My roommate Reid graciously set up a Firestick TV in my room, and I can't rave enough about the Pluto app. Or Hulu. Or anything. I'm not even working from home because I (as of today) still have a day job at a department store that is now a fulfillment center, although I haven't been showing up to all of my shifts because mental illness, but I don't like using that as an excuse. It's my job to take care of it and I have not been.
Anygay, the point is that I want to talk about Dick.
Dick is a comedy about two teenage girls, Arlene and Betsy (Michelle Williams and Kirsten Dunst) who unwittingly find themselves working in the Nixon White House as official dog walkers and later "youth advisors". Arlene also lives in the Watergate building, and they saw G. Gordon Liddy (Harry Shearer) there that night ...
Dick is funny. Really funny. I don't know why Michelle Williams didn't do more comedies. She's an incredibly strong comedic actor. Arlene is kind of a dork. She falls in love with President Nixon (Dan Hedaya). Williams completely sells this awkward character. You get a feeling that she and Betsy are "besties" and only hang out with each other, although the movie doesn't explore their high school life a lot (except for when they make their bus late after the White House and they can't get McDonald's).
I saw this movie in the theater, because I am an Ancient like Aeris. It was the summer of 1999. My dad took my brother and me and explained some of the jokes to us, because we didn't know very much about Watergate. Most of the comedic bits work enough that you don't need to know that much going in, but there is a gag about the 18 and a half minutes of silence on the recovered tapes that the movie serves very well.
This is what interests me: Dick BOMBED. Released on the first Friday in August, it opened at #12, grossing $2.2 million. It went on to gross only $6.3 million, on a budget of $13 million. According to Wikipedia, TriStar marketed it to teenagers, which might have explained the lackluster box office. It's a smart political comedy, not She's All That. What also fascinates me is that just a month prior, Kirsten Dunst was in another quirky comedy that had a horrible opening and was a bomb for its studio.
That movie was Drop Dead Gorgeous.
Drop Dead Gorgeous has since found a cult following - it is finally on Hulu after years of being famously unavailable, with its DVD out of print (I, of course, have lost both my copies). I am from Minnesota so I am biased in my love for that movie, and am always fascinated when people not from here, from Hilary Duff to Jia Tolentino, profess their love for it. Allison Janney has gone on record that she gets recognized more for that film than her Emmy-winning years on The West Wing, which had millions of viewers on weekly television.
Dick, however, has not received that kind of residual love. It's fascinating to watch in current political times. When I watched MSNBC, Rachel Maddow often interviewed a prosecutor who worked on Watergate before the Mueller Report came out. I forget her name now. She always wears pins. Her Twitter is really fun. I am now more familiar with John Dean, who famously spoke out against Nixon. The movie portrays this very well. "You're no better than him if you stay here," Kirsten Dunst tells Jim Breuer as she is escorted out of the White House, and he sells it with a dramatic and effeminate gasp.
I have somehow had Watergate randomly show up in my life last week. I thought I knew everything about Nora Ephron, but I found a Twitter feed that mentioned how she told everyone for years that Deep Throat was Mark Felt. She was married to Carl Bernstein (played here by Bruce McCulloch, with Will Ferrell as Bob Woodward, and they're absolutely hilarious), and after their messy divorce she would just tell everyone casually at dinner parties.
I have read Heartburn 50 times. I never realized that she names the husband in that book Mark Feldman.
I have also been listening to a podcast called "Trashy Divorces". There is a lady named Martha Mitchell that I can't believe they haven't made a movie about. Her husband worked for Nixon. She knew about everything. She would get drunk and call reporters. Her husband hired a body man who kicked her in the ribs. He is now working in the Trump Administration as an ambassador to what I want to say is Croatia, but don't quote me.
Anyway, I wanted to talk about Dick. It's really funny and available on Pluto, and I hope it someday gets the recognition it deserves. I was obsessed with "You're So Vain" as a teenager, and this movie was my first exposure to it. It is used perfectly here.
But you gave away the things you loved
And one of them was me
Dick is available on Pluto TV.
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