Predictive Programming: 1964-1980

Al Pacino, Funny Girl, and how The Empire Strikes Back foretold a Reagan landslide.

This is the third in a five-part series comparing election year winners to the #1 films of that year. Read: 1924–1940, 1944–1960, 1984–2000, 2004–2024.

As the clock ticks down to Doomsday, our brave candidates make their final appeals for the most powerful office on Earth. On the center-right, VP Harris doubles down on claims that “I am not him,” while on the right to far-godknowswhere, Former President Trump bellows, “But I still am.” Meanwhile, former Seinfeld mogul Steve Bannon is released from federal prison in Danbury, but remains shackled to the prison of flesh; and China is laughing all the way to space.

I started this series as a way to soothe my own low-grade election anxiety; my analyst helped me recognize how important storytelling and narration are to how I (and doubtless other screenwriters, novelists, et al.) structure my perception of an otherwise chaotic human experience. Viewing otherwise indecipherable events in the contexts of movies gives me the fantasy of control, and if that’s what I need to get me through the day, I’ll leave it up to you to figure out which life events inspired which FMIs (for example, my sister just went to college and my mom moved back to Florida). What I didn’t expect was to find such striking similarities between box office and election winners. If there is indeed a connection between what the masses watch and who they vote for, today’s batch is no exception. Without further ado:

1964: Mary Poppins

LBJ (D): 486

Barry Goldwater (R): 42

A month and change before election year, Americans witnessed firsthand the deposition of their champion and thus Light-Bulb Lyndon entered 1964 the incumbent. It makes almost too much sense that a nation, heartbroken and in disarray, would flock to theaters for the merry melodies of a magical nursemaid who provides two wishful children the structure and support they need to reconstruct their family unit. Just as it made sense that Americans looked to Johnson for a kind of continuity despite what they had lost. Was the long dicked Texan an analog for that lithe and loving witch? Clearly not, but there is certainly some aesthetic similarity in Lady Bird, and I’m not alone in questioning whether the film’s social consciousness was part of a subversive plot to keep kindness alive in a nation that just watched its hero die.

Is it Democrat or Republican? The poor matter and bankers are freaks, so I’m gonna have to go with Democrat—but Great Society Democrat, definitely not whatever this is.

1968: Funny Girl

Nixon (R): 301

Hubert Humphrey (D): 191

George Wallace (AIP): 46

The election of 1968 marked a turning point in this country, a sort of come to Daddy moment that suggested the White man, long neglected by things like antiwar sentiment and the civil rights movement, was back with a vengeance. Back when incumbents still had to run for their party’s nomination, Johnson’s narrow victory in New Hampshire spooked him enough that he dropped out, leaving the field open for VP Hubert Humphrey, anti-war Minnesota Representative Eugene McCarthy, and senator Robert F. Ken—what’s that? Oh… well just Humphrey and McCarthy then. Meanwhile, across the aisle, the Nixon/Agnew ticket was picking up steam, hampered only by Alabama governor George Wallace’s campaign to reintroduce segregation. Add to that widespread riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and campus protests against the snowballing (shitballing?) Vietnam War, and you’ve got a race that was as much a question of who will survive in America? as it was a ticking timebomb.

At the box office, the march of Mecha-Streisand was at full-steam. Hot off a successful Broadway run, Babs was the obvious lead for this musico-biographical treatment of the star-crossed love affair of vaudeville star Fanny Brice (remember the The Great Ziegfeld? Basically The Penguin for that universe) and her no-good second husband. A superstar held back by a dirty rascal she loves but doesn’t trust but still thinks deserves another chance was apparently what Americans were looking for—that’s basically how we got Nixon.

Is it Democrat or Republican? Like Fanny Brice—except for at least the last three elections—those of the lefty persuasion have found ourselves in a toxic relationship with the Democrats. This film has been rated DNC.

1972: The Godfather

Nixon (R): 520

George McGovern (D): 17

“Do you know how naive you sound, Michael? Presidents and senators don't have men killed,” so sayeth Diane Keaton in the role of Kay Adams, the embittered wife of Michael Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 magnum opus (yeah I like it better than Part 2, sue me!). Thing is, Adams was the naive one, and if you replace the word “killed” with “have their ops break into the DNC Headquarters,” she’d be like most of the Nixon-voting populace. The election of 1972 wasn’t just a win for the incumbents, it was the biggest win the Republican party ever had in the popular vote, a fitting massacre for an American audience thrilled to pieces by the wholesale slaughter that ushers in the reign of Young Michael. Only two years later, Nixon would tender his resignation in the wake of the Watergate scandal, lending a meta-level of intrigue to the film’s treatment of the relationship between organized crime and politics.

Is it Democrat or Republican? Despite Coppola’s status as our nation’s eminent humanist, the Mafia is fundamentally anti-democratic, plus they also probably helped kill Kennedy. REPUBLICAN

1976: Rocky

Carter (D): 297

Gerald Ford (R): 240

This one predicted the outcome of the 1976 election because the lovable jock dumbass loses in the end. (Spoiler?) But he put up a good fight. After VP Agnew’s resignation for some other shit and Nixon’s signature signoff, third to the throne was then-VP Ford, a Nebraska football player who suddenly found himself swimming in the nation’s greatest recession since the big one. Despite the advantage given incumbents, mounting troubles including said slowdown and the fall of Saigon put him neck-and-neck with “reformer” former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter, whose humble beginnings qualified him to be the first real “drain the swamp” candidate of the second half of the 20th century.

Carter’s ascent was not unlike that of “Italian Stallion” Rocky Balboa, whose emergence from relative obscurity to fight the World Heavyweight Champion is the basis of perhaps Hollywood’s greatest rags to riches story. Part of the tightness of this race was doubtless due to half of America seeing Rocky in Carter, and the other half in Ford.

Is it Democrat or Republican? The fantasy of hard work earning you the privilege of squaring up with the champ is distinctly Republican.

1980: The Empire Strikes Back

Reagan (R): 489

Carter (D): 49

John B. Anderson (I): 0

When the going gets tough, the people turn to populists and, like clockwork, the going gets tougher. In the case of Jimmy Carter, a bad situation got worse with the establishment of Iran’s Islamic Republic, hitting Americans where they hurt most: the gas pump. And despite a sincere appeal for unity, the Republican Party was in the lab formulating a powerful political engine we face yet again today: a far-right coalition united under the power of celebrity.

I’m reticent to compare the outcome of this election to the content of the sequel where the bad guys win, not only because Star Wars discourse has reduced real suffering to new levels of callousness and stupidity, but because I don’t care about Star Wars and hate talking about it. Suffice it to say, when a landslide ensured the highest office on Earth would be helmed by a wolf in cowboy clothing, the Empire had indeed struck back. And that’s what America wanted.

Is it Democrat or Republican? Democrat and we’re all dumber for it.

Tomorrow: We continue to chart the connection between the box office and the ballot as we compare the winners of 1984–2000.