Tag: Robert Mueller
Wishful thinking: Parody, Politics, and the Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time-Players
Here we are, Early October is when the Not-Ready-For-Prime-Tim-Players tend to kick off. Yes, folks, the next season of the long-run, late-night, skit-comedy series Saturday Night Live, will be kicking off a new, shall-we-make-you-laugh-your-ass-off? season shortly.
Meanwhile, the Presidential Administration of Donald J. Trump keeps playing like skit-comedy in its revealed words, choices, actions, and deeds. Sadly, with how politics reach and what they do to society, it’s not a laughing matter to mess up, screw up, or use shady tactics to try to solidify power while gaining personally at great cost to the public.
It’s ripe for parody, though. Alec Baldwin can tell you that. The veteran actor has been inspired (in the worst way possible) to play President Trump on SNL a countless number of times the past two seasons.
This season of Saturday Night Live coincides with the 30th anniversary of a movie that Baldwin co-starred in that mixed action and drama with politics and espionage of the Cold War. The Hunt for Red October is one of my personal favorite films and the only Tom Clancey novel-turned-film that I liked. I never took to Harrison Ford as Dr. John “Jack” Ryan in the two sequels, but that’s just me… I liked Baldwin’s Ryan (“I’m just an analyst!”) better than a typical action/thriller movie star like Ford taking up the role.
I keep having Red October pop into my head as scandals play out in the news. How one notable name in the current political dramatic climate rhymes so well with the name of the “phantom Russian submarine” that the film involves and its name is based on.
Red October. Robert Mueller.
Read MorePolitical motivation by way of Miister Ferris Bueller?
There’s one movie from the 1980’s that I still find as an asset, the whole perspective is told in such a way that it builds the protagonist in a comical and entertaining way. It’s a movie that stood as a benchmark to be met or exceeded for teen comedies, not just in the 80’s but in cinema, in general, moving forward from that point forward.
“Ferris Bueller, you’re my heer-oh.”
Yet what leads me to this write up is a negative. One line of dialog from Mister Ferris Bueller jumped into my head this morning, a line which I have long known from a scene I’ve long known… And the current world of politics and the grand motivator for the Dotard in Covfefe, Donald J. Trump, popped into my mind.
Is it fitting I link Ferris, Cameron and Sloan’s altercation at Chez Quis restaurant to Trump? Or is it a contradiction: Some kids who are members of the general masses try to get lunch at a high class restaurant in the Chicagoland area? I’m comparing something for this scene to a sitting President of the United States who is high class and thinks he knows populism while he is totally disconnected to the general populous.
Just to cut to the chase, Ferris’ entire concept of getting lunch at Chez Quis starts with him pretending to be Abe Froman, the Sausage King of Chicago. The idea sets off Cameron and Sloan as the maitre’d is not going along with Ferris’ con attempt.
It’s Ferris’ first-person, direct-to-the-camera reaction response to Cameron and Sloan that just seems to explain Trump’s inspiration for continued carelessness…
“A: You can never go too far. B: If I’m going to get busted, it is not going to be by a guy like that.”
A: Donald Trump is going too far. Regularly. The welfare of America is not what’s driving him as-so-much self-gain. B: The question must be asked if Special Counsel Robert Mueller is the “guy-like-that” or someone else. There’s too much evidence in the Trump-Russia probe to expect Mueller not to end up busting Trump. If it’s not him that does it, it will be Congress in one way or another.
I digress; comparing Trump to Bueller is an insult to Ferris Bueller and the ageless piece of cinema from director John Hughes.
