The West Wing Weekly

Starring Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, and Kevin Kline. This one was a Patreon subscriber pick! Additional materials: an article about the making of Dave Kevin Kline plays Mr. Fischoeder in Bob's Burgers "clever" as an insult in Fight Club 

Is The Candidate, in fact, the anti-West Wing? A political story that ends not with a bang, but with a question of existential dread. Interview with screenwriter Jeremy Larner in Brooklyn Magazine The trailer for Downhill Racer (1969) Jerry Seinfeld on Letterman: "You're rooting for clothes." Let us know what you thought of the film!

Did this movie predict Trump back in 1957? We discuss the film debut of Andy Griffith in a role so dark, anyone who knows the Andy Griffith show might experience some uncomfortable dissonance. Some goodies that came up in our conversation: The dance of joy from "Perfect Strangers" This essay about the film on the Criterion website Albert Brooks and Holly Hunter in a great scene from Broadcast News The 'ten-word-answer' scene from The West Wing What did you think of the film, on a scale of 1–10 grains of inert matter? Let us know!

This week, we dive deeper into the role of the fourth estate, as we discuss Network, the Oscar-winning film that was meant to be a wild satire at the time it was released, but ended up uncannily predicting the future. Some additional reading material: Mad As Hell, Dave Itzkoff's book about Network Directors' Guild of America post about Sidney Lumet at a 2003 screening of Network Vanity Fair article on the legacy of Network (which includes thoughts from Aaron Sorkin)