“It’s gonna be different now. They’ll never lie to us again.”
It seems odd to start at the ending of “Dick,” the 1999 Watergate satire starring Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams and now celebrating its 25th anniversary. But those final lines, spoken by Dunst’s Betsy to Williams’ Arlene, the teen girl duo whom the movie posits as the real political masterminds behind the Deep Throat informant that helped bring down Richard “Dick” Nixon, hit different when rewatching “Dick” in the current political climate.
“It always got a knowing laugh,” said director Andrew Fleming, speaking to IndieWire during the same week of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump’s life and President Joe Biden announcing he was not seeking reelection, instead endorsing his Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee.
“We knew at the time that that was meant to be a joke,” said screenwriter Sheryl Longin, who co-wrote the script with Fleming.
It seems odd to start at the ending of “Dick,” the 1999 Watergate satire starring Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams and now celebrating its 25th anniversary. But those final lines, spoken by Dunst’s Betsy to Williams’ Arlene, the teen girl duo whom the movie posits as the real political masterminds behind the Deep Throat informant that helped bring down Richard “Dick” Nixon, hit different when rewatching “Dick” in the current political climate.
“It always got a knowing laugh,” said director Andrew Fleming, speaking to IndieWire during the same week of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump’s life and President Joe Biden announcing he was not seeking reelection, instead endorsing his Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee.
“We knew at the time that that was meant to be a joke,” said screenwriter Sheryl Longin, who co-wrote the script with Fleming.
- 8/6/2024
- by Scarlett Harris
- Indiewire
Click here to read the full article.
Fascination over the mysterious identity of Deep Throat, the Watergate whistleblower, helped fuel the success of 1976’s Oscar-winning All the President’s Men, but it also led to another, far unlikelier project: 1999’s Dick, a bouncy comedy about two teen girls who unwittingly find themselves at the center of the scandal.
Dick focused on Betsy (Kirsten Dunst) and Arlene (Michelle Williams), a pair of 15-year-old best friends who wind up as President Nixon’s dog walkers and, somehow, become famed informant Deep Throat for Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward (Will Ferrell) and Carl Bernstein (Bruce McCulloch). (It wasn’t until 2005 that former FBI associate director Mark Felt revealed himself to have been the Post’s anonymous source.)
Ahead of the 50th anniversary of the break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters on June 17, 1972, which led to Nixon’s resignation following his administration’s efforts to cover up its involvement,...
Fascination over the mysterious identity of Deep Throat, the Watergate whistleblower, helped fuel the success of 1976’s Oscar-winning All the President’s Men, but it also led to another, far unlikelier project: 1999’s Dick, a bouncy comedy about two teen girls who unwittingly find themselves at the center of the scandal.
Dick focused on Betsy (Kirsten Dunst) and Arlene (Michelle Williams), a pair of 15-year-old best friends who wind up as President Nixon’s dog walkers and, somehow, become famed informant Deep Throat for Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward (Will Ferrell) and Carl Bernstein (Bruce McCulloch). (It wasn’t until 2005 that former FBI associate director Mark Felt revealed himself to have been the Post’s anonymous source.)
Ahead of the 50th anniversary of the break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters on June 17, 1972, which led to Nixon’s resignation following his administration’s efforts to cover up its involvement,...
- 6/17/2022
- by Ryan Gajewski
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Film review: 'Dick'
"Dick" takes the dumb-blonde comedy into the arena of political satire with mostly positive results. Two 15-year-old airheads find themselves embroiled in the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s when President Nixon appoints them as his official dog walkers. The comic interplay of fact and fiction will strike a resonant cord with those who recall a previous era's presidential scandal.
But the challenge facing this teen-oriented Columbia Pictures release is to find young people who know or care who John Dean and Bob Haldeman were. "Dick" is no slam-dunk for studio marketers. Watergate predates the age range of most in the target audience, and the film should have little appeal overseas with the possible exception of Western Europe.
Director Andrew Fleming, who co-wrote the script with Sheryl Longin, has upheld the traditions of the dumb-blonde comedy from Judy Holliday's glorious tootsie in "Born Yesterday" to Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow's ditzy duo in "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion." While operating on brain waves only the most sensitive instrumentation can detect, these movie dumb blondes nevertheless cling to a sterner moral code than the cynical souls that surround them.
Thus, while "Dick"'s Arlene (Michelle Williams) and Betsy (Kirsten Dunst) initially impact the course of history quite unwittingly, when they come to realize that rampant criminality infects much of the Nixon White House, they angrily take matters into their own hands.
According to this historic revisionism, Arlene -- who lives with her mother (Teri Garr) in the Watergate complex -- and best friend Betsy accidentally trip up G. Gordon Liddy's plumbers squad during their break-in at Democratic National Headquarters. When Liddy (Harry Shearer) spots the duo the next day on a White House tour when they stumble into a paper shredding room, Tricky Dick (Dan Hedaya) panics.
In an effort to find out how much the girls know, Nixon appoints them to walk his dog Checkers. (Since Checkers had been dead for years at that point, the dog presumably is Checkers' great-grandson.)
Fleming gets comic mileage out of bringing the dog walkers into key events of the day. The girls argue foreign policy with Henry Kissinger (Saul Rubinek), talk Dick into ending the Vietnam War and inspire a U.S.-Soviet treaty by introducing spiked cookies into the negotiations.
"Dick" views all the president's men as moral idiots of the first order. But their nemeses, Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward (Will Ferrell) and Carl Bernstein (Bruce McCulloch), are similarly mocked as egomaniacal bumblers. The scribes dub the girls "Deep Throat" not so much to protect their identity as to cover up their embarrassment over the source for the news stories that brings down a presidency. Indeed, a few scenes are lifted from Alan J. Pakula's "All the President's Men", only with an entirely new spin.
"Dick", at times, plays like an extended "Saturday Night Live" sketch with lulls where the comedy gets stretched too thin. But the film keeps coming up with clever twists on history and never makes the mistake of taking itself too seriously.
Indeed, by casting actors who bear only a faint resemblance to the familiar political faces from the 1970s, Fleming achieves a cartoonish look and tone that suit the comic spirit.
"Dick" is driven by a rocking soundtrack of period songs and an amusing exploration of the era's fashions. The political education of Betsy and Arlene serves to radicalize their wardrobe: Their frumpy high school get-ups give way into hippie regalia and flower-power rags.
Dunst gives a sexy flip to Betsy's giddy determination, and Williams amusingly conveys the hero-worshipping propensities that propel her to overcome an innate shyness.
Williams is also undoubtedly the only actress in history asked to portray a female who sees Nixon as a romantic figure. That she does so convincingly is a definite tribute to the actress.
DICK
Sony Pictures Entertainment
Phoenix Pictures presents
a Pacific Western production
Producer:Gale Anne Hurd
Director:Andrew Fleming
Writers:Andrew Fleming & Sheryl Longin
Executive producer:David Coatsworth
Director of photography:Alexander Gruszynski
Production designer:Barbara Dunphy
Music:John Debney
Costumer designer:Deborah Everton
Editor:Mia Goldman
Color/stereo
Cast:
Betsy Jobs:Kirsten Dunst
Arlene Lorenzo:Michelle Williams
Dick:Dan Hedaya
Bob Woodward:Will Ferrell
Carl Bernstein:Bruce McCulloch
Helen Lorenzo:Teri Garr
Bob Haldeman:Dave Foley
John Dean:Jim Breuer
G. Gordon Liddy:Harry Shearer
Henry Kissinger:Saul Rubinek
Running time -- 90 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
But the challenge facing this teen-oriented Columbia Pictures release is to find young people who know or care who John Dean and Bob Haldeman were. "Dick" is no slam-dunk for studio marketers. Watergate predates the age range of most in the target audience, and the film should have little appeal overseas with the possible exception of Western Europe.
Director Andrew Fleming, who co-wrote the script with Sheryl Longin, has upheld the traditions of the dumb-blonde comedy from Judy Holliday's glorious tootsie in "Born Yesterday" to Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow's ditzy duo in "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion." While operating on brain waves only the most sensitive instrumentation can detect, these movie dumb blondes nevertheless cling to a sterner moral code than the cynical souls that surround them.
Thus, while "Dick"'s Arlene (Michelle Williams) and Betsy (Kirsten Dunst) initially impact the course of history quite unwittingly, when they come to realize that rampant criminality infects much of the Nixon White House, they angrily take matters into their own hands.
According to this historic revisionism, Arlene -- who lives with her mother (Teri Garr) in the Watergate complex -- and best friend Betsy accidentally trip up G. Gordon Liddy's plumbers squad during their break-in at Democratic National Headquarters. When Liddy (Harry Shearer) spots the duo the next day on a White House tour when they stumble into a paper shredding room, Tricky Dick (Dan Hedaya) panics.
In an effort to find out how much the girls know, Nixon appoints them to walk his dog Checkers. (Since Checkers had been dead for years at that point, the dog presumably is Checkers' great-grandson.)
Fleming gets comic mileage out of bringing the dog walkers into key events of the day. The girls argue foreign policy with Henry Kissinger (Saul Rubinek), talk Dick into ending the Vietnam War and inspire a U.S.-Soviet treaty by introducing spiked cookies into the negotiations.
"Dick" views all the president's men as moral idiots of the first order. But their nemeses, Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward (Will Ferrell) and Carl Bernstein (Bruce McCulloch), are similarly mocked as egomaniacal bumblers. The scribes dub the girls "Deep Throat" not so much to protect their identity as to cover up their embarrassment over the source for the news stories that brings down a presidency. Indeed, a few scenes are lifted from Alan J. Pakula's "All the President's Men", only with an entirely new spin.
"Dick", at times, plays like an extended "Saturday Night Live" sketch with lulls where the comedy gets stretched too thin. But the film keeps coming up with clever twists on history and never makes the mistake of taking itself too seriously.
Indeed, by casting actors who bear only a faint resemblance to the familiar political faces from the 1970s, Fleming achieves a cartoonish look and tone that suit the comic spirit.
"Dick" is driven by a rocking soundtrack of period songs and an amusing exploration of the era's fashions. The political education of Betsy and Arlene serves to radicalize their wardrobe: Their frumpy high school get-ups give way into hippie regalia and flower-power rags.
Dunst gives a sexy flip to Betsy's giddy determination, and Williams amusingly conveys the hero-worshipping propensities that propel her to overcome an innate shyness.
Williams is also undoubtedly the only actress in history asked to portray a female who sees Nixon as a romantic figure. That she does so convincingly is a definite tribute to the actress.
DICK
Sony Pictures Entertainment
Phoenix Pictures presents
a Pacific Western production
Producer:Gale Anne Hurd
Director:Andrew Fleming
Writers:Andrew Fleming & Sheryl Longin
Executive producer:David Coatsworth
Director of photography:Alexander Gruszynski
Production designer:Barbara Dunphy
Music:John Debney
Costumer designer:Deborah Everton
Editor:Mia Goldman
Color/stereo
Cast:
Betsy Jobs:Kirsten Dunst
Arlene Lorenzo:Michelle Williams
Dick:Dan Hedaya
Bob Woodward:Will Ferrell
Carl Bernstein:Bruce McCulloch
Helen Lorenzo:Teri Garr
Bob Haldeman:Dave Foley
John Dean:Jim Breuer
G. Gordon Liddy:Harry Shearer
Henry Kissinger:Saul Rubinek
Running time -- 90 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
- 7/28/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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