About Opentopia
Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

Bob Roberts

Encyclopedia : B : BO : BOB : Bob Roberts

Bob Roberts is a 1992 film directed and written by Tim Robbins. It is a satirical faux-documentary on the rise of a right-wing candidate for the United States Senate. The main character, Bob Roberts, played by Robbins, leaves his hippie parents to enroll in a military academy. Fueled by a personal fortune he amasses on Wall Street and a strong public image from his music, which proposes a conservative vision in a rebel's persona, he embarks on a bid for the position of Senator from Pennsylvania. The film portrays the U.S. political process in a less-than-favorable light, suggesting that shady deals, hypocrisy and deceit are mainstays of U.S. politics.

Bob Roberts is based on a short segment of the same name and character that Robbins did for the television sketch comedy program Saturday Night Live on December 13, 1986, and is the first film in which Robbins takes on the role of director.

Contents

Plot Overview

[Spoiler warningSpoiler warning]: Plot and/or ending details follow.

A young Jack Black plays a role in the movie Bob Roberts.
Enlarge
A young Jack Black plays a role in the movie Bob Roberts.

Bob Roberts takes place in Pennsylvania during the Gulf War, chronicling the state’s senatorial race between conservative folk singer, Bob Roberts (Tim Robbins) and the incumbent, Brickley Paiste (Gore Vidal). The film is shot through the perspective of a British documentary filmmaker who is following the campaign of Roberts, and through his lens we see the main character travel across the state performing songs about evil drug users, lazy poor people and the triumph of traditional family values over the rebelliousness of the 1960s. As the campaign continues, Paiste remains in the lead until a scandal breaks involving him and a young woman who he was seen emerging from a car with. Throughout the campaign the reporter Bugs Raplin (Giancarlo Esposito) attempts to use the documentary being made about Roberts as a way to expose him to the people as a fraud, due to connections between his anti-drug charity and CIA drug trafficking. As the election approaches Roberts is asked to appear on a network’s sketch comedy show (that is clearly representative of Saturday Night Live), which causes a dispute among the cast and producers of the show, since Roberts announces that he will not be playing the song that he had originally intended, but instead performing a new piece. When this new song turns out to be nothing more than a blatant campaign endorsement, an angry staff member of the network pulls the plug mid-performance. As Roberts is leaving the studio, someone attempts to assassinate him, thus overshadowing the evening’s recent, image-crushing events. The reporter is initially linked to the shooting, and when the film ends we are left with many question about just how deep the conspiracies of Roberts go. This film provides commentary on the role of the media in shaping political candidates and campaigns, and also questions the sincerity of both political parties.

Artisan's special-edition DVD is feature-packed, with a good transfer in the original full-frame (1.33:1) and Dolby 2.0 Surround. Also on board are three commentary tracks — one with Robbins, another with Robbins and Vidal together, and a third track with Counterpunch editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, which has nothing to do with the movie but rather is a detailed discussion of CIA-related drug conspiracies.

Style

The style of Bob Roberts is clearly drawn from a number of real and mock documentaries, and its shots are carefully crafted to create this effect, in many cases through the use of hand held cameras. Not only does Roberts’ character clearly draw from 60’s era iconography of Bob Dylan, it also takes from the 1967 documentary, Don’t Look Back made about the singer, employing a similar (although consciously constructed) cinema verité style (Ansen 1992; Canby 1992). The film also draws from the mock-documentary This is Spinal Tap (Christopher Guest, 1984) which Robbins states to be a favorite film of his (Roberge 1992), and directly references this during the scene in which Roberts gets lost in an auditorium attempting to find the stage before his performance. Another technique which Robbins takes from Guest is the use of improvisation, which he encouraged the cast to use. In the case of Gore Vidal’s character, the majority of the lines were not scripted, and instead Vidal based his role upon his own political beliefs, and his real life positions on many of the fictional election topics (Johnson 1992; Kauffman 1992).

Response

While critics and audiences have responded to this film by connecting Roberts’ character to various political figures, such as George H. W. Bush (due to the similarity in conservative values), Robbins’ intentions for the film seem to be less partisan, and more about the political system in general (Roberge 1992). In the film Robbins does not identify either candidate's partisan alliance, and presents neither Roberts nor Paiste as particularly appealing, both having significant shortcomings in terms of being popular candidates for office. While the satire of the film is assumed by some to be based on Robbins’ own radicalism and leftist beliefs, he is not overly supportive of the left, portraying the democratic candidate as rather earnest, but not very in tune with the political system or the best ways to get in touch with the public. It seems that much of Robbins commentary is addressed at the role of the media in election campaigns, and around the fact that politicians’ success is due in large part to their ability to market themselves in a manner that is appealing to the public (Roberge 1992). In the film this comes across as being based much more around the candidates’ value as entertainers than the value of their words, for Roberts’ image as a 60’s era motorcycle riding, guitar playing rebel sells much better than Paiste’s as a hapless career politician. While some have critiqued Robbins for failing to make an effective political satire, stating that his references to Reagan era politics and the rebelliousness of the 1960’s are simply too anachronistic in the context of the 1990s (Troy 1993; Wattenberg 2001), others have praised it as a triumph for its ability to articulate political commentary as an entertaining Hollywood piece (Ansen 1992). In the end, it seems that this is meant to be the primary intention of the film, and, conspiracy theories and eerie similarities to contemporary politics (such as Rick Santorum’s election as Senator of Pennsylvania) aside, it remains significant for its success as an overtly political Hollywood film. While at the time the notion of a conservative rebel was something of an oxymoron, it has since become increasingly legitimate to many who felt overtaken by the wave of political correctness that flourished during the 90's. The increased exposure of what is now perceived by those on the right to be a liberal establishment has created a corresponding conservative anti-establishment that now appears very similar to what is depicted in Robbin's film. Perhaps what makes the film so gripping from a leftist perspective is the how the absurdity of the film is more realistic then they would like to believe. Truth, sometimes, is far stranger then fiction.

Cast

Music Career

Albums

Songs

All of the following songs were Produced and Arranged by David Robbins, with Music and Lyrics by David Robbins and Tim Robbins unless specifically mentioned:

Trivia

Bibliography

External links

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: