People like to pay a certain amount of lip service to the importance of young people participating in the electoral process. Still, in most regards, they tend to be either marginalized or outright dismissed. So it’s always a delight when those underestimated voices band together and flex their political muscle in unexpected ways. Recall, if you will, that 2020 Donald Trump rally in Tulsa with a much lower turnout than expected, reportedly largely due to TikTok users and K-pop fans mass-buying tickets they had no intention of using. More recently, the ascension of Kamala Harris to the position of presumed Democratic presidential nominee and JD Vance’s odious comments regarding so-called “childless cat ladies” have inspired fans of Taylor Swift to mobilize on Twitter to help get out the vote.
For an ideal cinematic representation of this phenomenon, you need not look further than “Dick,” the 1999 comedy that took one of the darkest periods in the history of American democracy – the Watergate scandal – and transformed it into a smart, sprightly, and hilarious comedy. It not only observed the proceedings, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern-style, through the eyes of a pair of bubbly teenage girls; it suggested that they were actually Deep Throat, the then-unknown inside source utilized by Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward to help reveal the story to the world.
Perhaps inevitably, it failed to click with audiences when it first came out. But over the years it has gained a cult following thanks to several factors: a clever screenplay that skewers both the scandal and the various treatments it had previously received in the media; a knockout cast headed by two young actresses who would be celebrated as the very best of their generation backed up by an absolute Murderers’ Row of comedy talents; and the silly but inspiring way in which its adolescent heroines recognize and develop their political agency in the most absurd manner.
Said teens are Betsy (Kirsten Dunst) and Arlene (Michelle Williams), two best friends living in Washington D.C.—the former in Georgetown with her well-off family and the latter with her widowed mother (Teri Garr) in an apartment in the Watergate complex. The two girls sneak out late one evening to mail it, putting a piece of tape on the door lock so they can get back in undetected. This is, of course, the night of the infamous Watergate break-in, and to say they get caught up in the international scandal would be an understatement.
“Dick” appeared at the end of a decade that saw considerable effort go into rehabilitating the reputation of the disgraced former president. This started with the opening of the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace in 1990 and the Nixon Center think tank in early 1994, culminating with his death later that year. This was followed the next year with Oliver Stone’s “Nixon,” an epic so solemn and stately in tone that critics at the time were pretty much legally required to refer to it as “Shakespearean” at least once. As loopy as it gets at times — and it gets very loopy as things go on — “Dick” serves as a bit of a corrective to this post-mortem veneration while reminding us exactly what led to his disgrace in the first place.
The film was the brainchild of director Andrew Fleming, who was riding high on the surprise success of the teen-witch thriller “The Craft” (1996), and co-writer Sheryl Longin, who reportedly had her own youthful encounter with Nixon when he and her family were staying at the same hotel. (She and a friend apparently tossed ice cubes at him.) Granted, the conceit of presenting well-known real-life events through a comically skewed take purporting to show audiences what really happened is nothing new—see Robert Zemeckis’s delightful 1978 debut “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” or the recent “Fly Me to the Moon” —but it requires filmmakers to find just the right tone for audiences who might not be familiar with the events depicted instead of becoming one increasingly tedious in-joke.
“Dick” finds that tone right from the start, and maintains it throughout. Sure, there are the expected bits about the tackier fads and fashions of the time, an equal number of jokes playing off the name “Dick” on which your personal mileage may vary (though the final one of those does earn a huge, if undeniably juvenile, laugh in the closing moments). There’s also a soundtrack jammed with the hits of the era, including a particularly inspired use of Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain.”
However, the script knows its history, coming up with inspired explanations for everything from that infamous 18 1/2-minute gap to John Dean’s sudden willingness to testify against his former colleagues. It amusingly pokes holes in the ways we’ve processed the entire story in our collective consciousness: turning war criminal Henry Kissinger’s inexplicable reputation with the ladies on its head by showing him droning on about international diplomacy to a disinterested Betsy and Arlene. Woodward & Bernstein’s treatment is especially funny—instead of the dashing pursuers of the truth worthy of being depicted by Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford, Will Ferrell, and Bruce McCulloch portray them as a pair of petty, bickering dolts.
Perhaps the smartest thing about “Dick” is the genuine affection it has for Betsy and Arlene. Contemporary reviews of the film have described them as bimbos and airheads and such, but, they’re just ordinary teenage girls—a bit giggly and silly, to be sure, but not dumb by any means. And the screenplay doesn’t treat them as such: they’re just at a point in adolescence where the issues of the world around them don’t have as much impact as the latest issue of Tiger Beat, The point is to see them gradually become smarter and more aware of their potential places in the world, without losing the sense of goofy effervescence that made them so appealing in the first place. This is the kind of character journey that Elle Woods would famously make in “Legally Blonde” (2001). Betsy and Arlene not only got to do the same thing a couple of years earlier, but they also got to bust out some swell roller disco moves in the process.
Perhaps in response to “Nixon”’s stacked cast, “Dick” also brings in a crop of great comedic performers and lets them riff on their real-life counterparts. Among the highlights are Harry Shearer’s maniacal caricature of Liddy and Dave Foley scoring big laughs as Haldeman. Then there’s Hedaya’s scene-stealing work as Nixon, a performance so funny and inspired that, in the pantheon of great Nixon performances, I’d put him second only to Phillip Baker Hall in Robert Altman’s “Secret Honor.”
But it’s Dunst and Williams’ lead performances that make “Dick” rise. By the time Dunst appeared here, she’d already more than held her own against powerhouse co-stars in films as varied as “Interview with the Vampire” (1994), “Little Women” (1994) and had shown a flair for comedy in the satires “Wag the Dog” (1997) and “Drop Dead Gorgeous” (1999). Williams, on the other hand, had fewer credits, and the ones that she did have—most notably her work on the hit series “Dawson’s Creek”—didn’t often give her many chances to cut loose. That said, they make for a genuinely sweet, engaging team.
The pair invest their roles with a kind of grounding that allows them to come across as recognizable people instead of mere bimbos. Take Arlene’s infatuation for Nixon: The conceit of a teenager fangirling over Richard Nixon is deeply silly, but Williams plays it with a real sense of conviction; it’s hilarious without ever tripping over into cruelty. When she holds up the microphone to Nixon’s tape recorder and delivers a rendition of Olivia Newton-John’s “I Honestly Love You,” it’s both side-splittingly funny and weirdly touching.
“Dick” largely failed to find an audience when it opened in theaters for a number of reasons. The ad campaign devised by the studio was aimed entirely at its young stars’ fan base (who presumably had little practical working knowledge of the details of the Watergate scandal); they likely preferred the more salacious outrages of that summer’s “American Pie.” At the same time, older viewers assumed that it was little more than an extended episode of “That ‘70s Show” and gave it a pass. It also had the misfortune to hit theaters a mere two days before “The Sixth Sense” became a genuine phenomenon.
Happily, “Dick” would begin to find its audience via home video and would eventually go on to become a cult favorite. However, the underlying message of the film—that young people, and young women in particular, can make a difference in the world —is one that not only continues to ring true today but now feels more timely and relevant than ever. Who knows? Perhaps one day, these politically fraught times may inspire another movie along similar lines. If it does, here’s hoping it’s as inspired and inspirational as “Dick.”
