- Year: 1992
- Genre: satire, comedy, drama
- Director: Tim Robbins
- Cast: Tim Robbins, Alan Rickman, Robert Stanton, Helen Hunt, James Spader, Tom Atkins, David Strathairn, Rebecca Jenkins, Ray Wise, Gore Vidal, Giancarlo Esposito, Harry Lennix, Pamela Reed, John Cusack, Susan Sarandon
- Plot: A conservative folk singer turns his hand to politics, running for the US Senate. He is not above dirty tricks and smear campaigns to gain an advantage over his opponent.
Bob Roberts takes place in Pennsylvania in 1990. It depicts a fictitious senatorial race between a conservative Republican folk singer, Bob Roberts, and the incumbent Democrat, Brickley Paiste. The film is shot through the perspective of Terry Manchester, a British documentary filmmaker who is following the Roberts campaign. Through Manchester’s lens we see Roberts travel across the state and sing about drug users, lazy people and the triumph of traditional family values and laissez-faire capitalism over the rebelliousness and social justice causes of the 1960s. Even though the Roberts campaign team officially avoids manifestations of open bigotry, their songs, speech and mannerisms are rife with snobbish dog whistles and racist and sexist innuendos, and Manchester’s footage reveals casual use of homophobic slurs.
Complementing Manchester’s neutral perspective are reflections by Senator Paiste, TV anchor Kelly Noble and investigative reporter Bugs Raplin, among others. Paiste is convinced that Roberts is a master manipulator linked to the National Security Council, the CIA and the military–industrial complex. Throughout the campaign, Raplin attempts to use the documentary being made about Roberts to expose him to the public as a fraud. Raplin believes that Roberts’ anti-drug charity, Broken Dove, is connected to an old CIA drug trafficking scheme, citing Roberts’ campaign chairman Lukas Hart III’s past in the Phoenix Program as proof. Shortly after an acerbic and disastrous interview with Roberts, Kelly Noble points out that his potential for success comes from subverting stereotypes by using his music, a tool of protest typical of the left during the counterculture years, as a vector for postmodern far-right politics.
As the campaign continues, Paiste remains in the lead until a scandal arises involving him and a young woman who was seen emerging from a car with him. Paiste claims that she was a friend of his granddaughter whom he was driving home, but he cannot shake the accusations. Roberts’ campaign suffers a setback as well, when Raplin’s accusations briefly gain traction and result in a subpoena on Lukas Hart III for unpaid housing loans rumored to be redirected to drug trafficking.
As the election approaches, Roberts is asked to appear on a network’s sketch comedy show. When Roberts announces that he will not be playing the song he had originally proposed, a dispute breaks out between the cast and producers of the show. This new song turns out to be nothing more than a thinly veiled campaign endorsement, and an angry staff member of the network pulls the plug mid-performance. As Roberts is leaving the studio, he is seemingly shot by a would-be assassin. Raplin, who has been causing problems for the campaign, is initially linked to the shooting, but he is later cleared when it is found that due to constrictive palsy in his right hand he physically could not have fired the gun. Following the incident, Raplin contends that Roberts was never actually shot and that the gun was fired into the ground. Raplin’s allegations are not confirmed on camera by Roberts campaign member Delores Perrigrew when she is questioned by Manchester, but she does show clear signs of remorse and abruptly quits the campaign.
The campaign is boosted by public support following the assassination attempt, and Roberts wins the election with 52 percent of the vote. Although Roberts claims that his wounds have left him paralyzed from the waist down, he is seen tapping his feet at a celebration party. While Terry Manchester is interviewing Roberts’ supporters outside the new senator’s hotel, a boy runs up shouting, “He’s dead, he’s dead, they got him!” When Manchester asks him what he is talking about, the boy shouts, “Bugs Raplin! He’s dead! They got him!” A joyful celebration breaks out among Roberts’ supporters, the shot changes to an image of his hotel room, and an upright walking shadow suggesting Roberts’ profile passes the window before the lights go out. The film ends with a radio news report about Raplin’s death at the hands of a right-wing fanatic and a shot of Manchester standing in the Jefferson Memorial, looking at the words, “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man”, inscribed there.
