Comedy and shame.

So what does this 1984 film have to do with our current moment?

Eh, I don't know. 

No, seriously, hold on. First, I want to say that I have never seen any of the Police Academy movies, which is strange because when I was a teenager it was exactly the kind of movie that I would have been coerced into seeing, most certainly on video, on some random summer day when none of my friends had any better ideas. But somehow I dodged that bullet. Not to pick on the movie -- some actors and comics I respect were in it -- but I had always heard it was about a lowbrow as you could get. 

Here I am, writing about it all the same. What happened was, I was reading through some cinema history and found out -- which I don't think I knew -- that Alan Ladd's son, Alan Ladd Jr., was a movie producer. He produced Police Academy. Then he won an Oscar as a producer on Braveheart. He also produced The Brady Bunch Movie. Cinema is the weirdest business on earth.

That made me curious enough about the original Police Academy to go to Wikipedia and the entry on the movie. I also discovered that in 2016, Bill Clinton copped to loving the series, saying of his marriage: 

“We rarely disagreed on parenting, although she did believe that I had gone a little over the top when I took a couple days off with Chelsea to watch all six Police Academy movies back-to-back.”

I don't know how I missed this quote in 2016, but it might have gone over my head because I hadn't seen the movies. I just figured they were dumb fun. 

But it was Bill, so I should have known better. 

I knew full well that it was movie law in the early 1980s that every comedy had to have a hooker in it. So of course Bill Clinton would love those movies. In the first picture the Mandatory Hooker commits fellatio from inside a lectern on a man giving a speech before a large crowd. Twice.

And he watched this with his daughter? 

Picturing the heartfelt lesson there: "Remember, sweetheart, this is how a woman gets ahead. And the man she loves, too, come to think of it." 

Do you think those scenes were ever on Bill Clinton's mind when he was doing one of his heartfelt addresses to the American public? 

This was the man who turned the Oval Office into the Oral Office, let us not forget.

Which brings us to the present moment. 

First, I learned that the inspiration for the film came from an actual event in San Francisco, where a motley crew of academy cadets were trying and failing to secure a film site. Producer Paul Maslansky was told that the police academy had to accept all applicants, however ludicrous, and keep them until they quit or officially washed out. And that made me think of the current lawlessness in San Francisco and the desperation of our cities to get anyone to join the police force after so many experienced cops quit or retired during the Defund Police nonsense of recent memory. 

Also in San Francisco, although not as mayor until 1996, was Willie Brown, without whose help and guidance none of us would have ever heard the name Kamala Harris. And indeed, Ms. Harris seemed to take the role of Mandatory Hooker in this little comedy, using her wiles to advance her career as a prosecutor in the state of California. Ferocious ambition and courtesan skills are an odd but not unheard of combination. But even Willie thinks she's out of her depth. I say she's in so far over her head she'll need a bathysphere to speak at the convention next month. 

Anyway, there it is -- sex, politicians, hookers, poor parenting choices, bad police recruiting, and comedy. Many people have been saying that the 80's movie that we should be scared of seeing in real life is The Terminator, with all the AI stuff around. But it actually turned out to be Police Academy.