All the King's Men w/ Sean Penn as Louisiana Gov. Huey Long

The murderer wasn't the same, but that is the way he was murdered. You can still stick your fingers in the bullet holes at the old capital.

One of the best casts ever, but movie wasn't all that good IMO. Just something was missing. I enjoyed it just for the sole reason I love history, but this movie had the potential to be GREAT, but fell short.

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then he lied. Willie Stark is CLEARLY based on Huey Long. I can't believe the author denied that. Pretty sure it is common knowledge the character is based off of the Kingfish.

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It's kind of like Orson Welles claiming that Citizen Kane wasn't based on the life of Hearst.

Warren not only denied it, he harshly condemned people who took it as Huey Long apologia.

Anyway, the book makes it very clear that Stark is not the main character, but rather a web of characters in a sort of bildungsroman of the narrator.

I thought the movie sucked. Penn was good but definitely not what I would have pictured Willie Stark as in the novel. The original movie, however, was much better and Broderick Crawford was exactly the image I had in my head while reading the book.

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I thought the movie sucked. Penn was good but definitely not what I would have pictured Willie Stark as in the novel.

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I love Sean Penn as an actor. I think he's phenomenal. But I think he was miscast in this role. I really think he was one of the weak links. He really never got it that he needed to be a LIKEABLE, charismatic, populist. The name calling and mud slinging was political sport, and those that did it best, did it with panache.

He came across more like an Earl Long than a Huey Long.

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but Sean Penn was incredible

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I don't think I've ever read anything on this board that I disagree with more than this, and that's really saying something. Wow. I'll admit I'm not a fan of Sean Penn, but I've never seen him this hilariously awful when he wasn't going full retard. His Stark and the movie itself are shite, which I think his mouth might have been full of based on the unintelligible noises coming from his hyper-emotive face in nearly every scene.

Movie was decent, at best. Penn was incredible, as usual. If anything was wrong with his performance, its that he tried to hard to make Willie Stark his own unique character.

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Robert Penn Warren (the author of the book) demies that Stark was based on Long

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1. Warren wanted to be known as a novelist -- a "creative writer" -- and not as a journalist.

2. If Warren admitted Stark=Huey he could've been sued by Long's relatives, for invasion of privacy. Rea-life murderer Nathan Leopold of "Leopold and Loeb" infamy (the case that inspired Hitchcock's Rope) sued the studio that made Compulsion, a fictional account of the Leopold and Loeb story, when they advertised it was based on the L&L case. Incredibly, he actually won at trial. Fortunately, he lost on appeal.

As to ATKM -- the original is infinitely better. Penn is horribly miscast as Huey/Willie.

I actually liked the newer version of the movie (it usually gets slammed), but Penn was horrible. I don't think I saw the entire older version. I know I watched at least parts of it in a Southern Lit class in undergrad.

And everyone knows damn well Willie Stark was based on HPL despite what RPW said.