The Package
Unclear and Present Danger
Jamelle Bouie
4.7 • 660 Ratings
🗓️ 24 December 2021
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this week’s episode, Jamelle and John talk “The Package,” the 1989 conspiracy thriller from Andrew Davis, and the first of many Andrew Davis movies to come on this podcast. They talk class tensions within the military, the age-old American fear of standing armies and military bureaucracies, the anti-politics inherent in conspiracy theorizing, the role of ideology in shaping the actions of key actors, and how the shadow of the JFK assassination hangs over this movie.
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Links from the episode!
The New York Times frontpage for August 25, 1989.
An information page for the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
The Wikipedia entry for “The Day of the Jackal.”
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It began in Berlin. |
| 0:03.0 | A routine assignment for Sergeant John Gallagher. |
| 0:08.0 | But something went wrong. |
| 0:10.0 | Now he's in over his head. |
| 0:12.0 | If he doesn't get some answers, it may be too late for everyone. |
| 0:23.6 | The package. The package. Welcome to Episode 5 of Unclear and Present danger, a podcast about the political and military thrillers of the 1990s and what they say about the politics of that decade. |
| 1:04.2 | I'm Jamel Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. My name is John Gans. I write a column for Gawker and a newsletter called |
| 1:13.1 | Unpopular Front and I'm working on a book about American politics in the early 90s. |
| 1:18.7 | Today we are talking about the package, the 1989 film from Andrew Davis. |
| 1:24.9 | Andrew Davis is a director with a unfortunately generic name, but he had a pretty |
| 1:29.1 | great run of thrillers and action movies in the late 80s and 90s. Before this one, it was above |
| 1:35.8 | the law, which is like the one or one of two good Seagall movies and I think Seagall's, |
| 1:41.4 | Stephen Seagall's debut. This was followed up, the package by Under Siege, which is the other good Stephen Segal movie. |
| 1:49.0 | And then there is the fugitive, which is just a classic of 1990s thrillers. |
| 1:53.6 | He kind of falls off. |
| 1:54.9 | Yeah, he did that. |
| 1:56.5 | And once you realize that, once you recognize that he did the fugitive, you're like, oh, okay, |
| 2:01.0 | his whole thing makes total sense. |
| 2:02.9 | This whole Chicago guy thing makes total sense. |
| 2:07.7 | After that, he kind of falls off, although he does do a movie in the beginning of the |
| 2:11.8 | 2000s, 2002 with Arnold Schwarzenegger called Collateral Damage, which I think, depending on how long we end up |
| 2:20.0 | doing this podcast, John, we were going to watch collateral damage. Did collateral damage get pulled |
... |
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