I'm just going to go where my gut takes
me on this one: for the second night in a row, I'm thinking of the
movie The American President.
Last night during the debate I was
thinking of it because of Michael Douglas's great line at the end of
the film. Douglas plays President Andrew Shepherd, and all through the film his smarmy would-be usurper, Richard Dreyfuss's Bob Rumsen,
keeps closing speeches with “My name is Bob Rumsen and I'm
running for President!” and in the movie's finale, at the end of Douglas's
kick-ass, take-name speech, Douglas looks at the camera and goes,
“I'm Andrew Shepherd and I am the President.”
I saw Obama do a little of that last
night, and as an unabashed supporter of his I was glad. “That's
the kind of decision you make as Commander-in-Chief.” He made sure a couple of times to end on a “as President,
that's what I do” note, which calls subtle-ish attention to the fact that
Romney is not President.
But I digress. What reminded me of The
American President in the Richard III clip was Anette Bening dancing! She dances with an
important man! Her dress is backless! And the camera smoothly follows her
back around to show how the whole room watches her! Here is the only
youtube clip I could easily find that features the American
President's Dance Scene: the preview of the film, around 1:39:
It's not a completely untoward
association; The American President was released on November 17th,
1995, within six weeks of the release of Richard III on December
29th, where there is again Annette Bening dancing with an important
man! Her dress is backless! And the camera smoothly follows her
back around to show how the whole room watches her! I wonder if
anyone saw both the films in theaters, one in November and one in
December, and thought, “We get it. Annette Bening's got a nice
back.”
Certainly Benning as Elizabeth is laughing and hugging a child by :20 and dancing all-eyes-on-her by 2:30, so even as someone who (as ever) doesn't know the ins and outs of the story of Richard III or seen the film, I figure she figures. Prominently. What I found myself curious about was whether the production teams of each film had done their dramaturgical homework--if each knew of the other flick. My father is a film editor, and growing up I was always hearing about a great project getting red-lighted because there was a similar film coming out that summer, or people wouldn't buy Bruce Willis as a geek after that hit-man franchise came out the month before, or whathaveyou. The bankability of a star is constantly dancing with what studios know or suspect about the timing of a film's release, which is something that goes undiscussed--“behind the scenes” in a way—as is the fact that movies are always talking to other movies that come out around the same time. They're jockeying for position and casting themselves in opposition to the other movies. It's kind of a party foul to realize, "Oh man, we're both movies in which Annette Bening dances in a backless dress with an important man, and we both use camera work that accomplishes in one go Bening as focal point character of a movie and also a sense of lavishness", etc. The dramaturgy there, the luxuriousness of the ballroom dancefloor, a la the Disney animated version of Beauty and the Beast (or maybe it's just the cinematography; I'm still confused by what dramaturgy is, exactly) is scriptive: we as an audience knew we're to be swept off our feet, into another world, the way Annette sweeps across the floor and the camera sweeps after her. And does the fact that she does so in more than one movie in less than two months contribute at all to the idea of Schechner's “twice-behaved” that Davis and Hodgdon both include in their respective discussions of theatricality and replicating? Is this "fourthly-behaved"? Is Annette Bening fourthly-behaving herself?
Certainly Benning as Elizabeth is laughing and hugging a child by :20 and dancing all-eyes-on-her by 2:30, so even as someone who (as ever) doesn't know the ins and outs of the story of Richard III or seen the film, I figure she figures. Prominently. What I found myself curious about was whether the production teams of each film had done their dramaturgical homework--if each knew of the other flick. My father is a film editor, and growing up I was always hearing about a great project getting red-lighted because there was a similar film coming out that summer, or people wouldn't buy Bruce Willis as a geek after that hit-man franchise came out the month before, or whathaveyou. The bankability of a star is constantly dancing with what studios know or suspect about the timing of a film's release, which is something that goes undiscussed--“behind the scenes” in a way—as is the fact that movies are always talking to other movies that come out around the same time. They're jockeying for position and casting themselves in opposition to the other movies. It's kind of a party foul to realize, "Oh man, we're both movies in which Annette Bening dances in a backless dress with an important man, and we both use camera work that accomplishes in one go Bening as focal point character of a movie and also a sense of lavishness", etc. The dramaturgy there, the luxuriousness of the ballroom dancefloor, a la the Disney animated version of Beauty and the Beast (or maybe it's just the cinematography; I'm still confused by what dramaturgy is, exactly) is scriptive: we as an audience knew we're to be swept off our feet, into another world, the way Annette sweeps across the floor and the camera sweeps after her. And does the fact that she does so in more than one movie in less than two months contribute at all to the idea of Schechner's “twice-behaved” that Davis and Hodgdon both include in their respective discussions of theatricality and replicating? Is this "fourthly-behaved"? Is Annette Bening fourthly-behaving herself?
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