« Tuition Hikes | Main | The Single Guy »
April 19, 2004
All the President's Men II
Casting began today for All the President's Men II according to a source close to the chutry experiment. A long-awaited sequel to the 1976 feature film starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as WaPo reporters Woodward and Bernstein who broke the famous Watergate scandal. Due to budgetary constraints, Dustin Hoffan's Bernstein has been dropped from the sequel, but Redford is in serious negotiations to reprise his role as Bob Woodward. Tinseltown is abuzz as conspiracy thrillers seem to be making a comeback unprecedented since the mid 1970s aftermath of the Nixon administration, with "Presidents" slated to compete with the movie version of Richard Clarke's insider book, Against All Enemies (this part is actually true).
Conveniently Woodward has a new book, Plan of Attack, that will provide the basis for a shooting script. In order to ensure brisk box office, only limited plot details are available, but the film promises at least 20% more scandal (and a much larger explosion budget) than the original. Woodward coyly revealed some of the details in an interview with Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes Sunday night (now I really wish I'd watched). Perhaps the most surprising news was the revelation (and I wish I were making this up) that Saudi Prince Bandar has promised to flood the US oil market just before the election:
Prince Bandar enjoys easy access to the Oval Office. His family and the Bush family are close. And Woodward told 60 Minutes that Bandar has promised the president that Saudi Arabia will lower oil prices in the months before the election - to ensure the U.S. economy is strong on election day.In addition to the "votes for oil" scheme, President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld also apparently worked a deal for General Tommy Franks to have unlimited finanical support for planning the Iraq invasion by November of 2001 (see Daily Kos for more on this topic), and by June of 2002, the President approved $700 million to support build-up for the Iraq war without getting Congressional approval:Woodward says that Bandar understood that economic conditions were key before a presidential election: "They're [oil prices] high. And they could go down very quickly. That's the Saudi pledge. Certainly over the summer, or as we get closer to the election, they could increase production several million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly."
"Gets to a point where in July, the end of July 2002, they need $700 million, a large amount of money for all these tasks. And the president approves it. But Congress doesn't know and it is done. They get the money from a supplemental appropriation for the Afghan War, which Congress has approved. ...Some people are gonna look at a document called the Constitution which says that no money will be drawn from the treasury unless appropriated by Congress. Congress was totally in the dark on this."Details about the rest of the cast are sketchy right now (in other words this metaphor is running out of steam, fast), but look for a major plotline around Dick "War Fever" Cheney. The major difficult confronting the screenwriters now is keeping the film down to a manageable length, forcing the writers to exclude some of the Bush presidency's most famous scandals. Producers hope to have a film ready by the end-of-the-year Oscar season, and it has been confirmed that the film's marketing slogan will be: "History?...We'll All Be Dead."
Posted by chuck at April 19, 2004 1:53 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.wordherders.net/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.fpl/1754
Comments
Dear Rona Barrett/Mary Hart/Pat O'Brien,
Um, is the sequel really "long-awaited"? How often do you reference Hollywood as "tinsletown"? I don't detect any camp, kitsch, self-consciousness or parody here. I think, perhaps, you're becoming complicit in the narratives you're trying (valiantly) to critique. Just an observation.
Signed sanctimoniously,
Ivan Attitude, aka,
Holier-than-thou
Posted by: Ivan at April 20, 2004 8:37 PM
Actually, I'm pretty willing to admit that the satire here fell a little flat. The implicit connection between Nixon's tricks and Dubya's is also probably a little too obvious at this point.
I just did a search, and this is the first time I've ever called Hollywood "Tinseltown," but I'm not quite sure what that means in terms of your comment. Maybe the point was that Bush's administration is becoming like a Hollywood movie. Maybe I should be a little more careful about what I post at 2:30 in the morning.
Posted by: chuck at April 20, 2004 10:22 PM