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By David Ansen
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If last year's Cannes Film Festival belonged to Madonna, 1992 may go down las the year of Tim Robbins. The Madonna sensation was preordained, but the media frenzy that's surrounded the lanky 33-year-old American couldn't have been predicted. It began when Robert Altman's "The Player," starring Robbins as the murderous movie executive Griffin Mill, became the early front runner for the Palme d'Or. For the Americans here, " The Player" was old news. But the Robbins buzz escalated when "Bob Roberts," written by, directed by and starring Robbins, debuted. This biting, clever political satire quickly became the hottest ticket on the Croisette.
Imagine a cross between "A Face in the Crowd" and "This Is Spinal Tap." "Bob Roberts" is presented as a mock documentary chronicling Roberts's/Robbins's campaign for senator from Pennsylvania. He is a candidate made for and by the media, a right-wing, folk-singing Wall Street Yuppie whose best-selling albums promote "family values" and revile bleeding-heart liberals, while shamelessly borrowing the rebel iconography of Bob Dylan. His opponent, the incumbent Brickley Paiste, wonderfully played by Gore Vidal, struggles to debate the issues while fighting off rumors of a sexual liaison with a 16-year-old girl.
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The "dirty trick" Roberts resorts to in the homestretch of the campaign is a whopper even by our current degraded standards (and stretches credulity more than it should). But Robbins's target is also the media circus that has transformed the political process into an image-obsessed adjunct of Hollywood. The insipid chatter of the TV anchors (cameos by James Spader, Pamela Reed, Fred Ward and Robbins's real-life companion, Susan Sarandon) strains to reduce all issues to "human interest" stories. Meanwhile, a radical and very untelegenic black journalist (Giancarlo Esposito) has uncovered dark deeds behind the Roberts campaign and can't get anyone to listen.
It took Robbins six years to get this $4 million movie off the ground, but it couldn't be more timely. It will probably open in August, as election-year fever is cresting. "I hope this doesn't get labeled as a political movie," says Robbins, who's worried the public won't think it's sufficiently entertaining. Well, it is political, and it's certainly fun-both angry and hilarious. Though Robbins is no conservative (he's written three left-of-center plays for his theater company, the Actors' Gang), he's hoping "Bob Roberts" speaks to the disenchanted electorate, both right and left. In Cannes, he resembles a reluctant candidate himself, watching his words as reporters solicit his opinions on everything from Dan Quayle to the influence of Altman on his movie (he didn't see Altman's HBO political satire, "Tanner '88," until after he wrote the script). What he wants most, he says, is to get back to New York, to Sarandon and their second son, born two weeks ago. For the overwhelmed star of the moment, everything is happening at once.
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