Each weekend Nathaniel is looking at a movie that you, the readers, chose the previous week.
Arlene: What's the deal with that Watergate thing. Do you know anything about it?
President Nixon: No, no. No no no. Absolutely nothing. I don't know a thing. No way, Jose.
Dear readers, I struggled with finding time for Dick this week. I recall mostly loving Dick in the late 90s/early 00s even though the quality of it definitely varies. But you demanded I spend some time with Dick so I finally did this weekend. It turns out it's especially delightful in the morning.
Everything you've just read is jokey but true (literally and figuratively) and if you found it annoying, then Andrew Fleming's Dick (1999) is probably not the movie for you...
The Watergate break in and our star witnesses, Michelle Williams and Kirsten Dunst.
A quick refresher for those who didn't screen the movie this week in anticipation of this discussion: Dick is about two bubbly teenagers in 1972 DC, flirty exuberant Betsy (Kirsten Dunst) and nerdy boy-crazy Arlene (Michelle Williams) who happens to live in the Watergate hotel. Through a series of improbable comic events they become regulars at the White House as "Official Dogwalkers" and "Secret Youth Advisors" to President Richard Nixon (Dan Hedaya). When things sour between the paranoid president 'Tricky Dick' and the teens, they become "Deep Throat", the infamous anonymous source that provides the big break in Bernstein (Bruce McCullough) and Woodward's (Will Ferrell) administration-crushing expose in the Washington Post. Would Dick make a great triple feature with All The President's Men (1976) and Nixon (1995)? Probably not but we've never tried!
The Woodward/Bernstein scenes aren't particularly funny -- your mileage may vary but Will Ferrell just isn't funny so why has he had such a huge career? They feel like they're coming from a sloppier more improvised movie. But overall Andrew Fleming who was then a rising film director (with The Craft and Threesome behind him) before pivoting to TV, crafts a pleasing comedy that is smarter than it lets on.
One tiny example is a scene where Betsy attempts to seduce a Secret Service member. The second she turns on the charm while whipping out her lip gloss, the score's heart skips a little beat and begins spoofing a stereotypical espionage thriller motif. It's the little things that count in comedy.
One of the most surprising and structurally perfect things about Dick's screenplay, is that its silliest and most juvenile joke -- the title joke no less -- is judiciously applied. The double-meaning tittering over the name "Dick" happens just three times verbally. What's more it's deployed in three-act structure and it's hilarious each time!
First it's a loud blurted confession in a roller rink at the end of the first act which is all about Arlene & Betsy becoming White House regulars...
Betsy: Just say it.
Arlene: I don't know what you're talking about
Betsy: Just say it cuz I already know.
Arlene: Alright, I LOVE DICK!
Then it's angrily shouted at The Mall to wrap up the second act during which Betsy and Arlene have wised up.
Arlene: I hate Dick. What was I thinking falling for Dick. Dick just disgusts me now.
Betsy: Dick meant a lot to me, too, but YOU CAN'T LET DICK RUN YOUR LIFE!
...Do you mind we're having a private conversation?
And finally a quieter reprise and a stupidly dramatic film-stopping closeup in the middle of act three as the Nixon administration is harassing these young women who know far too much.
Arlene: Dick frightens me.
Why does this purposefully dumb joke play so perfectly?
Blame the then-rising stars Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams, 17 and 18 at the time of the film's premiere, for their jubilant commitment to the material. They never wink-wink/nudge-nudge the obvious jokes but deliver them with such love for their characters and comic innocence that you're completely on their side even while you're giggling at their expense.
-You're so hard rock, now!
-Noooo
-Yes.
When Dick was released in 1999 Kirsten Dunst had been working for a full decade already. Her credited debut came in an infamous high profile flop (Bonfire of the Vanities) but she was soon quite famous thanks to the monster hits Interview with the Vampire and Jumanji. A handful of years after those hits, Dick served as the warm-up to her Bring It On (2000) ascendance which took her from reliable child star to bankable adult headliner.
Michelle Williams was also an old pro as an actor despite her youth. Her film debut, Lassie, came out in Dunst's star-making year (1994) but her claim to fame was as a series regular on Dawson's Creek, which was halfway through its second season when Dick premiered.
Both actresses would of course go on to greater heights but their skill was obvious even here. That's especially true of Dunst since comedic nimbleness was her unmistakable original forte. It's not just her slapstick-ready levels of teenage excitability but the amazing comic duet between her facial expressions and line deliveries. Even the spaces between syllables, as in the opening scene when she's typing ridiculously slowly, or the way she pauses to Be Serious when admitting hat she doesn't want her brother to like, die, are giddy fun. Acting choices are being made and she's just popping off the screen.
I love you. I honestly love you ♫♪♪
Williams would later become one of Hollywood's most potent dramatic actresses (and Oscar mainstays) but Dick serves as a notable reminder that her comic gifts have been largely untapped ever since (outside of her underrated supporting work in I Feel Pretty).
Aside from reliving the youthful rise of Dunst & Williams, Dick the movie in 2023 operates as a double-shot of nostalgia for both the 1970s and the 1990s. Only the earlier decade was intentional of course; you can't plan for future nostalgia. The comedy is more universal than referential overall (teens will always have ridiculous crushes and politics will always be satirizable) but there are a few good time-centric jokes like the weird ecstastic reaction to the promise of a trip to McDonalds (fast food chains weren't always a blasé fact of life), everyone knowing the words to "Hello Dolly" (which would get another big-screen tribute in WALL•E nine years later), and Arlene singing Olivia Newton-John's signature 70s hit (albeit two years before it was actually recorded) into one of Tricky Dick's incriminating tape recordings.
And there's plenty more 70s nostalgia in the fun costumes and production design details. And of course the entire plot hinges on the generational divide over the Vietnam war and the Watergate scandal that rocked the nation.
I’d like you to be my secret youth advisors which means you mustn’t say a thing about anything you see in the White House!
Dick screams 1990s now, too, mostly due to the familiar faces who were very associated with that entertainment era: Devon Gummersall, a key player from 90s classic My So Called Life, plays Betsy's stoner brother. French Stewart, then a star on the hit sitcom Third Rock from the Sun, is on view. Ana Gasteyer and Jim Breuer, both in the middle of their Saturday Night Live runs get minor comic characters. Two members of the early 90s sensation Kids in the Hall are also in the cast (Bruce McCulloch and David Foley).
The biggest dose of 90s movie nostalgia arguably comes courtesy of Dan Hedaya as Richard Nixon himself. Hedaya was all over the movies of the 1990s: The First Wives Club, Searching for Bobby Fischer, Alien Resurrection, The Usual Suspects, To Die For, Clueless, and more... he's even in Oliver Stone's Nixon which preceded this comedy! In some ways Hedaya was to the 1990s what Dabney Coleman had been to the 1980s: a reliable comic character actor who specialized in questionable morality even when playing sympathetic roles.
I really like you.
The movie is so bursting with cast members that we also get Teri Garr (though not nearly enough of her) and Ted McGinley who are both most associated with 1980s entertainment but there's always a little time-travelling with Hollywood since careers can be very long even if heydays or time on the A-list proves short. Finally future superstar Ryan Reynolds, just 22 when this movie premiered (and like Dunst & Williams, a professional actor since childhood), shows up briefly. He takes a massive hit from a beer pong before attempting to make-out with Kiki. He's so besotted with her he's rendered speechless, which... relatable!
But in the end it's the Dunst & Williams / Betsy & Arlene show. Whether this dynamic young duo is researching turqouise jewelry, unknowingly baking pot-cookies, clumsily attempting to flirt with disinterested Secret Service members, or watching the White House dog go "poo-poo", they're a great watch.
We look fantastic.
APRIL 8th: In a surprise coup, Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie (1964) defeated the Wachowski's Bound (1996) in the last hours of voting. So we're discussing Marnie that day. Streaming on Netflix.
APRIL 14th: 80s zeitgeist blockbuster Fatal Attraction (1987) currently streaming on Amazon Prime, Paramount+, MGM+, and Showtime