Friday A/V Club: Jerry Brown and Francis Ford Coppola's 'Transmission From Some Clandestine Place on Mars'
One of the strangest live political broadcasts of all time.
When Jerry Brown's presidential campaign fell apart in 1980, it belly-flopped with a flourish. As I wrote a few years ago in a look back at Brown's career,
The governor brought in Francis Ford Coppola to produce a live half-hour TV special in Madison, Wisconsin, shortly before the state's primary. The results might be the biggest blot on Coppola's filmography: Brown's microphone died, the program opened with a pair of typos ("Live from Madisno, Wisoc"), and images that were supposed to appear behind Brown instead materialized on the candidate's face. Coppola later said the show "looked as if it were a transmission from some clandestine place on Mars."
When I wrote that, I wasn't able to get ahold of the program, so I had to rely on second-hand accounts. Since then the special has been posted online, and what a wonderfully weird half-hour of TV it turns out to be. It isn't the biggest blot on Coppola's record: It has a deranged-video-art quality that makes it kind of entertaining, and it's certainly more watchable than Jack. But the sound is out of sync, the images behind the candidate sometimes feel like another show is intruding on the proceedings, and Brown looks like he has holes on his face.
In the closing seconds, an offscreen voice says, "It's gone much, much better than we even could have dreamed of." I can only assume that man was working for the Carter campaign. The typos at the beginning of the program were the perfect foreshadowing for what was to come.
(A belated correction on those typos, by the way: "Wisconsin" is misrendered as "Wisci," not "Wisoc." Such are the perils of relying on secondary sources.)
The speech's content is interesting too, inasmuch as it's a snapshot of a particular moment in the history of both Brown and the Democratic Party. But before we get to that, here's the video, which has been split into two parts:
The Jerry Brown of 1980 was socially liberal, but those issues are almost entirely absent here—the only time they come up is when someone in the audience asks what he'd do to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. (To hear Brown's rather bizarre reply, go to 9:52 in the second video.) And while it's clear that the candidate disapproves of America's interventionist foreign policy, the only time he addresses what was then a current military issue, as opposed to Vietnam or another topic of the past, is when he calls for cutting the MX missile. Otherwise this is a talk about economics: taxes, spending, regulation, trade.
On many of those issues, Brown sounds rather libertarian. He says the solution to inflation is to turn off the printing presses. He denounces deficits. He calls for indexing the income tax to inflation, and for reducing a variety of government levies. And he is fiercely critical of protectionism. (In an interesting contrast with his '90s attacks on NAFTA, he calls for creating a North American Economic Community with Canada and Mexico.)
But he also calls for energy rationing. He says we should reindustrialize the country with a corporatist "strategic plan" formulated by government, business, and unions working together. (Like many people who endorsed such ideas in the '80s, he cites Japan as a model.) He endorses subsidies for bullet trains and fuel-efficient cars. In a departure from his other views on global trade, he suggests that we stop private companies from purchasing foreign oil, arguing that such imports should be government-to-government transactions instead. And as a form of national service—this might qualify as another social issue, come to think of it—he calls for reestablishing the Civilian Conservation Corps. (This is actually an improvement on an earlier iteration of the idea. Brown previously favored mandatory service, but here he says it should be voluntary.)
And he does it all while Francis Ford Coppola is making him look like Max Headroom's sober brother. This video fiasco isn't just a funeral for the New Age '70s. It's an opening fanfare for the glitch aesthetic of the '80s.
(For past installments of the Friday A/V Club, go here.)
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with a corporatist “strategic plan” formulated by government, business, and unions working together.
Isn’t that idea like, directly pulled out of Atlas Shrugged?
This is some wild video. Thanks for the heads up, Jesse.
Doesn’t his aura smile and never frown?
Jerry Brown was Max Headroom?
Next time I’ll read the comments before commenting. Dork.
I remember being in London and first seeing a “Max Headroom” sign.
So you can blame Nick Cage’s uncle for Reagan.
What happened to Max Headroom?
It was 1980 and David Koch was on the Libertarian ticket as VP. Sabotage!
/Harry Reid
Coppola was channeling our future political successes in Iraq:
Democracy, Sexy, Wisci!
‘A boy, age about 6 or 7, approached an American reporter and said the two words that were uttered over and over: “America. Good.” Then he kissed the reporter on the cheek, shook his hand and pointed to the sky, pleading for water.’
The NYT really only does good work when someone is out blowing other countries up for them.
In 2008 I had a whole bunch of Iraqi (14th DIV) soldiers waving and saying “America good. Yeah.” and snarling “fuck Britannia”… they were a bit displeased with our British allies reluctance to do anything, while we happened to have a company of Apache helicopters knock out Jaish al Mahdi strongpoints when they asked us to.
I believe the correct term is “flock.”
“they were a bit displeased with our British allies reluctance to do anything”
What, Basra?
Was that the ‘Charge of the Knights’ thing? i thought it was cute the Iraqis also had a great fondness for naming their operations ridiculously grandiose things.
It was my theory that post-vietnam military operations were given more and more cryptic and ‘Led Zepplin-y’ names in the off chance that if it became an unholy fuckup, the name wouldn’t end up being too insultingly ironic in retrospect.
a la ‘Gothic Serpent’, or ‘Viking Hammer’, or ‘Acid Gambit’
I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall of the Pentagon meeting where they broke this trend and then had to backtrack the Afghan campaign from ‘Operation Infinite Justice’ to ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’.
Someone hadnt gotten a memo
p.s. perhaps now its more like ‘Operation Optional Burquas’
Governor Moonbeam, broadcasting from an undisclosed location ON MARS?
Sounds like a step up (or out?) for him, then. Go Jerry!
Obligatory:
“I am governor Jerry Brown…
To help Sofia Coppola with her speaking parts, they smeared peanut butter on her lips like they did to that horse on Mr. Ed.
Oh, give Sophia a break. She’s not a bad director and she’s kind of cute. I blame her father for Godfather III, not her.
She’s a good director. Really sexy. Terrible actress.
She looks good on the cover of Redd Kross’ Third Eye.
Actually, after looking at her filmography, I realized I liked all of her films. And I’m planning on re-watching Somewhere soon.