Badlands Story Hour Ep. 168: Bulworth

Chris Paul is joined by his good friend Josh Capps, a literature professor and screenwriter from Louisiana, sitting in for Burning Bright. The two break down Warren Beatty's 1998 political satire Bulworth, which Beatty wrote, directed, and starred in opposite Halle Berry, Oliver Platt, Don Cheadle, Isaiah Washington, and a nearly silent Sean Astin. Josh argues the film sits on a fascinating cultural crux point. He thinks 1998 was the pivot year when Hollywood shifted toward heavy programming, citing The Truman Show, Deep Impact, Armageddon, and The Siege all landing in the same window. The guys dig into Bulworth's opening confession that political assassinations are just a normal Tuesday for a senator with a fixer on speed dial, the eerie parallel between Bulworth dropping the mask once he had a hit out on himself and the way Trump later dispensed with the political pretense entirely, and Aaron Sorkin's fingerprints on the worst Halle Berry monologues about NAFTA and manufacturing. They also wander through the rise of West Coast rap as a marketing tool aimed at young kids, Public Enemy's 1994 song calling out a fake World Health Organization pandemic, the hierarchy of corporate political influence, and the difference between memory and story.