Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, which allows previously unreleased government documents to be disclosed to the public, we are able to learn many secrets of The President of the United States… like what kinds of movies the president enjoys.
That’s right, the heavily guarded information of which films are played in the White House’s Family Theater has been released for the Clinton administration and it seems The Big Dog-in-chief may have been the first U.S. president to watch some LGBT-themed films.
The first film to be shown in the White House was back in 1915 when then president Woodrow Wilson screened the Ku Klux Klan celebratory film The Birth of a Nation.
Clinton’s viewing habits were much less controversial sticking with mostly mainstream, crowd pleasing films, although a few of the films may have certain Republican nominees scoffing and throwing around biblical quotes.
In 1993, Clinton watched the Tom Hanks/Denzel Washington film Philadelphia, about a lawyer suing his firm for firing him because he was a gay man with AIDS.
Clinton also watched the 1996 film The Birdcage starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane. A remake of the 1978 film La Cage aux Folles, Williams and Lane play a gay couple who own a bar in Miami.
Of all the 171 films screened in the Family Theater during Clinton’s presidency, he only re-watched three: Mel Gibson’s The Patriot and Braveheart and the Meryl Streep film Music of the Heart.
Clinton’s total film watching experience pales in comparison to the all-time movie watching president, Jimmy Carter. In his four years as president, Carter watched over 400 movies, including the original Star Wars which he watched with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
The full list can be seen at Gizmodo.com.
