A George W. Bush Staffer Accused Kelsey Grammer and Kevin Costner of Stealing His Movie Idea
Before he was the star of Yellowstone, the show American dads love more than their own children, Kevin Costner starred in one of the most baffling, tone-deaf political comedies of the century: 2008’s Swing Vote. Don’t let the word “swing” fool you, Costner doesn’t play a baseball player or a golfer.
Costner plays Bud, an apolitical schlub who is guilted into voting in the presidential election by his daughter. Through a series of laughably improbable series events that make Waterworld seem grounded by comparison, Bud’s ballot has to be recast, and the election is so close that this random asshole’s vote will decide the whole thing.
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So both candidates try to win him over — the Democratic challenger (Dennis Hopper) and the incumbent Republican president (Kelsey Grammer). Just to be clear, this is a lighthearted comedy in which someone has to choose between President Dennis Hopper and President Kelsey Grammer, yet somehow resists the urge to give up and walk into the ocean.
If you think that Swing Vote doesn’t end with Costner giving an emotional speech about America, well then you’ve got the wrong fucking movie.
Perhaps the weirdest part of this already weird comedy is that it was the subject of a federal lawsuit, brought by an ex-White House staffer.
Shortly after it was released, Bradley A. Blakeman, a “former deputy assistant to President (George W.) Bush” sued the Walt Disney Company, as well as Costner, Grammer, and others, alleging that Swing Vote was secretly derived from a movie project he conceived of, called Go November.
Blakeman claimed that he personally gave his treatment to Grammer, who agreed to produce the film, and play the incumbent Republican president. Blakeman first met with Grammer when the actor visited the White House in 2002. So in addition to hatching war crimes, some members of the Bush administration apparently found the time to pound out movie treatments that would be perfect for Frasier?
After leaving the White House, Blakeman became the president of Freedom’s Watch, a right-wing group that launched a multimillion dollar campaign “designed to maintain Congressional support” for the war in Iraq, and which was accused of being a propaganda-spewing “White House front.” This was not long before Blakeman decided to sue the dad from Field of Dreams.
From the basic plotline, to the ambiguous ending, Swing Vote was a direct copy of Go November — at least according to Blakeman.
In response to the lawsuit, Grammer stated, “It seems a shame that someone who was once a member of an administration that touted tort reform as one of its major objectives should be involved in something so frivolous.” Yup, this lawsuit over a movie co-starring Stanley Tucci is the sole blemish on the otherwise flawless Bush presidency.
The whole thing was embarrassing for all involved. Entertainment Weekly questioned why anyone would even want to sue over Swing Vote, a movie that barely made any money at the box office and was generally regarded as “mediocre” at best.
If all that wasn’t humiliating enough, after two years, the judge in the case eventually threw out the claims against all defendants except for Grammer, who was forced to pay Blakeman $10. That’s not a typo, he literally paid him just ten bucks, which TMZ noted was “less than the cost of a ticket to see the flick.”
I believe the technical term for this is getting scrambled eggs all over your face.
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