ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
In April of 1976, Allen J Pakula's "All The President's Men" hit theaters, and a political mantra was born.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN")
HAL HOLBROOK: (As Deep Throat) Just follow the money.
SCHMITZ: That is the character Deep Throat, a highly placed source in the FBI doling out some wisdom to reporter Bob Woodward, played by a young Robert Redford. The movie broke ground for showing two little-known reporters taking down a president, revealing lies and abuse of power along the way. Fifty years on, what movies have followed in this tradition? And how are filmmakers today wrestling with the questions of presidential power? We're going to discuss all of this and more with NPR's Steve Inskeep, host of Morning Edition - and presidential historian, might I add - and NPR political correspondent Miles Parks. Welcome to you both.
STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Hi there.
MILES PARKS, BYLINE: Hey, Rob.
SCHMITZ: So, Steve, let's start with you. You've done a lot of thinking about the history of presidential power, both in your daily work at NPR but also through the books you've written. You know, what stands out to you from this film, 50 years on?
INSKEEP: I think you've hit on something - one of several things that are fascinating about this movie now. It's a movie just really about people talking and making phone calls and typing in an analog world.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN")
DUSTIN HOFFMAN: (As Carl Bernstein) How's it going?
ROBERT REDFORD: (As Bob Woodward) What are you doing?
HOFFMAN: (As Carl Bernstein) I'm just helping. It's a little fuzzy.
REDFORD: (As Bob Woodward) May I have it?
INSKEEP: Unbelievable clutter in this film. Everybody's desks are covered with papers and books and boxes. And then the reporters go home, and their home is covered with papers and books.
PARKS: It kind of stressed me out, honestly...
INSKEEP: It's - yeah.
PARKS: ...The amount of clutter. I was just like, guys.
INSKEEP: Unbelievable.
PARKS: Get it together.
INSKEEP: Unbelievable. And they're just, like, walking around
SCHMITZ: They've got to Marie Kondo that.
INSKEEP: Exactly, exactly. So, I mean, it's the 1970s. It is an analog world, and they're having human conversations over the phone. So that's part of it. But you hit on another thing, which it is an exploration of power and exposing the abuse of power. And I agree with you that I think films used to do a better job of this. Even, like, happy films. "It's A Wonderful Life" is a movie about political power and...
SCHMITZ: Yeah.
INSKEEP: ...Business power and who has it and who doesn't and how it affects real people's lives. And that's what this movie is about.
SCHMITZ: And Miles, before I get to you, I want to play a cut from the film. This is from Ben Bradlee, executive editor of The Washington Post during the Watergate scandal, who is played magnificently by Jason Robards.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN")
JASON ROBARDS: (As Ben Bradlee) Nothing's riding on this, except the First Amendment of the Constitution, freedom of the press and maybe the future of the country.
SCHMITZ: OK, so this is such a dramatic framing, but, you know, in many ways, this, at the time, was likely true. It's - you know, it's an interesting juxtaposition to today, when it seems like we've got a Watergate-style scandal popping up on almost a weekly basis. Miles, you cover U.S. politics every day. How do you see this film, like, in this light? I
PARKS: was surprised on the rewatch I did this week of how many parallels I saw to current politics. The biggest one to me was actually how the Nixon administration responded to the journalism. I think I have this illusion - as somebody who's been doing political journalism for, you know, like, 15 years - that 50 years ago, America had more of a collective reality, that, like, there wasn't this sort of, like, hyper-partisan, everyone's in a different camp, and if you don't say something that you agree with, then you can just say that it's fake news, et cetera, et cetera.
But that's basically what happens in this movie, is that they put out these stories. No one wants to talk because they're scared of a vindictive government coming after them. And then the administration is then able to say, well, your journalism's based on anonymous sources, so you can't trust it. And...
SCHMITZ: Fake news.
PARKS: Deny, deny, deny.
INSKEEP: I just want to add, also, you have the fear of the media outlet itself, of the government coming after them.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN")
ROBARDS: (As Ben Bradlee) You guys are about to write a story that says the former attorney general, the highest-ranking law enforcement officer in this country, is a crook. Just be sure you're right.
INSKEEP: If we get this story wrong or get caught in this story, well, we're a media company. We've got broadcast licenses. Maybe the government's going to go after our licenses. Maybe the government's going to prosecute us. They don't know what's going to happen.
PARKS: Yeah, exactly. And so there's so many things that just feel, like, very similar to what we deal with every day.
INSKEEP: I want to say something else about how it reflects our modern times. This is the 1970s, when there was a whole series of scandals that brought down Nixon, that brought down a lot of other people, scandals in the intelligence community, in the FBI, on and on. And there were a series of reforms, laws passed by Congress, norms established, kind of separation of powers in the executive branch, traditions and customs and rules, that the president should not interfere with law enforcement, tell them what to do.
And those changes from the 1970s, which were broadly accepted for a few decades, are the things that the Trump administration has actively worked to pull down in the last year, year and a half, contending that they were always wrong and always an impingement on presidential power and that the president should be able to order everyone to do everything, and they should just follow it.
SCHMITZ: In the years since, can you think of any movies along the lines of "All The President's Men" that deal so explicitly with tackling a White House administration? Miles, let's start with you.
PARKS: The one I thought of - this isn't exactly parallel, but close - is "Good Night, And Good Luck," George Clooney's movie from 2005, which is basically kind of this love letter to broadcast journalism, Edward Murrow kind of digging into Senator McCarthy's communist hunt of the 1950s.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN")
DAVID STRATHAIRN: (As Edward Murrow) This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the results.
PARKS: But I don't know. There is something kind of disturbing about the fact that to make a movie about the sort of golden age of journalism, you do start to see a trend that these movies are focused on 50, 60, 70 years ago. I think that's a little disheartening.
INSKEEP: You know, how's your screenplay coming, Miles?
PARKS: (Laughter) I haven't started it yet, but you'll be the first to read it, Steve.
SCHMITZ: (Laughter) Steve, what do you think?
INSKEEP: I think that's a great insight. I mean, there have been more modern things. There was that movie "Spotlight," which was about an actual investigation of the Catholic Church in Boston and many other places.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SPOTLIGHT")
MARK RUFFALO: (As Michael Rezendes) They knew, and they let it happen to kids, OK? It could have been you. It could have been me. It could have been any of us.
INSKEEP: There is still great journalism being done. There is sometimes great filmmaking based on that journalism. But these classic movies are a reminder of basic standards that I hope we can aspire to.
PARKS: Well, and one of those basic standards, I think, is "Good Night, And Good Luck," "All The President's Men" - both kind of work as movies because at the end, there are consequences. And I think that's one of the tough things about making more modern political journalism movies, is we're kind of in a little bit of a post-consequences era where you don't really see - it's very, very rare to see somebody step down or apologize for just about anything right now. And I think that does make the narrative arc a little bit more difficult.
SCHMITZ: But I guess, you know, it seems like if any presidency is primed, you know, for cinematic treatment, it is Trump's. I feel like if the January 6 attack against the Capitol had occurred back in the days of "All The President's Men," a script would have been greenlit before the first trial began. But so far, no January 6 movie and only a few films have ever come out about Trump.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE APPRENTICE")
JEREMY STRONG: (As Roy Cohn) There we go. What's your name, handsome?
SEBASTIAN STAN: (As Donald Trump) I'm Donald Trump.
SCHMITZ: "The Apprentice," about his relationship with infamous lawyer Roy Cohn.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE APPRENTICE")
STRONG: (As Roy Cohn) That's right. The Roy Cohn from all the papers. That's right.
STAN: (As Donald Trump) Yeah, you're brutal.
SCHMITZ: What do you make of there being so few films made about President Trump and his administration? Steve?
INSKEEP: I have a thought about that, yeah, and it's that we're in the film right now. We're acting it out. We're living it. Maggie Haberman, excellent reporter for The New York Times who is sometimes criticized for excellent reporting - I believe it was Maggie who quoted the president as telling aides in his first term that you need to think of this presidency as a television show, and I am the hero, and I need to have a battle and triumph every day. And that is the communications approach and the strategic approach, if you will, of this White House. So how would you top that with fiction?
SCHMITZ: So basically, we're in a reality television series right now.
INSKEEP: And I don't restrict that solely to the president. There are a lot of public actors who are living their lives this way.
PARKS: I also think "The Apprentice" is actually a pretty good test case when you think about how hard it was to actually even make that movie in the last year of the Trump administration. We've seen the administration kind of try to influence what media can say about President Trump. Especially if the media is going to be about President Trump, you can just only imagine how difficult that would be to deal with the federal government on something like that.
But the other thing I wonder about is also, frankly, audience appetite. Everyone has a phone. Everyone has been getting information, news about President Trump, daily for the last 10 years. If you're paying $15 to go kind of escape from your normal life right now, to go sit in a movie theater and watch a movie, I do genuinely wonder whether people are a little oversaturated on politics right now. And so when they go to the movies, I guess I just wonder about whether that's what they want to see.
SCHMITZ: That was NPR's Steve Inskeep and Miles Parks. Thanks to you both for joining us.
INSKEEP: Really enjoyed it. Thank you.
PARKS: Yeah, thanks, Rob.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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