Fiction imitates life
Movie
In the current us election season, Dickie Pilger's website seems quite a model. Here is a candidate extolling state funding of healthcare and stands for protecting the environment. But Pilger is different from other candidates: he is the lead character in a movie Silver City by director John Sayles. Richard "Dickie' Pilger (Chris Cooper) of Colorado, is making his first run for political office. So, he has not yet mastered the craft of being both smooth and authoritative in campaign appearances. While filming an ad about his environmental positions at a pristine-looking mountain lake, Dickie casts the line from his fishing pole and hooks up a dead body. Convinced that someone has set the candidate up for embarrassment, his shrewd campaign manager hires a detective agency to scare three people he suspects to have been behind the incident.
The fumbling Dickie gradually learns the ways. He goes riding with one of his funders, an estate developer, who wants more privatisation of natural resources. And by the end, Dickie is in total thrall to his funder. No prizes for guessing who Dickie is modelled on, though John Sayles disclaims it's George Bush.