RICHARD NIXON AND THE LYING AUTHORITY FIGURES IN SOME OF MY FAVORITE MOVIES

Sharp suit, gray hair, crooked smile: one of the first character-types I became aware was this lying authority figure. I didn't know it when I was a child, but each of these minor villains are stand-ins for Richard Nixon. See here: 

Mayor Larry Vaughn from JAWS (1975) 

The Mayor makes his position clear: I'm not closing the beaches. We never learn Vaughn's political affiliations, but he's a classic portrait of an empty suit (scripted by counter-culture comedian Carl Gottlieb), spouting platitudes like "Amity, as you know, means friendship." His greed and denial are a deadly combination. He's an archetypical Nixon figure, knowingly lying to the public about a real danger. 

 Mr. Lewis Teague from POLTERGEIST (1982) 

There's a lot of scary stuff in POLTERGEIST: creepy clowns, carnivorous trees, a flying Hulk action figure. But none of these would be possible without Teague. He's the one who built the the Cuesta Verde houses on top of a cemetery -- and he only moved the headstones (not the bodies.) Teague is to the ghosts what Mayor Vaughn is to the shark; the enabler of evil. Again, I didn't realize it at the time, but he embodies the public's distrust of leaders after Watergate and Vietnam. 

Dr. James Kelloway in CAPRICORN ONE (1978) 

Years of playing Mark Twain prepared Hal Holbrook for one of my favorite film monologues: his deliberately slowly paced speech perfectly sets up the story of CAPRICORN ONE. Holbrook actually allows us to sympathize with the devious NASA scientist. True to the post-Vietnam era: He's not a bad man, but he does questionable things. 

D.A. Thomas Pain in THE NIGHT STALKER (1972) 

Revisiting this cult favorite I figured the District Attorney fit the bill: He's threatens the freedom of the press and works with the police force to withhold information and cover up the murders of a Las Vegas vampire. And he's a silver-haired suit. The first Kolchak movie aired 5 months before the Watergate break-in, but he still counts! 

Dean Vernon Wormer in NATIONAL LAMPOON'S ANIMAL HOUSE (1978) 

In his 2006 memoir The Real Animal House author Chris Miller identifies the real-life inspirations for his stories of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity. At the end of the book he defends Dartmoth College Dean Seymore, noting that the real-life Dean was not the source material for Wormer: "Nixon was Dean Wormer. Dean Seymore was always a great guy. And his wife is not Marion Wormer!" Thanks for clearing that up, Chris. [This seems like as good a place as any to mention that John Landis' first choice for the evil college dean was DRAGNET's Jack Webb. Mr. Webb turned it down because he thought the script poked fun at authority. Yeesh!]

* * * 

So there you have it. The Nixons of my youth. 

Full-disclosure: this blog post was written to be a footnote to another article I wrote about Vietnam movies for IFC.com. 


RELATED POSTS 

My Favorite Flask - Mrs. Wormer in Animal House

My Favorite Flask - Mrs. Wormer in ANIMAL HOUSE

Occasionally someone I've never met asks me to contribute writing work as a "pop culture expert." That's because I wrote a (mostly) satirical essay about being a "pop culture expert" and my name comes up when you google the damn phrase. (Read it here) 

One of the most recent requests came from a flask website looking for short entries about flasks in pop culture. Here's what I wrote.  

FLASK CAMEO: NATIONAL LAMPOON’S ANIMAL HOUSE

National Lampoon’s Animal House features all kinds of drinking, but one of the more pointed portrayals comes from Verna Bloom’s Mrs. Wormer.

As the wife of the evil college Dean, Marian Wormer is part of “the establishment”, but she doesn’t pass up an invitation to a frat house toga party. Mrs. Wormer arrives late (having just come from the “God-damn senior honors dinner”) and crashes her Buick station wagon in front of the Delta House. Before entering the party, she takes a long pull from the silver flask stashed in her purse.

In a booze-heavy movie, Mrs. Wormer is the only character to use a flask. The snobs from the Omega House drink (imported?) beer from ceramic German mugs, while the Delta slobs guzzle Jack Daniels straight from the bottle. But Mrs. Wormer’s thirst is something that’s kept concealed. The flask reflects a bored housewife’s double-life. Unlike the joyless villains in the movies, Mrs. Wormer has a vice (and not just screwing a college kid who’s almost old enough to be her son) – her drinking humanizes her and makes the Dean’s wife much more relatable.

The Animal House novelization includes Mrs. Wormer in the extended “Where Are They Now?” post-script, noting that she went on to five unsuccessful stints in A.A. Wherever she is now, her flask is probably with her. 

*  *  *

post-script: 

The editor was so happy with my writing, he sent me a free flask. I don't drink, so I'm including it as a trivia prize at Saturday's ZOMBIE show. Go here for details and tickets. 

Sex, Love and "Bachelor Party"

As a pre-teen boy with premium movie channels I had access to all the mature-audience entertainment that 1980’s cable had to offer.  I watched everything from Hardbodies to Once Upon a Time In America (the long version). At school my friends would swap stories of seeing late-night nudity, graphic murders and gross-yet-mesmerizing sex scenes. But there was one movie where even the most permissive parents drew the line: Bachelor Party, a raunchy comedy about a bunch of guys having one last blowout before Rick (Tom Hanks) marries Debbie (Tawny Kitaen).

I managed to see this film when I was 12, and it was no wonder Moms and Dads didn’t want their kids seeing it. Bachelor Party features all kinds of debauchery: a girl-on-girl sex show with whips and vibrators, party balloons made from condoms, a donkey snorts cocaine, one party guest mistakenly screws a transvestite, a Hindu pimp threatens to have a man’s testicles cut-off, and a stuffy mother-in-law-to-be mistakes a man’s 13-inch penis for a foot-long hot-dog.  (Not to mention half-a-dozen signature gags shamelessly lifted from National Lampoon’s Animal House, and a gratuitous musical performance by Adrian Zmed!) But the most perplexing