Episode #46 -- All The King's Men

(or: “Future Justice Warriors, Unite!”)

“hey, do you think we might be overselling things just a little bit?”

“no. no, I do not.”

All The King’s Men is a 1949 adaptation of the book by the same name by Robert Penn Warren. It’s a movie that bears some striking resemblances to the rise and death of Huey Long, who served as governor of and a senator for the state of Louisiana in the late 1920’s through the mid 1930’s. Robert Penn Warren tried to claim that he wasn’t writing about Huey Long when he wrote the book, but it’s hard to give that much credence when there are as many parallels between Long and the fictional Willie Stark. Talking about older, well-regarded movies like these is always kind of tough for us— a lot of people think highly of it, but it’s also nearly seventy years old, and some of the things that were okay back then shouldn’t have been, and definitely aren’t now. Neither of us liked the movie too much (spoiler alert— that’s how those work, right?), and it’s not because it’s a bad movie, per se. It’s just a product of its time, and some things age worse than others. That concludes the serious part of this blog post, thank you very much for reading!

We also talk a bit about Kingdom of the Spiders in this episode, which is not nearly as much of a stretch as you might think it would be, and it’s not because we’re trying to make some sort of humor joke about how politicians are like spiders, or how Ted Cruz may just be a burlap sack full of tarantulas… although now that we think of it, has anyone ever seen Ted Cruz in the same room as a burlap sack full of tarantulas? It’s a little suspicious, you have to admit. YOU. HAVE. TO.