Now that I have seen “Bulworth,” I wish to thank all of my friends and neighbors who warned me against it.
My liberal friends warned me that this comedy, which Warren Beatty directed, produced, co-wrote and starred in, was full of negative stereotypes about poor, urban blacks and Hollywood Jews. My conservative friends warned me that it was full of simplistic, Hollywood liberal answers to the serious racial, economic and political problems of our time.
In other words, this movie had something to offend everyone, so, of course, I had to see it. Some of the best art I have seen or read has aroused somebody, somewhere to censor it as offensive.
But the offense has to be worth it. So I wondered: Is Bulworth worth it? Or is it just plain bull?
More Top Picks Best Crepe Makers For Home
It turns out to be quite a bit of both, which is why I want to thank my friends for their warnings. They lowered my expectations enough for me to be able to appreciate what Warren Beatty is trying to do, even as I gritted my teeth and moaned out loud over his failures to do it.
The biggest and best executed idea at the heart of “Bulworth” is its premise: What if a politician decided to start telling various constituencies and “special interests” what he really thought of them?
I told you it was a comedy.
Sen. Jay Billington Bulworth, in the days leading up to the 1996 California primary, is depressed by how far he has drifted from the ideals of his youth. In the movie, Bulworth’s idealistic youth is represented by actual photos of a young Warren Beatty with Robert Kennedy, Black Panther Party leader Huey Newton and other fixtures of ’60s idealism.
Missing, I noticed, was the now-famous shot of Beatty with Gary Hart, a photo that received wide circulation when Hart’s presidential ambitions foundered in an infidelity scandal.
Anyway, Bulworth feels suicidal. He takes out a contract on his life so his spoiled daughter and cheating wife can collect big insurance money. With nothing to lose in his final hours, he becomes Mr. Candor. This gives Beatty, as Bulworth, a license to say things he’d love to say in real life, one presumes, were he not bound by political and social correctness.
When asked at a black Los Angeles church what happened to the aid politicians promised after the 1992 riots, Bulworth explains that he and Presidents Bush and Clinton and others visited the riot zone, got their pictures taken and promptly returned to Washington and forgot about it.
When this draws audible gasps and grumblings, he proceeds to tell his audience that they are never going to get anywhere until they put down their malt liquor and chicken wings and find better leaders than “a running back who killed his wife.”
Later, at a Beverly Hills fundraiser attended mostly by wealthy Jews who are connected to the film industry, Bulworth ridicules their need for him to say something disparaging about Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan and chastises them for creating a lot of crummy movies just to make more money. “Don’t you have enough?” he says.
One wonders if Beatty has enough? If so, I want him to feel free to give me any excess. It might help both of us sleep better at night.
In other words, this movie’s view of the inner-city offers a Beverly Hills liberal’s view of black community life while its wealthy characters look like the worst ghetto stereotypes of what life must be like in Beverly Hills. If Beatty’s purpose was to help bring people together, he has succeeded only in offering us more stereotypical reasons to be frightened and resentful of each other.
I noticed in the credits that a Frank Capra III gets a production credit. That’s appropriate, since “Bulworth” offers a ’90s version of the sensibility that guided the original Frank Capra to create “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and other visions of patriotic optimism.
Like Capra, Beatty figures that most Americans desperately want their political system to work. They long for an honest Mr. Smith to prevail over the greedheads and special interests. They also long for love to conquer all (including class, race and the yawning chasm amazingly crossed by Beatty’s 60ish Bulworth and Halle Berry’s twentysomething ghetto homegirl.)
And, like Capra, Beatty is betting that, if Americans can’t see this in real life, they’ll pay to see it in a movie.
So why do I still like the movie? Because, unlike Capra, Beatty is not afraid to shake us up to draw our attention to some serious issues. As cinema polemics go, it has serious flaws. But compared to the mindless stuff Hollywood produces most of the time, it looks like sheer genius.