You're listening to The West Wing Weekly.

I'm Rishi K. Sherway.

And I'm Joshua Molina.

And today we're talking about the movie Dave, as picked by our Patreon supporters.

Dave was written by Gary Ross.

It was directed by Ivan Reitman, and it premiered on October 14, 1993,

31 years ago. Have you seen those fake opening credits for shows like Game of Thrones,

where they set it as like a 90s sitcom? I don't know that I have, but I sure want to now.

They're really funny. Basically,

like Game of Thrones made to look like Full House or Family Matters or something. Right.

Yeah. Exactly. So I thought I would do a version of that from my synopsis here of Dave.

Oh, great. Fantastic. Which is to say, take a movie of one genre and frame it slightly differently.

Because I think on paper, Dave sounds like a different movie or can sound like a different movie than it was intended.

I think I have a sense of maybe where you're going with this. I'm very excited.

Okay. Dave is the story of a bloodless coup d'etat. As a handful of the

sitting U.S. President's advisors and bodyguards overthrow his administration and defraud the American

people. Like Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-un, President Bill Mitchell, played by Kevin Klein, uses

lookalikes in his public appearances. While having an affair with a young assistant, Mitchell suffers a stroke and goes into a coma. The most recent lookalike du jour, Dave, also played

by Kevin Klein, becomes a pawn in the sinister power grab hatched by Chief of Staff Bob Alexander.

However, in the same way a pawn can become promoted in chess if it crosses to the end of the board,

Dave finds ways to co-opt his new role, bend power to his own will,

and usurp the presidency for himself.

...