, damn, dude, that's pretty stupid. Yeah. I don't think, I guess we'll get into how the satire works. works and what it's saying.

But yeah, how, how, how offensive do you guys find this movie? See, I, I did not find the film. Like,

I found it cringy. I didn't find it offensive. Gringy, I would say is right. Yeah, yeah. Like, I found myself having a hard time

just like watching all Warren Beatty rapping sequences. Oh, yeah, that was very difficult. Uh, but I'm not sure I found it offensive necessarily.

It's, it's such an odd artifact. of the 90s, both in terms of the hip hop being still this kind of countercultural phenomena that's a very clear, clearly part of the movie's vision, hip hop being this language of truth telling, right? Kind of a riff off of what the Ice Cube line from 10 years earlier that like gangster rap was like their CNN. So there's, which, which I, I would say that like by the late 90s is a little bit sort of like,

hey, it's, this is mostly mainstream, right? Like, this is, you know, this is in between. It's a weird, 98's a weird year for hip-hop. Because like 96, you get the Fuji's, you get a lot of great classic albums. And 98 is like DMX comes out. Yeah. We're on the way, but not totally there. But you're at Blueprint year, too, Jay-Z?

Yeah, that's 2001. Oh, that's 2001. Okay. Yeah, but like 96 was reasonable. It's like we're in the middle. And so I totally agree, though, Jamel. The whole tectonics of the film depend on you believing that hip hop and sort of the culture of the black masses is still speaking from the peripheries to the center. Right, right.

I was just as curious as far as like hip hop being stream. stream where it stands. A few months after this movie comes out, the Jay-Z single Hard Knock Life would drop, which I feel like marks, it's like it kind of marks the beginning of this like really serious mainstreaming of hip-hop. Another interesting 1998 thing that I was thinking about

because partially the lighting and some of the cinematography of this movie, like when they're in the club and all these greens and blues and reds, really reminded me of, of belly, the NOS and DMX film directed by Hype Williams. And that also came out in 98. And so it was really interesting that some of the aesthetics are similar. And that's another, if you want to put tent poles of how hip hop makes into pop culture, belly is one of those as well.

So I was thinking about those in tandem as well. That's a great point. That's a great observation. So, yeah, the movie hinges on this notion of what hip hop is. it like I don't I don't I don't how I put this that's the title of the that's the umbrella under which any consideration of this movie because just just the relationship to black America in this movie is so it's it very much is white guy who is involved in civil rights in the 60s which is Warren Beatty

was like Warren Beatty was someone who like you know supported the marches and was sort of like you know gave money and that kind of thing he's like very much he's like the archetypal Hollywood liberal and so like it's it's it is this like you know uh boomer Hollywood liberal trying to almost like for himself ask what happened and I feel like so much of the movie is Beatty asking what happened and searching for some kind of like authenticity that would allow him to express what he thinks happened. And so he finds it in this vision of the black community, which on one hand, you know, there is, there was, there is quite a bit of poverty,

disenfranchisement, segregation, these things are real. On the other, like, it's also sort of like highly reductive and very kind of flattened in the way that a guy like Warren Beatty who lives in L.A. in Hollywood and whose like encounter with working class black people is like totally filtered through his own social position would perceive what black life is like. And it's simultaneously, it's like it's not it's not like I don't I don't read it as like offensive or even sort of condescending. I just read it as sort of like, Yeah, Warren Beat is like an out of touch, like, he's like a, he's like a guy. He really wants to understand.

What he what this, okay, I got it now. What this movie reminds me of is once a week, I get an email. I'm writing about the Constitution every week, right? Once we get an email from some New York Times reader who's like, I'm an old white guy and I love your work. And then it's like a, it's like a racial confession. And it's like, I don't, well, first of all, I don't know what to do with this. But this movie feels like Warren Beatty's sort of like racial confession.

Speaking of the mid to late 90s, though, it reminded me of a kind of archetype that existed when I was a kid that just doesn't survive anymore, which was the sort of black white guy. We could use the term. It's kind of pre-wigger. I don't know. Yeah, I know what you mean. It's like, for me, it's like, especially from a New York perspective, it's like the movie's about Warren Beatty

turning into Michael Rapaport. Right. Like, you know, Michael Rappaport, before he was, you know, the arch defender of the Israeli government, he was just a black white guy. And because of that, he could like, you know, put forward his putatively pro-black political stances forward

in a way that did, still, though, condescend to and also siphon off of various aspects of black culture. You know, it's like, it was cringe. It was, it was kind of classic 90s racism, but the good part of it. It's hard to say because the 90s were so strange. You can't, it's hard to tell somebody now that like, there were some racist white guys in the 90s that weren't all that bad. And it's because they thought that they were honest. And, you know, some of the things they said.

Yeah. And he's that. He's that. I mean, when he starts like saying the N-word and the context, context of somebody saying it to him, I'm like, yeah, man, I remember that, you know? Yeah, yeah. Right. Yes. I think that this movie is Warren Beatty, like, trying to dab up a black guy and pretty embarrassing moment. But he's got his, his, his, his, his, his heart might be in the right place. It's like very, I would say, yeah, the, the politics of the movie are very much. much a liberal, a left liberal, with a kind of populist streak, voted for Jesse Jackson, may have voted for Jerry Brown, may have had a fun, probably had a fundraiser for Jerry Brown. And it's interesting because like the movie wants, there was like that, you know, Hallie Berry kind of gives him this Panther, Marxist, Leninist speech about, you know, the deindustrialization of the ghetto and all this stuff. And the movie is like interesting. And I think what, you're talking about is like it treats, it kind of wants to do this thing where it's like,

it's kind of stuck between race and class in a lot of ways that American, you know, political discourse gets confused and doesn't know which way to go where it's like, okay, well, you know, black people are working class. So we're going to go with a class first analysis in some parts of the movie. But then there's all this cultural baggage where there's a particularity and a particular level of oppression and struggle. So the movie's like not sure how to come. And this is like kind of where the left was at in the 90. Like this is a, you also have to think like the reason this movie like I read a review of this by Patricia J. Williams of the nation. And like it's remarkably kind of like,

eh, you know, this movie's like trying its best. That's like kind of stupid in some ways, but it's trying it's best. This is a low watermark for like for for the left in the United States. The night is bad. Like there's Ralph Nader at the end of it, but, you know, that's sort of not much. And Clinton goes to the center. The cultural is liberal in some ways, but it's, you know, we're getting welfare reform. You know, there's all the deregulation. It's just kind of this softer version of Reaganism. So like the left is such a low ebb at this movie, which all,

also is another part of Warren Beatty's like what happened story. And it's trying to kind of do this old new left panther thing, which is like the black people are the working class subject of a possible American revolution or or some kind of progressive movement in America, but in this extremely Hollywood, you know, backwards kind of way. But yeah, I think the reason why this film was made and the reason why it resonated with some people with critics is just the fact that the left was like so lost at this point. I'm trying to give people a impression of what it was like to be a left winger in the late 90s. It's like it was Michael Moore. It was like you, Noam Chomsky, this movie was like, this movie is like, oh, this movie's deep and

it says some things. It was a bunch of cultural signals. identifiers, you know, it was pretty bleak out there. There was no DSA, you know, the organizationally this stuff wasn't here. So this movie is like, I think also just like about the left being completely unsure of what to do with itself and trying to maybe be like, oh, maybe hip hop culture is a way forward. I would say there's a really interesting conversation about like the relationship between hip-hop and politics and why it, you know, like, has never been, like, there's been political, politicization of rap, obviously, and political rap, but, like, it's never been, like, I think the fantasy of some left-wingers has been, like, rap will get really political, and that

will, like, make the masses rise up. Anyway, that movie kind of participates in that fantasy as well, because in its most condescending moment, Don Cheadle, the gangster character, listens to this politician, Bullworth post hip hopification and he's like, you know what, I'm going to start to do shit for the community. That's like a ridiculous part. And he's like, I got to start doing shit. Like I'm inspired by this white guy's speech to start doing shit for the community. So I think that, and that's the most naive Hollywood liberal part of it too. So yeah, I think it's like, it's a lot of things going on. Hip hop is entering the mainstream. The left is totally out to see. White people are getting comfortable

with rap music and relating to it in a way that's not that's not hostile but is still exoticizing and kind of embarrassing and cringe. And yeah, like the black, white guys are like the Beastie Boy archetype, the Mark Michael Rappaport, you know, this stuff is very much in the air. And I was sort of one of those guys a little bit. But, you know, it was just because in New York, you know, hip-hop was what was cool. Yeah. Yeah, and also, like, I think part of that ethos, the sort of race-conscious left of the time was precisely to engage with race and try to excavate it for trope, for stereotype, to sort of look all of the, in certain admirable, but also, yeah, sure, certain, like, maybe kind of also cringe ways. Fisk cultural stereotypes for kind of, I don't know, clarity or moments of grace between disparate kinds of people. I'm thinking about two years later, Spike Lee makes bamboozles, which is still my favorite Spike Lee film.

And it's like set in a sort of minstrel environment and a TV producer using minstrelsy as a way to sort of like reinvigorate like the popularity of the show. And it's a similar thing of like this like, uh, bamboozled is, among other things, John was talking about the way people read headlines before. Among other things, this is a work of media criticism. So, like, at the beginning of the film, you know, sleepless, Bullworth is in his senatorial chambers, you know, a whole box of pizza open but uneaten on his desk.

And you hear his like misbeguided campaign speeches that are like, we're on the precipice of a New America. and by the way, fuck welfare or whatever, you know. But then he's looking at a TV, and it's like, and the TV is kind of flipping between wrestling and other very vulgar forms of sort of televised spectacle. Later in the film, somebody says to him, hey, man, we're going to have to, there's like a power outage at the station that's actually occasioned by one of his staffers who wants him to shut up, whatever, whatever.

And one of the TV flunkies says, we got to reschedule this because the network doesn't want to move this for Jerry Springer, you know? So part of it is part of the insistence on, I think, leaning on received cultural stereotypes. Like whenever they go to South Central, it just is boys in the hood all of a sudden. I just watched Menace to Society again last week. Yeah, yeah. Whenever they go to South Central, it's just sort of like it is the bleakest scenes in Menace's society. Over the movie.

It's like the Dave Chappelle scene where like a baby selling crack. in this movie. And so it's an interesting way of sort of talking about portrayal and talking about trope and talking about stereotype as as functionary in the sort of, you know, super structure of class oppression. So that was interesting. I mean, maybe at this juncture I should say I like this movie and we'll watch it again. Like it's crazy and it's weird and it definitely like is sort of paternalist. And I just think it's, you mentioned the Amiri Baraka, you know, between him and those two black women that are not Halliberry who are following him around and being sort of his own personal salt and pepper. There is this like coral, very, the whole thing is very Greek.

You know, all of a sudden he becomes the fool and he's speaking in verse. And so there is a, like, you can seem really playing around with structure and illusion in these very classical ways that I don't know. I really I really I know I I don't know if I would say that I enjoyed it but I am fascinated by it. No, I I you know, I watched it. I was sort of like as with you, I don't know what I expected. I think I very much did expect the ghetto superstar music video and then I watched this movie. And I'm just sort of like I'm just this is really strange. It's like it's a it's it's strange that arguably one of the biggest start.

as of his generation got a bunch of money to make this parable this like parable of modern day America that you're right like is it's full of it's trying to do something and um that's what I like about it's trying to do something and I just found myself like I you know again it was cringe worthy in a lot of ways but like I couldn't turn my eyes away from it this is like a a genuinely weird movie in a way that you don't often get from Hollywood. Coming from, I think Beatty,

which I should say, I mentioned earlier in the conversation that I was going to talk a bit about Beatty's cinematic persona. I think Beatty ought to get a lot of credit in this movie for being basically selfless the entire time. I mean,

he does make out with Holly Berry, so there's that. He wouldn't be Warren Beatty if he did. Right, right. There's a story of Paul Thomas Anderson sending him the script for boogie nights and Warren Beatty thinking he might be the the Mark Wahlberg at age like 65 or something. So there's that.

But like otherwise it's like it's Beatty not being not being afraid right to play the fool, not being afraid to sort of look ridiculous on screen for the sake of the message. And if you watch Beatty's performances, you know, beginning in Bonnie and Clyde and going forward, but like Bonnie Clyde being its real kind of star making turn. I've always thought of him as a lot of his characters, not all of them, but a lot of them basically being hymboes, like very attractive but dim and men who,

for whatever reason, achieve this level of self-awareness that then drives them insane. It happens in Bonnie and Clyde. It happens in shampoo. It happens in red. I think Reds to an extent is like that happening to a guy. And it's very much happening in Bullworth.

It's not, again, not every single Beatty performance, although a lot of them do have this sort of like dim, handsome guy thing going about them. But for being as big a star as he is and as kind of, you know, a legendary control freak, he is like surprisingly selfless in how he portrays himself on screen. And I find that, I find that really interesting about the guy. It's funny. One of the funniest parts of the movie is he's in this after-hours joint in Compton, you know, the long night, you know, it's like from dawn till dusk, except he doesn't become a vampire, he becomes black. And he goes up to the bar and these two black people are being like, oh, it's you. And then they say, and it's like, Clint Eastwood. He's like exposing himself as just like a generic white stiff, not only the Bullworth character, but himself in this way that I was like, that's really funny, man.

And like the way that like there is a fair bit of condescension happening, but there's also an awareness of the way that black people sort of tolerate this sort of white person. Yeah, there are these moments where they're overly impressed with him, I think. But there are moments where it's just like, you know, welcome. you know, one of the guys says, you know, boy, George Harrison sure can move when he's dancing. So I think that was a lot of playing with the persona that I thought that was cool. You know what? I think there's also just like a, this movie participates in a fantasy about American politics that all, not fringe, but all kind of frustrated political movements in the United States experience, which is if someone just got.

up there and spoke the truth, you know, things would really change. And what I was thinking about when I was watching this movie was Trump is white Bullworth. Like, like, he is like what, what people are what or right wing white Bullworth is that, you know, it's the same like, oh, you know what? Some guy just finally dropped the pretences and came out and said it. And it's so refreshing and so exciting. And that, you know, was what people want. from Nader and what people got from Bernie to a certain extent, but a little different. And what, you know, they wanted from Jerry Brown. Jesse Jackson is a little too polished of a speaker too rhetorical to exactly do that,

although, you know, he did attack the same inequalities and stuff like that. But this kind of like, oh, he's just going to lay apart the hypocrite. Someone's going to just get up there and finally go off script and take apart the hypocrisies of American society. and then we'll finally be able to make progress. And it's interesting to me, and I don't know what to do with it, but it was a thought I had in the movie that it was like, you know, this was accomplished weirdly, this fantasy of, of pop, this populist fantasy, which I guess, I don't know, does it go back to like

Mr. Smith goes to Washington? Something like that. I don't know. Someone also compared this movie to like Preston Sturgis farces where like a common guy ends up in some kind of political situation or. or high political office. So, yeah, I mean, I don't know what to do with it, but it was like, oh, yeah, I just couldn't help but think about Trump and be like, Trump is the culmination of the political fantasy that this movie participates in it, albeit in a very different way, which is like, just tell the truth and then the system will change. It's funny you mentioned Trump because, you know, by the end of the film, it's interesting the way that his critique, Bullworth's critique, such as he has one,

evolves over the course of the movie. You know, by the end, he sounds like, I don't know, whatever, Ralph Nader, talking about the corporate media, et cetera. At the beginning, he's a little bit more like Trump. Because, you know, first, you know, who else he sounds like in the black church, at least? He sounds like Barack Obama. He's like, if you guys would only, like, stop worrying about hip-polls, it's like, tell your cousin Pookie to take care of his kids or whatever.

And then cut to a fundraiser where he not only excoriates Hollywood, okay, that makes a little sense. he sort of Judaizes this. He's like, and you guys are all Jews, right? You know? That was truly ahead of its time. So it's like, oh, at first it's like unclear where he's going with this. He could be Ralph Nader, but it could also be Pap Buchanan. Yeah.

And you have to, you've got to stick with the film to figure out what exactly is the substance of the thing he's trying to say. Right, right, right. It's interesting to think, though, that form, this form of the, politician who lets it all out, who is loud, obnoxious, and just sort of like says what's, says what he believes to be real without any adornment. In the, sort of in the film, it only really catches on when it's tied to a message drawn from the black underclass. So, you know, when he begins to sort of like absorb what he's being told and then like filter

it through both his appropriation of like hip hop, but then also the literal things, you know, the Holly Berry character and the Don Chito character are telling him, then that's when it kind of takes off. But in the real world, it's sort of like, I think voters only really respond to the aesthetic. Like the actual substance almost doesn't matter. It's this aesthetic of of revelation that people are attracted to. I was just reading some interviews with, you know, people who voted for Trump three times. And they're asked about how they think about things going now. And there's sort of a cool, you know, I wanted him to shake things up.

And sort of the substance of the shaking up seems to be irrelevant. It's just sort of the sense that this person through their disregard for, you know, rhetorical formalities is going to shake things up in a way. And that, you know, that makes Trump sort of unlike Bullworth because the Bullworth character, there's a particular substance there by the end that is sort of the thing that people have connected to, the substance and the method of delivery. And in our world, it just really seems that if you can talk a certain way, it almost doesn't really matter what you're saying. And then people get surprised when, like, they're like, oh, I don't like what this guy's doing.

It's what you weren't listening to what he was saying. Right. Yeah, I think that there's that, that, that tension between form and content and is interesting because you can kind of roll it up into a critique of the commercialization of hip hop or people believing that some kind of authenticity or some kind of political change was possible through the medium of hip hop because it's exactly that. It's like, oh, well, this is kind of a raw. authentic delivery of truth from the underclass and, you know, it's going to change things.

But then it just became purely about that aesthetic of confrontation or anger or, or, you know, uncovering of the underbelly of the world. But it didn't actually have any kind of political tooth, teeth to it. And the movie obviously is not able, is not like making that critique. but it's it's just too early and it's also, but, you know, that critique more goes to, I don't know, well, Vincent could speak to this because he's written a novel about it, but it's also could speak to kind of like Obama's use of his, you know, hip-hop culture and saying like, oh, you know, I listen to Jay-Z and so on and so forth, which is its kind of neutralization or it's being absorbed into the rest of the culture and it's losing.

some of its edge. The other thought I had was, to Vince's point about, you don't know whether he's going to go right populist or left populist in this movie. I mean, at this point, there was such a weird, it was such a weird time for the left that, I think in 1996, no, it was a little later. At one point, Lenora Fulani, a really fringe left-wing candidate kind of coming from left-wing black nationalist tradition ran on a ticket with Pap Buchanan because they both had this like protectionist labor, not liberal, but like, you know, pro worker position. He was like, I agree with a lot of things that she says. This was also, you know, there was stuff about Israel with that as well. But yeah, there was just such a strange time and the left was so I had to see that

those kinds of hybrids were happening. Yeah, but that's just. It's, it is. All right. Look, I grant. I grant that this movie has an, is a very interesting cultural artifact and more so. But when I was watching it, I was like, this is very cringe. And I was like, and I thought I recognized entirely what its politics were. And I was like, this is such boomer liberal stuff.

So embarrassing, like trying to be relatable. But I realize it's a little, there's, there's more to it. And also I think, I guess we all have this nostalgia for it because it doesn't seem so bad in retrospect. It seems goodhearted at least. Yeah. Like you can point out its hypocrisies. You can point out its stupidities. You can point out as condescension, its paternalism, whatever.

But it was making something of an effort. And it just seems like that is even gone these days sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. I had a professor at Hunter College, this guy, a sociology professor, whose name I can't remember right now, but he used to like, you know, he was very sort of, I don't know, he brought his books to our class and a plastic bag and everything he played for us was just like videos about the corporate media and why there's no such thing as a left-wing media because it's really the corporate. He just, I don't know, that kind of critique is all, this movie is something. that he would have played in that class. And it also, like, I don't know,

what was interesting about it, too, to me, and maybe, I don't know if it's time to maybe get into the Halle Berry character, who I was just so interested in. It was like a white liberal contemplation of what the character of a sort of insurgent black revolutionary class would look like and sound like. Obviously, like John said,

she gives this long speech. about the industrialization, et cetera. And I was kind of thinking of that character. Oh, by the way, he says we should all, by the end he's talking about we should all fuck each other until nobody's black or white. And I think it's hinted at in the movie that this character is also biracial.

It's like, you know, somebody comes out and says, remember how your mother was dawn wrong by a white man, et cetera? And I was kind of thinking of this figure, this character in conversation with The perfidia character played by Tiana Taylor in one battle after another, you know, what is the character, what is the archetype of the sort of flawed black revolutionary and what is their relation to the sort of boomer liberal, the boomer left liberal of whom you speak, John? And his perspective is obviously like sort of encapsulated by this movie. I found that, this sort of enigmatic, yes, sex kitten, but also in a strange way, like, de-racialized black liberal. She's the only person that's tagged as biracial.

She's not as, like, hip-hop act, for lack of a better word, she's not, like, rapping and singing with him like these other women are. And she's not the drug dealer, Don Cheadle. She's this kind of, like, I mean, what she is is woke. right? How, you know, just that the emergence of that, that character as a kind of archetype was so interesting to me, too. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's just interesting to think about the whole film in relation to one battle after another, very different movies, obviously in tone, but both kind of satirical comedies dealing with, you know, race and class in the United States and the loss of The loss of innocence, I would say, is what I would say that the same nostalgia we feel for the awkward good intentions of this film is sort of one thing that one battle after another is saying wasn't so particularly bad about, say, the Leonardo DiCaprio character.

For all of his faults, he was not, he is not bloodthirsty. He is not an exploiter. He is a flawed person, but still somewhat laudable and dependable. I think that that movie was more, had a more, this movie doesn't touch on violence as much a little bit, but that movie was more about a critique of violence. But this movie doesn't really deal with that. I mean, they mentioned that the LA riots are kind of a background context of this movie. It comes up. But, you know, there is the, you know, there's obviously the mention of crime and stuff like that.

But violence, political violence is not such a presence in the movie except for the assassination, which is faked. Or we don't know exactly what happens at the end. And, yeah, it's so funny, Amiri Barakas in the movie. I wonder if they were friends. I'm still thinking about just the, Vincent, the connection between the Hollyberry character and the, and perfidy of Beverly Hills, Tina Taylor's character because it is it is kind of uncanny right sort of like it's the exact it's it is an archetype like the most of the seductive lighter skinned black woman revolutionary that you know what does that I don't know I don't I don't have a I don't have like

a read on what on the function on the function of that of that archetype I would say in one battle I mean, this is like the big argument about the character. Like my read of Tiana Taylor's character in that movie is that actually it was trying to, the movie is trying to tell you that she is actually not an archetype, that she is a human being. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Who is struggling with her role, her place, her ability to fulfill the kind of duty that she took on. And, you know, her daughter, her daughter at a distance is grappling with those same things as well.

Um, and so to me, to my mind, that movie is sort of like presenting you this archetype, but then sort of like, uh, showing you that like, uh, maybe you should think of this woman as like an actual, an actual human being and a person with a, with a full life. Um, Holly Berry's characters is just an archetype, right? It's just very much sort of like, I noticed that is, is, is there to have a particular function in the story. But the role, the way that that's filtered through sex appeal, I don't know, I'm just thinking about it. Between Paul Thomas Anderson and Warren Beatty, like, it's interesting to see this as a fabulation of a white male imagination.

Yeah. You know, it's the hope that in the revolution, I will also get laid. You know, that sex. I'm going to be a really hot. Yeah. Part of it. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. I think I actually think that the Paul Thomas Anderson movie is is somewhat more self-aware and critical of that sexualization. Yeah. And is definitely takes shots at it and looks at the kind of psychic damage it does to all of the characters in a certain way. But this movie is still like, yeah. But to your point about there's something being very classical. about this. It's that, you know, there is sort of an archetypicality, if you want to say it about a lot. Even like Bullwark's character is not all that developed. I mean, he's a, he is a, he is a liberal senator,

backbencher kind of lost figure that's easily recognizable if you paid attention to politics in the 90s. He's exactly that senator who you forget exists. And, you know, there's so many senators like that. And by. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's just like, oh, yeah, remember that guy? Oh, yeah. So it's just, yeah, I don't think that I did particularly notice, though. I'm like, this character is really getting no depth whatsoever, really no. It's just kind of, she's there. So, and the movie is, it's a satire. It's, but it is very much trying to make a point. So it is not primarily interested in being like, okay, these. or the story of these people is what's important here. It's trying to be a parable is not the right word. And allegory is not the right word. You guys know what I mean. So yeah. And, you know, there's a place for that. I think that's also like what annoyed me where I was like, these people are kind of wooden. And I didn't, I didn't really put it in the context of well. It's trying to be

kind of a fable, a political fable. I was just like, this is not terribly deeply thought out, but maybe it was more than I gave it credit for. We need to start to wrap up. Okay. So last thoughts on Bullworth? I'm not entire. I mean, obviously we have a lot to say about it. I don't know that I would watch it again anytime soon, but I don't, I would not say

I'll never watch it again. That's what I'll say. Yeah. I may find myself like if it's watching it again in a weird mood. Yeah. I'm definitely going to watch it again, but I also think that would not say that I will not watch it again is great like poster copy. Yeah. I will almost certainly watch this again.

You know, if I ever find myself teaching a class that is basically the remit of this podcast, this is going to be on the syllabus because I do think if nothing else, it is a true, a true capsule of a particular moment in American. political life in the late 90s. We're going to be watching later on in the podcast, Primary Colors, the Mike Nichols film. And that, I think that'll also make a nice conversation piece with this movie. Sort of the, the cynicism, the sense of, you know, politics being reduced to entertainment, all these things that I think are kind of,

the unwee of late 90s American politics. I think you see all these things in, Bullworth, as well as I've been saying, just something genuinely interesting. Be Amir Barakas, who has the closing line of the film, um, that's, it's sort of like, it's very enigmatic.

It's sort of it's, it's, I don't know. Um, be a spirit, not a ghost. Right. Which I guess means be alive,

not dead. I mean, that's not elucidating it at all. That's just going to a second metaphor. But, you know, Anyway, yeah. I mean, if I, you know, if I had to think if you, a ghost is inner, right?

A ghost haunts a place. A spirit animates. Yeah. Um, uh, so that's, that's, that's, that's how I might read that line. But yeah, this is, this is not the movie I was expecting. And something I will, I will almost certainly revisit. Um, and if it ever gets a, like a modern physical. media release. I will like 100% buy it. It hopes that one of my children will like in bored

and watch it and be like, Dad, what the fuck is happening? And the song is really good. I was singing it to myself all week. And yeah, because it is a real classic. Yeah, yeah. Only only hit Pra's ever had. And I think he later got arrested for some kind of fraud. Yeah, he's dealing with that right now. Yeah. No. The Fugees, man. All right. That is our show. Thank you, as always, for listening. You can find this podcast, wherever podcast are found. That's Apple Podcast. That's Google. That's Spotify. That's everywhere. if you leave a rating and a review, it helps people find the show. And we also just want to know what you're thinking. And if you want to contact us directly, you can reach out to us via our feedback email.

That's unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com. Unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com. For this weekend feedback, we have an email from Laura titled Oklahoma City, A Survivor Story, and A Push. We had our previous episode was a TV movie, Oklahoma City of Survivor Story. Here's Laura. Hi, my name is Laura and I'm a teacher and a fan of the podcast. I teach high school, including an APUS history class. I've used some of Jamel's writings in my class. Unfortunately, I usually run out of time in the year to get to the 1990s. But if I ever get my planning together, I will definitely try to incorporate some of Johns as well. I listened to Oklahoma City, a survivor story

episode on a whim last week and were struck by the conversation at the end of the podcast about the role that memory and history play in American society. As a history teacher, especially when working with high school students. I have spent a lot of time thinking about the importance of the story people tell about history and how the way the story is told and whose point of view is privileged. How these things shape political events and culture. Should the conversation and insight about the forgetfulness of America ring true and put into clear words and put into clear words, ideas and notions that have passed through my brain but never settled into coherent thoughts. The AP test is over and I usually assign a project of choice to the students before the end of the year,

despite their protest. This year, the intro to the project is a paraphrase of your conversation along with proper attribution in the link to the episode in the full section of the conversation. Thank you. That's not necessary, but I appreciate it. The goal of the project really is to get my students to figure out the myriad ways that events from the past, shape the present, whether it is a local issue, a monument or a movie, all options for the project. I just wanted you both to know that in addition to an entertaining and informational podcast, as always, you helped a very tired teacher find a little of the fire of inspiration and meaning in my subject. hopefully my newly rekindled enthusiasm will spread to the students.

I appreciate your work and thank you, Laura. Thank you, Laura. That's very nice to hear. That's so nice to hear. Just when I was about to give up. It genuinely fills me with quite a bit of joy to learn that educators find my work, find our work valuable.

For sure. Last semester, I was doing anything in Georgetown for the semester. and I would encounter lots of freshmen and sophomores who are like, oh, you know, I read your work in high school. And it makes you feel old, obviously. Yeah. But it all, but it's, but it's, it's nice, you know? It's the best way to age.

Really? Yeah, really. Yeah. And it's like a nice reminder that we're not just like speaking into the void that the things we're doing here. They have an impact somewhere. So thank you, Laura, for the very lovely. email. And again, if you want to reach out to us, that's unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com. Episodes come out every two weeks, generally speaking. So you can catch us in two weeks

with an episode. Let me bring up the list, the master list. It might be Arlington Road, which has been people have been requesting Arlington Road for a long time. So if it is on, Road. Everyone will be excited. But let's see. It is not Arlington Road. It is, we got a couple weeks before Arlington Road. It is the 1998 Roland Emmerich directed Godzilla film. Why are we doing that, Jamel? This is a Jamel insertion. All right. You know what? This is the one with the puff daddy song, right? Yeah, yeah.

This is the one with the puff daddy song with Jimmy Page. Bar-a-a-ma-ba-ba-ba-ba-ha. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. All right. You know what? Or the version on the soundtrack, the version of Green Day's brain stew with Godzilla Roars in the background.

I listened to the hell out of that soundtrack when I was 11 years old. But here's a quick plot synopsis that I actually think there's a reason why I pick this. French nuclear. tests irradiate an iguana into a giant monster that viciously, viciously attacks freighter ships in the Pacific Ocean. A team of experts conclude that the oversized reptiles, oversized reptiles, is the culprit before long.

The giant lizard is loosen Manhattan as the U.S. military races to destroy the monster before it reproduces and its spawn takes over the world. I think this is actually like a classic late 90, the environmentalist sort of nuclear proliferation piece. Okay. And so that's why I picked it. Okay. Not just because, as I look to my left in my home.

I have multiple box sets of Godzilla films. Yeah. It has nothing to do with the fact that Tremel is obsessed with Godzilla. All right. So that's next main feed episode on the Patreon. We've just done a bunch of episodes on Vietnam War movies. We have an episode on Apocalypse Nalup. And then we're going to do an episode on kind of Nuremberg as a,

as a subject of film. So specifically the most recent film on the Nuremberg trials last years, Nuremberg starring Romney Malik and what's his name? Oh, Russell Crow. Russell Crow. As Herman Goring. And in all time, Russell Crow sits down for a movie performance. But we're also going to talk about judgment on Nuremberg, which recorded before, Nuremberg documentary.

It's just Nuremberg as like this subject. And the 2000 Nuremberg film with Alex Baldwin. And maybe, maybe we can watch the Hannah Arendt movie next. What Hannah-R-R-R-N movie? Oh, have you ever seen, it's called Hannah-R-R-R-R-T? It's not bad. So there's a movie about the writing of Eichmann in Jerusalem where it's basically she just is sitting around our apartment and smoking and thinking.

Awesome. Yeah, it's good. It's good. I like, I mean, I like it, but. Oh, is this, is this 2012? Yeah, Volker Schlondorf, I think, right? Who I think is a great director. Um, director's, uh, oh, no, Margaret von Trata. Vargaretta, his ex-wife. Okay. All right. Um, she, she also made with him, um, the lost honor of Caterina

and Bloom, one of our early episodes. Okay. So I'm not going to, I'm not going to, I'm not going to insist, but maybe after our Nuremberg conversation, trials of Nazis will be a theme. Just putting it out there. I happily, I happily, I have. It sounds interesting to me. I'm happy to watch this. Okay. All right.

Okay. So that's over at the Patreon. Patreon.com slash unclear pod. $5 a month. There are two Patreon episodes every month plus a weekly politics show. If you want to just hear us shoot the shit about the week in politics. Vincent, thank you for joining us. Thanks for coming.

It was great. It was great. Volvo, Laura. Do you have anything you'd like to plug? No, just the aforementioned novel, great expectations, and my work at the New Yorker. Read his work at the New Yorker. It's wonderful. Pulitzer Prize nominated as well.

Pulitzer Prize finalist. Finalist, finalist. That's right. Finalist. So for John Gans and Vincent Cunningham, I'm Jamal Bui. This is unclear and present danger. And we will see you next time.