A Face in the Crowd

So, you know, seems like they could they could still do that one.

The one I picked was a movie called A Face in the Crowd, which is a satirical movie about the media.

And Andy Griffith plays a character who's picked off the street and then put on camera and becomes a sensation.

Oh.

climate, but very classic.

I saw Ilya Kazan's A Face in the Crowd with Andy

Griffith.

I love this.

... uh, uh, in favor of purity, meaning the words that envelop the, the nefarious, uh, brutality are always very, uh-

uh-Folksy, you know? And, and in, in terms of it coming back now, uh, you, you know, you just watch A Face in the Crowd, the movie-

Yes

... that's the thing.

Oh

... or a Face in the Crowd?

Face in the Crowd.

What was that called?

Uh, Bud Schulberg produced it.

His brother Stuart worked for NBC, and that's where I met him.

But, uh, uh, yeah, A Face in the Crowd, the greatest political movie, I think, ever made.

Yeah, I watched Face in the Crowd a couple of years ago, and boy, when you look at the, the advent of cable news and the, uh, primetime pod, per- personalities and now streaming and podcast-

Yeah, it feels like a movie that exists within like a tradition of a certain kind of movie or like a lineage.

We spoke a lot about A Face in the Crowd, Ace in the Hole, and people have referenced Network and other films.

It seems like it's a story that gets changed.

over and over every five to 10 years.

which well which like the new york times just had you know well this would have been a couple months back around the uh semi-quincentennial you know and they they had their list of the films that explain america and like where's network network wasn't on there at all and that's right at the top of my list One of the films that explain America.

Another film that explains America, and I think pairs with this one really well from about 25 years, 20, 30 years earlier, which is Elie Kazan's A Face in the Crowd, written by Bud Schulberg, which, if you don't know, stars Andy Griffith as Lonesome Rhodes, someone who... is found in the gutter, a very talented singer who becomes this media personality and eventually political personality because Kazan and Schulberg recognized in 57 i think when that film comes out what chayefsky is writing about which is the way that this medium you know what for them was television for us is just the screen um how it amplifies personality and how powerful and dangerous that force is And so it's easy to look at a film like A Face in the Crowd and say, oh, that it's prophetic.

But again, it's picking up on what was already apparent in the mid-50s, even if people didn't want to realize it, which is that this ability to connect with the mass of people, even more so than radio, although it's, you know, that film charts the transition from radio into television because that's the journey the character makes.

He starts out on radio.

But now we have exported that structure, that way of getting news and information.

We've exported that around the world.

So A Face in the Crowd is one of those films that cannot recommend highly enough And then again, if you like Ned Beatty and you haven't seen Thunderpants, what are you doing with your life? Sure, we could do a whole show about just Thunderpants.

I don't know if you've ever seen that movie, but it is magical.

It's all of us, and it's gonna be really bad if it goes on much longer.

Well, people are gonna look back and think A Face in the Crowd was a documentary.

A Face in the-

I mean, I remember seeing that years ago and thinking, yeah, well, this could never be.

Cause you know, we did an episode cycle about two years ago, all containing movies relating to politics.

Um, like Wag the Dog, A Face in the Crowd.

Actually, three movies all depicting Richard Nixon, apropos.

But, you know, something I think, Emilio, that you said there was, you know, this perspective that a lot of people view elections as things that just kind of happen in the background.