Unclear and Present Danger - Murder at 1600

Episode Date: January 17, 2026

Jamelle and John are back for the new year with an episode on the 1997 thriller Murder at 1600, directed by Dwight Little and starring Wesley Snipes, Diane Lane, Alan Alda and Dennis Miller. It is yet another entry into the mini-boomlet of films whose premise, essentially, is what if the president were horny…and murderous.In their conversation, Jamelle and John discuss the relationship between the media and Americans’ conception of power, and how this even influences decision makers at the very top. They also discuss the difference between conspiracies in the public mind and conspiracies in reality.A reminder that they also have a Patreon where they cover the films as of the Cold War as well as produce a weekly politics show. You can find that at patreon.com/unclearpod.

It wouldn't be the first time there was violence in this town. It wouldn't be the first time a brutal murder was covered up. Okay, I'm coming down, let's be advised I'm coming from our fourth place. And it wouldn't be the first time a prominent family was involved. The first time... The Pennsylvania Avenue. And that just that changes all the rules. Signs of force?

No. So you're saying sex? Not rape. So she had sex in the White House. They were there. Who was where? They were in the White House. This is global, detective.

It's a little bit off your turf. This is a homicide. This is my turf. The presidency is an institution, not a person. An institution will be protected at all costs. If the president or any... member of his family killed Carlottown. They would call me before they even wiped the blood off their hands.

So what do you do? I'm going to put the president in a lineup? Where are you going with this? Either to the White House or to the press. You were born to become a chalk outline. Murder at 1600. Well, and welcome to Uncleared and Present Danger, the podcast about the political and military thrillers of the 1990s

and what they say about the politics of, of that era. I don't know why I pause in politics there. I'm Jamel Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. I'm John Gans. I write a column for the nation. I have the substack. I write the substack newsletter on popular front. I am substack. I write the substack newsletter on popular front. And I'm the author of when the clock broke, conmen, conspiracists, and how America cracked up in the early 1990s. And on this episode of the pod, we are talking about a little 1997 action thriller titled Murder at 1600. Directed by Dwight Little in starring the Great Wesley Snipes, Diane Lane, Alan Alda, Daniel Benzali, Ronnie Cox, and Dennis Miller, back when they were trying to make Dennis Miller a movie star, wasn't very successful.

Yeah. He was also in the net. He was in the net. He was in a lot of stuff. I think he has negative charisma. Whatever his, like, thing is, I just don't think it works. on screen with like actual actors, but that's kind of a minor point. When we begin murder 1600, we are in the White House where someone is having sex in the

Oval Office. Later, we find the woman, presumably, dead in a restroom. This brings in Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Homicide Detective Harlan Regis, played by Snipes, who then begins to investigate this along with the Secret Service liaison, Nina Chan, played by Diane Lane. What follows is Regis and Chance first attempting to figure out whether or not the story being given is actually true. And then it turns out that it isn't and that there's some deeper mischief afoot, Regis attempting to get to the bottom of it and almost reluctantly dragging Chance in. Their leads include the president and the president's son, a scumbag of some sort.

But they eventually find that this doesn't really have to do with the first family at all. It has to do with the national security officials around the president who are frustrated with his inaction in the face of several U.S. service members being held by North Korea. This is part of a recurring point in the film is that the president is struggling with what to do without recover these service members. His national security advisor, Alan Alda, in fact orchestrated the killing of the young woman in order to implicate the first family and force the president to resign. having uncovered this plot, Regis and Chance, then rushed to the White House to try to tell the president what's happening and keep him from leaving office and bringing in the warmongers who would like to go to war with North Korea and China in retaliation for the captured American soldiers. As you could probably tell from this very brief summary, this is a bit of a convoluted plot, but I will say, just from the jump, you know, the first time I saw this movie, I was like, I'm not sure if I like it that much. this most recent time I was like this is a great time I'm enjoying myself

the whole time but we'll talk more about that later the tagline for murder at 1600 was he's a DC cop on the outside she's a secret service agent on the inside tracking a White House homicide to the first family's front door

and then also the address changes all the rules I think that's a better tagline yeah because this whole this whole like paragraph here Yeah, we know, right? We got it. The movie's called Murder at 1600. Like, we got it. But the address changes all the rules. That's a good tagline. It's like, oh, okay. You know, this isn't going to be a regular murder investigation because it's happening at the president's residency. All right. Yeah. Murdered 1600 was not especially well reviewed. but it sorry, not even a but

and it was a box office disappointment. It wasn't like a bomb or anything but it was just sort of it underperformed. It was released before sorry no, it was originally scheduled to be released before absolute power. The Klendiz would film which the president

actually murder someone. We discussed this in an earlier episode. You can look that up. Apparently when Eastwood heard that murder 1600 is getting positive test screenings, this is allegedly director Dwight Little says that Eastwood convinced Warner Brothers to release absolute power first to make murder a 1600 look like a copycat. I do think it is funny that we had two murder in the White House films at the same time. And I believe this is the same year that we also had Volcano and Dante's Peak. And then there's also Armageddon and Deep Impact.

So lots of, you know, screenwriters coming up with the same idea at the same time in producing two movies. Neither absolutely power or murder 1600 is especially well known now. So unlike Armageddon, which is like a, you know, a blockbuster that people still watch. And I guess people kind of watch Dante speak. Maybe. You got to be kind of a freak. Those movies

Those are movies It's almost There's like some Some Like one of those movies That's kind of a cult classic Cult classic is putting it strongly It has something of a weird cult following

I would say Yeah Yeah I just want to note real quick That the director here Dwight Little Also directed in 1985 film KGBB

The Secret War which is looks totally like a directed video thing the 1989 Phantom of the opera which starred Robert England you know Freddie

Freddy Krueger he directed one of the good Segal movies Mark for Death and also freewhelly to the adventure home and Broken Arrow which is no what?

No that's a That's a John Wu film. What's the little doing here? I think this is a mistake on Wikipedia. Yeah, that's not. That can't be right. That's not right. Because Broken Error, it's John Wu's first American film, I believe.

Okay. Murder 1600 was released on April 18th, 1997. So let's check out the near times for that day. All right. Let's see what we got in the paper here. All right. Well, right here on the left, Nitton Yahoo fights police report by police, Israeli Premier accuses labor of trying to foment crisis. Prime Minister Benjamin

Nittanyahu went on the counteroffensive today against police recommendations that he'd be indicted for breach of the public trust, defiantly vowing to a gathering of political eyes that this government is not going anywhere. At the same time, the initial shock of the disclosure that Mr. Nitton Yahoo had been implicated by the police and what has known as been called the Barron Affair, has followed by widespread questioning of the gravity of the charges, especially after senior police officers confirmed, their recommendation was based largely on the testimony of one witness. The affair was centered on allegations that Mr. Nittanyahu appointed a lawyer named Rony Barron as Attorney General last January under pressure from an influential member of the coalition,

R.A. Derry, who evidently expected his appointment to help him in his corruption trial. Well, as we know, Benjamin Nintyahu is a criminal. He's a war criminal, but he's a petty criminal as well. Noted piece of shit. Yeah, one of the worst guys ever. And that's a big, you know, that's a tough one to get up there. Tory, let's see, this is sort of your mid-90s paper here, which is a little sleepy. But there's some things.

Gingrich will get a loan from Dole to pay House fine. First payment due in 2005, former Senate leader says that $300,000 is an investment in future of our party. Speaker of, Speaker Newt Gingrich announced today that he would pay. his $300,000 fine to the house by borrowing the money from Bob Dole, who called his action not only an opportunity to support a friend, but a long-term investment in the future of our party. The terms of the loan must still be approved by the Ethics Committee, but under the plan announced today, Mr. Gingrich would not have to pay a penny before 2005. Mr. Gingrich's lawyer, Jay Randolph Evans, told reporters that the Speaker intended to repay the

loan from increased earnings. He anticipates after leaving Congress, not from money people might give him. Mr. Evans said collateral will be provided, but he would not say whether it would be or whether it would include the Speaker's House in Georgia. What did he do? I have no, I do not know what Dingrich did. Yeah, I'm trying to figure this news article. Usually, you know, they include what it did, what he did. Let's see.

I'm reading through the, let me see. I'm going to Google that, actually. Okay. Well, you're Googling that. I'm going to say that I thought the headline Tory leader in election gamble embraces an anti-Europe stance. It's about John Major, who is thatcher's successor. And it's just interesting to think about the anti-Europe strain in UK politics. Just always been there. You know, I feel like Americans think of Brexit is coming out of nowhere. But Brexit is actually part of a, you know, this is a thing. This was a thing in UK politics. Yeah, so he's, Gingrich's ethics violations back to the 1990s when Gingrich taught a course, I'm reading on Politifact, a course at Kennesaw State College while serving Congress. The organizer of the course solicited financial support from, quote, individuals, corporations, and foundations, end quote, promising that the project qualified for tax exempt status. But an ethics committee investigated concluded that the course was actually a coordinated effort help in achieving a partisan political goal. something that would run afoul of his tax exempt status.

Okay. A further problem for Gingrich was that during the investigation, he submitted letters from his lawyers for which the subcommittee was unable to find any factual basis. Genghis should have known that the letters was inaccurate, incomplete, and unreliable. Okay, so he did something illegal or violated campaign finance laws and then lied about it. Okay. Interesting. I didn't know that.

I mean, I thought I was pretty up to date on every, fucking scummy thing he did, but there's always something new. Let's see. Schumer set sight on Domato race. Representative Charles Schumer, the Brooklyn Democrat, has dropped plans to run for government will have challenged Senator Alfonz de Marlado. The rest is history. Serbian leader bounces back to foe's dismay.

President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, the Balkans' wiliest political escape artist, appears once again to have defied the expectations of his opponents and reassert his grip on power. Mr. Milosevic, who was knocked off stride by months of protests by the political opposition, as now moving to limit critics of him in the independent news media. He has signed laid those who were disloyal to him in his moment of weakness and appointed a longtime loyalist as chairman of the Electoral Commission. This is something you might read in the United States of America these days. He has capitalized on disarray in the ranks of the opposition, which began squabbling almost immediately after they took power in many of Serbia's large cities.

It's so funny. You know that joke where if you take U.S. news and put a foreign country's name what it would sound like? I mean, I cannot read this and just sort of crack up if you just put it. This is the U.S. And to the consternation of critics, he's preparing to run for the Yugoslav presidency. The post is now largely ceremonial, but many in Serbia believe that Milosevic will remain his sweeping powers if he's elected by the federal parliament, which is dominated by members of his socialist party. I think that Milosevic only gets pushed out of power in like 2001. Let me see.

And then, of course, he ends up. It was a 2000. It was called the Bulldozer Revolution. And then he ends up at the Hake in 2007. And I think he's convicted of war crimes and genocide. Of course, Slovadovadov Milosevic was the primary. minister, the president, the leader of Serbia during the era of the Yugoslav civil wars, former Yugoslav civil wars, and the genocides that took place there. And the universe,

to this side up may apply to the universe after all. Measurements by scientists have suggested the first time that the universe has an up and a down. I don't know what that possibly could mean. I hope I'm not upside down is the only thing I could respond to that. Anyway, anything else look interesting to you on this paper? No, that's all that looks interesting to me. I just want to read one headline from the next page. Yeltsin now seems ready to accept NATO at his borders. Okay.

All right. That will become a problem later. That will become a problem later. Although it's worth saying that the reason why so many Eastern European countries want to join NATO is because, you know, Russia not a good neighbor. Yeah. Russia not a good neighbor. No.

All right. Murdered 1600. John, had you seen this before? I had never seen it. I mean, I was aware of this movie. Like, I remember the trailers. I remember being in the video store. I remember its existence.

But I had never actually seen it. And I watched it last night. And I got to tell you, I really enjoyed it. I did not expect to. I would not say this is a great movie. It's got, look, it's chock full of cliches, which is part of the reason it's kind of fun. And I figured out the movie in the first three and a half minutes because...

I mean, as soon as Alan Alda shows up, you're like... That's a villain. Yeah, yeah. I was like, and then I was like, okay. And then I was like, the really sinister guy is not really the bad guy. And I was just like, you use all these, like, you know, analysis tools that you're just watching hundreds of these movies. I was watching with a friend and they were like, how many of these movies have you watched? And I was like, I don't even want to think about it.

And like, it was just like you've seen enough of these movies and you just know exactly what's going to happen. And I was like, okay, this is what's going to happen. And yeah, it was a lot of fun. Like, okay, I was, I was like, all right, I get it. But I would say, I don't know, what was it about it? I mean, the movie's script wasn't great. It had some howlers. But it was just didn't take itself too serious.

obviously was paste, I think, really well and had pretty exciting action sequences and pretty suspenseful stuff and had pretty good atmosphere, even though, you know, it leans into cliches, a lot of rain-swept streets and diners and motels, but you kind of love all that kind of stuff. So I just thought it was pretty fun. And I would say it was interesting. There's some political content that was interesting we can get to. But yeah, I was kind of surprised. I, you know, sometimes I turn on these movies and I'm like, all right, here we go.

But this one, I was pleasantly surprised with how fun it is. I mean, Wesley Snipes is just, first of all, an incredibly fun actor to watch dynamic presence on the screen. As an action star, like, it's incredible. Like, he's just beating people's asses and he looks great. The thing about watching these movies and this sort of heyday of Wesley Snipes's career is, it makes me, I mean, it makes me kind of sad that he kind of got brainworms and, like, became a sovereign citizen and didn't pay his taxes. I know. That's like why he went to jail and everything.

But like, you're right, he's such a dynamic presence. I know. He shows out and you're like, oh, yeah, I'm in good hands here. Like, he's so fun. I'll say, I've seen this before. And as I said earlier, first time I saw it, I was sort of like if he on it. And then the second, this most recent time I watched it, I was just, you know, I was just, I don't know what it was.

I don't know what it was about my mindset, but I was just plugged in. Yeah. And I think what it was was that, you know, the film begins and it's like a dark and stormy night, right? It's, I mean, it's kind of a big cliche. And they're in the Oval Office and someone's having sex in the Oval Office. And the movie, which knows, I think, very much what it is gives you, I think,

like a quick, like, nude shot of the woman. So it's sort of like, yeah, you're here to see. You're here to see. And after the shot of the sex act, it cuts to a portrait of George Washington in the Oval Office. Yeah, I know. The position has to be staring down. And then it cuts like a portrait of Thomas Jefferson.

Yeah. And I just like, I like laughed out loud. I know. That was very funny. It's so funny. And I was like, okay, this is, this is dumb. This is stupid. Yeah.

And then I kind of was like, I'm here for it. I have to say I have real affection for any movie that takes place in Washington, D.C. I don't think very much that this is shot in D.C. Actually, a couple weeks prior, I rewatched in Atlanta Fire at my parents' house. It was like on TBS. And I was like, well, I'm going to sit down and watch this. And me and my dad both, just sort of befitting us being, you know, him being an old man and me being a middle of... That's the perfect way to watch that movie on TBS.

That's like where it should be. With your father. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like on an afternoon. Yeah. But that movie was shot in D.C. That's like very much like you get some good DC location stuff.

I'm not sure of this one so much. No, but I appreciated that Snipes's character was like a Civil War nerd in DC. I like that. Yeah, that was, I mean, they, yeah,

they like added a little depth to his character and, um, kind of like gave him some more background with that. I gotta say that his, his hair drove me insane though. Like he's like a cleft shaved into his, which I didn't remember being a style in the 90s, but it drove me nuts.

And I was just like, but other than that, I was like, okay, this is amazing. I also think that he had a contractual clause that he would have to appear in a tag top in any film that he was in. Yeah. Yeah. I think that that was like, because there's a couple scenes where it's like, okay. And yeah, he looks great in tank top. He's ripped. But yeah, no, I mean, I'm trying to think about the politics of the movie a little bit.

bit. Okay. Real quick, before you move, before you're thinking about politics, I'll say, I think Diane Lane is pretty good in this too. I really like Diane Lane as an actress. She also, I mean, she looks great. That's kind of a given, but like, she's an incredible looking woman. Yeah.

But she's also, I think, I think quite good in this, in this film. So she's, she looks amazing. And also I was just cracking up, because it was almost like naked gun level of parody where she would like jump out of a building and then her hair looked like it was just like done perfectly for that scene like every scene she just has like perfect hair and makeup no matter what's going on and at one point she has like one little injury because being in fights and running around and like that's it um yeah so she yeah she does a great job and obviously she looks incredible um yeah it's just two great looking Hollywood stars um yeah yeah you know the the beginning

in the movie with those with the with the portraits staring down in disgust at the sex being committed in the Oval Office I was like all right this movie's going to have a conservative valence for sure this is going to be one of the the

Clinton Clinton our president is too horny and can't do things in foreign policy because he's too horny movies that's I mean and that's kind of what it is right like the the the The plot doesn't, the president isn't, isn't the one having the affair.

No, it's Hunter Biden. Dude, he looks like Hunter Biden. It does look like Hunter Biden. It was the Hunter Biden character. He was obviously supposed to be like some Kennedy-Syon reference. But it was definitely, I was like, I couldn't, I was like, oh, it's Hunter Biden. Yeah, the kid is a womanizer. The kid's a womanizer.

But I mean, in a wife beat her, too. Like, he's like terrible violent. Yeah. but not a murderer. But the president here isn't the one who's horny, although it suggests that the president has been horny in the past. But it is... I think the movie does have that you write this conservative sort of like valence.

That's sort of this, you know, liberal-coded president is just unable to do what's necessary to bring home America's boys. Now... But then it's doveish, right? Right. I mean, the thing, I mean, the movie is like not coherent, right? Right. So it's both, I think it's, I think the film's perspective is that the president maybe should be doing more.

But that there's like a chain of command as a way things happen and that doesn't involve doing a coup. Yeah. Deep state coup. Deep state coup. Yeah. I'm trying to. But so I think for a viewer in 97, I think they would have maybe picked, I think they would have immediately rocked like a Clinton comparison. Yeah.

And they would have picked up because one of the criticisms of Clinton with that he was sort of like too dovish. Chris for the right at the very least. There is like I'm trying this, there's notion of sort of like deep state actor. The term wasn't in usage then. But I do think that there is like this post, and we've discussed this before in previous episodes, the sort of post-Cold War hangover, like you can't really trust the national security state. Yeah, yeah. Right.

Like the president, you know, the lawmakers maybe want to back away from a war footing, but the national security state wants to go to war. And that's sort of, I feel like that's, if there's a, if there is a politics to this movie, it is part of this distrust of kind of establishment Washington and a distrust of, you know, those who are eager to have conflict. Yeah, for sure. I think that it has a, yeah, it's got a kind of conservative valence. It's like this weak Democrat Lib president, but also evil national. So it can make anybody, everybody happy.

Yeah, I mean, like we've seen the. deep state coup or the deep state intrigues to start a war kind of thing. And as I said, the movie is just chock full of cliches. And there was like, that was just one of them that I clocked immediately. I was like, okay, we got the, we got the angling for war, generals and bureaucrats against the elected politicians thing. We've seen that many times. Um, yeah, I think that it's just like the, the movie is like, well, that's not the proper, that's not the proper procedure. That's not the way we should do things. That's true. But I, I couldn't also like, looking at this from another angle from the, from the perspective of the present, I was a little bit like Trump, I'm sure like Trump 1.0 could have watched this movie and identified with the president because he was like, yeah, like John, this guy does.

what Alan Alda is what John Bolton has always wanted to do. Like he wanted, like, he wanted to create a coup against the president in order to start a big war with North Korea. Like that, Alan Alda is John Bolton in the movie. It's just like the national security advisor, a high ranking national security official who's like, thinks that he should be in charge. And the president is not bellicose enough, not strong enough. and is going to be a weakling. And we got to get rid of him. So yeah, I mean, like, that was, I was just like kind of looking at this from, like, I mean,

Trump obviously would also be on the other side of this, as we've seen, very recently seen, of someone who would act precipitously, maybe if U.S. soldiers would be seen. But I'm saying as the perception of a victim of an entrenched bureaucracy, and officials that are plotting against them that don't have as interested in heart, I can see Trump throwing on this movie in the Oval Office, especially in his first term and being like, that's what they tried to do to me. That's what they try to do to me. That's why they're trying to get me to resign. They're trying to impeach me. Deep state, deep state. So like, and I think that that's actually, and, you know, I got to tell you, I mean, like, we'll talk about this in a politics episode,

but, like, just reflecting on what's happened recently and these films, you know, like, There's so many, like, we just did unclear, we just did clear and present danger plus Air Force One in Venezuela, kind of. It's just remarkable. Yeah, no, I mean, the Caribbean strikes are literally clear and present danger. Yeah. Yeah. And then the kidnapping, it's just like, and then I, I, you know, I'm like, oh, this

podcast actually, like, and I honestly think it can't be underrated, how much these films form a unconscious or barely conscious. structure of fantasies or worldview of not just, I'm not going to just say it's the dummies in Washington, D.C. or the idiots in the Trump administration, which it certainly is. But for all of us, and I think that that's what the risk about this, you know, as policy is that, well, it kind of touches on something because people have seen it in the movies. And if it looks like the movies, they're going to be satisfied by it. The movies have a very clear resolution. The good guys win, the bad guys lose, nothing really tragic happens. And the, you know, competency or

strength or whatever, Harrison Ford prevails. And then, you know, that's the end of the story. And then that's kind of what Americans want to happen in government in different ways. Conservatives have their own visions of that. Liberals have their own visions of that. But these movies and TV shows really structure our fantasies about government. And this one, I think, you know, when people are interpreting politics, they have these movies in the back of their heads. Like, you know, you just kind of like see these shadows of it and the way that they tried to, tried to turn the Hunter Biden scandal into something. I mean, you know, Hunter Biden obviously has a lot of problems and is not a continent person,

to put it lightly. So, but, you know, like this sort of like, oh, the president's family has these issues. It's just like there is a, there is an element of, of life. emitating art in all of these things. Well, I mean, that's one of the interesting things. So this is such a good example of how,

you know, the mediocre films have a lot more to say, have a lot more to say there's more to talk about with them because it's clear that the screenwriters, I mean, who are relying on lots of tropes, who are, um,

who are not, I mean, they're not thinking too deeply here, right? Like so much of this is a, almost like a fantasy of how people believe high office operates. Yeah, yeah. Right?

Like how these things go down, right? So the, you know, high-ranking military officials and political appointees are scheming against the president. There's a pervasive conspiracy involving the Secret Service, right, to suppress things. like all this kind of stuff. When, I mean, in reality, cover-ups are usually haphazard. There aren't really conspiracies per se. I mean, I thought you wrote a piece recently, John, about, you know, referring to talking a little bit about the decision to go after Noriega in 89 and making the observation

that even the principles involved didn't really have a clear sense of why they were doing it. Right. You know? Yeah. Like, and that I think that has happened in a lot of very consequential things. in American history, we're just kind of events took over. Yeah. Right.

And that's, I bring that up to say that that's closer to reality, right? Like in actual reality, people with lots of power aren't necessarily far-sighted or, like, capable of doing long-range planning or anything else. They are often brought along by events. They are often as, you know, responsive, not responsive, but as reactionary, reactive, there you go. As reactive as anyone else. And so the idea that the National Security Advisor would be like orchestrating this grand plot to get the president to resign, it's kind of, I mean, it's like silly and pulpy. It's great for a movie. The thing is, as for your point,

media, they would leak the reality. They would leak fix it in the media. The thing is, as per point, John, is that because these movies, these plots do, I think really, I think you're right, powerfully shape how ordinary people perceive the world, powerfully shape how would be elites understand the world. We're in this odd situation where it does seem as if the people in power have watched all of these things and are behaving in ways commensurate with the things that they watched, thinking that that's how reality is. Not the first time.

I mean, apparently Nixon was watching Patton before he was. ordered the invasion of Cambodia or the bombing of Cambodia. But yeah, I mean, especially, I mean, did you hear Trump talking after on Fox News after the Venezuela thing? He was like, it was like a movie. It was like a movie. Yeah. He wants, and they can make him happy. You know, there's a weird, the democratic aspect of Trump, if you will, is the fact that he's not unlike a lot of his constituents. So like, you know, if you can make him happy with these. kind of cinematic or good TV images, that's the policy he's interested in. And he knows that he has some animal cunning that the public might respond to it well. Now, that's a discussion for another

time. But, but yeah, I mean, like, he, he is very, I mean, look at the way he staffed his first administration. He kept on talking about central casting, right? He wanted to look like a movie. He wanted to look like a movie. Yeah. So I think it's just that these, yeah, and I, I, even movies like this, which are, I wouldn't say forgotten, but definitely not classics, definitely not referenced a lot, definitely not watched a lot. They form this kind of like ambient background, this kind of sea of thoughts and fantasies that we grow up in and we're just kind of unaware of it. And then you get confronted with a real life situation. And then you're like, where did I get that idea? And then you're like, I got it from a movie. And like, you know,

A perfect example, I'm sorry to keep bringing this up, but it's just top of mind and unavoidable, is like the video that they shared of the raid, they played Fortunate Sun by, like the White House had a video of the raid on Caracas, and they played Fortunate Sun, which is a, you know, a protest song against Vietnam, which many people pointed out, but the real reason was that it was in, it was in Forrest Gump. It's a song that's playing when he's like arriving in Vietnam and Forrest Gump. Right, right. It's a, it's a song that is. Vietnam movies. Yeah. It's very much associated with the Vietnam movies, but sort of that vibe. It'd be, if they had played all along the Watchtower, right, it would be the same vibe. That's another kind of- Or paint it black by the Rolling Stones. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. There's a set of songs that we associate with these things. Yeah. They're just, they're just, I mean, this is memes. This administration is like a, it's like a form of hyper-reality. Yeah, it really is. It really is.

I mean, like, I've resisted that interpretation a lot, like the spectacle and the hyperality, but you can't, you kind of can't get around it when you see stuff like that. Right. Right. You can't. You can't. And so I think it's right to look at this movie as a, as part of the background of things that shapes how people understand what's happening in the world.

I mean, to bring it back to the 90s, right? Like, you know, among the, among the conspiracies associated with the Clinton, were the ones involving Vince Foster, the Clinton official Clinton family friend who committed suicide. And there was like all of this, all these conspiracies about how the Clintons had him killed. There is the Clinton, what, the Clinton kill list or a Clinton kill count or something like that of all the people the Clintons had killed. And it's like that, if this were a movie, that would be totally plausible. Right. Like, if we lived in Hollywood land and reality followed Hollywood logic, then, yeah, like a scheming lady Macbeth first lady and her sort of like equally scheming husband, offing people who are getting too close to their secrets. You would find that in a bad movie, but a movie nonetheless.

In real life, in real life, the president couldn't even keep an affair secret for like a couple years, right? Yeah. Like in real life, uh, uh, the big scandal of his administration was in the fairy have with like a 20, a 20 something. Right.

Um, and it was, I think, justifiably a scandal, you abusing its power to, uh, uh, have sexual relations with,

uh, the 24 year old. I think she was younger than that, wasn't she? It's 23, 24. Yeah. Okay.

I think. Um, but the point is that that was hard to hide. It's like difficult to hide that. that stuff. There are an infinite number of eyes looking at this office and breaking a scandal can make a career. And so it's very difficult to hide this sort of thing.

But that explanation, like, oh, this conspiracy likely isn't true because can you imagine how difficult it would be to hide something like this, to keep it secret? doesn't, I think, land when, you know, so much of our pop culture about politics about high office is about secret conspiracies and all these sorts of things. Yeah. I'll know I will say. Go ahead. You got to kind of hand it to the conspiracy people with Epstein a little bit, right? Yeah, okay. You know.

But, I mean, okay, real quick, because I'm not going to hand it to them. Okay, okay. If only if only because Epstein was like an open secret. I mean, that's actually what's so scandalous about it. Right, right. Everyone around the guy knew. Yeah. But they found it too lucrative or beneficial to them.

Yeah. To do anything about it. Yeah, that's the scandal. I mean, the scandal was like, again, like elite impunity. Yeah. Not so much that this was hidden. Because, like, you know, a couple months ago I watch, there were a couple Netflix documentaries on Epstein, so I watched them all.

And the striking thing about it really is Is that sort of like, yeah, this was kind of an open secret Right. Among his elite circle, yeah. And you had to be Purposefully looking the other way To not notice. To not see what was going on.

So I, you know, the conspiracy, to make sense that you can hand it to them, it's that Are there powerful pedophiles? Yes. But it's not, it's not a conspiracy. conspiracy in the sense that it's like all that secretive. Right. Yeah, it was just tolerated. Right.

Yeah. But what was my point with that? I just think, yeah, I mean, look, what do, how does policy, like what underhanded things actually are done to shape policy? Well, they leak things like, okay, let's say there's a faction in the White House that has a certain policy agenda. They leak things to the media that tries to hem in the decision making of either Congress or the president, making it politically harmful for them to undergo.

certain courses of action. That's what they would do. And you see that all the time. It's just like, oh, they're leaking that because, like, this is the faction that wants this or this is the faction that doesn't want that. Like, they are trying to get public opinion to hem in the president. They're trying to manipulate public opinion often. But that's different than, you know, doing a coup against the president, blackmailing

and doing a coup against the president. I mean, I'm sure it feels extremely frustrated. to know that someone, you know, if you're in politics and you have an understanding of what's going on and then you see your factional rivals leaking bullshit to the media and then the public's understanding of it is just completely wrong. And then you're like, we now, what do we do to fight this? Because we can't, we can't go on the news and say like the other people working in the White House are my enemies, you know? Like you have to, you know, you know, know, make a united front.

So you see this all the time with the, with the Trump administration, all these little faction on turf wars and stuff like that. Leaks and things like that. So yeah, it's more, it's more like leaks and media and public opinion manipulation, or attempts to manipulate the public than these Byzantine plots. Right, right. The closest thing to a real Byzantine plot I can think of, the two, are Nixon's Negotiations before the 68 election and Reagan's secret negotiations between the 1980 election.

Yeah. You kind of can't, don't want to believe it, but it really happened. Yeah. That was, that was, those are genuine secret plots. Yeah. But the more baroque stuff is, is, is, is more Hollywood. But this is just a just. Even Watergate was like kind of an accident and a dumb thing.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. that's all to say that like it is useful to remember that reality is stupider and less coherent than the movies unfortunately it seems like the people in power do not know this right um and our intent trying to make it the movies which which in doing so only makes reality

even stupider and more incoherent in a funny way. Yeah, it's, we're going straight down the tubes. Yeah, it's like his effort, he has this like real need or desire to simplify things. And it's just the way he talks and the way he thinks, if you want to call it that.

And that only makes things worse. Like he, he always tries to simplify things and it just creates a bigger and bigger mess. That's like a one way to think about his approach to business. Think about his approach to politics. It's just like, yeah, I get that you think that you can boil things down to these extremely simplistic terms, but you're actually like continually not getting like, it's like a lossy format, you know?

Like you're just like, this is getting worse and worse and worse. Yeah. All right. I think it's a good place to wrap up. Yeah. Any last thoughts on the movie? No, I would just my only thought, I was, I kind of thought that the premise of having a DC cop coming to the White House to investigate a murder was a little unlikely

because I think that would just be under federal jurisdiction immediately, right? But I suppose so. Yeah, that's federal land. Yeah. I would recommend the movie just as like a thing to throw on and have fun with, right? Like it's not too long. It's perfectly enjoyable.

It's the kind of like, you know, it's the kind of schlock that they don't really make anymore for mainstream releases. You can certainly find it direct a video or whatever or on streaming,

but they put this in the theater, they didn't really do it too much anymore. And that's a shame because it would be a good time to see this in a movie theater with a bunch of friends. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. That's our show. Thank you, as always, for listening. You can find unclear and present danger, wherever podcasts are found. That's Apple, that's Google, that's Spotify, or everywhere.

And if you leave us, a rating and a review wherever you find us, that would improve things for us as well. It will help people find the show and boost us up in the ratings and the ranking. So please consider doing that if you are a listener. And if this is your first episode, please consider subscribing to the podcast. You can reach us for feedback via our feedback email, unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com. For this weekend feedback, we have an email from Michael titled, Don't forget a few Good Men was located at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, and this was a response to our previous

episode on A Few Good Men. I listened to your episode A Few Good Men with Interest, both for Rob Reiner and nostalgia and for remembering how I liked this movie as a teenager in the 90s. But most of all, I remember finding out about Guantanamo Bay Naval Base's unique legal status from watching the movie and thinking, wait, the U.S. is an Atlanta border over Cuba. I then researched and learned about the history. parenthetical. I was not a very interesting teenager. Listen, dude, you're in good company here with the, I was a teenager who looked up stuff like that too. So I was surprised that Guantanamo

as a setting of the movie did not come up as a detailed topic in your podcast episode. I, you know, honestly, I'm a bit surprised I didn't come up either. I just, I think you just remember thinking about it. We can't think of everything. Come on. Give us a break over here. After all, it was the site of one of the most high-profile violations of human rights laws by the U.S. recent decades. And of course, Camp X-Ray and the other Allied facilities creation is most closely associated with policy decisions championed by Dick Cheney. As you and most of your listeners certainly know, he was the key promoter of Bush administration's cruelty and aggression, championed by the Jack Nicholson character, and the denial of due process that would have allowed the people

detained there to be adjudicated in if found guilty in prison appropriately. This, of course, is the opposite of the procedural justice that is the lodestar of few good men. I would be surprised if Cheney didn't himself invite the comparison to Jessup that was in the biography Angler. While the Cheney clan has gotten some modest establishment rehabilitation from the Never Trump Association, Gitmo is a stain on America that has lasted through five administrations, despite two of them trying to close it down. Join the pod. Thank you for all you do.

And happy new year. Best. Thank you, Michael. Yeah, I mean, I don't really have anything added that you didn't already say. Gitmo is a stain. And the story of how the U.S. came into possession of Guantanamo is very interesting. My buddy, John Katz, has a great book, Gangsters of Capitalism, which is about this sort of early 20th, late 19th century period of American imperialism, of which the acquisition of Guantanamo is part of the story. And, you know, Dick Cheney rests in piss, is all I got to say.

Yeah, agreed. episodes of the podcast come out roughly over two weeks until we'll see you in two weeks with an episode on Ridley Scott's 1997 drama G.I. Jane. This will be our last film from the year 1997 before we moved to 1998 and approach the end of the 90s for this podcast. Of course, we'll continue stuff post-90s. And as far as I'm concerned, the last movie that fits the the the main thrust of this podcast comes out in 2002. But anyway, next we're watching G.I. Jane. A movie I've never seen.

Remember quite clearly. I remember all the media about it when it came out. But I've never quite seen it. Long time listeners know that I'm a military brat. My parents, both of them served in the Navy. And I feel like this movie was a topic of conversation in our home, although what was said, I do not remember. G. I. Jane stars Demi. Moore, Bego Mortensen, and Morris Chestnut, among many other

somewhat well-known actors. A quick plot synopsis in response to political pressure from Senator Lillian Dehaven, the U.S. Navy begins a program that would allow for the eventual integration of women into its combat services. The program begins with a single trial candidate, Lieutenant Jordan O'Neill, who is chosen specifically for her femininity. O'Neill enters the grueling Navy SEAL training program who under the command of Master Chief John James Ergyle who unfairly punishes O'Neill

until determination wins his respect This is actually I think this movie is quite relevant in the present because the current Secretary of Defense basically wants to get women out of combat once again So we'll talk about that We may have a guest as well we may have a guest as well.

So stay tuned for G.I.J in two weeks. Don't forget our Patreon, patreon.com slash unclear pod where we discuss the films of the Cold War and do the same thing that we do on this main feed podcast. We also have, John mentioned it a little earlier, a weekly politics podcast where we just should have discussed current events. No movie involved. And that's always a good time. The next movie for the Patreon will be the La Caree adaptation. little drummer girl, but the first one from the 1980s starring, who's it star? So it's Diane Keaton, who recently passed away.

So we'll be checking that out for the Patreon. And we have a couple years of shows on the Patreon. So it's $5 a month. Subscribe and you get access to a whole bunch more content. It's a good time. For John Gans, I'm Jamel Bowie. This is Unclean Prison Danger, and we will see you next time. Thank you.