City Hall
Unclear and Present Danger
Jamelle Bouie
4.7 • 660 Ratings
🗓️ 14 December 2023
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s episode of the podcast, Jamelle and John watched “City Hall,” a 1996 political drama directed by Harold Becker and starring Al Pacino, John Cusack, Danny Aiello, Bridget Fonda, David Paymer and Martin Landau. You’ll also notice a beardless Richard Schiff, Lauren Velez, and Senator Fritz Hollings of South Carolina.
In “City Hall,” Cusack plays Kevin Calhoun, the loyal deputy to Mayor John Pappas, played by Al Pacino. After a young boy and a police detective are killed in a sting gone wrong, Calhoun has to navigate a tense political situation in effort to bring the crisis to a resolution without harming the rising prospects of his boss. Unfortunately, as he soon discovers with the help of Marybeth Cogan, a lawyer for the slain cop played by Fonda, behind the deaths are a tangled web of corruption that reaches from the political machine to the courts to the mayor’s office itself.
The tagline for “City Hall” is “It started with a shootout on a rainswept street and ended in a scandal that shattered New York.”
You can get “City Hall” for rent or purchase on Amazon and iTunes.
Our next episode will be on “Crimson Tide.”
Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I feel that this city is gonna explode. |
| 0:05.0 | I am talking guns. I'm talking corruption. |
| 0:08.0 | I'm talking 2,000 shootings a year. |
| 0:11.0 | It all began with a shooting. |
| 0:14.0 | Got a shootout in Williamsburg. |
| 0:17.0 | There's two deaths, and they're connected, and that's all I know. |
| 0:20.0 | That's all I want to know. |
| 0:22.2 | Kevin, you're my right hand. You're the mayor's right hand. |
| 0:25.1 | Who do you think you are? Some gum shoe and a dime novel? |
| 0:28.9 | Aren't you supposed to be the pipeline to the mayor? You should tell him somebody's taking |
| 0:31.7 | up the wrong street. Both of you. You want to stay way the hell away from this one. |
| 0:36.6 | Who side of you are? Yours? And I always will be, John. Just because this kid thinks he can elect your president, are you going to forget who got you here? I don't forget. I don't forget anything. Why don't you run for office instead of carrying the mayor's bag? I consider it an honor not only to carry his bag, but also to fill it at night |
| 0:56.0 | with the things I think the city needs. Damage control, Kevin, damage control. There was a palace |
| 1:02.2 | that was the city. A palace in which there is no king, no queen, no princes or dukes, but subjects all beholden to each other |
| 1:15.5 | to make a better place to live. This is an incident that will not go away. I choose to fight |
| 1:24.4 | back until this city. Our city is a palace again. |
| 1:31.3 | The city... Welcome to Unclear and |
| 1:48.2 | A podcast about the political and military thrillers of the 1990s and what they say about the politics of that decade. |
| 2:08.7 | I'm Jamel Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. |
| 2:11.8 | My name is John Gans. I write the Substact Newsletter on Popular Front, and I'm the author of the forthcoming book |
| 2:19.0 | When the Clock Broke, which should be out in June. |
| 2:23.1 | But you can pre-order now, as we like to remind you. |
... |
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