Half-Assed Internet Research
The Oval Office set was reused more than 25 times; Bill Clinton gave Gary Ross an autographed script and a photo with a Dave mug; Barack Obama told Kevin Kline he loves Dave; a musical opened in 2018; Nelson Rockefeller's 1979 death with his assistant; Woodrow Wilson's 1919 stroke and his wife running the presidency; the impersonator scene was added late in the shoot; Ivan Reitman's wife and son Jason play Vice President Nance's family
In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 00:38:19Read transcript
- The film's Oval Office set was reused more than 25 times, including for The Pelican Brief, Hot Shots Part Deux and Absolute Power in the 90s, which makes sense since everyone has seen a million pictures of the Oval Office; a nerdy aside notes the residence here is like no other White House residence on film, with a president's bedroom totally different from the identical Sorkin bedroom in The American President and The West Wing, this one quite large and full of red velvet with the bed really far from the other furniture; Hot Shots Part Deux will never get a Rewatchables.
- Bill Clinton surely approved of a film that gives hope and optimism to the presidency: he gave Ross a framed autographed script calling it a funny, often accurate lampooning of politics, plus a picture of himself holding a Dave mug, though a host adds you can't really trust Clinton saying he likes something.
- Barack Obama once told Kline he loves Dave and watches it when depressed because it makes the job look fun and easy; the hosts debate whether the line about the current president rooting for Mitchell was Obama's or Kline's, a punctuation issue, and find it weird for Obama, who did that job for eight years, to care what a movie says about it.
- A musical based on the movie opened in 2018, and President Mitchell's stroke apparently really happened: Nelson Rockefeller, the former vice president and New York governor, died in 1979 at 70 during an encounter with his 22-year-old assistant, though the hosts think he probably wasn't in office at the time and nobody found a Rockefeller lookalike to bring out in front of the people of New York.
- Woodrow Wilson, two years into his second term in 1919, had a stroke that left him semi-paralyzed, partially blind and mentally incapacitated, and since the 25th Amendment had not been ratified his wife took the presidency for the last two years; a century later it is still not known how bad it was, and a host feels like being in history class with Dr. Bill.
- The Wilson story is pitched as the greatest hundred-years-ago Hulu series, the First Lady in 1919 taking things over, with a joke about ending the pod to open Final Draft.
- The scene where Dave and the First Lady are presidential impersonators was added late in the shoot because Reitman didn't buy that those two would click and felt they needed something leading to that scene; the hosts agree you can't go from 'I hate you' to 'you're a stranger' to 'hey'.
- Ivan Reitman's wife and son play the wife and son of Vice President Nance as he is sworn in at the end; the son is Jason Reitman, who became a famous director, so look for him in the Nance scene.