The Campaign movie & Dylan McDermott

We went to the flicks on Sunday, saw The Campaign.

It'd hardly be possible to make important, serious points in the midst of a goofy, crude, potty-mouthed farcially comedic presentation of a congressional race in North Carolina, but The Campaign makes a stab at exactly that, with mixed success.

It's a funny movie - I laughed a lot, sometimes when nobody else was laughing. Husband, at times, laughed louder than most causing a young girl a few rows forward to turn round and stare at him.

The movie tries hard to be satirical but, to be honest, most of the satire gets buried. Maybe that's the way satire needs to be served up these days in the USA, in order to reach the widest audience, and get them to take note - even if unconsciously; akin to like giving a dog medicine by hiding it in a piece of its favourite food.

Nutshellized plot:
A four-term congressman, Republican, with a reputation for laziness and being interested in only what the position offers as perks, lets himself down further by a highly indelicate recorded phone message accidentally circulated to his supporters.

Worried that, if allowed to run unchallenged, he might lose the seat, the Fotch Brothers (thinly disguised parody of the Koch Brothers) persuade a very unlikely individual to challenge him. This well-meaning but feeble and clumsy individual needed to be trained in the ways of campaigning. He, and his family and dogs, also needed to undergo a complete make-over by the brothers' hard-nosed hit-man/handler.

The brothers have a dastardly plan to sell out city land and manufacturing bases to the Chinese. They need a tame congressman to be a willing puppet.

All manner of fun, as well as lots of overly-crude stuff goes on along the way. Characters and situations can be seen as parody montages of real life characters and situations from recent political stories: the e-mailed photo of the male appendage, the extra-marital affairs, campaign finances, Citizens United, the outright lies and hypocrisy of it all. It's all there and it doesn't take a political fanatic to recognise it.

For detail of cast etc see here.

I'll take a look at the natal chart of the actor playing the wicked handler/hitman - his face kept bugging me all through the movie. I couldn't think where I'd seen him before. Dylan McDermott. Looked him up later and the penny dropped. He played the lead in David E. Kelley's TV series about a law office, The Practice, (1997-2004) of which we have the only DVDs made available. The Practice was forerunner of the wonderful Boston Legal.

Born 26 October 1961 at 1:54 PM in Waterbury, Connecticut (Astrodatabank)




I can see why he fitted his role as a lawyer in The Practice so well. Saturn (law) and Jupiter on the ascendant, said by astrologers to be the strongest area of the chart.

His natal Scorpio Sun is conjunct Neptune (ruler of film) and Neptune conjoins Mars (dynamism) - all three planets in Scorpio, which translates that he's naturally intense and passionate. The more challenging aspects of a Scorpio nature are softened in his case by Venus and Mercury nextdoor in lovely Libra. Moon in quick-witted Gemini is in harmonious trine to his charming Libra Venus, making him a likely magnet for females! His screen presence is certainly magnetic, whether playing a law-upholding goody or a law-breaking hard-nosed baddy.