▶ Watch Video: The power of politics on screen Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”.
Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” … Frank Sinatra in “The Manchurian Candidate” … Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in “All the President’s Men.” Big political movies with big stars have long been part of the Hollywood playbook.
Playing the chief of staff to President Michael Douglas, Martin Sheen got his first taste of a fictional White House in 1995 in “The American President.” Four years later, Sheen became the small screen’s most famous commander-in-chief, as President Jed Bartlett on “The West Wing.” He described the role as one of the best moments of his life, “as an actor, as an American.”
“The West Wing” premiered 25 years ago this month. But getting it on the air in today’s contentious political climate would be tricky. “Today, with where we are in our, you know, divided politics, sure, it would be very difficult,” Sheen said. “You have to tell the truth. And nowadays there’s all these questions about, ‘Whose truth?’”
Despite the intense interest in this upcoming election, Hollywood appears to have largely stopped making political movies. “If they’re making them, they’re not showing them to me,” said Michael Lynton, a former studio executive (he ran Sony Pictures Entertainment for 13 years). Show business, he says, is a bottom-line business that today is more risk-averse than ever, relying on big-budget global franchises to drive profits.
Running a studio, Lynton said, makes him answerable to his bosses and his shareholders: “Very much so. And, you know, they want a return, understandably. And that’s a huge piece of the equation. They want a financial return.”
What they don’t want is controversy. Consider “The Apprentice,” the new film tracking Donald Trump’s rise to power in the 1970s and ’80s.
