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Turner Classic Movies rings in the Trump era with ‘A Face in the Crowd’ – Metro US

Turner Classic Movies rings in the Trump era with ‘A Face in the Crowd’

A Face in the Crowd
MGM

We’ve spent the last two months dreading Inauguration Day, like someone who’s learned which day they’re going to die. Some of us planned it out: taking off work, making travel plans to protest, or simply visiting the liquor store for a special first-weekend-of-President-Trump bender.

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Turner Classic Movies planned, too. They used the Friday the businessman/conman was to be sworn in as an excuse to schedule a couple cinematic subtweets. “The Fountainhead” — the 1949 take on Ayn Rand’s Objectivist bible that isn’t “The Fountainhead,” starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal and adapted by the egomaniac author/cult leader herself — played early in the afternoon. It was a nice way to sarcastically welcome in a cabinet made up of selfish greed monsters who think of the less fortunate as blood-sucking parasites, not people who need a tiny piece of the nation’s money pie to live.

A much sharper stab comes later. Tune in at 5:45 p.m. to see 1957’s “A Face in the Crowd,” in which Andy Griffith plays an entertainer who blossoms into a populist demagogue, raking in crowds by telling them what they want to hear. Then you can weep at the ending, in which the masses learn what he really thinks about them. Instead of voting this liar into office, they do the entirely unrealistic thing and turn on him. Enjoy! And remember: rotgut whiskey is your friend.

Follow Matt Prigge on Twitter @mattprigge