'President' Bill Pullman Offers Lesson to Hollywood – Go Bipartisan

Bill Pullman is getting used to playing president.

The versatile actor assumed the Commander in Chief title for the hit film “independence Day,” and he’s back in the Oval Office again for the upcoming NBC comedy “1600 Penn.”

Maybe it’s those experiences which helped him answer this question during his current publicity tour for the project.

What party does President Gilchrist belong to?

There’s no affiliation. The writers are very political in that they have chosen to be as bipartisan as possible to get as wide an audience as possible.

It sounds oh, so simple. Yet modern Hollywood routinely disobeys this obvious marketing move. Consider two recent films struggling to find an audience. “The Guilt Trip” marks Barbra Streisand’s biggest film role since the 1994 film “The Mirror Has Two Faces.” Yet it came in at number eight over the weekend on the box office chart and may not make much more than its modest $40 million budget via domestic ticket sales.

There’s nothing remotely political about the project, but Streisand’s strident activism in recent years can’t be helping the film’s box office appeal.

“Promised Land,” a polemic against the fracking industry, is also underwhelming audiences albeit in limited release. It’s hard to imagine any potential movie goer not understanding the film’s one-side approach no matter how the stars protest the truth.

NBC’s new bipartisan spirit may also be a nod to New Media outlets who will hold the network accountable should it embrace cheap slams against conservatives.

Either way, the show stands a better chance of succeeding if it doesn’t insult roughly half its audience. Smart.