Movie Report: Swing Voter

Your Humble Blogger watched the first half-hour or so of Swing Vote, a truly terrible movie that doesn’t appear to actually be a remake of The Great Man Votes, despite having the same plot: a useless old drunken failure (and single father) is somehow the vote that gets to decide the election, and regains the respect of the town and his child in the process. I haven’t seen the earlier movie, with the great John Barrymore as the useless old drunken failure; in the new movie it’s Kevin Costner as the useless drunken old failure. I would have expected him to be a good choice, able to play the part unsympathetically, while the audience still likes him, because he is, after all, Kevin Costner. Sadly, no—at least not for me. Not enough to make me sit through the rest of the thing, anyway.

Digression: YHB really does like movies, now and then, you know. I just watched Wild Target, a sort of comedy thriller with Bill Nighy as a ludicrously precise hit-man and a fantastic supporting cast, including Martin Watson Bilbo Freeman hilariously playing a rival assassin. The whole thing is done with a lovely dry wit, Bill Nighy is predictably marvelous, and Imelda May rips it up on the soundtrack. I could gripe about a few minor things, but seriously, I had a great time. End Digression.

Anyway, I was wondering what would make the idea of the movie work. I mean, in some ways it’s a great idea for a movie: a Big Election comes down to One Vote. How exciting is that? And the redemption is tied in to the ideal of democracy, and all that good stuff. On the other hand, your basic useless drunken old failure role is not really a very good protagonist, particularly if at the beginning he doesn’t actually have strong feelings about the franchise. What I’m saying is, what does the useless drunken old failure want? The answer is generally not a vote in the election. And while the voting business can wake the useless drunken old failure up to wanting something and attempting to get it, thus creating a plot, it’s a long way in to the picture before that happens. And by then, I’ve shut it off.

So, here’s my idea for the movie: it’s not about the useless drunken old failure at all. Make it about the rival campaign managers. I admit that I am influenced by the casting of the recent version, with Nathan Lane and Stan Tucci in the roles. Unfortunately, I only saw glimpses of them (or of the candidates), and while they were great, they weren’t particularly worth watching the rest of the movie for. Also, they appeared to be playing very similar characters—Mr. Tucci was playing a smooth, cynical manipulator and Mr. Lane was playing a rumpled, cynical manipulator. That was about it. Not a contrast worth a movie.

How about this, though—Campaign Manager A is that cynical manipulator, the one who believes, in his fundamental heart of hearts, that the whole exercise of democracy is about herding sheep. Campaign Manager B, on the other hand, is a bit of an idealist, who thinks that elections are about the will of the people, presenting them with policy options and asking them to choose. He also believes that his Party’s policy preferences are clearly superior, and that people who don’t support them must not really understand them; his opposite has no interest in policy at all, and is happier with a choice of suits or theme songs.

Now, to make this more interesting, you probably want candidates who cross up their managers: Cynical manager has a competent candidate, a bit of a policy wonk, with an instinct to explain the choices and trust this Last Voter to make the Right Choice. Idealistic manager has an ambitious empty suit that he can’t stand (but who he trusts will vote the Party’s preferences); that candidate wants to pander to whatever this Last Voter wants, no matter how ludicrous.

I think, now it comes up, that it is a mistake to set this in a Presidential election. I understand the point of making the stakes as high as possible, but it does limit the potentially plausible actions of what at that level would be consummate professionals. I think you would want the race to be for governor of a small state—perhaps the incumbent has just been appointed Vice-President or something, so it’s a snap special election. Or the prize could be the mayor’s chair of a medium-sized city. Something big enough to be interesting, but small enough for some improvisation.

In talking about this with my Best Reader, it occurred to me that in the old days, if Hawks or Lubitsch or Wilder were making it, they might well set the thing in Herzoslovakia or Upper Schliessburg. That might well be awesome, setting the thing in the first post-overthrow election in Nozakstan, where the candidates have brought in American campaign managers. You would have to be careful to avoid the quaint foreign village thing, though.

In the quaint American village, what I think would work really well is that the dueling campaign managers are unable to find who that Last Voter is—the quirky denizens of Cicely, Alaska draw together and refuse to violate the law that keeps the ballots secret. The increasingly frustrated managers keep meeting in the bar (or diner or whatever), and the plot is driven by the relationship between the two adversaries/colleagues as they try to find the Last Voter or at any rate influence the Last Vote. One way to manage the play is to make it into an increasingly fast-paced farce as the denizens smuggle the Voter out through the bathroom as the Campaigns come in simultaneously through the front and back doors. That sort of thing. Round in circles. Possibly our Last Voter forms friendships with the candidates (thumb-twiddling until the thing can be settled) who don’t of course know that their fates depend on it.

Another way, and one which intrigues me, is to take the Last Voter out of it completely. The Campaigns, their managers and candidates and supporting staff, blow into town causing a huge ruckus, and after eighty minutes of complete inability to identify the Last Voter, are completely bamboozled, with neither them nor the audience never knowing if the Last Voter was the butch barmaid, the businesslike banker, the brawny builder, the bosomy bookbinder or the boring busdriver. In this version, as we get our dose of Americana and idealistic Democracy, the point of the movie is the point of the whole great experiment, that in the end, the important thing is that everybody’s vote does count the same.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.