Cinematical

In this particular case, I think the presence of real-life news people helps the film because it lends reality to a movie whose premise is very, very implausible. When there's a good chance the audience is not going to buy the premise, maybe it helps nudge them along to see familiar personalities playing along with it. In other words, it would probably never happen where one ordinary voter got to decide a presidential election. But if it did, these are the people who would cover it, and this is what the coverage would look like.

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I think Dave is the only movie I've seen where the inclusion of these figures actually adds to the movie and does not detract or distract in the process. And I'm sick of Jay Leno cameos. I don't watch his bad jokes in my own free time, so why would I want screen time devoted to him, especially when it's something I paid for?

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I don't particularly like most of these cameos - they seem geared towards paying said celebrity to prove they can 'poke fun at their image' or something else that's similarly positive but which they won't do for free - but they make sense.

See, which people become political talking heads on TV is not contingent on which people run for office. If Clinton and Huckabee had won the primaries, or if there were no Iraq War, Chris Matthews, Tucker Carlson, Larry King, and Arianna Huffington would still all be on the TV, and still have the same schtick.

Movies rely on the audience assumption that nothing explicitly shown by the film to be different from the real world is to be considered different from the real world. It's a convention, but a fairly useful one; to take an extreme example, imagine if every fictional film had to re-establish laws of physics and world history.

Now, if you believed that Larry King discussing politics was wholly contingent on out George Bush Jr/Iraq War political climate, then I could see your trouble with this. But I doubt that you believe it. I think that you, like me, just find these cameos annoying (and self-serving) and want them out of there.

And, like I've said, I do too. They don't contribute anything of value, for the most part. But they make sense.

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Who cares if they use real news anchors! The entire premise of the movie is pure hollywood since an individual vote doesn't count anyway. Does anyone remember the 2000 election? Its the electoral college dummy. There is no such thing as a tie and the anchors are in real life are as fake as they are in the movie. The news anchors are actors and in their everyday profession and now they are just getting paid for doing their "real" job, acting.

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Just one smaller point: The inclusion of these anchors often doesn't work for international audiences. You mention Matthews and Carlson: I don't know who these people are (I'm from the Netherlands). Huffington I know from her blog, but I think I'm the exception. Larry King and Jay Leno are widely known, their shows can be seen here on tv.

So while international audiences might be interested in a movie about the American election process (we watch the real one voraciously and I believe many Europeans understand the US election process better than their own (and better than Americans themselves, but that's another matter ;-)), these cameo's won't work for them...

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I am uncomfortable when real-life celebrities/newsfolks make cameo appearances in movies or television programs as 'themselves' - whether it's Bryant Gumbel and company in the movie "Contact", or the parade of real-life newsies that paraded through episodes of "Murphy Brown".

Sure, it's 'cool' at first blush. "Contact" and "Dave", in particular, made excellent use of cameos and technology to add to and advance the story - and I count both films among my favorites.

The practice certainly adds to the verisimilitude of the film...which is also part of my problem. It blurs the line between reality and fiction and, in effect, makes liars of the celebrities involved - by ascribing actions, thoughts, events to them that have no place in their real life. However, I have little problem if these same celebrities become 'actors' - in the sense that they portray characters that are different from themselves (however loosely veiled).

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I think that since they're all political commentators, than one can easily imagine that their commentary would just be tailored for the news of this fictional reality. It's their job.

However, my first thought upon learning that they make cameos in this movie is that they must all have very shallow, highly partisan political beliefs (in order to provide "balanced" political representation and so the audience can easily recognize them as representatives of those opposing political beliefs) and that they must be easily bought.

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I don't see the problem with including them, it adds realism. And bear in mind most very successful pundits and talk-show hosts are in the public eye for 16+ years which is, at minimum, three presidents. As such their commentary does not need to be tied to a particular administration or political climate.

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I haven't seen the movie, but after reading these comments and seing the two opposing views, it seems both sides do agree on one thing, makes sense. I personally believe it is a great vehicle and kudos to the creators for the notion. For the newsfolks to avail themselves to the opportunity and rise to the occassion may seem self-serving, but given their already established statures, I think generous.

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