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The Mona Charen Show

What Can 'A Man for All Seasons' Tell Us About Today?

The Mona Charen Show

The Bulwark

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.51.3K Ratings

🗓️ 16 May 2026

⏱️ 58 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A Man for All Seasons is one of cinema's great moral arguments—six Oscars, a cast of legends, and a story about conscience under autocracy that feels more relevant than ever. Mona Charen and Sonny Bunch dig into why this 1966 film became a touchstone for conservative intellectuals, what it says about people who preach virtue and then fold when it counts, and why Robert Bolt—a leftist—wrote the right's favorite movie. Plus: the rule of law, the seduction of power, and what it means to stand fast even when it costs you everything.

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Watch 'A Man for All Seasons' free on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9BbfoBeXB4

Watch 'A Man for All Seasons' free on The Roku Channel: https://therokuchannel.roku.com/watch/414b53b36b4c5b01b5fae4c1d7eb8e9d?source=google

Transcript

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0:00.0

I think of Marco Rubio.

0:01.9

I think of Bill Bennett, who wrote the Book of Virtues for God's sake.

0:06.0

Dennis Prager, who lauded, you know, moral values and being true to them.

0:12.3

And then when the Trump challenge came, they were Richard Rich.

0:16.9

They were ready to throw that all over.

0:25.3

Welcome to the Mona Charrin show.

0:27.5

Thanks so much for joining me today.

0:29.8

This is a special edition of this show, as I mentioned in the T's last week.

0:36.0

I am welcoming my friend colleague, Sunny Bunch,

0:39.8

who is our culture editor at The Bullwark, and we are going to discuss a film that I hope

0:46.5

some of you have had an opportunity to view. It's a classic from 1966, A Man for All Seasons.

0:56.3

And this film probably had more of an influence on me than any movie I have ever seen.

1:03.5

Sonny, I guess I first saw this movie as a child when it first came out.

1:14.7

And it was so profoundly. I wept at the end. I was so moved by this story of rock solid integrity. And I just found the movie

1:23.9

itself to be brilliantly made. There are a number of things I want to get into.

1:28.9

But if you could set the scene in terms of the background of what kind of the movie it was,

1:35.0

you know, it won like six Academy Awards, the producer-director.

1:39.6

Tell us a little bit about the background.

1:41.9

Sure.

1:42.5

So a man for all seasons was written by Robert Bolt. He

1:45.9

wrote it in, I believe, 1960, he finished the play. The first staging was in 1961. Then he wrote

1:52.0

the adaptation of the film, which was made in 1966. It was directed by Fred Ziniman, who folks may

...

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