Saturday Night Potomac Fever

Just back from Washington, DC, I’m thinking about what a great cinematic backdrop this city makes, with its monuments and its stately marble halls. Hollywood has been in love with our nation’s capital almost since the beginning. Witness Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Frank Capra’s 1939 valentine to the power of our elected officials to do the right thing. More recently we’ve had DC-based horror films (The Exorcist), DC-based political thrillers (All the President’s Men), and aliens blowing up the Capitol dome (Independence Day).

Over the years, as Americans have become increasingly cynical about government, Hollywood has supplied us with films that comment directly on those in the seat of power. Though the names are changed to protect the not-so-innocent, Mike Nichols’ Primary Colors is unquestionably a look at the election of William Jefferson Clinton, with John Travolta deftly impersonating the big guy from Little Rock. And Oliver Stone’s W. doesn’t hide behind pseudonyms in charting George W. Bush’s rise to the White House. Films such as these hardly speak well of our current generation of leaders. Where is clean-cut Jimmy Stewart when you need him?

But it’s surprising how many fairly recent Hollywood movies find in the presidency a source of romantic optimism. A prime example, of course, is 1995’s The American President, with Michael Douglas falling for Annette Bening. (She describes their first date to a confidante: “I kissed him.” And then what? “He had to go and attack Libya.”) In the film, Douglas’s character is a widower, so their romantic escapade is basically beyond reproach. The presidency doesn’t look nearly so good in 1993’s Dave, in which a President falls into a coma while in flagrante delicto with someone other than his wife, and must then be impersonated by a wholesome lookalike. Still, it’s the innocent romance between Dave (Kevin Kline) and the First Lady (Sigourney Weaver) that drives the action.

To me the most unforgettable White House-based romantic comedy dates all the way back to 1964. In Kisses for My President, an attractive but no-nonsense Polly Bergen plays the first female chief executive. But the focus is on her hapless husband, Fred MacMurray, who finds his masculine ego shaken when he’s expected to attend a round of ladies’ luncheons and garden club teas. After much comic mishap, the problem is solved: President Leslie Harrison McCloud steps down from her office because (you guessed it) she’s pregnant. Ouch!

Real-life (as opposed to “reel life”) Washington is a trifle different. My hotel, alas, turned out to be steps away from George Washington University’s Ronald Reagan Institute for Emergency Medicine. When ambulance sirens disturbed my sleep, I couldn’t help musing about what sent President Reagan into emergency care: the bullets of John Hinckley Jr., a young man trying to impress movie star Jodie Foster. Reagan, of course, was our first movie-star president, and a deranged movie buff who confused cinematic illusion with reality nearly cost him his life.