This is a story with anguish and triumph. This is the story of The American President. I mean the movie, starring Michael Douglas and Annette Bening.
I've been a fan of this movie for a long time. It's #76 on my top 100 list. It's sort of a "prologue" to The West Wing TV series, in that it was written by Aaron Sorkin, and featured a few of the same cast members (Martin Sheen and Joshua Malina), albeit in different roles.
It's a movie that, strangely, I did not own on DVD. I was at the store Tuesday night and noticed it on the shelf for $10. I decided to fill that rather signifcant hole in my collection, and picked it up.
On the drive home, I'm sort of wondering to myself, was there ever actually an unmarried president of the United States? I got home and Googled that, and came up with the answer: yes. One. (The answer I'll give in a moment. For now, you can think on this as a bit of trivia and see how you do.)
The next day, I'm browsing some of the web sites I usually frequent. I'm talking literally the next day. And I came across an announcement that a new edition of The American President is due on DVD in April.
Dammit! My $10 was spent just 24 hours too soon. I was still stinging a bit from this on the next night as I attended the weekly Thursday night trivia with my friends.
We get about halfway through the game, when up comes a history question: "In 1812, as the White House was burning, who saved the presidential potrait of George Washington from the fire?"
We came up with the right answer rather quickly: Dolly Madison. After we'd run that up, we had a little time waiting for the next question. So I decided to quiz the table: "Do you know which president is the only one who wasn't married?"
One person in our group in particular went to the trouble of learning all the presidents not long ago. She noticed that presidential trivia was coming up fairly frequently, and so committed the order to memory, along with a few scattered factoids such as "assassinations," "died in office," "political party affiliation," and so forth. But even she didn't know this one.
"James Buchanan," I informed them. And on we went with the trivia.
And then, the second-to-last question of the evening came up. Worth big points. The trivia master spoke over the microphone:
"The category is U.S. Presidents."
The aforementioned presidential trivia junkie smiled.
"Who is the only unmarried U.S. President?"
And we all bust up laughing. We can hardly believe the coincidence. But it doesn't keep us from hastily scribbling Buchanan and running it up.
It turned out that our team was the only team to come up with the right answer. That, combined with a Reservoir Dogs-themed final question that we aced, gave us the win. The prize, as always, $25 off your bill.
So, I'm out $10 for buying The American President too soon (assuming the new version seems sufficiently loaded for me to want it), but the group is up $25 because the fact I'd bought it is the only reason I'd happened to look up this particular bit of trivia during the week.
Crazy, huh?
Oh... as a bonus... for those of you who are fans and just dying to know the Reservoir Dogs question: Which actors played the characters of Mr. Pink, Mr. White, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Blonde? Answers here.
2 comments:
LOL! Years ago, friends and I were hanging out at my parents' place en route to a concert. We had hours to kill while my dad did a small job on my car and thought about catching a movie, but this was before multiplexes and we didn't know what was showing where. It was trash day so there were no old local newspapers lying around and I was just lamenting that fact when the letterbox opened and a newspaper landed on the carpet. Naturally, everyone bust up laughing.
Buchanan is rumored to have been our country's first gay president.
There's an entire soap opera focused on the "descendants" of President Buchanan. Writers can be funny sometimes.
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