Jimmy Carter Watched Over 400 Movies While He Was President
Former President Jimmy Carter at the American Museum of Natural History on January 12, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Andrew Toth/Getty Images)
Quick, which U.S. president was the biggest film buff? Your first guess might be Bill Clinton, who had a lengthy conversation about movies with Roger Ebert in 1999, or Ronald Reagan, who was a legit movie star himself. But no — it turns out that the man who viewed the most films during his administration was Jimmy Carter, in a single term. In a post on Paleofuture, blogger Matt Novak has listed every single movie Carter watched at the White House or Camp David between January 1977 and January 1981, from first (the appropriately themed All the President’s Men) to last (the Jimmy Stewart crime drama Fools’ Parade). Check out the complete list here.
Novak compiled Carter’s complete presidential movie-watching history by going through his whole journal (available publicly through the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library) one day at a time, jotting down any movies that cropped up on the itinerary. It’s a surprisingly eclectic mix of films that spans decades and genres, including horror (Alien, Magic), film noir (The Big Sleep, Strangers on a Train), musicals (An American in Paris, Hair), contemporary drama (Kramer vs. Kramer, The Last Picture Show, Rocky), and comedies (The Mouse That Roared, Animal House).
Like most of the modern U.S. presidents, Carter also loved Westerns and war movies. In fact, Novak reveals that Carter hosted an early screening of Apocalypse Now at the White House with director Francis Ford Coppola in May 1979, three months before it was released in theaters. But President Carter’s most interesting movie date might have been a screening of Star Wars with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. That happened at Camp David in February 1978, mere months before Sadat and Israeli Prime Minster Menachem Begin took historic steps towards peace in the Middle East by signing the Camp David Accords. Could the power of the Force have played a role?
Also of note: Jimmy Carter was the first president to screen an X-rated film at the White House. Midnight Cowboy, released in 1969, was viewed by Carter on Dec. 27, 1977. However, one could argue that the Best Picture winner no longer qualified as “X-rated” by 1977, since its rating was revised to R before the film’s re-release in 1971.
