Primary colors
Welcome to Screen Gems, our weekend delves into adjacent queer and queer headlines from the past that deserve a watch or re-watch.
Eerie: primary colors
Author Joe Klein caused a sensation in 1996 when he published Primary Colors, his 1992 Clinton presidential campaign novel under an anonymous nickname. The book sparked a frenzy as detectives and reporters attempted to uncover the author’s true identity and which events in the novel were actually true to reality.
By 1998, the media unmasked Klien, although that did not diminish the hype for the film adaptation, directed by film legend Mike Nichols. John Travolta, in the course of his career, plays Jack Stanton, a southern governor known for his incredible interpersonal skills, flirtations and presidential ambitions. He hires Henry Burton (Adrian Lester) to work on his campaign, and Burton immediately feels like he has wandered into an insane asylum. Burton’s wife, Susan (Emma Thompson), a brilliant lawyer, constantly has to hide her anger and embarrassment over her husband’s affairs. Campaign strategist Richard Jemmons (Billy Bob Thorton) pontificates about gaining political advantage at all costs. Libby Holden (Kathy Bates), a butch lesbian “fixer” joins the campaign to quash reports of Stanton’s feminization. Burton wants to believe in the champions of utopian America Jack Stanton but begins to wonder if the candidate only cares about power.
No filmmaker has ever directed actors better than Mike Nichols, and Primary Colors presents a cast at its best. Given the pedigree here, that says something. It also helps that Nichols has the massive cojones to raise questions not just about the Clinton presidency, but about American democracy as a whole: maybe, at the end of the day, it’s really about winning at all costs. With the future of a nation at stake, does the struggle for power justify a tactic, no matter how dirty?
Primary Colors also doesn’t shy away from its weird characters or the uncomfortable role they played in ’90s politics. Kathy Bates nearly steals the film with her Oscar-nominated performance as the ruthless Libby. The film also features another extremely underrated actor as a queer character; we can’t identify it here, as that would reveal one of the film’s main twists.
As the Clinton presidency is on the verge of a re-examination in the wake of American Crime Story: Impeachment, we suggest giving the primary colors a fresh new look. It remains one of the best films ever made on American politics, one packed with sharp and hilarious observations on the system, and the other with ethical questions as elusive as they are intriguing.
Streaming on Amazon, Hulu, iTunes, YouTube and VUDU.
