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Tuesday, May 12, 1998 By Tony Norman
Hollywood has never done well with urban politics, but the few times it has addressed the subject honestly have been illuminating.
That's why a movie like Warren Beatty's "Bulworth," which opens here on May 22, continues to haunt me days after seeing a sneak preview at the Showcase East. Watching a film that spells out how many of the disparities in our society are triggered by the globalization of the economy feels vaguely heretical, like watching some long hidden cat jump out of the bag.
Beatty plays Sen. Jay Bulworth, a Democrat from California who hires a hit man to knock him off on the eve of a successful re-election campaign.
Bulworth is so consumed with self-loathing over abandoning the progressive principles he championed before he became "successful" that his fatalism triggers a regimen of compulsive truth-telling and reckless behavior (like hanging with marginalized black folks deep in the heart of South Central Los Angeles).
You could almost hear the racially mixed, but predominantly white, audience hold its breath as Bulworth' s fly girl Nina (Halle Berry) lectures him on the political realities that produce capital flight, the heartbreak of post-industrial economies and the collapse of middle-class aspiration that made the early civil rights movement possible.
There was a similar moment in "Good Will Hunting" when the Matt Damon character rebuffs the military' s offer to become a house mathematician by reciting America' s military and foreign policy intrigues and how they always seem to end in the exploitation and death of young men from South Boston just like him.
"Bulworth" is full of moments that make you wonder how such an unsparing critique of the racial and political status quo ever made it into a major $30 million Hollywood release in the first place.
That' s when you realize no one will ever see this movie.
As befitting the bizarro logic of these times, "Bulworth" will open on less than half the screens hosting "Godzilla," the special effects no-brainer that, one assumes, will say absolutely nothing of consequence to anyone who isn' t a radiated mutant lizard from Japan. "Godzilla" will grab all of the magazine and newspaper covers on the weekend it debuts while the genuinely gutsy and original "Bulworth" will probably struggle to find an audience one-tenth "Godzilla' s'.
This isn't a blanket endorsement of all of Beatty' s ideas in "Bulworth." There's plenty of old school liberalism of the patronizing kind in the screenplay, especially the all-too facile equation of black life with the pathologies of the ' hood and hip-hop culture.
But I can't remember the last time a Hollywood movie used this kind of intelligence and humor to make connections between an "oppressed'ety and its political acuity.
"Are you saying the Democratic Party really doesn't care about the interests of black folks?" one irate woman asks Bulworth at a campaign stop at a church in South Central.
"Isn't it obvious?" Bulworth replies with all the rakish charm he can muster.
But instead of suggesting they become Republicans, Bulworth makes the point that the Democratic Party' s level of interest in any community is directly proportional to how much money it gives at election time.
Bulworth also throws in a gratuitous admonition to the community to give up its love affair with malt liquor, fried chicken and its support of "football stars who stab their wives," suggestions the congregation is initially scandalized by, but grudgingly admiring of.
"He's telling the truth," a few church members mutter, grateful to have been invited to join the political process as adults instead of supplicants. It is an astonishing scene, all the more powerful because of its honesty and rarity.
This is a long way from the former histrionics of Spike Lee, who only recently redeemed himself with "He Got Game." A phony like Quentin Tarantino isn't even on the map with idiotic hipster fare like "Pulp Fiction" and "Jackie Brown."
But Spike deserves the hits for, if nothing else, picking a fight with Tarantino earlier this year over the frequency of the "n" word in his movies when his own movies are filled with the epithets. Tarantino is apparently so rattled by Spike' s criticism that he recently got into a fight with another black man who echoed the complaint.
This is the level of the debate in Hollywood when it comes to race and politics.
I'm afraid that unless Warren Beatty sticks his fingers up his nose, spreads his nostrils and says, "I'm surprised that white Americans accept Wesley Snipes because he's so African-looking," as Tarantino is alleged to have said, there won't be enough notoriety to get folks into the theaters.
Still, "Bulworth" deserves plenty of props for being both entertaining and enlightening. With Lee's recent triumph in "He Got Game" and John Sayles' brilliant "Men With Guns," one can be forgiven for thinking movies are starting to matter again.
But it's summertime and special effects are king. Quality films may be the lull before the crashing storm of banality we've come to know and love.
Beatty's only hope for a decent return on the studio's investment is that the public will be so weary and disgusted from having its intelligence insulted that it will take a chance on what may be the most subversive film to come out of Hollywood in a generation.
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