Unclear and Present Danger - No Way Out

Episode Date: December 10, 2021

On this week's episode, Jamelle and John discuss the strange, surprisingly sleazy 1987 thriller No Way Out, starring Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman and Sean Young. Topics of discussion include Costner's strikingly bland persona, the contradictions within Reaganite conservatism, the futile quest for national unity, and the late 1980s as the last hurrah for the idea of the carefree white man. Contact us!Follow us on Twitter!John GanzJamelle BouieLinks from the episode!New York Times front page for August 14, 1987New York Times reviewTrailer for The Big ClockBob Dole's Washington Post obituary

They needed a hero. Understand he has a background in intelligence. There's two tours with naval intelligence. Get him here. He liked excitement. Take us somewhere. He wanted her. Their passion upset the balance of power.

Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman, Sean Young, Will Patton, No Way Out. Welcome to Episode 4 of Unclear and Present Danger, a podcast about the political and military throwers of the 1990s and what they say about the politics of that decade. I'm Jamel Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. I'm John Gans. I write a column for Gawker, a newsletter called Unpopular Front, and I'm working

on a book about politics in the 1990s. Today we are talking about the 1987 movie No Way Out, starring Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman, Sean Young, Will Patton, and Howard Duff, also an appearance by Fred Thompson, always happy to see that guy, directed by Roger Donaldson, by Robert Garland and based off The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing. The Big Clock was adapted into a movie by the same name, The Big Clock in 1948. And there was apparently another adaptation of this story, kind of this thriller inside of a building called Police Python 357, a French movie starring Yves Montand, who was great, who is one of my favorite French actors. So I think I should check that out. The movie was a modest success, made $35 million off of a $15 million budget.

And the critical reception, as far as I can tell from the reviews we collected, it was pretty mixed. Some reviewers really liked it. Others thought it was more or less disposable, not really worth checking out. A quick plot synopsis here. I'll say that if you have not seen the movie, you should, because we're going to talk about plot details. It's going to be spoiled for you. So if you haven't seen the movie, this is a good time to pause. Go check it out.

This one is available on Amazon Prime. You can also rent it on iTunes. So the quick synopsis for No Way Out, Navy Lieutenant Tom Farrell meets a young woman, Susan Atwell, and they share a passionate fling. Farrell then finds out that his superior, Defense Secretary David Bryce, is also romantic involved with that well. When the young woman turns up dead, Farrell is put in charge of the murder investigation. He begins to uncover shocking clues about the case, but when the details of his encounter with Susan's surface, he becomes a suspect as well. John, did you know anything about this movie before he watched it? I had never heard of this movie in my life before watching

it and I'm maybe for good reason. I mean, I don't think, I don't think, you know, I don't know, I have very mixed, while I was watching this movie for large periods of it, I was like, this is bad. But later, I was like, there's some interesting things going in, going on there, and there are things, I wouldn't say I liked about it, but I was intrigued by. I was really surprised to read the critics being like, this is a great thriller, a real plotty, intricate thriller. I think it's just like, well, first of all, let me just say, and I think we're on the same page about this.

Not a Kevin Costner guy. And he just doesn't do it for me pretty much in any role. This movie came out around the same time as The Untouchables, which is a better movie, you know, and not a bad movie. But I'm not a fan. And that movie feels a lot less dated than this movie, which really has the stink of the 80s on. it heavily. But yeah, it's a strange movie. It's a kind of film noirish movie, a kind of claustrophobic thriller of a person under

ostensibly false suspicion for a murder. It's being framed by this sort of evil Reaganite bureaucrats who are becoming stock characters that we're talking about here, one of which looks remarkably like young Roger Stone and yeah it was I don't know what did you think

I mean I was just like really kind of like this is an odd I mean it had the film noir thing of being like this is a little bit of a B movie you know what I mean right right you know so and I could get

I find that charming sometimes I'm like yeah this is kind of there's something kind of seedy dingy second rate about this movie but in a way it kind of captures weird cultural preoccupations And it had a little bit of that, but I was like, this is not a fine film.

I was wondering what you thought about it. Yeah, when Kevin Costor and Sean Young begin to go at it in the back of that poor man's car, I was like, this is, this is tawdry and I way. I wasn't necessarily expecting. I'm not against it. I'm all four people making out in movies. Don't get me wrong. Well, they go quite a bit further than making out.

Yeah, me too. But, yeah, it was, I think. I agree with your assessment of it as a film. It's sort of, there are parts that when it works and when it hits, it really does sort of, I think in the back half when it gets very plotty and suspense filled, I really enjoy that. But so much of that first hour is very talky and not very compelling. And Kevin Costner, I just don't think has very much on-screen charisma. Before we get further into our conversation about the movie,

we're going to look at the New York Times homepage for the release. state for this film, which was August 14th, 1887. So, John, I think you have that paper up. I'm just bringing it up now. Yes, I actually, instead of going through all the headlines, I wanted to focus on

on three. Sure, yeah, I think I know which ones, but tell me, hold on, I'm finding my newspaper tab here. Everything got confused. The three I'm looking at are Reagan planning to seek more aid for the Contras, six-week extension urged. Yes.

Fear spreads in Gulf states as war nears, which appears to be about Bahrain in Iran. This is something I have no sense of this. And then also a decade after Elvis faithful at the shrine, I just thought that was funny. Well, yeah, the Iran-Contra, well, the Contra headline is very interesting because this is shortly after the congressional hearings for Iran-Contra ended. And, you know, the Democrats had re-sees the Senate majority in 1986, so they sort of had control of these hearings and, you know, were able to highlight the kind of criminality of the situation. And, but, you know, what was weird is that actually, so the matter of the Iran-Contra investigation was that there was a, you know, the National Security Council under Reagan had initiated an illegal program of covert support for the countries, which was explicitly

banned by Congress. But in 1986, the amendments, the congressional amendments that, that, that, that, that, that Congress had passed, were actually amended again, and the U.S. began to legally give military aid to the Contra's. So this is Reagan demanding more. So it's weird that during the Iran-Contra hearing, there was also a legal, there was legal aid going on to the contras. Yeah, this story is a little bit obscure to me as well, but I can understand the context,

which is that, you know, this was in the midst of the Iran-Iraq war, which carried on for a very long time, I think carried on for another two years after this. And I think it just sort of became a security risk in the entire region, and the Gulf states, you know, felt the pressure of the proximity of this, you know, extremely fierce and bloody and violent war that carried on for, you know, pretty much a decade. And the thing about this war, I think that's important to keep in mind is that at various periods, the United States sort of encouraged both parties as part of its very Byzantine foreign policy in the region. And obviously, you know, the arms that were arriving to Iran

during a wrong contra, you know, we're part of this conflict and also the United States did a lot of assistance to Saddam at the same time. So it's, this is also that

you know, an aspect of the sort of strange and rather labyrinthine imaginations of foreign policy at the time. One story I thought was really interesting as this Chattians describe victory in desert

because I just read about this. This is a battle that became famous later because it was these Toyota light technicals which we see all the time in the news in, you know, Syria and Libya now. This was like their first sign of tactical supremacy. They beat all these Libyan tanks. So these Chattian, and this is sort of like

the sign of things to come in guerrilla and unconventional. warfare. So I thought that was funny to see that. As far as the movie is concerned, I think these had to get something that is in the movie, which is political appointees, the executive branch at least, is trying to move away from a Cold War posture of direct confrontation with Russia and towards sort of implicitly, you know, a attention to other areas of the world, to other threats to other concerns. One thing I think is worth saying before we really get into it is that this is obviously a podcast about the movies of the 1990s, but this is a film from 1987. And the reason we chose it, the reason we're

talking about it is because despite it not being a 90s movie, it very much feels like something out of the early 90s. And in my view, sort of the both the paranoia, both sort of The profound cynicism at the national security state is very much in line with some of the movies we've already talked about and some movies we will talk about. So despite it kind of falling a little outside of our boundary, I think it very much fits the genre we're talking about here. Yeah, that's interesting. I think that the movie, well, first of all, let's set the scene.

I think the first scene in the movie is really fascinating, the first few scenes in the movie. because it begins very much I mean I was struck how much of a different era it was at the beginning of the movie I was like this is the 80s this is the Reagan 80s and it was in the context there was a real kind of restoration or cultural counter-revolution of the 80s where glamour glitz balls this absurd excess was very much in fashion

and you know it begins at this very fancy Washington party where the protagonist is kind of trying to show schmooze his way into, you know, a job, a plum job at the Pentagon, and he meets an old school chum, who this, that actor, who's the actor who plays the, the, the creep? That's Will, that's Will Patton, who people will recognize, I think people, our age will recognize from, remember the Titans. He is the white coach. Oh, right. Okay. Yeah, so he, yeah, so he's kind of trying to, uh, network into this world of Washington, uh, parties in glamour and glitz and it's very, you know, yeah, it's, it's pretty distasteful, I mean, by

contemporary standards, and I think people had a sense of it then, but this is, you know, the world of, of, you know, the original iteration of Donald Trump and, and Nancy Reagan and this, this kind of fashion. So, you know, we, we get into that, and then he meets Sean Young and is very taken with her and her fancy gown. and, you know, they run off together and have this infamous scene we've discussed in a limousine. Stretch limousines was a huge cultural signifier of the era. But I was just like, you know, it begins in very much firmly in the world of Reagan. And can we just tell them the twist of the movie or should we get to that later?

Yeah, we should tell them the twist of the movie. Okay. So it turns out that this character, at this character, they're trying to frame this character at some point during when Gene Hackman, God, where do you even start? So there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a scene here that kind of is a, I caught, and it was the only one of two tells, I thought, that gave away that the character is actually a secret, Kevin Costner's character is revealed later to be a secret Russian agent. And that's he orders a straight Stolichinaia at the bar when he meets Sean Young's character.

And I was like, hmm, are they trying to tell us something? Is he a Russian? And turns out, yes, he was. So they get into the limousine, he begins this whirlwind affair with Sean Young, who turns out to be also the mistress of Gene Hackman, the Secretary of Defense. And he's working for the Secretary of Defense. This love triangle is complicated. You know, there's all these classic sort of 80s montages of them driving around a convertible sailing. And, you know, I was watching this movie, especially these first scenes, and it's just like,

you know, before the movie gets weird and possibly even subversive, just how much like Reagan-era ideology this was? I was just like, there's like, the Navy was super in style. Like, this was shortly after Top Gun, like, the Navy White's uniform was like, you know, a really, because, you know, the Navy was such a huge part of Reagan's military buildup, and it was a huge part of like American National Pride at that moment. And then, you know, they're sailing on the boat. And I was like, this is the last time. I was like, I understand, like, the frat boy nostalgia for the 80s, because it's like, this is the last time, like, white men could feel really good about themselves without guilt

or anybody criticizing them, like, this is... Right, without any irony about it. Like, in the 90s, you can still have these scenes, but it's sort of like, well, well, you know, there would be, some character would say something like, you know, well, this isn't very politically correct or whatever, but... Right, right. Right. In the 80s, you can have Kevin Costner, who is just sort of, you know, he's very handsome,

but kind of like blandly, you know, middle American handsome, sort of not really anything distinctive about him. No, and not ethnic in any way, obviously, and the movie is meant not to be. And he, they're on the sailboat. And I thought the scene on the sailboat was just so weird because I was like, oh, they're, it was so badly filmed. Like, it was, like, they were in,

it was like backlit and the shadows were on their face. I mean, you would know more about the photography than I did, but I was just like, this is so badly filmed. But then I was thinking about it later as the movie on, develops. And this is where a few of those film noir, this is sort of a bad movie, but its mistakes almost lend to its content, where I was like, you know what? The shadow, the kind of, the shoddiness of that scene sort of reveals how BS the whole situation was because he's actually a spy and it's not, it's, there is a deception going on. Um, he's trying to

seduce this. I mean, he falls genuinely in love with her. or it's implied that he does, but he's trying to seduce this woman to get closer to the information from the Secretary of Defense, Gene Hackman. Yeah, so I just thought it was like, yeah, I know what you're saying about the 90s and this or the disillusion with Cold War propaganda, so on and so forth. But the beginning of the movie is situated very much in the 1980s in a way that was jarring, you know? No, that's right.

I mean, I think to the extent that there's a version in the film, I think you begin to see it with Gene Hackman. Mr. Hackman's character, Secretary of Defense, you learn that he is in for another four years. So whichever, whoever the presidential administration, whatever presidential administration is, I guess, my sense is that it's implied that this is a Republican administration. Yes. Gene Hackman is there for another four years. And he specifically wants to kill a big submarine program, a big sort of, again, implied to be,

you know, more appropriate to an earlier era of Cold War conflict. he thinks is a big boondoggle, and he specifically hires Kevin Costner's character, Lieutenant Thorell, who works in Naval Intelligence to be someone who can more or less get direct access to CIA information and direct access to sort of other deep state actors to filter, to bring unfiltered information to the Secretary of Defense to Hackman that he can use in trying to kill this program. And so the plot of the film sort of the things that are that put cost to character in his place that you know hackman's motivation initially beyond trying to cover up um the murder of his mistress although part of

the reason why he wants to cover up cover it up is that obviously it revealing it uh it being revealed would derail his career and derail his effort to do this thing um then we'll Patton as sort of the loyal lieutenant to Gene Hackman is trying to, again, advance Gene Hackman's objectives and also protect him from the fallout from the scandal. And it's sort of it's in that element of the story. And in the portrayal of all these characters, I think the movie gets super cynical about the national security say in a way that I actually was not expecting it to be at all. Well, that's funny because all the reviews, I think it, you know, it came out in the con a lot of their views and a lot of the interviews with producers and people worked on

the movie, you know, it doesn't fit exactly, but they put it in the context of a wrong contra. They're like, oh, this is in a wrong contra. This is a movie perfect for the wrong contra moment. And I think it does, and there is even an, there's a weird little scene where he encounters two guys who are sent by Will Patton, that's his name's character, to try to get him. And he's like, oh, you, these guys were Nicaragua, and he says, oh, you were Death Squad guys, you're Death Squad guys. And so there is like, kind of these nods to the to the to the malfeasance of the of the national security state in that era which are a little bit uncommon and you wouldn't have seen in top gun for example um so yeah there there is a critical there's a critical or cynical depiction of and i think it's just you know it's the decadence of the time maybe has come to a like that's like the noirish part of it's just like there's a real sense of disgust or over overripeness about that period and both in its all of these intrigues on the bureaucratic level

and all of these uh you know all of the the parties and the you know the glamour and and and so on so forth so it's kind of like a movie that's disgusted with the 80s and disgusted with itself and and and presents that in a lot of ways um i mean discusses with the with the triumphalism almost of the United States in this period of American officials in this period of the of the of the of the way of the way that the late Reagan administration really you know did walk around with its chest puffed out with with I think a lot of me you could call it arrogance about the president in domestic position, but then just the United States' position in the world.

There's a sense in 87 that no one knows that the Cold War is about to end a little abruptly, but it's very clear that the Soviet Union is not, is not the great, the great power it once was. No. And that is, that is contributing to sort of this, you know, prelude to celebration, celebration vibe. in late 80s America. Yeah, I think the other thing it's disgusted with is the careerism. I think it takes a really...

Like, what is this guy, Gene Hackman's... Like, careerism is a very... is a kind of sub-theme of the movie because Gene Hagman's ambition to, like, make his program go through is sort of... And his vanity of having this, you know,

kept woman in Sean Young is a big part of it. And then his little... his little toady assistant who's sort of oddly has a kind of smithers to Mr. Burns thing going on with him, which is implied that there's, if the movie wasn't subtle enough that implying there was some like homerotic subtext, like they have to have a character say he's a homosexual, which is, you know, part of a not so honorable Hollywood tradition of making villains coded gay but um you know i think i think i think i think fred thompson specifically yes

mr thompson someone says like does he have a wife and fred thompson's like a wife is a homosexual right exactly and has to make some kind of saucy not very nice remark about that um yeah so there's there's a careerism of all the characters including we learn the careerism i mean we're introduced to the character through careerism because he's trying to kind of move up up in the chain of the Defense Department. And we learned that his careerism is actually much more sinister because his job is revealed that he's a Russian spy. I mean, what's so weird about the movie

is that he's the hero of the movie. I mean, that's never undone by the fact that he's a Soviet agent. His Soviet, and he's sort of abandoned at the end by his handlers and left out in the middle of nowhere. And they don't even bother to kill. him because he's stuck and has nowhere to left to go, which is something to think about. So, yeah, there's a, there's a, you know, real, there's, there's all the, it's almost like

the political agendas don't matter. It's just like, oh, these people are all, you know, self-seeking, using these bureaucratic, um, uh, means to advance their own personal careers. And that leads to, you know, while Sean Young is sort of stock and turns out that Hackman is violent, but she has sort of material incentive to keep her relationship with him going. So it's almost like the venality of the Reagan era is also a little bit on display here. And the careerism, which, you know, is sort of also in a very, a movie around the same time in Wall Street gets a slightly more romanticized picture, maybe, even though it's critical. But this is maybe even a little bit more critical of that sort of 80s careerism.

And that's I thought it was a really interesting part of the movie. I mean, I think contrasting, so two things. The first is that the movie. the movie is critiquing, criticizing, you know, 80s careerism and sort of Reaganite excess. And it makes us, I think, especially clear in an early scene where you see Kevin Costner, Kevin Costner's Lieutenant Farrell, saving someone on the deck of the ship on which he is stationed. There's a big storm, a squall or something. The watch, the lookout is about to get washed overboard.

And Kevin Costner goes to save him. And so you have Costner's character being straightforwardly heroic in this one context outside of Washington. And you see, I mean, I think they're in the Philippines. So you see them all act like sleazy sailors later. But that's not like, that's not, that's not portrayed as something negative. It's just, oh, yeah, these are guys on deployment doing what guys in deployment do. On the ship, in that context, Costner is straightforwardly heroic. It's only when you get back to Washington that things become grubby and venal or

sorry, grubby and venal and self-interested. Yeah, Washington is the den of the, you know, the hive of scum and villainy. Right, right. Which is, I mean, it's interesting, which is interesting, which is interesting, which, what is interesting about. that is, it is, because this is all coded as a Republican administration, it's not, it's not that often that you get depictions of Republican Washington in that way, right? Republican Washington as corrupt and sleazy and self-interest. I feel like those depictions are typically of Democrats. Yeah, I mean, yeah, typically, typically projected onto Democrats just because

the Democratic Party is a much more transactional, much more interest group based. So it sort of fits a little better. But the, you know, Reaganite Washington as a place where, you know, for all the high-minded rhetoric of Reagan and Reagan supporters, all the rhetoric about democracy and, you know, American strength and American power, the movie shows us Washington that is. is, you know, self-interested to the point of parity, right? Sort of no one, no one really seems to really believe in anything. Not at all.

Other than what, other than best positioning themselves relative to other, other power brokers. Yeah, and I think that that's like the contradiction at the heart of the whole Reaganite ideology that is like this confusion between public and private ambition. It's just like, it's absolute. worship of private greed and initiative and entrepreneurial effort as the, you know, the primary virtue of the American public just does not mix very well with the public-spirited part of having, you know, a democratic republic. So like, you know, when you take the ideology that greed is good and the free market is good and people are best served by seeking out their own self-interest and you bring it into the government context, you're going to get problems.

And it's interesting that one of the criticisms I was reading this morning in the executive summary of the Iran-Contra investigation, and this was a big part of the problems with Reagan-era foreign policy is that this worship of the private sector and this gutting of public power in a way, you know, manifested itself in Reagan foreign policy and the privatization of a lot of things, like the use of kind of contractors, the use of getting billionaire donors to go in for pet projects, which was part of your wrong contra. So there's this, you know, the whole ethos and ideology of privatization in the market suffused Washington. And, you know, when, you know, there's really no other word for it.

You know, when you, when public and private ambition are confused, it's corruption. Right. And that's just, and, you know, we're not faced with people taking bribes, but in this movie exactly, but we're faced with, you know, people's private ambitions. being their their main motivation, political ambitions rising up in the career system of the bureaucracy. So, yeah, which is very different than clear and present danger where you're beaten over ahead over and over.

There is some kind of public-spirited thing that you have to do. Right, right. It's interesting to think about this as being a contradiction within Reaganism and sort of a contradiction, I think, within, you know, broadly the conservative movement, or at least the part of the conservative movement that is still very much invested in an Iranian ideology, in part because what makes it interesting to think about is how much of that ideology rests from this idea that this form of conservatism represents a return to or restoration of founding era of values, that limited government, you know, small government, you know, devolution of authority down to

to states and localities, these things, getting the government out of the way of private interest, whether that means businesses or, you know, charitable organizations or churches or whatnot, the worship of private self-interest in that way is intention, what sort of this idea that this is a return to founding era values, which founding year of values were very much, I mean, the, the, one of the key claims of your Madisons, of John Adams especially, was that Republican government was not actually possible without public virtue, without public spiritedness. That for as much as that the system of government is designed to harness self-interest and harness ambition, there is still sort of a, with, with, Within American republicanism, a lowercase R, there is this sort of normative expectation that, yeah, the people engaged in this are going to recognize that their private interests need to be set aside. The ambition here is political ambition to win office, to earn public respect, et cetera, et cetera, not necessarily to enrich yourself. And, you know, the degree to which the Reaganite conservatism of the 80s, and I'd say the

American conservatism up to the present, the degree to which the public spiritedness, the public virtue part of that is more or less sort of like excise and replaced with an embrace and acceptance of and celebration of, I think in the, in the Trump era, certainly celebration. of the um a private self-interest above all other values is it's a it's a striking tension with sort of the pretences of the whole worldview yeah i mean it's a problem that it's difficult to solve uh it's a problem that is i think just a problem in liberalism and republicanism to a certain degree because it's a governmental system based on public service in the interest of a society that's based on private interests, and that leads to a lot of complicated issues.

Like, well, you're helping out a business. Isn't that public spirit in that some way? They employ people, but of course, you know, these things become very muddy and confusing. You know, I think it's, you know, in a weird way, here, like, here's my speculative interpretation of the movie, is that in a weird way, like, the movie is anticipating the end of the Cold War and realizing how the Cold War was a little bit of a charade, like, okay, so the main character is a Russian spy. It turns out he's actually, they try to frame him to be a Russian spy, so it's kind of artificial, but then he turns out actually to be a Russian spy. Russian spy. But then, so all of their hunting for him is based on this kind of pretense that, you know, we're trying to hunt this. We're actually doing this for our self-interest, but we've created the story that there's a Russian enemy, which is, you know, perhaps you could say a little bit of an allegory for the careerism or the existence of the industrial military complex and

national security state. There's a pretense that there's some kind of ideological conflict, some thing going on, but it's really about these people's own private agendas and trying to rise in this. And then, you know, rather than him, it's almost like the Soviets don't keep up their part of the bargain because they just drop him in the end. They say, and that's sort of like the end of the Cold War. It's like, you know what? It doesn't even matter. And they drop him. And then And once they don't even care, once they don't even care about that, like, what is there to go on? And that's like the desperate and lonely and alienating end of the movie.

It's just like, what is this all for? If the Soviet threat is not even real and this spy that they don't even care about the spy that they inserted, they just decide, eh, he doesn't really mean anything to us anyway. And so this whole charade of, you know, oh, we're seeking out a spy or we're fighting the Soviets. Turns out that nobody believes in it. So on the one hand, it was fake. And then the Russian said, well, we don't need this guy anymore anyway. And it's just like, so what was keeping this all going? And I think that's the sort of like weirdly subversive thing about it. It's just sort of like, oh, this was a process without an actual purpose.

It was just about the careers and the short-sighted interests of the, you know, the individuals involved. And all of the larger stories about where it fit in the world and the United States facing the Civil Union as an ideological opponent just totally gets lost. So it's almost like that's the problem. problem with the Cold War, too, it's just like, how can we view the celebration or the making private interest in the market, the primary interest, how could that ever be a public interest? Like, how could that ever be a shared project?

And I think that that's what, in a way, the, you know, Reagan or, and then, Neil, liberal or whatever you want to call it, um, issue has foundered on and why I don't want to go too crazy with this, but in a way why we got Trump is just like, or why people are fed up with that kind of stuff. It's just like there's only so far I can go where you don't actually have a shared purpose and you just celebrate, uh, individual initiative and acquisitiveness as the end of your society until that becomes deeply unsatisfying and demoralizing for everybody. And also just creates a lot of, uh, inequality and problems. Right. No, I think that's, I think it's right. One thing I wanted to, um, emphasize is the sense of disparate in the movie, because it's not

just about costum's character. It's about Will Patton's character as well. Like for Will Patton's character who is trying to advance and everything as well, but also has this like, you know, personally invested in, um, Gene Hackman's secretary of defense. And there's this element, right, sort of, well, if there is no, if the ideological, if the ideological crusade is fake, or not nearly as significant as we think it is, not at least there's still personal loyalty. At least there's still sort of a connection to those you work with and those who you work under. But then Gene Hackman, right, in his kind of desperate attempt to avoid any, to get out of it all, offers to betray

uh betray will patent's character and pin it all on him pin Sean Young's murder right on on him and so this drives will Pat's character to commit suicide in a in a kind of gratuitous use of slow mo but that's besides the point yeah there's a lot of gratuitous things in the movie yeah yeah yeah but I think I don't I think that's just part I mean I think looking at looking at sort of the vibe of the film, I think that's an important part of it. No, it's not, you know, both the ideological story falls apart, but also the story about loyalty falls apart, that there really is nothing, there is no substance of any kind

present in these relationships and in this structure. What a, what a, what a, what a, what a, uplifting message. I mean, I mean, yeah, it's a, it's a really starkly dark film in that regard. And, like, that's why I was like, that was kind of cool at the end, because I was like, at first I was like, this is a stupid celebration of Reagan era excess and so and so forth. And I was like, eh, maybe it's a little more complicated. I still don't think the movie works on every level, but it's, it's really fascinating to me how it does get away or, you know, it seemed to get like a fairly good public response

and got, you know, a mixed critical response. Most of the critical response was not about the content of the movie. There wasn't that much discussion of it, but just, you know, how much of its plot actually worked and was convincing to people. But yeah, I mean, it does have a very dark message to say about the United States in that era and probably much more than the films that we've watched so far, which kind of have some kind of, definitely have characters who embody, who embody, virtues that, you know, that are rewarded by the films or seem to be good by the films.

But the hero, the all-American hero in this movie, is a spy, is a Russian spy. The only person we think who actually embodies American values and is this, you know, as you said, kind of bland Midwestern white guy who is the one who actually falls in love with the girl, or we think actually falls in love with the girl, and is not just using her. her, it's just revealed to be a total phony as well. So it's just like, yeah, everything about it, everything about the, the world of Washington and, you know, one could say America is kind of, kind of stripped away of any kind of aura and made to look pretty empty and hollow, which is dark.

I just wanted to add to your point about sort of the emptiness of a, you know, an ideology, a culture is centered on material acquisition and sort of worship of the market. It's sort of, if that is the vibe at the end of the 80s, it does help put, right, the rise. of Pap Buchanan and sort of the beginnings of what I think would culminate in Trump. It puts that in sort of a better context, right? That once, that the extent to which there aren't any fractured along these lines within the conservative movement can be sustained by the fact that there is at least sort of on paper this big ideological enemy that we're all unified against.

That it is important to, you know, fight the Soviet Union or defeat the, the Soviet Union, but also to keep the American left at bay as well. But with the fall of the Soviet Union, that kind of, when we've talked about this before, that falls apart. That sense, that sense that there needs to be unification among conservatives falls apart. And so Buchanan becomes in that regard kind of the first major public figure to essentially present terms for pivoting the conservative moving away from its Reaganite status quo and towards something towards something very different. Now, we're recording this the day after, two days after Bob Dole passed away at 98.

And Dole, who was a significant figure in the 80s and early 90s, up to his presidential run or his second presidential run in 96, you know, Dole was notable for being intensely anti-immigration in a way that does kind of like presage the Trump era nativism. And it's just an interesting, it's interesting to think about the fallout from the Cold War, the exhaustion from the Reaganite access as going in both directions, left and right,

and as an influencing mainstream politics in sort of interesting and unpredictable ways because Reagan was notably not that hostile to immigration at all. Right. And also less,

and only less than 10 years later, you have a potential successor who's speaking very differently. Yeah, I think it's like, yeah, and they're, you know, again, this is just, this is the problem of political parties and it's the problem of the country. It's just, is, is finding a common purpose. And in nationalism and populism, you know, in ways that are not necessarily always healthy, propose some kind of communal purpose

for the nation and are not, are meant to be replacements for, you know, the kind of more libertarian sections of the conservative movement, which, you know, are more individualistic. You know, we have a lot of energy on the right now about trying to find some kind of shared purpose and usually comes out in rather, you know, I think disturbing ways. But I think there's a problem both left and right now is what does the United States mean, what is its purpose in the world? and this movie sort of offers us a rather, you know, a kind of preview of the of the dilemmas and just the aimlessness and the stuckness.

I mean, the name of the movie is no way out of this kind of like end of ideological conflict or the discovery that the ideological conflict wasn't really real in some way. Yeah, and I think, you know, we, in a way, I mean, even though I, you know, I'm sort of disagree with you at the beginning when you said this movie was more of a 90s movie, and I, I'm coming around to your point of view because in a way, it's a little bit more, sadly, a little bit more up to date than I would like to admit, because the movies of the 90s that we've discussed so far, sort of, you know, propose an American purpose that will outlive the Cold War. And this one shows it's sort of already dead at the tail end of it.

So I don't know. I think, you know, obviously there's two, on the right, there are two ways that they've tried to recreate national purpose, which is one in neoconservatism, which is to try to create new Cold Wars and World War II type ideological cohesion through these global conflicts, which hasn't really worked, and nationalism, populism, which inevitably gets, you know, freighted with all of the racial issues and past of the United States about who's really a citizen and who's really an American. So, you know, these two ways of creating American national unity have both, in my opinion,

failed, but I don't know that I could say, I mean, Obama era was one thing, but I don't know if I could say the left or liberals have done, I mean, I think that what they've done is less harmful, but I don't know if it's been more effective in creating a national, a sense of national purpose or comedy than the Republican. Yeah, I mean, the Obama era attempt to forge some sort of national story that all Americans can, that all Americans can come into was, was that of, you know, the arc of the universe bends towards justice and it's about inclusion. Right. And Obama's election itself represents the fulfillment of some promise that all Americans can lay claim to. and feel proud of.

And the issue is, right, is that not all, as we very clearly saw, is that not all Americans believe that. Many Americans reject that notion entirely. Yeah. They see Obama and the people for whom Obama speaks as not co-equals within the polity. Right. And so kind of the great liberal attempt to forge something. was electorally successful on the presidential level, but it didn't seem to really make any impact culturally,

at least not on the larger political consensus. It didn't create any kind of permanent consensus like you saw in the middle of the cult. Well, I think that that may be, you know, Sam Goldman in his book After nationalism and his contention and in a lot of other places, it's just like mid-century American consensus is an exception and not the norm. and we should stop thinking about it as the norm that we need to get back to. I don't know what what then you do then, but that's basically his answer, which is just like, look, let's get over the war and the Cold War to a certain extent,

which was kind of figuring out a way to extend World War II by other means and, you know, and just think about our country in a more realistic way. Right. I think Sam, I think one of the implications of Sam's argument is that, that the kind of default state of American society outside of the context of something like a Cold War is just a lot of fracture and not very much unity. It is a bunch of different regional cultures, a bunch of different regionally based political arrangements, and, you know, an elite class that is much more, it's much less constant. concentrated than it is currently. Sort of the issue, I mean, kind of the difficulty is that we have just a much more national

culture, like setting aside politics, just like culture is much more national, much more uniform between areas. Yeah. I live here in Virginia, but, you know, you go, I go in any direction, and things aren't that much, aren't really that different. And that wasn't the case. It was much more the case that if you were. were, um, as my parents were right from like the deep south and you head out to California.

By devastation in California for a minute when he was in the Navy, sort of it's just a vastly different kind of culture. Yeah. In a way that isn't quite as true anymore. And I think, I think the expectation, I think the reality of a national culture creates the expectation of something like a more unified national politics. But that's not really, that's not really a thing that can happen, or at least a unifying national politics. And that's not really a thing that can happen. So how do you, right, like, what does the United States look like when our culture is much more uniform and unified than it's ever been before? But like our political forms are reverting kind of to their, you know, more fractured states.

Well, in a way, I mean, I find a lot of things about U.S. politics at the present stage to be pretty depressing and frightening, but I mean, I wouldn't want it to be, it would be creepy if our culture was, if we were, I mean, it would be very conformist maybe in a way that people miss in the kind of 1950s way where we're on the same page about politics and we're on the same page about culture. I mean, you know, it's good to have some dissent and diversity of things going on the country. So I don't know. I hope that political differences take a form that are less apparently destructive than they are now. But I don't think that I would have liked to have lived as much as I kind of worship the intellectuals of that era from time to time. I don't think I would have particularly enjoyed living in the 1950s or early 1960s at the height of this consensus that people, you know, romanticize now. That being said, I think that the low point is the, is the, I mean, I think commentators both left and right now say this.

I mean, there's a, there's a, I don't like other things they say, but there's a growing, you know, belief on the right that the Reaganite enshrining of self-interest was destructive. And I think that this movie kind of points to that in a lot of different ways. But no one's been able to make people buy the self-sacrifice stuff or you're part of a big national project stuff. I mean, Trump is the worst messenger for that because he's the avatar of 80s excess and self-interest. And he can't really, you know, he's a populist in so far as he can upset, you know, cultural elites. But he's not, you know, he has no sense of national belonging or community. like so you know it's we I always joke about how we're stuck in the 90s but but there are

very much you know thinking about this movie and and and thinking about it and I don't know if it's just because of capitalism or living in a liberal society just that the centrality of self-interest in the country just makes it very difficult to imagine national purposes now even like now with the fucking pandemic you know you'd it's difficult like there's so many different agendas and people splitting off in different directions and complaining and so so, so, so no one's, like, we haven't accomplished like, oh, yeah, we're all going to get on board and we're all going to get vaccinated and do all the right things. It hasn't happened. And it's not happening. We thought, oh, maybe with this, uh, all this new social spending,

it'll create a new spirit of, of national purpose. And it's not really happening. I don't think, but we'll see. No, I, the one thing I'll say is that, um, this is I think it's important to remain attentive, why people who might be tempted to feel nostalgic for earlier periods of great national purpose, it's important to remain attentive to the fact that even in moments when it seems like the country is unified, there is still quite a bit of division and conflict and dissent on from both right and left, right? Yeah. not simply one side or the other.

So, you know, the, be, the, arguably the high watermark of sort of like a, you know, national solidarity, the Second World War had people who opposed the war. Yeah. I mean, who were very vocal about their opposition. Yeah. So I think, I think that's, I don't know, it sort of, if no way out represents the dead end of, the kind of that ends up the Reaganite vibe and Reagan ideology

then it's also I think it's also it is important to recognize that there like that might be the that may have been one bad option but there's not really any good options here either in terms of trying to

you know create some sense of national feeling. And even if you can manage to do that, it's going to be much more ephemeral than you might think that, you know, kind of the fundamental, and this isn't even, I was supposed to say the fundamental problem, but just sort of the fundamental fact of the United States is that, and this has always been the case, it's just a big, fractitious country. Yeah. It's like straight up.

And there's sort of the moments when Americans, um, uh, transcend that are very, very few and far between and don't really last all that long. No, yeah, I agree with you. But I think like the sort of negative unity of this move, of this, you know, being in a film art universe is a little exaggerated. I mean, I think obviously Washington is horrible. And, you know, but I do think that, you know, it's a little bit more complicated and interest, well, maybe not. But it's, I don't think that the world of the 2000s is quite

as bleak, even with everything awful that's going on. I don't think, you know, in terms of movies like this, when they're representations of romance, you know, we watch this in Wall Street and they're just showing people's romantic relationships as being involved in their career advancement and really self-interested and shallow. I think things have improved a little bit in terms of our, I don't know if it's our cynicism about that. I mean, the 90s had a kind of re-flowering of romantic comedy and, well, that was going on the 80s well, and belief in love and so and so forth.

And this era, and I think, you know, some Phil Noir movies of the earlier era had a very, a very cynical picture of interpersonal relationships which I mean it's there but I don't know if it's so dominant our culture well certain certain corners of the culture that you know people are just really out for themselves and you know real even solidarity and love on not on a national scale but on small scales is not possible in our society I'm not sure

how dominant that belief is but maybe it is. I think it's time to wrap things up. So any last thoughts on the film? Strange movie. I don't know that I recommend it, but maybe I do because I would like people to experience what I experienced. So check it out.

Let me know what you think. And if you think we got it right or if we missed something. Yeah, I would recommend it just because, you know, I did find the twist. And if you're listening to this, like, you know, you heard the warning at the beginning. If you're listening to this and you haven't seen it, I apologize because I thought the twist, if nothing else, the twist was genuinely shocking to me. Yeah, it was cool. I'm glad they did it. I'm glad they did it. Yeah. It's sort of a one and done. Like you can't do that again ever again. You can only pull that trick once. But that alone made it worth watching. And it's just sort of, it's an interesting artifact. I don't know. It's an interesting artifact of the late 80s of this, of the end. of the Reagan era in the beginning of something new.

And Gene Hackman's good in everything, pretty much. Yeah, they haven't said much much about him in this episode, but he's very good. It was underused. Yeah, I think actually this being not such a great, you know, you know, when you're doing historical research and you're doing cultural history, you know, you don't want to find the really brilliant things because they're timeless. You know, it's kind of the second rate works that give more of a sense of the zeitgeist. and this is if nothing else is that and it just really and you know has interesting things to say about the time it was in

whereas like some amazing movies like they're yeah you see some sides of their age but they could have been made any time because they're great works of art but this is very much situated in its time in a way that I think is actually pretty useful for our purposes at least okay that is our show if you are not a subscriber if this is your first episode um please subscribe first i hope you enjoy listening but please subscribe. We're available on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, on Stitcher Radio, on Google Podcasts, and pretty much wherever else podcasts are found. If you subscribe, please leave a rating and a review on our show page.

It does help people find the show. It helps push us up the rankings so that we, you know, so that people browsing that can find us and find us maybe as a more, you know, stimulating alternative to, I think, some of the podcasts we have found ourselves next to, not to throw unnecessary shade on strangers that I do not know. You can reach out to both of us on Twitter. I am at Jay Bowie. John, you are.

I'm at Lionel underscore trolling. I'm currently on a Twitter break, but it might be over by the time you listen to this podcast. So who knows? So reach out to us with any. comments or feedback or you can shoot us an email the email for feedback is unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com we have actually been getting letters emails from folks and so one of these days we'll do a show when we actually respond to some of that feedback let's just do a mailbag mailbag show yeah mailbag show digital communication show we didn't really talk much about

all the analog technology or digital analog technology Oh, no, it's cool. Yeah, it's me too. I think it's what Nokia Wave is the term for it and it's a favorite thing from this period. Okay, episodes come out every other Friday, so you will see us in two weeks. Our next movie is one more movie from the 80s,

and it is the package, I believe, another Gene Hackman movie directed by Andrew Davis, who we're going to, I'm going to do a couple Andrew Davis films over the course of this podcast. And this is the first one. But that's the package. You can probably find that on streaming somewhere. I haven't actually begun.

I saw it on Amazon recently. I think that's where I saw it. I found it somewhere. I watched it recently. Before we even talked about doing this show, I watched the package on streaming. It's still, it's out there somewhere. Yeah. It's on, I'm looking right now, it's available on Amazon to Rent, iTunes to Rent, and Pluto TV to watch with ads.

There's a free option there for when you check it out. So that's her next movie, the package, in two weeks from this release date, two weeks from when you're listening to this, if you're listening to it on release date. Okay, for John Gantz, I am Jamel Bowie, and this is unclear and present danger. We'll see you next time. Thank you.