The First Mister

Why "Long Shot" is a movie for our times. Plus: A special announcement!

Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen in Long Shot.

Charlize Theron was done playing The Girl.

When Seth Rogen approached her to co-star in his rom-com, Long Shot, Theron warmed to the idea of working with Rogen — she liked him personally — but she worried that he would make her a prop to his stoner-comedy shtick. She had paid her dues, proved herself, toned down her ethereal beauty to win an Oscar, and still was forced to wait around for Tom Hardy to come out of his trailer on the set of Mad Max. She always made her 8 a.m. call time. She’d be sitting in the War Rig, in full costume and makeup, while the crew accommodated Hardy’s chronic tardiness like he was some kind of boy genius. Screw that; unprofessional is unprofessional.

Rogen was funny as hell, though he had an image. His fans knew what to expect from him. He played a version of the same emotionally stunted man-child in the bro’d-up comedies Pineapple Express, The Night Before and Knocked Up, where Katherine Heigl felt overpowered as The Girl on a boys’ set.

Would Rogen and the bros at his production company give Theron the Heigl treatment?

“I had a horrible fear that I would be in a Seth Rogen movie and be the girl, who just stands there,” she told The Los Angeles Times in 2019, the year that Long Shot hit theaters.

Despite her concerns, Rogen offered an irresistible opportunity to fill a position — President of the United States — that remained out of reach for American women. He wanted her to portray the fictional Charlotte Field, a highly respected Secretary of State who impulsively hires his character, Fred Flarsky, a scruffy, anti-establishment journalist with, yes, a benign pot-smoking habit, to punch up the humor in her speeches. After the POTUS (Bob Odenkirk), a doofy ex-TV star, informs Charlotte that he plans to leave office and start a movie career, she launches a stealth presidential campaign with his initial seal of approval. Charlotte is a classy diplomat, an optimal public servant, a pillar of professionalism and formality. She sees the presidency not as a power grab but the best chance to pass an international treaty that protects the environment. She looks flawless and behaves impeccably. She smiles and glad-hands and tolerates powerful rich guys only out for themselves. Her handlers view her as the ideal first woman president — and vessel to make the world actually care about saving its oceans, forests and bee population. But! A test survey reveals that Americans wish she was funnier. Which is very unreasonable. Since when are secretaries of state supposed to be funny?

“She was completely competent,” Nora Ephron once wrote about George W. Bush’s Secretary of State, Condoleezza “Condi” Rice, after attending a dinner where Rice gave a speech. “She was, however, not at all funny. She tried to be, but she wasn’t. She was what I call not just ‘not funny’ but ‘NF,’ which is far worse — it’s truly, deeply, tragically not funny.”

Ephron, who posted scalding-hot takes on The Huffington Post in her later years, observed that “what Condi is really good at is making nice, which is the opposite of being funny. I’ve always believed that women of my generation (and hers) were literally trained to make nice. It wasn’t really important for us to have opinions of our own; instead, we were supposed to preside over dinner parties, and when two men at the table disagreed violently with each other, we were supposed to step in and point out the remarkable similarities between their opposing positions.”

I have to wonder if the Long Shot team read that blog post because, political leanings aside, Charlotte shares Condi’s agreeableness. Her whole job is to make nice and hope that rich and powerful men will listen to her and look up from their navels and toward the bigger picture.

Fred Flarsky really listens to Charlotte. As her speechwriter, she’s paid him to do so. But he would pay attention even if he weren’t on the payroll. He values Charlotte, the person and the idealist. Fred also has issues — for one, a refusal to hear ideas different from his own. He wears an embarrassing teal windbreaker to fancy events. Eventually, in a Cinderella moment, he slips on a tux for a gala in Buenos Aires, quipping in the manner of a mid-century Borscht Belt comedian, “I think the guys who killed my grandparents are hiding in here.”

Fred’s candor rubs off in Charlotte as she begins to speak her mind and publicly reveal her sharp wit and playful side. Her popularity grows. She enlists Charli XCX, pre-brat summer, to perform on the campaign trail. It turns out that Madam Secretary can sell her plan to save the planet through being true to herself and having some fun along the way. Spoiler alert: When Charlotte is elected president, Fred — née Flarsky, now Field — becomes the first-ever “First Mister” and gives an enthusiastic tour of First Lady portraits in the White House. He then unveils his official portrait: A comic book-style rendering in which he brandishes an American flag as though he were in battle while a bald eagle perches on his arm. (Unintentionally January 6th!)

“I used to think the best way for me to change the world and make it a better place was through journalism, and I’ve realized that’s not at all the case,” Fred tells the camera with Charlotte at his side. “Really, the best thing I could be doing for the world is just supporting this amazing person and just trying to learn from her and kinda just trying to be the best First Mister I can be.”

Rogen brought that energy into the room with Theron. His willingness to collaborate impressed her. He did not balk when she recruited Liz Hannah, who wrote The Post, to do a rewrite on Dan Sterling’s script, crucially adding a woman’s perspective.

And yet, the result does feel tonally like a Seth Rogen movie. I love Long Shot. It should not be my favorite rom-com of the past 10 years, but it is. Long Shot is smart yet slapstick and shamelessly gross. It places Rogen and Theron in humiliating scenarios that I laughed at despite myself. In one, Charlotte successfully negotiates a global hostage crisis while high on psychedelics.

“Why don’t we instead save a ton of lives?” she tells the enemy on the other line. “I mean, that’s pretty f—king awesome, right?”

(Look, I would spell out the F-word, but I’m Midwestern. Nope. Just can’t do it.)

Theron is hilarious in Long Shot, more so than I’ve ever seen her. She and Rogen have legitimate chemistry, and Charlotte and Fred skew closer to who the actors are in real life. Without knowing it, movies can deliver a vision of the future, however pie-in-the-sky it might seem to the filmmakers at the time. And Long Shot, which flopped at the box office and later became a surprise Netflix hit, was certainly ahead of its time.

In fact, you could also say that five years ago, Long Shot foreshadowed the ascent of Kamala Harris, her endearingly affable husband, Doug Emhoff, and a campaign brimming with humor and feel-good vibes. I can’t wait to see Emhoff’s official White House portrait. For now, there is this:

douglasemhoff

A post shared by @douglasemhoff

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THE MINISTRY OF POP CULTURE

Hi friends! A special announcement: With Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Kirthana Ramisetti, Thea Glassman and Saul Austerlitz, I have launched a new writer-owned collective called Ministry of Pop Culture. There, you’ll find pieces on the Taylor Swift fandom, Carrie Bradshaw’s hairstory and an in-depth interview with Emily Nussbaum about Cue the Sun!, her new book exploring the messy world of reality TV.

Like and subscribe if you’re so inclined!

Meanwhile, I’m back to my regularly scheduled programming here at this newsletter. You can expect interviews, commentary, recommendations and Glen Powell updates. (Belatedly, I applaud Anne Helen Petersen for her brilliant take on Powell’s appeal.)

Did you watch the Olympics? I’m experiencing some withdrawal. I’m not sure anything can top the magic of the 2024 games. But: We’ll always have Emily in Paris. Season four premieres Thursday and not a moment too soon.

Yours in “I bought this and have no regrets,”

Erin