irony in casting a movie has been known to tinkle my funny keys

Es­ti­mated reading time is 1 minute.

LAST NIGHT we watched Lee Daniels’ The Butler. It is based on the life of Eu­gene Allen, a butler in the White House for decades, where but­lers are his­tor­i­cally black. It stars Forest Whitaker as Cecil Gaines, who wit­nesses the changing of the guard in the Oval Of­fice through thirty-four years of service.

It was a good movie, ad­dressing some of the re­al­i­ties of racism in these here United States. It had an ex­cel­lent cast in the lead roles, but check out this sup­porting cast: 


Eisenhower

Robin Williams as Pres­i­dent Dwight D. Eisenhower

 
 

MarsdenKennedy

James Marsden as Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy



SchreiberLBJ

Liev Schreiber as Pres­i­dent Lyndon B. Johnson

 
 

CusackNixon

John Cu­sack as Pres­i­dent Richard M. Nixon

If that irony is too mild for your taste, best of all is Alan Rickman as Pres­i­dent Ronald W. Reagan and . . . Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan! The rest of the star-heavy cast in­cludes Oprah Win­frey, Cuba Gooding Jr, Ter­rence Howard, Lenny Kravitz, Vanessa Red­grave, Minka Kelly, Mariah Carey, and Clarence Williams III.

If heavy irony in casting tin­kles your funny keys, then this may be your type of movie. But you have to look it up on your own if you want to know what it is to see it.

 

 

 

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