Is The Candidate, in fact, the anti-West Wing? A political story that ends not with a bang, but with a question of existential dread.

• Interview with screenwriter Jeremy Larner in Brooklyn Magazine
• The trailer for Downhill Racer (1969)
• Jerry Seinfeld on Letterman: "You're rooting for clothes."

Let us know what you thought of the film!

Did this movie predict Trump back in 1957? We discuss the film debut of Andy Griffith in a role so dark, anyone who knows the Andy Griffith show might experience some uncomfortable dissonance.

Some goodies that came up in our conversation:

• The dance of joy from "Perfect Strangers"
• This essay about the film on the Criterion website
• Albert Brooks and Holly Hunter in a great scene from Broadcast News
• The 'ten-word-answer' scene from The West Wing

What did you think of the film, on a scale of 1–10 grains of inert matter? Let us know!

This week, we dive deeper into the role of the fourth estate, as we discuss Network, the Oscar-winning film that was meant to be a wild satire at the time it was released, but ended up uncannily predicting the future.

Some additional reading material:

Mad As Hell, Dave Itzkoff's book about Network

Directors' Guild of America post about Sidney Lumet at a 2003 screening of Network

Vanity Fair article on the legacy of Network (which includes thoughts from Aaron Sorkin)