WARREN BEATTY’S “BULWORTH” NOMINATED FOR EXPOSÉ AWARD
Some forty years ago, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl urged Americans to wake up and face the realities of injustice. Similarly, Warren Beatty uses the medium of poetry to expose what he considers the hypocrisies of the Democratic Party of the Clinton era. Fed up with Beltway bullshit, Senator Bulworth of California arranges to have himself assassinated while lampooning the way in which the moneyed interests prevail over the people. However, he so enjoys his role as national curmudgeon that he decides to abort the assassination in order to continue exposing why the Democrats do nothing for African Americans (they do not contribute enough campaign money and cannot vote Republican anyway), for health care (the insurance companies, happily benefiting from the present system, make hefty campaign contributions to keep it that way), etc. Using the vehicle of rap music, Senator Bulworth is on the same wavelength as Eddie Murphy’s The Distinguished Gentleman, in which the protagonist satirizes Washington D.C. politics as the biggest con game in the world. Beatty’s Don Quixote tilts so many windmills so quickly that filmviewers will have to see Bulworth several times to take complete notes on all the syllabus of errors, most of which deal with the plight of African Americans.