(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "JFK")
DONALD SUTHERLAND: (As X) Why was Kennedy killed? Who benefited? Who has the power to cover it up? Who?
SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
That's Donald Sutherland there in one of the most memorable political conspiracy movies, 1991's JFK.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "JFK")
JOE PESCI: (As David Ferrie, yelling) It's a mystery. It's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma.
PFEIFFER: These days, we're steeped in conspiracy theories across our social feeds, but it's Hollywood that has made conspiracy theories so vivid. So in this polarized political season, where the president himself floats conspiracy theories, we wanted to mine the vault for the best political conspiracy movies. What did they tell us and why did they matter? To get into it all, we have Barrie Hardymon, a senior editor on NPR's investigations desk, and also Danny Hensel, a producer on Weekend Edition. Hi to both of you.
BARRIE HARDYMON, BYLINE: Hi.
DANNY HENSEL, BYLINE: Hey there.
PFEIFFER: So start me out broadly. What is it about conspiracy theories that make for good movies? Is it just that they go in so many different directions, it's just the perfect storytelling device?
HARDYMON: Well, broadly speaking, I think it's that we don't trust our political institutions and probably never have. And so it is always an interesting thing to see your worst fears made flesh. You know what I mean? So I think truly there is that kind of - I always thought there was something behind the scenes.
HENSEL: And the other side of the coin in this era of government intransigence, isn't it kind of fun to live in the fantasy of government getting something done...
HARDYMON: No.
(LAUGHTER)
HARDYMON: Depending on what it's done.
HENSEL: ...Even if it's a criminal...
HARDYMON: Yeah, yeah.
HENSEL: ...Even if it's a huge criminal cover-up?
HARDYMON: Yeah.
HENSEL: Yeah, I mean, I think they work really well as mysteries. They work really well as thrillers. Usually, there's a protagonist who's sort of slowly uncovering all the details over time. It's like a whodunit, but instead of one individual person, it's a whole system that is slowly being unraveled.
HARDYMON: That's a good point (ph).
PFEIFFER: And, you know, as we heard in the intro, some are clearly based on real events - JFK assassination. Maybe we can talk first about some of the nonfiction conspiracy movies. What do you think of as the big ones there?
HARDYMON: I mean, certainly, "All The President's Men" is sort of the ore (ph) text for that, I feel.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN")
HAL HOLBROOK: (As Deep Throat) You tell me what you know, and I'll confirm. I'll keep you in the right direction if I can, but that's all. Just follow the money.
HARDYMON: And what's kind of lovely, by the way, about "All The President's Men" is while all of the machinery of the institution is kind of gross, you do have these heroes who are, you know, the reporters - who, me? - who are still kind of the, you know, on behalf of the people fighting that. So that, for me, is the ore text, I would say.
HENSEL: And I think, yes, there's JFK, but there's also a couple of movies that draw on - that are not based on fact but draw on, I think, the legacy of the JFK assassination. And one of those is "The Parallax View," which is by the same filmmaker as "All The President's Men," Alan J. Pakula. And that's about a man uncovering a sort of conspiracy of presidential assassination.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE PARALLAX VIEW")
PAULA PRENTISS: (As Lee Carter) Since the assassination, six of these people have died in some kind of an accident.
WARREN BEATTY: (As Joseph Frady) Look, nobody's trying to kill you, huh?
PRENTISS: (As Lee Carter) These people were killed.
HENSEL: And it's rooted, I think, in the same culture that popped up after the JFK assassination and at the same time as the Watergate scandal.
PFEIFFER: What about if we move to the fictional world, where Hollywood just got to make something up? What are your favorites in that case?
HENSEL: Well, "The Manchurian Candidate," I think we would both agree, are - is an amazing movie, and there's a great remake, as well, from the 2000s. This is the story of a man who was brainwashed in a service abroad and is trained to assassinate.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE")
FRANK SINATRA: (As Major Bennett Marco) Why is all of this being done? What have they built you to do?
LAURENCE HARVEY: (As Raymond Shaw) I don't know. But whatever it is, it's supposed to happen soon.
PFEIFFER: And the original cast, by the way, I mean...
HENSEL: Oh, unbelievable.
PFEIFFER: ...Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Angela Lansbury...
HARDYMON: It's wild.
PFEIFFER: ...Janet Leigh.
HENSEL: Oh, Janet Leigh, very talented (ph).
HARDYMON: Yeah. Oh, why wasn't it a musical?
PFEIFFER: Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
HARDYMON: That's what I want to know.
HENSEL: It should be. And the remake...
HARDYMON: Oh, my God. Really, why wasn't it?
HENSEL: ...Not to be outdone, I mean Meryl Streep and Denzel Washington and Liev Schreiber.
HARDYMON: Yeah.
PFEIFFER: Yeah, yeah.
HENSEL: "Three Days Of The Condor," which is a Robert Redford movie about a CIA analyst who comes back to his office to find all of his coworkers have been killed, and he has to find out why.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR")
ROBERT REDFORD: (As Turner) No, no, I'm in a phone booth. I'm just a block away. I'm in the street.
JESS OSUNA: (As The Major) You're in violation of secure communication procedures, Condor.
REDFORD: (As Turner) Listen, I'm telling you, I came back with lunch, and it was raining, and the whole house was murdered. Everybody is dead.
HARDYMON: In earlier sort of forms of this, you have films like "The Best Man," which is about a contested presidential convention. In this one, it is sort of - it has a principled former secretary of state versus a ruthless political operator. And the suspense kind of revolves around this information and who controls the information and those particular political alliances that are created as a result. It is worth watching the movie for Lee Tracy's speech on power, which, of course, all of this is about.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE BEST MAN")
LEE TRACY: (As President Art Hockstader) I am here to tell you this - that power is not a toy that we give to good children. It's a weapon, and the strong man takes it and he uses it.
HARDYMON: And the early part of it, the problems are, yes, we have - we are going to spread a rumor about you. We are going to use the - your deepest secrets against you, and it's these sort of political drama conspiracies. But then, after a while, you get to these other movies where it's like, the conversation you're really having is, how different is the public performance of democracy when you compare it to actual outcomes? And that is where you can just feel, like, the public trust beginning to deteriorate.
PFEIFFER: OK, so we're talking about older movies, "Manchurian Candidate," "Three Days Of The Condor"...
HARDYMON: "The Parallax View."
PFEIFFER: ...Exactly. These are older movies. Do you think older times were more conducive to conspiracies? - because today, conspiracies seem so real. We're so soaked in it. Does that mean that it's harder and harder for us to think something could be a conspiracy because it seems like it is now?
HARDYMON: Yes.
HENSEL: It's hard to separate - it's not so much fact from fiction, but it's hard to separate the fantasy of conspiracy with the reality that now conspiracy theories exist in our world, and we have to contend with them on a daily basis. But I think there are movies that sort of tap into that. I mean, I think about "Burn After Reading," which is a really silly movie and is about a conspiracy attempt that makes no sense - a bunch of gym employees in the D.C. area who stumble across a draft of a former CIA guy's memoirs that they confuse with secret intelligence and try to blackmail the government. And the point is not so much the conspiracy, but the idiocy of the people trying to carry it on.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BURN AFTER READING")
JOHN MALKOVICH: (As Osborne Cox) Listen to me very, very carefully. You have no idea what you're doing. And I warn you most emphatically...
FRANCES MCDORMAND: (As Linda Litzke) You warn us? You warn us?
MALKOVICH: (As Osborne Cox) Yes. Yes.
MCDORMAND: (As Linda Litzke) You warn us.
MALKOVICH: (As Osborne Cox) Yes.
MCDORMAND: (As Linda Litzke) Let me tell you something, Mr. Intelligence.
MALKOVICH: (As Osborne Cox) Let me...
MCDORMAND: (As Linda Litzke) We warn you.
HENSEL: Even though it's almost 20 years old, it speaks to this time that we're living in now where, I think, these conspiracies, we can see them maybe a little more easily for how silly they are, but they also have sometimes profound national security implications.
PFEIFFER: Is Hollywood becoming less and less the place to explore this? Because it's happening in our real lives, it doesn't work so well on the screen anymore?
HENSEL: Yeah, I mean, I don't think you're going to get anything more crazy in Hollywood than you would on your TikTok feed or Instagram algorithm. I mean, I think you could just see people talking to their camera, espousing something ludicrous, and it's more entertaining.
PFEIFFER: Yeah. Even with that caveat, is there any conspiracy movie that you think captures our current moment?
HENSEL: There's a movie, and I don't even like it that much...
HARDYMON: (Laughter).
HENSEL: ...So I don't know why I'm recommending it. But it really speaks to this phenomenon. It's a movie called "Winter Kills"...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "WINTER KILLS")
JEFF BRIDGES: (As Nick Kegan) Tell me where she is or I'm going to blow this whole thing wide open.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) No way, Mr. Kegan. You know, you're not to be believed.
HENSEL: ...From the late '70s, sort of a forgotten movie with Jeff Bridges and John Huston and a really amazing - it's, like, a great cast. But it's a conspiracy kind of comedy, kind of thriller. It's about a guy whose half brother was president and was assassinated, and 15 years later or so, he's - gets a tip about the assassination and is trying to investigate it. And he goes down a lot of different rabbit holes, and most of those rabbit holes don't reveal any information, but they sort of reveal a lot about the character of the people who are providing him information. And I think that's the movie that sort of speaks to our times because I think we have, you know, information overload, and I think people are getting information from lots of different places. And no one really knows what's true anymore. But the way that you get your information, the way that you spread your information, the way that you talk to people, I think that's really what reveals a lot about yourself rather than just the information that you know.
HARDYMON: You know, "The Conversation," which is a famous old film with Gene Hackman...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE CONVERSATION")
GENE HACKMAN: (As Harry Caul) I'm not afraid of death. I am afraid of murder.
HARDYMON: ...It's about surveillance, which is a thing that we are very much attuned to...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE CONVERSATION")
CINDY WILLIAMS: (As Ann) The man with the hearing aid like Charles.
FREDERIC FORREST: (As Mark) Where?
WILLIAMS: (As Ann) Right there with the shopping bag. He's been following us all around, and he was following us close.
HARDYMON: ...Privacy and really what the - I suppose, the kind of moral burden of knowing something that's dangerous. And again, as we think about information and how we metabolize that information - what we know, what we don't know, what's true, what's not - I actually feel that "The Conversation" is a movie that kind of steps up to the plate for now.
PFEIFFER: That is NPR's Barrie Hardymon and Danny Hensel. Thank you.
HARDYMON: Thank you.
HENSEL: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF BADBADNOTGOOD SONG, "STREET KNOWLEDGE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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