Unless I'm forgetting something, my favorite Election Day TV episode is the MTM episode with the blizzard during coverage of election returns. No, not any of the West Wing episodes (unless, again, I'm forgetting one I liked). Second choice? I did really like the Columbo set on Election Day, with Jackie Cooper as a candidate who kills his campaign manager (although I suspect in real life the fantasies are more common in the other direction, campaign managers who dream of murdering the candidate). Others? I'll take any suggestions.
The best Election Day in a movie is an easy choice: The Candidate. Second best? Maybe The Great McGinty? But the very best Election Day moment in the movies, at least to me -- even better than the last line of The Candidate -- is the point at which they finally decide which headline to use to announce the results of the Kane/Gettys election.
So, Wim With Jim, and Happy Election Day!
Monday, November 1, 2010
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Didn't you like "Election?" I think that movie is pretty good. Way fewer rough edges than "McGinty," for sure.
ReplyDeleteI do like Election, but more as a high school movie than as a politics movie. And for here, I was thinking of "real" election days -- note that I didn't mention the Lisa/Dave election, either.
ReplyDeleteAnd, yes, McGinty isn't the most polished piece of work ever, but it's still terrific, IMO. If you like something a little slicker, Hail the Conquering Hero is also terrific...both of them are must-sees.
Every year, my wife and I host an election party. And every year, we buy champagne in case our favored candidate wins (this year, we'll probably get to save it for New Year's). And every year, she fakes wanting to open it early, to start celebrating it early, to call it and just be done with. And she will persist in this charade until I utter the magic words- "Do you want to tempt the wrath of whatever from high atop the thing?"
ReplyDeleteSo I guess that would be my favorite piece of election-day fiction.
Election Day in "The Candidate" is excellent, but I still think I'd give the edge to "Gangs of New York." The day starts with machine supporters turning out the vote at knife-point. Then we see men voting and then getting shaved so they can vote again. Then we see Boss Tweed being informed that they're running out of ballots, to which he responds with orders to keep counting anyway. It ends, of course, with the winner being beaten to death with his own club after getting stabbed in the back with a meat cleaver. Now that's an Election Day.
ReplyDeleteSeth,
ReplyDeleteGood call...that's a great Election Day. I am more fond of The Candidate's Election Day (does anyone know whether that's Oakland's Paramount Theater, BTW? Looks like it to me, but I don't know for a fact). But Gangs is awful good, and a better movie overall -- although The Candidate has those iconic moments.
Yes! "Hail the Conquering Hero" is a great movie, maybe second only to "The Lady Eve." Though I'm rather fond of "Miracle at Morgan's Creek" -- some cute satire of political information-processing and deliberation (and bandwagon-hopping wrt "the will of the people") in that one, too -- and "Christmas in July" ... and -- I'll stop listing now and just note that the more Sturges lets William Demarest have his way, the better the results tend to be.
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