In Dave, which came out in the year of Schindler’s List, Kevin Kline plays U.S. President Bill Mitchell, a cold-hearted man with an eye for pretty young bed-warmers. It bothers him not one whit that his behavior has permanently estranged the First Lady (Sigourney Weaver), who only pretends to be part of a happy presidential couple. But his misbehavior catches up with him when, in bed with a cute member of his staff, he suffers a severe stroke. His cagey chief of staff (the always-slightly-reptilian Frank Langella) has no wish to undermine his own power by handing the reins of government over to the squeaky-clean vice-president (Ben Kingsley, of all people).l His solution is to elevate a convenient look-alike (also, of course, played by Kevin Kline) into the presidency. Kline’s Dave, who runs a Georgetown temp agency, is naturally at first awed by the honor of pretending to be President Mitchell. He’s naïve about the personalities of the powers that be, and overwhelmed by the thrill of actually occupying the presidential suite in the White House. (When he lifts up a phone receiver to make a call from the Oval Office, he feels the need to ask if he needs to dial 9 first.)
But Dave, for all his aw-shucks manner, is not exactly a fool. He believes in his country’s mission, sees true honor in helping the genuinely needy, and quickly discovers that as President Mitchell he’s positioned to do an end-run around his malevolent chief of staff. There comes a time, though, when the situation of a missing, ailing president has to be permanently resolved. And Dave’s inventive solution, which I’m sure takes most viewers completely by surprise, allows for a happy ending that’s at least semi-credible, given all that’s gone before.
It's well known that comedies, even excellent ones, are generally overlooked when Oscars are handed out. The year of Schindler’s List also produced a number of other seriously great films, like The Remains of the Day, The Age of Innocence, and Philadelphia, the AIDS-related drama for which Tom Hanks won his first Oscar. Dave was nominated for exactly one Academy Award, a well-deserved nod to Gary Ross for his original screenplay, which beautifully sets up all the craziness to come. (As a longtime teacher of screenwriting. I salute him.) The screenwriting Oscar, though, went to Jane Campion, for her extraordinarily inventive work on The Piano. (Other losers in that category were Ron Nyswaner for writing Philadelphia and Nora Ephron—among others—for scripting a romcom classic, Sleepless in Seattle.)
Politics American-style is a funny business. The year of Dave’s release into theatres was also the year that William Jefferson Clinton entered the White House. When the threat of a presidential impeachment arose in Dave, audiences of the time were well aware that a U.S. president had never been impeached since Andrew Johson in 1868. That was to change in 1998 following the notorious Monica Lewinsky affair, and of course we all know which president was impeached twice during his single term in office.
What’s going on our country today is no laughing matter. But I’m grateful that Dave finds some humor in unthinkable news from Washington.
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