Unclear and Present Danger - Shadow Conspiracy

Episode Date: August 24, 2024

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched Shadow Conspiracy, the 1997 political thriller directed by George P. Cosmatos and starring Charlie Sheen, Linda Hamilton, Donald Sutherland and Sam Waterston.In Shadow Conspiracy, a young White House aide uncovers a plot to assassinate the president, making him a target of the conspirators. What follows is a race to evade the assassin, expose those responsible, and save constitutional government from a shadowy group of deep state operators. If this sounds generic, that’s because it is! The movie feels like it was written by ChatGPT. Despite the total absence of anything original, Jamelle and John do find much to discuss in the film, including the ways in which it is rooted in the anti-political ethos of the 1990s.The tagline for Shadow Conspiracy was “Life, liberty and the pursuit of absolute power.”You can find Shadow Conspiracy available to rent or buy on Amazon or Apple TV+. Episodes come out every two weeks so we’ll see you then with an episode on Absolute Power, the 1997 political thriller directed by — and starring — Clint Eastwood.And don’t forget our Patreon, where we watch the films of the Cold War and try to unpack them as political and historical documents! For $5 a month, you get two bonus episodes every month as well as access to the entire back catalog — we’re almost two years deep at this point. Sign up at patreon.com/unclearpod. The latest episode of our Patreon podcast is on the 1973 Walking Tall, starring Joe Don Baker.Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck.Contact us!

They met in secret. They forged an alliance. They spoke of treason. Bobby Bishop, please. Mr. Bishop's unavailable. I must speak with him immediately. It's a matter of life or death. Something terrible is happening inside the government at the highest level.

A White House aide. They killed your apechenko. Where are you, I'll come get you. an investigative reporter. Professor? Listen to the man to that conspiracy piece you wrote, Bobby Bishop says he can confirm that story. Each holds a piece of the puzzle. What were your sources?

Bobby, what just happened? Something about shadow. To a conspiracy. Bobby, I've been ordered to bring you in. Where are you? That could topple the government. Chanko tried to warn me about something going out of the White House. Together, they have... They have less than 12 hours to unravel a mystery.

God, Bobby, what are we gonna do? There's a chance I can stop him. The future of the country is in our hands. Shadow Conspiracy. Welcome to Unclear and Present Danger, a podcast about the political and military thrillers in 1990s and what they say about the politics of that decade. I'm D'Mal Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times Opinions. section. My name is John Gans. I write the substack newsletter on popular front and I'm the author

of the book, When the Clock Broke, Conman, Conspiracists and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s, which is available wherever good books are sold. Recently promoted by none other than former President Barack Obama on his summer reading list. That's right. That's right. I'm very happy to say that and that's very exciting. And I wonder what he thought. of it. I would, but I guess I'll never find out. But yeah, it's pretty cool. Thanks, Obama.

Yeah, thanks, Obama. On this week's episode of the podcast, we watch the 1997 political thriller, Shadow Conspiracy, which very generic name and very generic movie.

Shadow conspiracy is directed by George B. Cosmodos, who directed Rambo 2, which we did an episode on Rambo 2 for the Patreon. So you can head over to our Patreon, unclear, or patreon.com slash unclear pod and listen to our Rainbow 2 episode. But it's directed, directed by George B. Casmodos, written by Adi Hazak. He has a chief writing credit. He wrote and produced from Paris with love, starring John Travolta in Three Days to Kill.

starring Kevin Costner. Those are Luke Bisson movies. He also apparently created the NBC crime series Shades of Blue, which I've never heard of. And I'm sure it has like, you know, 10 million weekly viewers and so these things work. But I mentioned the writer and the director because this, this is a terrible script. Shadow Conspiracy stars Charlie Sheen, Donald Sutherland, Linda Hamilton, Stephen Lang, Ben Gazera, and Sam Waterston. So a good cast. This is a good cast, and Sutherland and Hamilton in particular are really doing the best of what they got. But, okay, so the plot of Shadow Conspiracy is Charlie Sheen plays Bobby Bishop, a special assistant to the president.

You're reminded of this several times, just in case you forget, a specialist to the president, kind of like a press guy, and he stumbles upon some sort of conspiracy that kicks off when a group of researchers, scientists, it's actually kind of unclear, are murdered by a mysterious assassin. When that assassin kills one of those people as he's trying to reach Bishop, Bishop then becomes the target of the assassin. And as he tries to escape the assassin, he enlists the help of his jury. journalist's ex-girlfriend Amanda Givens played by Linda Hamilton. They are, as they try to escape the assassin's grasp, Bishop begins to really try to investigate who is behind the assassination, what they're trying to do, and why he is a target. And it turns out that behind this plot is a conspiracy among high-ranking members. of the White House to assassinate the president and take control of the government and steer

it through what is said to be a turbulent time. It's not hard to guess who the guy plotting all of this is because the movie stars Donald Sutherland. But that's shadow conspiracy. The tagline for shadow conspiracy is life, liberty, and the pursuit of absolute power. This is a good tagline. I feel like there's an inverse relationship between the quality of the tagline and the quality of the movie. That's the only one, just the one on the poster.

Shadow Conspiracy, you can rent or buy it on iTunes and Amazon. I rented it on iTunes. And it was released on January 31st, 1997. So let's check out the New York Times for that day. Did you mention just exactly how big of a flop this movie was? Oh, we let's, yeah, we can talk about that. So this movie was a gigantic flop. It cost $45 million to make.

It was a product. It seems like it was distributed by Buena Vista pictures, which I believe was owned by Disney at the time. Yes. So it's a Disney distributed by Disney. $45 million is a pretty penny, about $90 million in today's dollars. and it made at the box office, so total, made $2.3 million. It's opening, it's opening weekend, it pulled in $1.4 million, and then it's next weekend, it dropped to $384,000, released to $837. seven theaters. This, that is, this was a flop, folks. And I don't put a lot of stock into

Rotten Tomatoes, but this one has a 7% rotten tomatoes rating, which just means 7% of critics who are part of the survey or whatever gave it a positive rating. That's probably like three people. Wait, how are three people? And yeah, I mean, it's deserved. We'll talk about how bad this movie is. And not even fun, bad, just sort of like a chore. Yeah. But, but, okay, movie came out, was released. Friday, January 31st, 1997. So, John, please take it away. This is one of the most 90s generic end of history is actually happening New York Times that we've ever had. I cannot see anything here that he's even remotely interesting. But we'll do it. Greenspan urges action to curb cost of living rises and benefits. Consumer price index is called too generous.

Alan Greenspan, I mean, this is what the news was like. I mean, the fact that you even knew, Alan Greenspan was a giant star in the 1990s because, I mean, I guess Volker was a big deal too. But the Fed chief was like, oh, the interest rate. It was such a big deal, you know. Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve urged Congress to move quickly to limit cost of living increases for Social Security and other federal benefits. In doing so, he weighed directly into one of the most politically sensitive issues facing the government. Mr. Greenspan said the Labor Department should speed its efforts to fix a range of shortcoming in its main measure of inflation, the consumer price index. Okay, if you haven't already fallen asleep, you get the point.

This is the number one. This is the biggest story on the paper, right? The top left or is at the top right. This is I believe this might be, this is like the big story, yeah. Yeah, this is the big story. Then over on the other side, we got governors opposed Clinton proposal for Medicaid cap. The National Governors Association has decided to oppose President Clinton's plan to set firm limits on

federal Medicaid spending, contending that it would saddle states with more of the cost of providing health care to poor people, state official said today. What else we got here? Billions of profits were issued as Clinton and bankers met when President Clinton, his treasury secretary and the country's top bank regulator met last May at the Democratic Party-sponsored coffee with some of the nation's most powerful bankers, at least three big issues worth billions of dollars in potential profits for the financial industry were on the table. The banker said they were particularly angry about an administration bank backed plan that require them to bail out the savings and loan industry.

Their competition, several participations were called. They also debated proposed regulations and legislation that would determine whether banks would be able to expand into other businesses. Well, the savings is loan industry no longer exists. So it sounds like they got their way, which was basically how they interacted with the Clinton administration in general. Basically, they just did whatever banks told them to do. Maybe that's a little bit of an oversimplification. But let's just say the administration was highly sympathetic and sensitive to the needs of the financial industry,

which was a big driver of the prosperity of the 1990s. This one is kind of interesting to me. FBI lab practices faulted in Oklahoma bomb inquiry, and we can talk about this maybe in terms of the movie in a certain ways. The FBI lab practices faulted in Oklahoma bomb inquiry, an internal Justice Department investigation of the FBI crime laboratory has uncovered numerous complaints by laboratory employees about the handling of forensic evidence in one of the government's most important criminal cases against two men charged with the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building in April 1995. The criticism of the FBI's conduct emerged in a series of interviews conducted by investigators from the Inspector General's office. In the interviews, some of the laboratory workers said their superiors engaged in sloppy and proper unscientific practices in the Oklahoma City case. Laboratory examiners in Oklahoma shipped critical items to the laboratory like the faded black jeans were by Timothy J. McVeigh, one of the two defendants when he's arrested in a brown paper sack instead of sealed plastic evidence bags, a gun and a knife purported to belong to Mr. McVeigh were sent to

the laboratory only in a manila envelope the employee. All right. So anyway, anything here, grab you, Jamal? Nothing really. A quick comment on the opposition to the proposal for Medicaid cap. So Medicaid's a joint state federal program. The way it basically works is the feds provide most of the money and the states get to kind of design. their program as they as they see fit. The Affordable Care Act changed that somewhat. As it was originally written, it said you either have to expand your program to cover, it's going to cover people up to 135, 140% of the federal poverty line.

And if you do this, we will cover 95% of the cost for the first 10 years. Or if you don't do it, we'll take all your Medicaid money. So basically forcing states to do it. And the Supreme Court in the Sebelius case, I believe, said, no, you can't do that. You can't coerce states because of this made-up constitutional principle that's never been applied before. So you can't force the Medicaid expansion on the states, which is why we got to a point where states had to be kind of like persuasive. weighted state by state to expand Medicaid. And I think we're at a point where there are still some states that have not taken the money. The money's still there for any state. I think North

Carolina last year or two years ago finally expanded its Medicaid program and got the federal money. But this Clinton program, so that's all to say that Democrats have kind of embraced Medicaid as a program. And to the extent that there's a path to universal health care through the existing set of federal health care programs. Medicaid is probably the most likely path because there's already kind of like a method for its expansion. And there actually aren't that many gaps in terms of who needs guaranteed health care. And so the poor get guaranteed health care.

Seniors get guaranteed health care. The next step is probably kids, people under 18, get guaranteed health care. And you could do that through Medicaid. But in the 90s, of course, there's this big fiscal retrenchment, this big effort to slash the social insurance state era, big government is over, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And this proposal was basically to cap Medicaid was to prevent its growth, prevent the program's growth, and then kind of push additional costs onto the states.

And it would have amounted to a major Medicaid cut over 10 years. And it is a good thing that for the most part, there's no, talk of cutting Medicaid. And to this thing, that Medicaid's part of the policy conversation, it's much more about how do you expand and improve on Medicaid. So that's all. The effort to balance a budget, big in the 90s, there is a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution that was almost passed, bad idea, but it was almost passed through

Congress, lots of talk of balanced budgets. And we, you know, we kind of gave that up. with Bush, too. And now, now, you know, budget politics aren't even really part of the conversation. Like who thinks about the deficit anymore or the debt? Right. Which, depending on who you ask, you know, could be a problem, could not be a problem. Well, guess we'll find out.

Yeah, I guess we'll find out. I mean, it's sort of like, as long as the United States, it's funny, it's pretty much a function of American political stability. right. As long as the United States remains a stable and relatively prosperous country, then no one's going to have a problem with like global economic transactions being carried out in dollars, which means that kind of like one benefit for us as like Americans is that we don't have to worry too much about the debt we accumulate because there will always be buyers for U.S. debt. But if if through some sort of circumstance, I can't imagine what they would be.

The United States becomes dramatically, politically unstable. Then our debt would become a problem. Because then everyone would be like, oh, I don't know how I feel about conducting transactions and a currency that may not be tied to a stable political system.

Yeah. I think that basically it would be it would have to be really bad for American debt to no longer be something that people bought. But who knows we did get downgraded but those bond rating agencies i mean they really don't they're just making things up as they go along so that was because the uh one of one of one of our debt ceiling stand down which in fairness you know the debt ceiling is bad and i think the next

president who encounters it should basically be like listen the constitution the law tells me we can't issue new debt the constitution tells me i have to faithfully execute the laws and that the U.S. government can't default. And so I think that the debt ceiling statute is unconstitutional, and I'm just going to issue the debt. I think it's, I think it's as close to an airtight argument you can make that, like, Congress does not have the power to tell the government that I can't issue debt to cover obligations that Congress gave it. Like, you can't do that. I can't, I can't tell, you can't tell your kid, go to the store and, buy some milk and then not give them any money to do it and then get mad at them when they

like take $10 out of your wallet. Anyway, that's not, has no relationship to what we're talking about today, but it is one of my personal pet peeves. And I'll say, I'll say real quick at the, we're recording this on Wednesday, August 21st yesterday was the Tuesday, was the second day of the Democratic National Convention. They had Bernie talk and then hilariously they had J.B. Pritzker talk and J.B. Pritzker, you noted Democratic billionaire and governor of Illinois. And then he was followed by some guy who used to be CEO of American Express. I don't really, I mean, I don't know who the guy was,

but he did make the totally legitimate point that a good business environment depends on rule of law. And for that reason, business people should support Democrats. But it's, it's, it is, it is like true. And sort of one of the ironies in the classic cat, Capitalists are kind of stupid way. One of the ironies of, you know, politicratic support for Donald Trump is they think they're getting tax cuts. But like he may, he made the stabilize the political system. And they may personally be fine, but like their business interests may not be.

But, you know, no one ever, no one never lost money betting that very rich people would be stupid. Is that what I'm going with that? Yeah. I don't know. It's just like the intrinsic, you know, way the system is set up is that their short-term pursuit of their interests often has long-term negative consequences for them. I mean, that's just the way, like, the competitive market system is set up. It's like, you know, these people are kind of like burning down their own, I don't know,

what the, what the, what the, what the, uh, they're selling the goof. I don't know what the fucking... You get it. You get it. They're killing the goose that laid the golden egg. You know what I mean? You understand what I'm saying. Anyway, I'm not very articulate today.

The fact of the matter is, yeah, it's a classic contradiction of capital where, you know, capitalism's short-term, capitalist's short-term profit-making endeavors all. often undermine their long-term stability of their enterprises and vice versa. Right. Okay. So this week's movie, a shadow conspiracy. John, I've, I've subjected to a lot of bad movies. Have you seen this before? Have you seen this before?

I've never seen this before. I have, I have, you know, this podcast, I've asked you to watch a lot of that movies over the years. Yeah. This one might be the worst. I think in terms, not in terms of like, you might be right. In terms of like just not being interesting in any way. Like we've watched ones that are like more offensive. Yes.

Like that I'm like, yo, this, the fucking movie is just makes me mad because I'm like, but this movie was very boring and just kind of shallow. Yeah, it was pretty bad. And like, yeah, the script was bad. It's incredible. Like, it's so funny. I don't know. Like this movie's totally forgot.

and with good reason. But like, it's got a kind of, it's got big star. I mean, Charlie Sheem was a big star. Right. Huge star. And you can totally see why he took this role. I mean, it appeals for Oliver Stoney, you know? Yeah, yeah. And they were like, oh, well, but the scripts, Donald Southern. Yeah, it's like a fucking shitty Oliver Stone movie or like, which, you know, in my view is pretty shitty. But like, yeah, it's like, this is like a trying to trick people into thinking that maybe it's an Oliver. They're like, oh, wait, I've seen like some of these things. there's a conspiracy. It's got Charlie Sheen. It's got Donald Sutherland. And then they go and watch some movie. And then Ben Gazzar is in it. He's also great, you know, and he's not, he's like nothing in

this movie. So yeah, it's just really phoned in. It's like a deep state plot. I mean, we can talk about it in terms of tropes that we've seen. There's like a deep state plot by the White House chief of staff. Political cynicism is sort of a part of it because the guy, the special Special assistant Bobby Bishop is like some slick whiz kid who's not, who's very cynical about manipulating the press and doesn't really believe. And he does some kind of nasty stuff in the movie at the beginning. He kind of blackmailes a United States congressman played by Gorva Dahl, which I thought was kind of interesting. Considering the top, this is the only thing I'm going to just go straight to this because it's the only interesting thing I can think about the movie is

that Gorvadole's, like, playing in the movie, like, kind of piqued my interest because he became very kind of deep state paranoid, um, conspiracy theorists later in his life. Gorbadole, of course, I didn't realize that. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. So, well, Gorbadole has really interesting, you know, political, literary career. Of course, you know, traditionally, we think of Gorbidoll as the great. liberal opponent to Buckley, right? So, and Gorvadole was famously gay. He kind of stood, he was

kind of the image of protrusion, sophisticated American liberalism. But Gorvado also comes from, you know, a very old stock, waspy American family. Actually, I think some of them were French Catholics, but a very old stock like Maryland, French Catholics. And, he had kind of almost proprietary feeling about the United States. He was a little bit like, I don't know, what tradition could you put him in? Henry Adams, some, like a patrician guy who's feelings of, I mean, I don't think he was as bigoted as Henry Adams, but definitely you'd have to bring him into the conversation. But he kind of is a throwback and his politics is Jeffersonian liberalism, if you want to call it that.

But was the same kind of like odd mixture you have in the United States history where you have a patrician who has very populist tendencies and feels that the United States that he grew up in is changing. So I could kind of see what attracted to this movie. and then this led it late in life to a kind of almost hard right turn it's more complicated than that but he became pen pals with a few people including bill Kaufman of the american conservative and even more scandalously uh and and just um had this would just happened or a couple years earlier from this movie as we saw the newspaper he became a correspondent with timothy mcvay in prison so and he had wrote for vanity fair a few years later a kind of conspiratorial thing even though timothy mcvay admitted to have do it and have done it saying oh maybe the fbi framed him and

there was more to the story um and basically there's a there's a bill calcare Kaufman and the American Conservative wrote a kind of appreciation for Gore Vidal when he died. And this quote, I just thought, was really telling where this is what, you know, he's writing to his buddy, Bill Kaufman. He says, as always, the unconsulted people, this is where I got this idea, Vidal was an aristic, this is what Calvin writes. Vidal was an aristocratic populist. It was as if Henry Adams had fallen for William Jennings, Brian. That's interesting. As always, the unconsulted people are cowardly isolations to muse Gore as yet another one of our endless wars began. Unfortunately, I'm just going to editorialize here and say that's not really true. The American public loves wars. It's not like they're getting dragged off and they really want to go. Left-right rumblings against the Empire heartened him. They are terrified that anti-imperials will get together and revive America first. No bad rally and cry. So, you know, he was a little bit of this strange

mix of this kind of left-right tradition in American populism that crops up where anti-war people on both sides kind of get together. It always creeps me out. But, you know, I mean, one can make the argument that the wars are worse and, you know, this kind of coalition of anti-imperialists should be encouraged. But yeah, that's kind of where he comes from in American politics. So you can see why he would get into this movie maybe. I don't know. But it's not a very sophisticated. Yeah. No, it's, he has, it's sort of, he has like, it's almost like he's a, he's, he's, he's like both Jacksonian. I mean, he's very sure of his politics feel very antebellum in that. Yeah, exactly. Sort of like Jacksonian in, in, in their, um, suspicion of concentration of the suspicion of bigness.

of the suspicion of existing political elites but also like Whiggish yeah in in the hostility to um you know foreign expansion and intervention all these things because like the Jacksonians notably were like total you know aggressive and imperialist maniacs yeah in the wigs were sort of like oh we shouldn't do that so it's it's kind of like it's it's it's it's an interesting politics that doesn't really exist anymore I guess to the extent that it does it might be you know and this would make sense given where he ends up it is among the paleocons yeah kind of yeah yeah it's jeffersonian and the way that that the jacksonian like in the way that two jeffersonian traditions kind of split up in the antebellan period like right had they're we're

sort of like, you know, there's the, there's the kind of Jacksonian populist and also imperialist side. And then you have the wig-ish kind of like, I don't know, well, I guess they were more descendants. The wigs more descendants of the federalist tradition or, but it's complicated. Yeah, it's a little complicated. I mean, the shortest story, both the wigs and the Daxonians do split off from the Jeffersonian Republicans. Right, right. The Jeffersonian Republicans, uh, uh, white federalism off the map. Right.

By 1820, like the federal federalists just like don't exist anymore. Yeah. And then you get. So everyone, everyone's a Jeffersonian. But then within that, you do have the split between sort of like more expansionist oriented suspicion of, you know, eastern capital. right you know very much committed to the game and farmer and then you have the somewhat more patrician more you know focus on like morality yeah um suspicious of of a foreign intervention

interested in sort of like tying together the country through like economic institutions and those those two paths right they diverge yeah like Andrew Jackson emerges on the scene and it's through him that you get like the divergence basically sort of like Jackson is this is this dominant political figure who represents this one part of the Jeffersonian tradition and his opponents and organize themselves into another party. Yeah. And I mean, interestingly enough, right, like the wigs were first called or the kind of the immediate anteceded to them. They were called the National Republicans. Right, right. Right. So sort of like you have the Jeffersonian Republicans and the national

Republicans, which actually gets you at a pretty good, and get to a pretty good idea of the split. Yeah. That emerges. Yeah. So he's like a Jeffersonian and pre-split Jafersonian in weird ways. Like, so yeah, or he reflects both sides. But yeah, he's a very old, old political consciousness, which, and almost harkens back

to an America where left and right doesn't, is not a division that makes a lot of sense yet, you know? Right. No, I mean, that's yeah. it's it's it's very tough to talk about left and right as we would understand it before what before basically like fDR i mean before i would say i would say before wilson wilson okay like like 19th century politics you can't really cleanly divide into left and right in that way yeah it was just whichever railroad oligarchs were being up but it's a little more

complicated than that but yeah um yeah so anyway that's just a big divert that but i that that i was like oh i wonder why he he wanted to be in this movie and it fit very much with his his um his kind of i think you know more and more suspicious feelings about about the the state of the of the government and the he was you know the the shredding of the constitution as far as he understood it the bill of Other than that, I don't really know what to say. I think that the, what's the nature? Can you, what's the nature of the conspiracy in this movie and why is, why are they doing? Because they say the president is insane or something like that, but it's Sam Warriston.

I don't know. He doesn't seem so crazy. Like they didn't, they don't do a good job of like setting the, setting the, like, you know, I think the movie could be really good. There's another movies like this where like, I think this is what you need to make a really good thriller. conspiracy deep state thrillers you actually need to make the crisis real and have it be like you know like the conspiracy's too evil like you know what I mean like if they're like they're going to do a coup but they kind of like may have kind of a good reason to do it like the president is actually

crazy or maybe he's too old to be in office or something like that you know what I mean but he is still legitimately elected or maybe he was a legitimately elected, but he's a dangerous lunatic who didn't receive the popular vote. Something like that. Yeah. Okay, so I got to say

I've already said it several times. This movie is terrible. The script, and this will get to talking about the actual conspiracy. The script in this movie is like sometimes it's hard to figure out what's a good script, right? Like, you know, occasionally it's obvious what a good script is, but like what constitutes a good script

versus a merely adequate script, maybe versus even a bad script, can sometimes be a little difficult to discern. But like there are times and it's like just totally clear, you have a terrible script on your hands, and this is one of those times. Yeah. Because the movie is constantly like, I mean, for example, we learn early on that Charlie Sheen's character is a special assistant to the president. And then, like, literally the next scene, the president walks in.

He's like, what's the deal with this Charlie Sheet situation? He's a special assistant to the president. Yeah, they keep on. Yeah. Yeah, we heard that 45 seconds ago. They're like the professor whose death kind of sets off the event of the film when he is approaching Charlie Sheen. He says, this is almost literal words. there's some sort of conspiracy

at the highest levels of the government and it's like it's like whoever wrote this whoever wrote this it seems like they just had a book of sort of like tropes about government conspiracies like they they like skim through

you know some bad airport thriller and kind of just like translated that into a movie in more modern parlance the movie feels like it was written by chat GPT like if you ask an AI, an AI bot to, like, write a 90-minute conspiracy thriller, this is what would come up. Right.

And we often, we often sort of like are like, oh, what a, what a time for movies, the studios, they still knew how to produce like a decent, this was the, this was the downside, was that they could make things like this. I mean, what was the big harm? I mean, it just was a flop and they wouldn't do it again. But like, well, they would. Like sometimes they produce Fops, but I think that we don't, we look back on the show with a lot of nostalgia for this period of filmmaking because a lot of these movies are like decent or even some of them are quite good. But I think like this is instructive to be like, yeah, well, they could still make some real stinkers.

But the conspiracy in this, as far as I can tell, is that there are, so the president has just won a second term. No one thought he would, but he won a second term. And his big plan, his big, like, I guess aim is to, what it seems like is begin to walk the government away from the military industrial complex, beginning with base closures. And it should be said that base closures were kind of a big deal in real life American politics during this time. It was called Base Alignment and Closure Brack. It was a process that was ongoing from basically the late 80s into the early 2000s. In 95, there was a big wave of base closures. Listeners may know I grew up basically on a military base just like down the road from Naval Air Station, Oceania, and Virginia Beach.

And both my parents were in the military. and I was a elementary schooler who read the local newspaper. So there was lots of chatter about whether or not any of the bases in the area would be closed around this time. And this chatter popped up again 10 years later when there was another set of closings. We discussed in a previous episode, I forget the episode, I forget the movie, but we discussed in previous episode the base closure in Charleston, which was a major one. but so this was I mean this was obviously politically controversial right sort of like bases were major engines of economic growth where they were located but they were also they also cost a lot of money to run and I believe as I'm looking at this like the the the government ends up saving like $12 billion annually through its base closures but this was like a live thing and I guess in the movie The president, Sam Waterston, is like, I'm going to close all these bases.

We're going to, you know, cut defense spending, et cetera, et cetera. And his advisors are like, this is a terrible idea. Congress will never go for it. And the movie doesn't actually go into that much detail, but one assumes it's sort of like the generals and other members of the staff are like, this is too dangerous. We have to do something about it. In a lot of ways, I mean, this feels like somewhat, it's basically. the plot, or the plot is like similar to that of the remake of Seven Days in May

that we watched not long ago the ones starring Forrest Whitaker. So that was a better movie than this. It's based off of an excellent movie. So that's that's sort of what the conspirators were doing.

And there's also this program that these researchers have written that is designed to basically find discrepancies in the federal budget or whatever. And it's through this program that these professors discover this plot, I guess because, you know, communications between the plotters, money being spent, and they're murdered because they discover the plot. And one of them tries to tell Charlie Sheen, he's then murdered, which makes Charlie Sheen a target.

But Charlie Sheen ended discovering what the plot was because his journalist ex-girlfriend had written a story about something adjacent to this. I can't quite figure it out. Yeah. But that's as far as I can tell, that's the conspiracy. And Donald Sutherland's character, who I think is the chief of staff, is the one engineering all of it out of a desire to sort of like maintain, you know, the security of the world. I think you're right that these movies work better when the plots are actually plausible,

when they, like, make sense. Well, there's a real believable political crisis. Right. Yeah. Like seven days in May, I think, works in part because the crisis was a desire to come to some sort of, like, the taunt with the Soviet Union. That was what prompts the military leadership to want to coup the president, which that makes sense, right?

Like, the height of the Cold War, effort to kind of, like, find some sort of. sort of peace with Russia. That actually does check out in terms of something that might constitute a crisis. But this, you know, basically like we don't want to cut the budget. I think there was a lot like some of these movies we watched succeed, but I think it's just like finding the the real source of political tension in the middle of this decade that did not seem to produce it naturally was, you know, probably a challenge and the one that this movie does not live up to. It does have kind of like, it's all over the place and it doesn't really develop any of these things.

It does have like elements of a surveillance thriller too, right? Because there's all these like technological goodies in it. And then the ending that shows like a globe and it's like, ah, they're listening. But it's like, it's like, yeah, it's not quite the kind of movie that's trying to make some kind of point. At the end, it's trying to make some kind of point about surveillance, just all over the place and has all these different tropes and all these different pieces of another type of movie or more focused movie, and it doesn't really do them. You know what I also noticed about this movie visually? You know, we watch a lot of movies on this and some of them like seem, you know, like they show their age. but this one feels especially dated like it just it just looks so 1990s but it even looks like you know

I watch a lot of movies from 1997 because there was a lot of great movie 1997 maybe the high watermark of American civilization in certain ways like there were some really great movies the country was at peace we did not you know 9-11 was very far away the dot com bust hadn't happen yet. The early 90s recession was was over, you know, the country, that internet was happening. It was an interesting time, but it was also a very boring time. You know, so it was a kind of like, and then this movie feels like older than a lot of the movies from that, from the, from the, I mean, this is the same movie, the same, I mean, it's a period piece, so it could hide its age, but I mean, LA Confidential came out in 1997.

um and it just looks in terms of its clothing in terms of costumes in terms of you know everything it just looks very of its of its age or even a little dated and i noticed that with the less good movies that we watch like this movie shows its age a lot more than other ones like it's very rare that we watch a movie where i'm like you know okay i can i can really you know it's really feel a little paid but it's really good yeah i mean donnie bascoe comes out in 1997 an amazing movie again it's a period piece hide it uh it's it itself but also conspiracy oh we're probably gonna watch that i imagine conspiracy theory comes out yeah yeah i mean i'm comparing it um unfairly i can't compare it to like lost highway by david lynch because it's like an art movie but there are other movies

that come out in this in this in this in this gear that i still watch and don't feel nearly as dated as this film. It's just like, there's a reason why these movies fall off of the radar. And we're the only insane people who try to go back and look at these things and try to get something out of them. But, but, uh, you know, this, I mean, we may have be the only people who watch this in years. No, I'm sure someone out there is like just stumbles upon it and watches it for the hell of it. Is there anybody you think who's like, this is my favorite movie?

And if it is and you're listening, I'm very sorry, but I really want you to write us a letter because I want to understand. Like, is there anybody who's like, you're wrong? This is a great movie. You're missing the point.

And I'm mad that you guys are tearing it down. I can't imagine. I, you know, I rented this from iTunes. I may have been, I may be the only person to have rent. did this on iTunes. Other than some like Donald Southern completionist right? Like someone who's like, I got to watch every single

movie this director is made or this person's been in. I can't imagine anyone watching this. I wanted to say the whole deep state conspiracy thing. One thing we've talked about, especially as in this peak 90s period, is sort of

like the 90s like anti-politics ethos, right? The sense of politics does not matter. And I feel this and it's at such an extent like the Oliver Stone films of this of the 90s as well really are all a part of this narrative. Now some of the

politics don't matter stuff as like oh you know more for Gore the son of a drug lord none of the above if I could cut the cord kind of stuff where it's it's well the two sides are the same there's no meaningful difference between Republicans or Democrats

which if there's a time you can make that case the middle of the 90s probably that time and so what's what's the point in engaging in politics, in electoral politics in this point. But kind of the other side of that is this sort of everyone's the same and not just that. It's not as if the politicians control anything anyway. Right, right. There's always, that's like the weird thing about like those deep state conspiracy theories

is that they contain anger at the government and cynicism, but also like are helpless and just like they encourage apathy. Not. I mean, sometimes they lead to kind of populist explosions, but there's a lot of apathy. Well, it doesn't matter anyway. There's nothing we can do. There's always someone else running things. You know, this movie seems to posit that although these conspiracies do exist, they can be defeated. Although the resolution isn't like a restoration of self-government. Like there isn't some scene of the president like taking control on behalf of, you know, the people. There isn't anything of that. Um, it's just, it's just kind of, oh, well, they've been exposed and that's, that's it, which, I mean, kind of funny, speaks to something that isn't a lot of these movies as well, which is there's a distrust of politics, a lack of faith in politics. But there is a belief that if you can just get things to the media. Right, right. If you can just get things to reporters. Yeah. Then, then the people will be outraged enough to make a difference. And the abiding faith in the power of journalism. Yeah. To change the world, which, feels like still an artifact of water faith. I find so quaint. Yeah. Um, uh, as I, as I read, uh, first, you know, not to speak too ill of my profession, but, you know, you, you, you read, you, you, you read some modern day journalism. You're just sort of like, I don't, I don't, I don't know if you should trust these people that much. Jamal comes out for the fake news, right? Fake news media. Yeah, I guess the fake news,

be just like if if if you if you if a story like this actually broke it would get traction because there's a secret behind it and I think what one of the interesting things about sort of like how like the norms of political journalism have developed in the last 20 years is that things that are not secret are not treated as being particularly newsworthy or scandalous so if you do if you do like if this plot just a criminal in public yeah right if this entire plot were happening in public. If like Don Donald Sullivan were going before like, you know, in public forums and saying, yeah, if the president tries to do this, we'll just like take away his power or neutralize him in some way. That would be like a day one story. Like one day

story. Yeah. That would be it. Yeah. Because like Trump says stuff like I'm going to stop the constitution. I think it's time to suspend the constitution. And then people are like, I'm not very interested in that. Right. Yeah. Or he's like, I'm going to, like, use the military on protesters. And you're like, oh, that's, that's bad. It doesn't, no one, no one cares. I mean, partially it's because people correctly don't have a lot of faith in his ability to carry those things out. But it's still pretty fucking crazy. It's still like, it's crazy that we've just gotten used to the, like, if Trump comes out tomorrow and it's like, I'm going to, well, like, shoot everybody, uh, once I'm president. People would just be like,

well, you know, I don't know how seriously we should take that. Well, that's just, that's just Trump. Yeah, I know exactly. Yeah, I don't know. But yeah, it's true. Secrets are much more, it's a paradox, though, because, like, I do also believe that, you know, the public has lost its ability to, its interest and its ability to parse complicated stories a la Watergate, a la Iran Contra, where you have to follow the newspaper for months at a time and follow. revelations and try to piece it together. I mean, Russiagate was kind of like that and then it kind fizzled. But, you know, I do believe, yeah, secrets seem to be interesting to people. But then when

it's actually revealed, which goes along in something, and you're like, whoa, that's, that's quite a revelation. People are like, well, now the secret is out, it's no longer a secret. So I'm not, I'm not interested. And that's why these like conspiracy theories like Q and on, which continually push back the locus of power and control in this kind of meson of beam never ending hall of mirrors are what is like more interesting to people. Because if it ends, you know, if it's revealed, people are like, well, that's not that big of a deal. You know, like the conspiracy theory has to be almost metaphysical and endless for people to keep their imagination. You know, if you actually just say, oh, well, like, they were trying to do something, they were trying

to overthrow the government of the United States and end, you know, the peaceful transfer of power and overturn an election, like the public response to that, although I'm sure it was not the horror that you might imagine, you know? Right, right. It was, I mean, it was very quick. I mean, it's, I wouldn't say, I hate the word, but I wouldn't say it's been completely normalized, but it's sort of, it's like, it's like now existing like the background of Trump antics. Yeah, the shock of it has definitely worn off. It's difficult, it's difficult to get, I mean, I don't, I'm not, I'm not, I don't want to like be one of those people who goes on the radio and it's like Aaron Fierry, Trump is going to overthrow the government.

government and you know like even I am like all right just take it easy like you know which is not good necessarily but I don't I think it just goes to show two things one is that people don't take them seriously when perhaps they should but also we're just inundated with the fucking insanity of it all and it's also like yeah the things he tries to pull off very often don't work so it's not necessarily worth it to to be in a constant state of agitation about it right right and also yeah That's the time. Like, it may be that, you know, many years from now, we look back and we're like, well, that was a pretty crazy time.

And people ask us, whoa, what is it like to live through that? And you were like, well, strangely normal, you know? Yeah. You know, there were, there were, there were crazy moments. But then, you know, life kind of returned to normal. Yeah. I mean, but that's, that's sort of, that's, that's always the way it goes, right? like even in times of great upheaval for most people,

most things are pretty normal. We're running on time. So any last thoughts on the movie? I'll give mine real quick. This is a bad movie. You shouldn't watch it. I do want to give a shout out, though, to Linda Hamilton in this movie

for doing the best you can with a bad script. And Donald Sutherland does elevate just in terms of like he can deliver or anything and it sounds great. Charlie Sheen is like not a believable White House guy I mean the problem is that Charlie Sheen's White House guy is like a total cynic

Who believes in nothing But like the thing about these people is that they are cynics But they also are true believers at the same time Yeah they're both Right right right right right Yeah he's not such a good white house staffer He can come off a little sleazy But it doesn't it doesn't deliver here

Yeah I don't know what to tell you guys don't watch this movie. If you did watch it because you're following along the show, I'm very sorry. We try to entertain you. But just keep in mind we had to watch it too. If that makes you feel better. Yeah.

Sometimes we have bad movies on this program and there's nothing we can do about it. But hopefully next one will be better. What is our next movie? Our next movie, and I'll repeat this when we get to the end, but I'll say here, our next movie is Absolute Power directed by Clint Eastwood. Clint, very excited. It would be definitely more interesting than this, no matter what.

This is the fun, Clint, where it's basically, like, in the movie, Clint Eastwood plays a thief who sees the president involved in the murder. But, like, it's very clearly, Clint's like, well, if I caught Clinton getting a blowjob, I would have stopped him. Okay, I'm looking forward to this. So it stars Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, Laura, It's a good cast. I'm excited for this one. Before we get to talk about our next movie, we got to wrap up.

So that is our show. If you're not a subscriber to Unclear and Pressing Danger, please subscribe. We're available on iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, and wherever else podcasts are found. And if you do subscribe, please leave a rating and a review. So people can find the show. You can reach out to us on social media if you want to. Unclear pod on X or Twitter. I'm on blue sky and TikTok and wherever so you can reach out there. I'm going to try to make an effort again to post some stuff on other social media. I know we record

this in Riverside, which records our video as well. And I probably could do something with that. So you might find some more social media stuff from us. And maybe if we get enough Patreon subscribers one day, I'll just like hire some 22 year old to do it for us. But until then, I may try to do some of that. You can also reach out to us over email at unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com. For this weekend feedback,

we have an email from Michael titled Zemeckis and Erasing Black People from the 1950s. This is in relation to our Mars Attacks episode where we had a conversation about Tim Burton, Mars Attacks being directed by Tim Burton, and the kind of like

the whiteness of the Tim Burton verse. And so I think we may have mentioned Zemeckis in that conversation as well. So here is Michael's email. I really enjoyed your conversation about the blind spot and or erasure of black people and culture from the Tim Burton verse. It reminded me of two moments in films from the 80s and 90s that pulled off a much more intentional version, both directed by Robert Zemeckis. The first is in Back to the Future where it appears to be a lighthearted joke that Marty McFly playing Johnny be good at the high school dance inspired Chuck Barry. Chuck, Chuck, it's Marvin, your cousin Marvin. You know that new son you're looking for, but really it is implying that rock and roll

didn't come from the fusion of a number of deeply ridded black musical traditions. We could maybe chalk this up to just a time travel joke, but again in Forrest Gump, the same trick is pulled with a young Forrest Gump teaching Elvis to dance rather than his influence slash appropriation for black musical culture. And in case you thought this was limited, to music, the only other material appearances of black characters and Back to the Future are the black family that lives in the McFly's House and be bad in 1985, which implies the neighborhood is crime written. In 1985, Mayor Goldie Wilson Jr., inspired by Marty to run for mayor in 1955. That's it for the three-movie series. It feels a lot more intentional than

the Lily White World of Burton. Enjoying the pod and the book, it was a perfect Father's Day gift for my dad who said it was, quote, terrifying and great, and wishing both. the best. Thank you, Michael. I've always found, I love Back to the Future, but that Chuck Barry joke really rubs me the wrong way. Yes, really bad. It's really bad. It's true to just like, come on, Zemeckis. The Forrest Gump thing is interesting, too. I don't know. There's, I think, I think, possibly with Zemachus and with Burton, I think one of the points we made, and this is a thing I think is true, which is that like these are both, these are like, these two were children during the 60s and they grew up in like, you know, segregated lily white environments.

And I think for them, like black people kind of like appear into their cultural lives as like a, they're like a new thing and not like part of the world itself. And so when they're thinking about what constitutes like a like a more innocent world or whatever, it is for them a world that doesn't have black people, not because of any prejudice, but because it's just sort of like they, their, their mind space is shaped by a segregated environment, which is like the problem of segregation. Like, it actually does, I think, like, it, it, it's, uh, I think segregation was bad. Produces. I mean, it's bad. Sorry, I'm sorry. I couldn't help myself. Yeah.

but it also it shapes how people perceive the world and I think pretty profound ways yeah and I think what you see in these in these movies

is exactly that right yeah and then you don't like these these little ideology or whatever like end up in these movies and I'm sure the director

wasn't like you know if you press them about it you're like how come black people and they would be like oh you've thought of that

you know it's just it's just becomes the, it becomes the material reality of your world when it's actually by law and violence separated. And then, you know, that's the whole point. It's supposed to, they were trying to make normal life be white, you know, and then these are the, these are the after effects of it. Yeah. I don't know if we haven't used a mech, Zemecki, Zemeckis is in the, in the pipeline for this podcast. He doesn't really do the thriller so much.

Not a huge, I'm a huge fan of his. I, you know, I love back to the future series. I'm a big fan of castaway. I think it's actually a tremendous movie. And I like Flight,

the Denzel Washington movie from Mike. Oh, he finally puts a black movie and then he's a fucking junkie. Okay. It's a good movie. All right. I know. I know.

I'm just kidding around. But isn't, don't you think that's kind of interesting, Jamel? I mean, I've never thought about it, but you see how deep it goes. But I mean, okay,

my, my one thing with Denzel complaint, isn't this suspicious thing? He got, he wins his Oscar for playing a skum bag top. And I, I find that very distasteful. Like not for a hero.

I think that that was just to be like, I know what you mean, but I think they were like, oh, he's such a good actor. Like he, and we love him, but isn't, isn't it terrific that he has the range to play a villain? But that's not nearly his best role. He's good in it. No, I mean, he's good at it, but sort of like, yeah, it's not. Because he's Denzel Washington. It's not like his, like, great role.

Yeah. It's true. I think they did it to be like, ah, we love. how he's a villain like plays I see what you're saying though why can they give it give it to him for playing a good decent man

God-fearing man yeah that sound like my parents now right okay thank you Michael for the email episodes come out every two weeks so we'll see you as said

with an episode on absolute power 97, uh, starring, you know, um, Clint starring, starring, uh, Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, Laura Linney, Judy Davis, Scott Glenn, Dennis Hayesbert, um, Richard Jenkins. A lot, a lot of people in this movie excited to watch it again. And that, oh, and don't forget our Patreon, of course. Uh, our Patreon, we watch the films of the Cold War and we try to impact them as political and historical documents. It's $5 a month, two bonus episodes a month,

and access to the entire back catalog of Patreon episodes. So you can sign up for that at patreon.com plus UnclearPod. Our most recent Patreon episode is on Walking Tall, the 1973 film starring Jodon Baker. Crazy movie, really violent and seedy. I thought we had a good conversation about that movie. So you can check that out on Patreon. And then our next movie for the Patreon is the 1970 film of Joe starring Peter Boyle.

So kind of in that whole vigilante thriller world. And that is it for us. For John Gans, I'm Jamal Bowie. And this is unclear and present danger. We'll see you next time. Thank you.