5 Thoughts on the Graham Platner's Allegations

Well, I did not expect to get two political articles out in two days after a relatively long drought for them, but that's the way the political news crumbles sometimes.  Without further adieu, let's discuss the horrifying allegations faced by Graham Platner, the (present) Democratic nominee for US Senate in Maine.

Graham Platner (D-ME)

1. Graham Platner Must (and Will) Drop Out

For those unaware, Graham Platner, who has faced multiple scandals involving a Nazi tattoo, racist & sexist Reddit comments, physical abuse, and extramarital affairs, added to that list with an allegation of rape from Jenny Racicot, a 41-year-old woman who dated Platner on-and-off for two years.  Racicot, a registered Democrat, said that she was initially reluctant to come forward because she agreed with Platner's politics, but said "I'm just here to tell my story to give a clearer picture of who he is and the type of past he has."

Platner initially vehemently denied the allegations & refused to get out of the race, but that tenor had softened in a Twitter video he posted, where he said he would step back for a few days and consider what to do next (while still denying the allegations).  The deadline to drop out and be replaced (without any issue) by the state party is next Monday, and I'll be honest-Platner will be forced out sometime before then, I suspect within the next 48 hours.  Already an avalanche of US Senators and Senate candidates have issued statements asking for him to step aisde, and combined with flagging poll numbers & potentially soft fundraising numbers (he hadn't yet released his Q2 numbers, always a warning sign this far into the month), he will step aside, likely saying he's doing so "to not be a distraction," but nonetheless disappearing into political anonymity.  Either way-a week from now Graham Platner will not be the Democratic nominee for the US Senate.

Senate President Troy Jackson (D-ME)

2. Democrats Will Pick a Replacement-But Whom?

Under the pretty clear assumption that Platner will drop out of the race before the Monday deadline, Democrats will get to pick a replacement.  While Gov. Janet Mills would probably be the frontrunner for this if she hadn't run, she did run and turned in an underwhelming performance (and she also seems pretty much done with politics), so I doubt she's the candidate.  The same seems to be the case for Rep. Jared Golden, who is retiring at the end of this term, but otherwise would be our best candidate and could easily beat Collins.

Therefore, it's likely to be someone with a less obvious national profile.  The far left, including Hasan Piker, are making the argument that Platner represented their ideals and while he should go, they should get the opportunity to replace him with someone from their line (former Senate President Troy Jackson).  But Jackson has a relatively robust connection with Platner (there's literally video of Platner saying that he's "proud to share a stage with him") which Collins would pretty quickly weaponize against him, and also (on a personal level) I'm feeling pretty heartily burned by the Sanders/Khanna wing of the party (more on that in a second) so I honestly hope that they pick someone other than Jackson, though online sentiment (and for what it's worth, betting markets) seem to think he's the frontrunner.

Personally, I think you could make an argument that they could go with the second place finisher in the Maine gubernatorial race, which would be Dr. Nirav Shah, but he also is a first-time candidate and (again) the party should feel a bit burned there.  It honestly feels like the Democrats, given the charges against Platner, might pick a woman as his replacement (this was a big consideration when Al Franken resigned, and ultimately ended up being a good decision), though there are men who aren't first-timers and might be in the mix (Attorney General Aaron Frey and State House Speaker Ryan Fecteau being the top ones).  State House Speaker Sara Gideon, Rep. Chellie Pingree, or Secretary of State Shenna Bellows would all work...but they've all lost to Collins before, even though I think they'd all three go in potentially as favorites if they ran this time.  Ultimately this in some ways enters VP speculation (i.e. it's mostly a guessing game where no one knows how it turns out), but I'm going to throw in one additional name I'd be looking at if I was in the contest: current Senate President (and Jackson's successor to that office) Mattie Daughtry, who is young (she's 39), a woman, a longtime & respected state leader, and because she hasn't run statewide doesn't have any of the "far left vs. establishment" baggage many other candidates have.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)

3. Susan Collins Race Just Got Completely Changed

There was mixed opinion on whether or not Susan Collins would be happy or sad about this change, and I am going on record as saying that Collins was probably miserable when this leaked yesterday.  A good comparison is the 2012 race where Republicans begged Todd Akin privately to get out of the race (according to most reports State Treasurer Sarah Steelman was ready to take over for him as a replacement), but Claire McCaskill stayed silent and only tacitly spoke against him because she knew she'd lose to Steelman.  Collins is in the same boat-she clearly wanted Platner as her opponent, likely was aware of this story (or the rumors about it), and may well have had more ammunition about Platner in her research bag.

Now Collins will have to run against a different candidate, admittedly one who is less vetted & will start out with a cash disadvantage...but that will pretty quickly evaporate.  There's no evidence this close to the election that voters punish congressional replacement candidates (this is not a Biden/Harris situation), and as long as they don't pick someone with a similar scandal or who has strong ties to Platner, he likely will be a political asterisk by November.  Instead, Collins will have to run the kind of campaign she would've had to run in 2018-where the only option to send a message to Trump is to vote her out, and she has to convince Democratic voters why they should keep her against a candidate they'll like.  I have long-maintained that 2018 might be the only election cycle since she was first elected that Collins would've lost.  2026 could well become that case, and without Platner in the race, she becomes the mild underdog in my estimation.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) at a campaign rally
with Jackson (left) and Platner

4. The Left Needs a Reality Check (or a Time Out)

I've resisted so far in this article saying "I told you so" but I'm going to say it now less to be "that guy" and more because I think it needs to be underlined.  Platner, for starters, was always a bit of a silly choice for the US Senate.  He had no political background, had never held (or even run) for political office, and he was hardly a compelling speaker if you compare him to, say, Jon Ossoff or Beto O'Rourke.  His aesthetic and personal history became a weird sort of Rorschach test for people desperate to not run yet another long-tenured political officeholder against Collins.

But the scandals were obvious, and plentiful, and the fact that so many Democrats were willing to take the risks and ignore the giant red flags of a Nazi tattoo, assault allegations, and years of casual online racism & misogyny should reflect badly on them.  Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Martin Heinrich, Ro Khanna, David Hogg, and the hosts of Pod Saves America should be ashamed of themselves.  They will claim "no one could've seen this coming" but it was very, very obvious in the same way it's always obvious Trump will have more scandals, and either they are aggressively stupid (which they aren't...well, most of them aren't) or they genuinely don't have strong beliefs beyond winning power and influence.  They were willing to nominate a Nazi-tattooed man who had had rape allegation rumors surrounding him for months for the most consequential Senate race in the country, just because it might endear them to his far-left supporters.  I'm sorry, but that is exactly what people like Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, & Ted Cruz attempted to do in 2016 in glomming onto Trump, and they deserve to be uttered in that same breath after their behavior here.

Abdul El-Sayed (D-MI)

5. Will This Influence Any Other Races?

The DSA/Democratic Tea Party train has already left the station a bit in New York and Colorado, but honestly-so far that hasn't really caused an issue like Maine, where a swing state (and in this case, a flip) was made vulnerable by nominating a candidate that was politically toxic.  It's also not clear (to me) how much legs this story has, or whether or not people will associate Platner's candidacy with the people who carried water for him (i.e. the Bernie's and the Ro Khanna's) or if this will totally be put into the confines of the scandal.

But I am definitely watching Michigan right now.  Both for the US Senate and for the 7th district, we have a duplicate of this race-a more established Democratic woman, being portrayed as the favorite of the establishment, facing off against someone backed by the Sanders/Khanna wing of the party.  In both cases, if the party doesn't back Haley Stevens & Bridget Brink (and instead backs Abdul El-Sayed & William Lawrence), they're not necessarily (hopefully) going to have a scandal of this magnitude, but they are going to be coming into the general with a coalition that we were seeing in the past few days was falling apart in Maine post the the primary glow even without the recent Platner news, and could potentially take winnable races off of the map.

The Fallout of Mallory McMorrow's Exit

State Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-MI)

Yesterday, State Sen. Mallory McMorrow suspended her campaign in the US Senate primary in Michigan.  This isn't super surprising.  McMorrow started with a lot of promise in the race.  After going viral in 2022 for a speech attacking Republicans, McMorrow seemed like a rising star in the party, and I'll own that much of her campaign (in terms of quality) was considerably sharper than her other two opponents: Rep. Haley Stevens and Wayne County Public Health Director Abdul El-Sayed.  But McMorrow struggled in the race.  In an era where the conflict in Gaza disproportionately impacts Democratic primaries compared to the general electorate's concerns, McMorrow was stuck in the middle.  She did not receive money from AIPAC (which Stevens has), but she was not as ardently anti-Israel as El-Sayed, and she pissed off the far left by criticizing El-Sayed's campaigning with Hasan Piker, who has been accused by many (including me) for being a dangerous force within the party, and of trading in antisemitic dogwhistles.  In retrospect, McMorrow would've been better off still going for a promotion, but instead for Stevens' House seat and backing Stevens from the get-go while still getting a national platform in the process.

McMorrow's campaign has shown something challenging in the Democratic primaries, and something that could be a harbinger of things to come in the 2028 presidential election: there is not room for a candidate in-between a moderate establishment type (like Stevens) and a candidate who embraces the far left (like El-Sayed).  Her campaign was sharp, she ran it textbook, and much better than Stevens, who has struggled with being socially awkward in a number of public debates and El-Sayed, who seems to be an unserious candidate; while other top Senate candidates like Josh Turek, Roy Cooper, & Mary Peltola were featuring photos of them at parades & Independence Day events in their states on social media, El-Sayed had a video of him line-dancing in an American flag cowboy hat & skin-tight black v-neck to Taylor Swift's hit "You Belong with Me."  All-in-all, McMorrow felt like a really good compromise candidate-a true progressive who would push the Senate left while still being palatable enough to moderate audiences to win swing voters in a state that Donald Trump won in 2024.  But if there's a recurring theme in the Democratic Party in 2026, it's that no one wants compromise (except me-I endorsed McMorrow and donated to her campaign).

This now sets up a really interesting dynamic in the race though: a true one-on-one, no incumbent race between an establishment figure and a far left figure.  Other races like this have either A) not featured a race relatively light on scandal, which honestly this is (as far as I can tell, there's no actual scandal involving either Stevens or El-Sayed...people just don't like their politics or their approaches, but this isn't an Andrew Cuomo situation) or B) featuring an incumbent that people can say "throw them all out to!" in the way they did Diana DeGette & Adriano Espaillat (Stevens is a sitting member of Congress, but she's not a senator).

Aggregate public polling shows Stevens in a better (but not impenetrable) position, though El-Sayed has shown up in the lead in at least some public polling against Rep. Mike Rogers.  In terms of the primary, in the past few weeks there's been a lot of candidate or PAC-backed polling, but reading through the weeds it feels like El-Sayed has a lead, though a small enough one that McMorrow's supporters could make the difference if they break toward Stevens, and there's at least some polling to show they might.  This race has entered tossup territory, and it will be interesting to see how this turns out.

This is because there's a lot of vested interest from both sides for their candidates to win this race.  Stevens started that avalanche with an endorsement from Attorney General Dana Nessel immediately after Stevens exit (as well as powerful SuperPac Emily's List).  I would anticipate that at least some combination of Gretchen Whitmer, Gary Peters, Jocelyn Benson, Elissa Slotkin, & McMorrow herself will also get into the race, probably to endorse Stevens.  Whitmer's endorsement would be the most consequential-she's still popular (she'd have closed down this race had she won), and there's apparently a lot of bad will from El-Sayed's campaign against her in 2018.  If she backed Stevens, it'd be worth a few points in her direction.

But if you look to the presidential races of 2024, you also see some lines being drawn.  Chris van Hollen & Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez both have endorsed El-Sayed.  This is notable in particular for AOC, as she refused to get into the Maine Senate primary recently with another left-supported candidate (Graham Platner).  On the flip side, Ruben Gallego & Catherine Cortez Masto have both endorsed Stevens, and so has Nancy Pelosi, perhaps the most lauded establishment Democrat in the party.  It's pretty clear that if you're an establishment Democrat, you want Stevens, and if you are supporting the emerging Democratic Tea Party movement from the left, you want El-Sayed.

If you've read this blog very long, you'll guess where I stand, though I will own that (like McMorrow) I feel a bit adrift.  I am a relatively conventional Yellow Dog Democrat, but one who is probably considerably more progressive than most of the politicians I support, and I was excited we had looked like another Tammy Baldwin/Tina Smith-style liberal who can easily code as a moderate.  But I also care about who we are nominating-I don't like full-on litmus tests, especially in purple/red districts like this and I also don't approve of some of the public misogyny & coded xenophobia that is coming from El-Sayed's camp, and sometimes from him himself.  I also don't think someone who publicly supported "Defund the Police" is a good candidate in Michigan, and brings insane amount of risk with him.  I therefore am hoping for Stevens, even if (as of right now) I'd bet on El-Sayed ever so slightly...though there's a lot of game to play, and if Stevens pulled an Angela Alsobrooks (i.e. a candidate who closed well enough to win in what would've been seen as an upset a few weeks earlier) I wouldn't be surprised.

OVP: The Conversation (1974)

Film: The Conversation (1974)

Stars: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Cindy Williams, Frederic Forrest, Harrison Ford, Teri Garr

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Picture, Original Screenplay, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Harrison Ford: click here to learn more about Mr. Ford (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Harrison Ford's public persona has long been of a man who didn't really want to be a movie star.  A lot of this, I have long-suspected, is at least partially untrue (otherwise why do it, especially when he became bonkers rich & didn't really need to do it anymore...after all, his wife is also a talented actor who now rarely works).  But it is interesting that Ford's fame came relatively late.  The role that made him a movie star was Star Wars, which was released just days before his 35th birthday. For comparison's sake with some of his 1970's peers, Al Pacino at that age had several Oscar nominations and the Godfather franchise, Dustin Hoffman had been Ben Braddock & Ratso Rizzo, and Jack Nicholson & Peter Fonda had both boarded a motorcycle into legend.  Ford spent much of the 1970's balancing his time between small roles in movies and making furniture for people like Joan Didion, Valerie Harper, & George Lucas.  Ford's movie career, though, is really interesting because he appeared in a lot of interesting movies, among them Michelangelo Antonioni's controversial Zabriskie Point, and three Best Picture nominees: American Graffiti, Apocalypse Now, and today's film The Conversation.  For all of the talk about Ford at one point before Han Solo nearly quitting the industry to work as a high-profile carpenter, the more intriguing idea might be what he did in this film: taking on the role of distinctive, very handsome character actor in important auteur-driven features.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Conversation is a movie best headed into with you knowing as little as is humanly possible, so while I provide a spoiler alert on all of my reviews because I generally want to know as little as possible about all movies I'm going to, this one in particular it helps to go in blind so I'll reiterate that now.  The movie follows Harry Caul (Hackman), a man who runs a service that essentially follows people and records them for money (it is not lost on me that The Conversation, which competed with Chinatown for Best Picture in 1974, bears a striking resemblance to the Roman Polanski film as both are about private investigators who uncover more than they expected from a routine case).  Unlike Jake Gittes, Harry Caul does not advertise and is not well-known for his work.  He is, instead, anonymous to the point of unhealthy, keeping everything about him at a distance to the point his girlfriend (Garr) doesn't ever visit his apartment and he doesn't even have his own phone.  This is driven by wanting to avoid retribution, but also the very real threat of violence in his career.  Similar to Chinatown (again) there are allusions to a previous case throughout the film that the audience only understands to be too horrific to mention, and that haunt both detectives to the point they are constantly in fear of repeating it.

The Conversation is considered a landmark film, but because Francis Ford Coppola had it come out the same year The Godfather, Part II (one of the greatest movies ever made), it always feels like it doesn't get its due, and so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect headed into this-would it be a really handsome movie, one that stands up but can't compare with a picture as perfect as Godfather II, or would it be just as exceptional.  Again, similar to Chinatown, it's not clear until the last moments what's happening, and it's also not clear where The Conversation will land in that comparison.  But as the movie concludes, you realize it's also a true masterpiece.  We understand as the film ends that Harry has no idea what he's walked into, and what he's helped cause.  He assumes that the conversation between Frederic Forrest & Cindy Williams at the beginning of the movie is of a couple that might be having an affair, and becomes concerned when he uncovers (while listening to the clips that he initially won't hand over to a man known as "the Director's" assistant without first meeting the Director himself) that a part of the clips that he couldn't initially hear says "he'd kill us if he got the chance."  When he meets the Director (played by an uncredited Robert Duvall) he becomes worried for the young couple's safety as it's clear Cindy Williams is the Director's wife.  But as we learn in the waning moments of the film, he's missed something on the tapes-the emphasis in Forrest's reading of the word "us."

Because as the film ends, it's a case where Frederic Forrest has murdered Robert Duvall's husband with help from his lover, leaving all of the money (and secret organization he has) to Cindy Williams, and leaving them the opportunity to end up together.  The movie's sound work is legendary (and Oscar-nominated) for a reason, as not only is the entire setup with Hackman's Harry filled with us getting whirs & blurs from the recording equipment, but also the film tells in flashback narrative things the audience will have missed.  The film clearly inspired everything from The Usual Suspects to Severance (which borrows heavily from The Conversation's score), and you see why-this is a movie that shows paranoia is justified...and cannot be resolved.  We end the movie with Harry knowing he is being watched, knowing that he can't escape or be safely private...and having to give in to that to not go mad.

Harrison Ford's role is a key component & a crucial part of this story, even if he's only in about three scenes.  He plays the Director's assistant, and plays him with a level of bureaucratic cool that you kind of just assume he's a jackass (also according to most reports, Ford played him as gay which kind of comes across in the way he's super bitchy in a way you don't find a male character in the 1970's, even if there's no hint of this other than him wearing a stylish green suit in one scene that Ford bought with his own money), one who has gotten to this position through being absurdly handsome and honestly it's the sort of character you assume you don't need to pay attention to as the movie progresses.  Because I am writing this about Ford, though, I was paying attention, and it gives you a whole other angle here.  Ford's Martin Stett is the only figure in the film who 100% knows everything that's going on we learn as the film goes by-he works for the Director, but he's also clearly aware of the affair, and given that he's still working for Frederic Forrest & Cindy Williams in the end, it's possible he orchestrated all of this in connection with them.  The paranoia seeps into the actual film...was this all a setup to use Harry, kill the Director, and give the young couple everything they wanted?  Only Ford's Stett, who calls Hackman in the end to tell him he's being watched, knows for certain, and makes him the true antagonist of the picture.  Ford is good in this, and as we'll talk about next week, that layered acting ability didn't totally diminish when his visage started to adorn the postered walls of teenage boys, but as I said above-it's hard not to think of Ford in the same way we think of someone like Robert Duvall or John Cazale, someone who added extra layers to already great movies, as a supporting character actor, while watching The Conversation.

Diana DeGette and the Rise of the DSA in 2026

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO)

On Tuesday, Rep. Diana DeGette lost her primary bid for reelection, becoming already the fifth incumbent Democratic House member to lose her reelection bid in a primary to Democratic Socialist Melat Kiros.  This is on top of a near-record 58 incumbents in the House (24 of whom are Democrats) that will be leaving, setting the stage for (should the Democrats win the majority), a very different caucus for Hakeem Jeffries to lead than what he currently runs.  DeGette's loss, though, also opens up a lot of questions about the DSA's growing influence on the Democratic Party...a party they seem to openly despise.

I will start by saying, transparently, I've always really liked Diana DeGette.  Her predecessor in the House was Pat Schroeder, a legendary congresswoman who ran for President in 1988, and is one of my heroes (there's a framed photo of her hanging on my wall in this room), so I will own that part of this is biased in the sense that I am sad about this loss.  DeGette is a deeply reliable Democrat, very much someone you would've historically considered a liberal.  Her record on abortion rights is perfectly pro-choice, she is a strong advocate for gun control, and in particular, is a leading politician on healthcare issues (including Medicare for All).  She is not, as has been labeled on her, a "moderate" in any sense of the word.  Her voting record would be largely indistinguishable from, say, someone like Elizabeth Warren, whom most people feel pretty comfortable saying is a liberal.

DeGette's primary against Melat Kiros is largely predicated on just a few issues, because by-and-large their viewpoints were pretty much identical from a practical standpoint.  The biggest was around Israel.  DeGette's record on Israel has been called "mixed" but it's less mixed and more nuanced.  She has pretty consistently (since the attacks on October 7th) stated that she supports Israel's right to defend itself against Hamas, but has largely refused to vote for standalone bills providing funding to Israel due to the genocide (my word, not hers, which was also a sticking point) in Gaza.  It should be noted that DeGette did vote for a humanitarian bill in April 2024 that provided some funding to Israel as part of a compromise package with the House GOP, as it also provided funding to Gaza, Ukraine, & Taiwan.  173 Democrats voted for this bill, while 37 (and 21 Republicans) voted no (to match the comparison above, Elizabeth Warren also voted for this bill, as did noted Senate liberals like Tina Smith & Tammy Baldwin).

This was, by-and-large the only major issue that the two disagreed upon in the primary, and much was made over the fact that Kiros was considerably younger than DeGette (Kiros was born the year that DeGette entered Congress), but I will note that these DSA challenges oftentimes focus on just a handful of issues: Israel, age, & stylistic approaches to politics.  I will also own that I hate primaries largely based on style, especially in solid blue districts.  I say this as someone who already admitted to having a framed picture of a politician on my wall, but I think that ultimately the best politicians are ones who actually get the job done and I don't need my politicians to be flashy.  I am aware that on occasion you need to invest in a politician that feels like a national candidate, as I have learned from watching Al Gore & John Kerry lose that Americans will rarely pick someone on their merits if they don't want to go to a bar with them, but I don't need flashy politicians to be happy.  I want politicians who actually work in the real world, and do the job of getting their work done.  Like everyone, I approach my life with some complaints, and will complain on occasion (or more if it's the right audience)...but I hate people who are defeatists, and who just talk about their problems without actually fixing them, and so I have a lot of respect for people like a Diana DeGette, someone who has done the work, consistently putting out legislation to try to make the country better, without caring about their following on cable news or social media.

I also think that these primaries tend to gloss over the very real, sometimes glaring, faults of the challenger because they're younger and more exciting (because the media, and many grassroots people are more interested in flashy people, the latter in part because they're so angry and they want to feel seen through their politicians).  Kiros, for example, has made past statements refusing to condemn attacks at a Jewish Community rally in 2025 as being "antisemitic" even though they clearly were.  Combined with her campaigning with Hasan Piker, a noted far left figure with a large following who regularly trades in antisemitic language & conspiracy theories, a lot of the closing arguments were over Kiros not being strong enough on the rising tide of antisemitism in the far left, which you see pop up in things like the attacks on State Sen. Scott Wiener this past month (as well as in October 2024) in public protests that feel less about Wiener being pro-Israel (he's really not, he supports a two-state solution) and more so on Wiener being Jewish, as we see disproportionately large attacks on this issue against Jewish politicians.

Kiros is not the only far-left figure who has taken on an "establishment" (a more accurate if much vaguer term than "moderate" for someone like DeGette) and won while also having a host of controversial statements.  Darializa Chevalier recently beat Rep. Adriano Espaillat in New York, despite having said in the past that she doesn't believe in the prison system (even refusing to back prisons for murderers) and has called for the end of all deportation & an open borders policy with immigration even for those accused of crimes in the United States.  And we've spent way too much time on this blog this year talking about the many, many controversies of Abdul El-Sayed and Graham Platner, but know they're definitely an indication of this same wave of candidates.

Unlike El-Sayed or Platner, Kiros & Chevalier are in super blue districts-they are going to win and become congresswomen next year.  But I will own that it saddens me that the Democratic Party, which has a largely strong record of running serious-minded people, ones who are focused on actually making incremental and real improvements in the lives of Americans, are succumbing to challengers who seem less inclined to govern and more inclined to get the most likes on Twitter.  Also, as an historically yellow dog Democrat, it freaks me out to have multiple candidates for Congress I'd struggle to be able to vote for flying under our banner.  Diana DeGette was a good congresswoman, and I say that as a pretty progressive-minded person, one who actually took steps to pass legislation into law, and not just legislate through voice alone.  Kiros & Chevalier seem more like, well, Bernie Sanders-definitely making a principled stand, but one that never seems to go beyond that with little signed bills to their credit.

Saturdays with the Stars: Harrison Ford

Each month of 2026 we are looking at an actor or actress who found their fame in action films, fighting bad guys & saving the day.  Last month, we spoke about Bruce Lee, an actor who (like Steve McQueen before him) died relatively young and forged a type of movie star that hadn't really been seen before.  This month, as promised, we are going to start a six-month run of actors who made virtually all of their successful films post-1975.  To start that, we'll begin with the one guy who did have two big movies before 1975 (American Graffiti & The Conversation), but who would become synonymous with two characters that would reshape the cinematic landscape after Jaws, and make him the movie star's movie star, an action hero that the whole family could root for, even if his prickly public demeanor might bristle at such superlatives.  This month's star is Harrison Ford.

Born in Chicago, Ford (like Bruce Lee last month) had a clear path before him if he followed his parents' footsteps into show business.  His mother was a radio actress, and his father a former actor & advertising executive.  He grew up in a mixed faith household, his mother being Jewish while his father was Irish-Catholic, and both were quite progressive, something that Ford would carry for the rest of his life (the rare action film star of the modern era that is very much a Democrat).  Though incredibly handsome, Ford's initial forays into entertainment were middling, getting bit roles in westerns while George Hamilton & James Caan (both roughly the same age as Ford) got top-billing in the same pictures.  So frustrated with acting was he that he had a side gig as a carpenter (one of his clients included writer Joan Didion), and were it not for George Lucas seeing his potential in American Graffiti, he might have made that his life.

But Lucas saw something in Ford that soon the entire world would, as he put him as Han Solo in Star Wars, a movie that would make him a household name, while Lucas (as a producer) a few years later would give Ford the role he might be most synonymous with, Indiana Jones.  These two movies launched highly lucrative franchises for Ford, but they were hardly the only movies that really commanded the public's attention.  Throughout the 1980's and 90's, Ford was one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood, particularly when it comes to launching action franchises.  So famous is Ford that part of me almost didn't want to include him here because I struggled to come up with four major films that I hadn't seen of his (according to Letterboxd, I have seen 28 of his films).  So while we won't review Star Wars and Indiana Jones (as I've seen them all many times), we will talk about them, alongside some of Ford's other biggest pictures of the era, including two forays into more serious acting.

Game of Death (1978)

Film: Game of Death (1978)

Stars: Bruce Lee, Gig Young, Dean Jagger, Colleen Camp, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Director: Robert Clouse

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Bruce Lee: click here to learn more about Mr. Lee (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Actors dying during or after the production of a film is not uncommon, and it's actually relatively normal for directors/studios to use creative ways to meld together clips, body doubles, & whatever you can think of to piece together one last movie with a popular star.  Everyone from Carrie Fisher to Philip Seymour Hoffman to Heath Ledger to Paul Walker all had films released after they died that they had been filming at the time.  But no actor in the history of movies has ever continued to work as much in the years after his death in the same fashion as Bruce Lee, to the point where there became a name for it: "Bruceploitation."

The films that happened after his death in 1973 run the gamut, from re-editing two movies from old episodes of Lee's time on The Green Hornet to actors using Lee's name or film titles to conjure allusions to the late actor.  Films with names like Bruce Lee Fights Back from the Grave (likely the tackiest of the bunch) were relatively common in martial arts films of the 1970's.  Even Jackie Chan, who would eventually succeed Lee as the biggest name in martial arts films, would get an early start with New Fist of Fury, a spin on Lee's 1972 film that we profiled earlier this month.  Producers, having seen gargantuan paydays with The Way of the Dragon and Enter the Dragon, weren't willing to go quietly and admit that Lee had only really starred in four films, and their gravy train had passed away.  This greed was most encapsulated by today's film and its inexplicable sequel, perhaps the most horrifying movie I can remember seeing given its backstory.

(Spoilers Ahead) Game of Death follows a relatively standard (for a Lee picture) plot, with Billy Lo (Lee...occasionally) fighting against a racketeering syndicate who is threatening he and his fiancee (Camp) as they want a piece of his new movie star success.  Billy, after being shot in the face during a film production, decides this is a good time to go into hiding, and in hiding exacts revenge on those around him, in an attempt to get them back for essentially ruining his career (and eventually, because they kidnap Colleen Camp).

This is the plot of Game of Death...which you will not care about during the movie, as the plot of this movie is very obviously "Bruce Lee is dead."  This is because with the exception of about 12 minutes toward the end of the movie, Bruce Lee the living person is not in the film despite prominent top billing.  He is instead being portrayed by a series of stunt doubles & stand-ins, many of whom have their face onscreen, and are clearly, visibly, not Bruce Lee.  That is, of course, when they decide to even do that.  There's an actual scene (and I had to rewind, which if you know anything about streaming movies on Amazon Prime, is a feat) but there is literally a shot of this movie where they have taped a headshot of Lee onto a mirror, with it clear that a cardboard cutout is serving as the face of the stand-in to make him look more like Lee.

Most famously, Lee himself does appear in the film earlier on in the picture...but as a literal corpse.  That is because, in a shameless scene where we see Colleen Camp screaming & crying while attending the fake funeral of Billy Lo, we see cutaway footage of the actual funeral of Bruce Lee, at one point for a second or two seeing the open casket visage of the actually dead Lee on the screen.  Other than a scene stolen from The Way of the Dragon where he fights Chuck Norris imposed into the beginning of the picture, this is the first time you see the real-life Lee in the movie, making it all the more jarring.

Game of Death is, by my estimation, grave-robbing.  Despite having proper actors like Camp and Oscar-winners Dean Jagger & Gig Young (this being his final film before he murdered his new wife & killed himself, which in literally any other review would be the real-life headline), the only thing worth watching here is Lee.  The scenes, especially his fight with basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabber, where he battles in a skin-tight yellow jumpsuit, are splendid.  Lee is wry, agile, funny, & sexy-as-fuck.  I will own at this point that I have developed not just a heart-fluttering crush on Lee but also a talent one on him (I will 100% be completing his five film set at some point, as I am a true fan), and so on his behalf, the fact that this movie (and somehow a sequel that patches together even more past footage of Lee) exist is an abomination.

I will note, though, that it also opens up an uncomfortable door into the other legacy of Lee: his son, Brandon.  The younger Lee was also an actor (in fact both of Bruce Lee's children would become film performers), and in the 1980's he was doing some version of Bruceploitation, making films like Legacy of Rage which was released in Asia to try to capitalize on his father's still potent legacy.  Lee, though, didn't have much success, even after getting a chance in some American action films in the early 1990's.  But The Crow would end up being (in terms of box office) his big break.  The gothic superhero film was a smash hit in 1994, but similar to half of the films of his father, it was released after his death.  Eerily like his father's character in Game of Death, Brandon Lee would die from an accident involving a prop gun, in this case accidentally firing a live round that had been trapped in the barrel, shooting Lee in the abdomen, and killing him.  Unlike Game of Death, most of the younger Lee's performance was completed (he only had three days left on production, so most reviews don't note the clear real-life issues with this production coming through on the screen), and so after some jostling between Paramount & Miramax, the latter used a stand-in and CGI (which would later become more common) to complete Lee's performance.  Father and son would eventually be buried next to each other in Seattle.

Next month, and for the remainder of the year, we are going to start writing about the "true" modern action stars and not just the pioneers who forged the way, all six of whom would enter into action movie fame throughout the late 1970's, and especially in the 1980's & 90's, the heyday of the action movie genre.  Our first star, though, is going to be someone who, for much of the 1970's, felt like he was headed in a different direction than action, and it was only a chance twist of fate (and eventually billions of dollars) that would make him one of the Grand Tetons of the genre.

Enter the Dragon (1973)

Film: Enter the Dragon (1973)

Stars: Bruce Lee, John Saxon, Ahna Capri, Bob Wall, Shih Kien, Jim Kelly

Director: Robert Clouse

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Bruce Lee: click here to learn more about Mr. Lee (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We're going to be doing double duty with Bruce Lee this week since I missed one of his Saturday's earlier this month, and we're starting with Enter the Dragon, which for Lee was also the end.  Enter the Dragon was released in Hong Kong six days after Lee's death to rapturous audience reception (and box office).  Some of this had to have been attributed to the mystery surrounding the martial arts icon's demise.  Lee's health had been, despite seemingly being in peak physical condition (he has the body of a modern Olympic athlete in Enter the Dragon, basically unheard of given the training techniques for actors in the 1970's) in a risky position-he had suffered a collapse attributed to a cerebral edema during recording sessions for Enter the Dragon a few months before he passed away.  He was supposed to meet with film producer Raymond Chow about an upcoming picture he intended to make but he had a headache, and took a painkiller & a nap, and when he didn't show up for the planned meeting, Chow went to his house, where he tried to revive Lee, but it was to no avail-Bruce Lee, then one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, was already dead at the age of just 32.

(Spoilers Ahead) This is a weird juxtaposition against Enter the Dragon (we'll get into more of his death in a second) given this is just a grand movie for him, and likely would've opened up a new level of fame for the actor with global audiences.  For starters, this was his first film since Marlowe (in which he had a bit part) to have an American leading man opposite him.  While John Saxon is not as famous as James Garner, he had headlined a number of B-grade pictures, and was about to have a solid run as a featured player in horror classics like Black Christmas and A Nightmare on Elm Street.  Having two leading men that feel at-odds with each other in terms of acting styles helps Enter the Dragon, a really solid action film, one with sensational fighting sequences (and not always featuring Lee), and a plot that feels a bit more rooted in consistency but not repetition.

My favorite part of Enter the Dragon is the way that it incorporates elements of Blaxploitation into the movie.  At the time that subgenre was also part of the action/crime genre in the same way martial arts were, and having these two stylistically against each other works really well.  It helps that Jim Kelly is in the film, a Black man who was about to have a brief stint as an action leading man, as he has some terrific one-liners (there's an admittedly problematic but still funny joke about halfway through where he picks out four women to have sex with, and apologizes to the remainder for not having sex with them too, primarily because he's "had a long day" as if four women alone won't be a challenge at all).  Kelly, Saxon, & Lee are stylistically really different in their approach to acting, but that fuses together to make something interesting-this is the rare film of this era where combining a lot of styles and approaches in one film actually works and doesn't feel messy.

Lee's death would quickly be followed by a funeral (where action stars Steve McQueen & James Coburn would serve among the pallbearers) as well as a mountain of conspiracy theories.  The official cause of death for Lee is what is known in Britain (remember, Hong Kong was then part of Britain) as "death by misadventure" which insinuates that it's an accidental death caused by a risk taken by the deceased.  In this case, it was taking a medication that, in combination with the cerebral edema that Lee already knew he had, caused his brain to swell, killing him quickly.

This is probably what happened, but that doesn't mean that the public, juxtaposing the seemingly banal death with a man they saw look basically immortal onscreen, didn't want to make up new ideas.  They range from other medical theories, one seemingly compelling one indicating it was heat stroke (Lee had recently had his sweat glands removed because they didn't look attractive onscreen) or an undiagnosed case of epilepsy.  Some have said that he may have had a bad reaction to cannabis, but that was addressed by his physicians at the time, and they said that was not possible.

But the most commonly discussed conspiracy theory about Lee is that he was murdered.  There is no concrete evidence of this, but the suspects in the potential crime run the gamut from the Hong Kong triads (killing him for refusing to pay them off or for exposing martial arts secrets) to accusations he was killed by a jilted lover (he passed away in the apartment of actress Betty Ting Pei, whom some have alleged he was having an affair with at the time) to the truly insane theory that he was killed in a martial arts fight by a rival martial artist using the move "dim mak" (aka the touch of death).  I will own, on a personal level, that none of these make sense as a theory, and all of them (quite frankly) feel, charitably, far-fetched.  But they are a part of Lee's legacy as a celebrity, and to ignore them felt irresponsible, particularly given that if you look at Lee's post-death existence, mysterious tragedy would become something of a trend as we'll discuss later today.