Movies

With bloated staffs and citizens e-mailing opinions 24/7, Barack Obama and John McCain probably don't feel the need for any more advice. But the presidential candidates could learn a thing or two by watching the best of the movies that have been made about political campaigns.

In The Last Hurrah, a 72-year-old candidate struggles with attempting to seem hip. He's flummoxed by television, which has just come into use in campaigns, the way McCain is with the Internet.

As The Candidate, Robert Redford presents a fresh young face unlike his opponent, whom he shows in ads looking old and fatigued.

Other issues addressed onscreen are as current as today's headlines: whether to resort to negative ads, for one, or the difficulty candidates have not becoming cynical.

So take a break from the conventions and watch Hollywood's vision of political campaigns.

All the King's Men, 1949

Political pitch: Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark, a hick Southern lawyer with noble intentions to help the poor who's recruited to run for governor with no experience. On the campaign trail, he realizes he can manipulate people with his populist message. Willie becomes a power-grubbing governor who keeps dirt on potential rivals and corrupts everyone around him.

Background: Based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that was meant to evoke Huey P. Long, Louisiana's flamboyant Democratic governor in the 1930s whose motto was "every man a king." Long intended to run for president but was assassinated in 1935 at the Louisiana State Capitol.

Best line: "Look, Willie, you yell at them too much. Just tell them you're going to soak the rich guys." — Advice to the governor-to-be on how to give a political speech

The Best Man, 1964

Political pitch: Curious about what a brokered convention might look like? Then this is your movie. Henry Fonda and Cliff Robertson play presidential candidates going down to the wire. While conventioneers yell their lungs out, opposing camps unearth information that could hurt both candidates.

Background: Based on a Broadway play by Gore Vidal, The Best Man is filled with characters who resemble politicians from the 1950s. Fonda's candidate is based on Adlai Stevenson. Robertson's espouses right-wing views like Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy. The former president, whose endorsement both candidates seek, is meant to be Harry Truman. His favorite joke about "striking a blow for freedom" whenever he downs a bourbon is uttered onscreen.

Ronald Reagan screen-tested for one of the candidates but was turned down for "not having the presidential look."

Best line: "Someday we're going to have a Negro president. After that we're going to do something for that other minority and elect a woman." — Former Democratic president to the convention

Blaze, 1989

Political pitch: Paul Newman as an eccentric governor of Louisiana, who frequents strip clubs in New Orleans. One night his eyes fall upon the young Blaze Starr (Lolita Davidovich) taking it all off. So begins a romance that hurts him politically as his opponents use his extramarital affair to block his run for office and his wife uses it as a reason to have him committed to a mental hospital.

Background: Another political movie about a Long boy, this one Earl, brother of Huey. Earl used to refer to himself as "the last of the red hot poppas." He and Blaze really did have a long-term affair. The movie is based on her memoirs.

Best line: Earl: "Would you still love me as much if I wasn't the fine governor of the great state of Louisiana?" Blaze: "Would you still love me if I had little (breasts) and worked in a fish house?"

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 1939

Political pitch: When a senator from Montana dies in the middle of his term, the state's political machine chooses the naive head of the Boy Rangers for the job under the assumption that he will keep his mouth shut and, above all, not do anything to oppose the dam they want to build that will make them all rich. But the new senator, Jefferson Smith, turns out to have a mind of his own and a plan for a boys' camp on the land where the dam is to be built. Smith makes his case during a dramatic filibuster.

Background: Based on the novel The Gentleman From Montana, the movie is mostly fictional. But the lanky body of star Jimmy Stewart is sure to remind you of one of the current presidential candidates.

Best line: "You think I'm licked. You all think I'm licked. Well, I'm not licked. I'm going to stay right here and fight for this lost cause, even if the room gets filled with lies like these and the Taylors and all their armies come marching into this place." — Smith at a low point in the filibuster

Bulworth, 1998

Political pitch: Warren Beatty stars as California Sen. Jay Billington Bulworth, who, realizing that his constituency no longer supports the liberal agenda he's advocated since the 1960s, takes out a $10 million life insurance policy and a contract on his own life. Knowing his days are numbered frees him up to speak the truth — or rap about it — no matter how offensive it may be.

Background: Beatty, who wrote, directed and produced the movie, based it very loosely on his own experience as a Democratic powerbroker in the presidential campaigns of Robert Kennedy, George McGovern and Gary Hart. The truths that come tumbling out of Bulworth's mouth closely approximate Beatty's beliefs. Politics were so much on his mind that he toyed with the idea of running for president in 2000.

Best line: "All we need is a voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep ... everybody till they're all the same color." — Bulworth on the campaign trail