Oliver Stone’s W. opens tonight. For a little perspective, we decided to watch a different movie made in an era of political transition and economic collapse. Gabriel Over the White House (1933) tells the tale of a slacker president who undergoes a religious conversion, after which he consolidates executive power and sponsors an enormous financial bailout. Sound familiar? It should, FDR personally approved the script, then went on to enact half of the film during his presidency, but the parallels echo through many administrations.
Quint from Ain’t it Cool News tells us what he’s been watching, including a tender love story involving vampires, Let the Right One In, and a rediscovered classic, The Matchmaker.
Karina Longworth and Kevin Kelly give us the scoop on early footage from Watchmen. Will it live up to the hype?
(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)
0:00 - Intro, listener e-mail
6:01 - Quint’s take on W.
8:41 - W.’s 1933 counterpart, Gabriel Over the White House
26:35 - Quint’s media diet
32:57 - Thoughts on the Watchmen teaser footage
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In an email exchange this week with John Damer-a regular FilmCouch listener–he mentioned a movie called Gabriel Over the White House. Just go to this movie’s Wikipedia page, and a movie-dork acid will start to fill your stomach. William Randolph Hearst made a movie where there’s a gangster driveby of the White House and the President predicts last week’s bailout plan?!?!?! You must see it.
You start searching for the DVD and, probably, wind up at Amazon.com. There you’ll find a few secondary vendors selling VHS copies of the movie for over $100. Your heart sinks. A little more digging reveals there’s no copy at the local library. For the more Internet immersed, you may try Archive.org hoping the copyright expired and it’s now in the public domain. No luck. MGM still holds the rights. But there’s a guerrilla spirit of VHS movie collectors out there who won’t let baby be put in the corner.
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