Mel Gibson is likely fuming over the latest casting news for the highly anticipated sequel to The Hangover. Former President Bill Clinton was spotted in Thailand on Saturday filming a cameo for The Hangover Part II, which reunites the original comedy hit's stars Zach Galifianakis and Bradley Cooper. The film crew initially reported that Clinton simply "hung out" on set, but TMZ confirmed that he was indeed filming an appearance. The former president will play himself in the film, People magazine confirmed Sunday. And considering the first installment of The Hangover included plenty of sex and drugs (in addition to an unforgettable Mike Tyson cameo), can we expect an anti-inhaling or Monica Lewinsky joke to be written in?
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Five years into his stint as the mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani decided to try something new. The 55-year-old politician made his big screen debut in the 1999 remake of Neil Simon's comedy The Out-of-Towners, starring Goldie Hawn and Steve Martin. The mayor's role as himself was not a stretch, nor was it a hit. "There's a moment, for example, when the Clarks are caught in a compromising position in Central Park, and are suddenly hit with spotlights and seen by dozens of people inside Tavern on the Green, including Mayor Rudy Giuliani, playing himself," Roger Ebert wrote in his review. "Incredible as it may seem, this is not funny." A few years later, Giuliani gave acting another go in the climactic scene of the 2003 Jack Nicholson and Adam Sandler movie, Anger Management. Despite the film fizzling, Variety acknowledged that Giuliani's appearance (with speaking lines this time) was a pleasant surprise.
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After more than two decades doing show business alongside his wife and bandmate Cher, Sonny Bono decided he was ready to settle into something more serious. In 1988, the same year that he stared as a show dad in Hairspray, Bono was elected as mayor of Palm Springs in California, and seven years later, he became a member of the House of Representatives. A year after earning the position, Bono had a minor role in the 1996 children's film First Kid, starring Sinbad as a Secret Service agent hired to protect the president's rambunctious son. The congressman plays himself and bumps into Sinbad's character outside the Oval Office, where he proceeds to fawn over the former rock star. It was the final moment of silver-screen glory for Bono, who died in a ski accident two years later.
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Another Chicago politician will step into the movie spotlight with the release of Oscar-winner Steven Soderbergh's thriller Contagion in 2011. The film is about a deadly disease with the potential for outbreak and stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Laurence Fishburne, and Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, who will make his Hollywood debut. The Democratic Party Whip shot his single scene—in which he chairs a Senate hearing and offers one line of dialogue—last week opposite Fishburne. "All those hours on C-SPAN have prepared me for this historic moment in my life, but I'm still a little nervous," Durbin told the Chicago Sun-Times. "All I can think of is going on too long with the thank you list in my Oscar acceptance speech."
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Steven Soderbergh seems to be a fan of using real politicians in his movies. Before Sen. Dick Durbin prepared for his big screen spot in Contagion, Sen. Barbara Boxer, Sen. Orrin Hatch, and Harry Reid were among some of the politicians who appeared in Soderbergh's Oscar-winning drama Traffic. The movie examines illegal drugs from the perspective of several characters, including a conservative judge played by Michael Douglas. In one scene, Douglas' character meets various members of the Washington elite, all of whom are eager to help him with his effort to spearhead the war against narcotics trade in the U.S. As the Senate Minority Whip at the time of the movie's 2000 release, Reid improvised his dinner-party chatter and is overhead saying, "Education and rehabilitation. Prevention. That's not significant to these reporters." Soderbergh told Salon that the politicians were selected at random. "We just sent a lot of letters out. We didn't discriminate as to who we sent them to, and the ones who showed up we filmed," he explained. "There was a lot of material we got in that cocktail party scene. We had to cut it way down. But it was fun—all improvised."
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One of Jim Henson's most beloved live-action interpretations of Kermit the Frog and Co., the 1994 film The Muppets Take Manhattan, took the Muppets to Broadway and included a bevy of celebrity appearances. Brooke Shields, Liza Minnelli, and Joan Rivers all made cameos, as did New York City's mayor at the time. With his 10 film appearances and multiple stints on Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show, Koch solidified his position as one of the country's best-known mayors. "For him, personal recognition is everything. He has no wife, he has no dog. He's got himself in the mirror," one columnist told People magazine of Koch. Perhaps it's true that the former mayor didn't exactly play nice with others. When asked this year via Twitter how he liked working with the Muppets, he replied, "Better than playing with human beings… Much more decent."
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Though Pacino got top billing for the 1997 film The Devil's Advocate, another Al popped up in the thriller—Republican Sen. Al D'Amato of New York. Toward the end of his 17 years in the Senate, D'Amato decided to appear as himself in the supernatural movie, which also starred Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron. For the film, Sen. Pothole, as he is nicknamed, shook hands with the Devil (Pacino) during an office party scene, saying, "Let's get together for lunch," after rubbing elbows with New York lawyers. The notoriously self-promoting senator didn't know what he signed on for, but was game for anything his name was attached to. "I didn't know what it was about," D'Amato told the New York Daily News. "They didn't go over the plot. All they said was that Al Pacino was a powerbroker."
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It may not be of the same caliber as John Hughes' previous work on Sixteen Candles and Home Alone, but the family comedy Baby's Day Out did include something those two films did not—Fred Thompson. The movie was released in 1994, the same year Thompson began his tenure as a Republican senator for Tennessee. He may have won over voters, but Baby's Day Out was panned by critics and audiences alike. The film follows a kidnapped infant's adventures during one day in New York. Thompson plays FBI agent Dale Grissom, who finally catches the baby and perps. "You're surrounded! Throw down the boo-boo and put your hands over your head!" he shouts. But it gets better—when he calls his fellow officers after discovering the book (or "boo boo") was left at the crime scene at Baby's Day Out's denouement. "Tell them to turn around," Thompson barks. "We're going back to the tick-tock to get the boo-boo. And send for backup."
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Despite the buzz surrounding Clinton's role in the sure-to-be raunchy sequel to The Hangover, he may not be the first president to pop up on the big screen after serving his country. A 1917 propaganda film, Womanhood, the Glory of the Nation, reportedly featured appearances from not one but two American presidents. The movie, about a fictional nation called Ruthania that invades the U.S., is said to have included both former President Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, who was serving as president at the time. Though Womanhood is now lost, a review from The New York Times does hint at Roosevelt's screen time, despite no mention of a cameo from sitting President Wilson. "The loudest cheers came with the mention of Theodore Roosevelt's name or the showing of his picture," the Times reviewer writes.
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