SCREENSCENE: "Dave Foley, formerly of CBC's Kids in the Hall, is filming Dick, a satire of Richard Nixon's Watergate era."
By Jamie Portman, in the Ottawa Citizen, March 18th, 1999.
Canadian comic Dave Foley remembers being glued to the television set as a youngster during the Watergate hearings, which led to the downfall of U.S. president Richard Nixon and the imprisonment of several members of his staff. But little did Foley know back then that one day he would be satirizing these events on the big screen. The former star of CBC's Kids in the Hall has been filming Dick, which he predicts will be "a very funny movie." All the key White House characters from those days have been resurrected for this skewed look at the crisis triggered by a botched Republican burglary of Democratic party headquarters 27 years ago. The film also "reveals" the identity of the mysterious "Deep Throat" whose whistle-blowing revelation on White House attempts to cover up the conspiracy helped trigger Nixon's downfall. In writer-director Andrew Fleming's comic spin, Deep Throat is actually two high school girls who have wandered off during a class trip to the White House and become the official "walkers" for Nixon's dog, Checkers. "They start ratting to the Washington Post about Watergate because Nixon kicked his dog," Foley chortles.
Foley had his barber give him a crewcut so he could play H.R. Haldeman, Nixon's bullet-headed chief of staff who ended up in jail for his part in the conspiracy.
Another Canadian, Saul Rubinek, assumes the heavy spectacles and clotted accent of secretary of state Henry Kissinger.
Dan Hedaya plays Nixon and Harry Shearer plays another convicted Watergate conspirator, G. Gordon Liddy. The Motion Picture Association of America has given Dick, due for release later this year, a PG-13 rating because of it's sex-related humor, drug content and language.
Working on the movie, Foley did a lot of research on the Watergate crisis and finds himself appalled that anyone should try to place President Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky on the same level.
"Watergate and the move to impeach Nixon was a response to an act of true corruption," he says. "But this Clinton impeachment was in itself an act of true corruption--cynically and opportunistically motivated."
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