The Screengrab

Jeff Greenfield at Slate offers a timely new unified theory of American presidential politics based on the work of Chuck Jones. In a nutshell: American politicians are divided between those who remind voters of Bugs Bunny and those who remind them of Daffy Duck. "As shaped by genius animator Chuck Jones — he didn't create the Warner Bros. icons, but he gave them their later looks and personalities — Bugs and Daffy represent polar opposites in how to deal with the world. Bugs is at ease, laid back, secure, confident. His lidded eyes and sly smile suggest a sense that he knows the way things work. He's onto the cons of his adversaries... Bugs never raises his voice, never flails at his opponents or at the world. He is rarely an aggressor." JFK was a Bugs, Nixon a Daffy; Ronald Reagan, a Bugs, Jimmy Carter a Daffy (who, as if in some Biblical prophecy, prepared for the 1980 contest by being attacked by a rabbit.) Some partisans may detect cracks in the argument. Greenfield identifies the current incumbent as a "Bugs Bunny", but do either Al Gore or John Kerry match up with Daffy Duck, as described by Greenfield: "He fumes, he clenches his fists, his eyes bulge, and his entire body tenses with fury," responding to every setback with "a sibilant sneer"? (Personally, I always associated Kerry with Bullwinkle. But maybe dragging in characters from Jay Ward Productions would demand a whole other set of rules.)

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Jonathan Demme's documentary Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains opens this week, and while it isn't really about Carter the President so much as about Carter the Ex-President, it got us thinking about the Oval Office and the movies. Depicting Presidents is always a dicey proposition on film. In contemporary films, there are fewer ways to take your audience out of a movie than to show the President of the United States and have it not be the actual current President of the United States (another reason why Crimson Tide, with its CNN-generated Bill Clinton cameo, is so awesome). In films set in the future, it's hard to show the President and have it not feel like a ham-handed attempt at instant dystopianism. (Funny how those silly people in the future rarely elect somebody halfway decent to the office.) Our list this week focuses on Great Fictional Movie Presidents. But you'll notice that we've included two sorta-not-fictional Honorable Mentions. You may also notice that we've avoided some movie Presidents (coughMichaelDouglascough) who irritate the hell out of us.

Peter Sellers as President Merkin Muffley, DR. STRANGELOVE, OR, HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964)

Of all the roles played by Peter Sellers in Stanley Kubrick's brilliant black comedy, none leaves an impression quite like President Merkin Muffley. (The dual vagina references in the name are as sure a sign as any that anarchic comic author Terry Southern was behind the screenplay.) Allegedly based on fussy Democrat Adlai Stevenson, Muffley's role as the sole voice of reason and practicality in a film full of powerful madmen anchors the entire movie — and, on occasion, such as in the legendary and hilarious telephone conversation with the Soviet premier (much of which, like a good deal of Sellers' dialogue, was originally improvised by the actor himself), provides some of Dr. Strangelove's funniest moments. Muffley wasn't always meant to be the film's unflappable straight man; Southern originally wrote him as an extremely loopy collection of tics and affectations, including a severe head cold and an obvious and stereotypical homosexual demeanor; the former was so effective that it basically prevented anyone from playing off of him, and the latter, in rehearsal, was felt by both actor and director, to be too broad. Instead, Sellers played Muffley as almost preternaturally bland, which made his occasional forays into hysteria all the more effective.

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Movie screens are about to be awash in black crime lords from the 1970s, what with the imminent release of Ridley Scott's American Gangster, starring Denzel Washington as Frank Lucas, and Mark Levin's documentary Mr. Untouchable, about Leroy "Nicky" Barnes. Lucas and Barnes were high-rollers and business competitors thirty years ago; now both are retired and living in the witness protection program, having turned for the government when their backs were against the wall. In Barnes's case, he can boast of having been broken under direct orders from the president of the United States; Jimmy Carter reportedly turned the dogs on him after reading a 1977 New York Times Magazine article on the drug kingpin's "untouchable" status and deciding, that ain't right.

This week in the Los Angeles Times, Robert W. Welkos catches up with with the seventy-four-year-old Barnes and finds that he's interested in maintaining his legacy; he's upset about the high-profile movie starring Denzel Washington as his old rival. "Hollywood is so full of baloney," he told Mark Levin. "They got it all upside down. [Lucas] and his 'countryboys,' they didn't run New York, I did." Levin was able to use that to convince Barnes to cooperate and be interviewed for his movie. But Levin says that when Barnes and Levin hooked up recently to discuss the good old days, "Their conversation, if I could characterize it a little, was like a reunion of fraternity brothers." (They also bonded over presidential politics. Rudy Giuliani will be delighted to hear that both men are ready to give him their endorsement.) Less eager to let bygones be bygones and shoot the shit are the old cronies whom Barnes ratted out as part of his deal with the Feds. Many of these guys had already filmed interviews with Levin before he managed to rack down Barnes; how did they react to the news that he would be sharing the screen with them? "There were some heated discussions," is how Levin describes it. — Phil Nugent