Holy Crap! It’s election day in America! Being an Eastern Canadian I almost did not make this connection until a couple of days ago where at that point I had a completely different thread prompt ready to go. What is life without a little spontaneity, throwing all caution to the wind and saying sure I will throw out that post I worked on for two weeks and write a new one up in a couple of hours, after all what is the worst that could happen (You know what, this one time I probably should not have said that)? In this spirit I have decided to bump that prompt to next week in favour of topical synergy input (Look I have been having to take leadership courses at work and they want me work on my execuspeak).

Making movies about politics or in general how things are/were run can be tricky. If based on real life events you want to make sure you put in some effort to get the facts right, or failing that go for hilariously wrong so at least people will think you are doing it on purpose. Dramas and historical movies often run the risk of being too dry or boring, while if a comedy gets too zany it may lose either it’s message or it’s impact.

For my money one of my favourites has been Wag The Dog. In the middle of an election campaign where the incumbent president is not doing well one of his fixers hires a Hollywood producer to film a fake crisis for the President to respond to and then as things go awry they respond to each new crisis with bigger and more far-fetched tactics (also it has Willie Nelson). It was the second free movie I ever went to during my time as a theatre employee and I thought it was a fun satire with a little tiny bit of bite as well as a bit of darkness (full disclosure: haven’t seen it since release).

Politics/governance movies need not be limited to American or presidential movies. Maybe you really like movies where mayoral candidates have pro-shark attack platforms (say what you want he did get re-elected). Dictators, kings, Mr. Smiths who go to Washington, Prime Ministers, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords all count (Was there ever a documentary about that town Libertarians took over that eventually got overrun with bears?). So with all that being said and as a hopeful distraction or escapism from today’s events (if you need one, and I am 100% sure I will) today’s prompt: What are some of your favourite movies that deal with either politics or government?