And a recent viewing of Hotshots Part Deux featuring a thinly disguised Saddam Hussein (who I imagine was probably a little less amusing in real life), I was wondering if there are any instances of dictators having watched movies featuring, probably quite unflattering, versions of themselves and what their recorded opinion of their depiction was?
Kim Jong-Il in Team America also counts
btw I was originally thinking of movies but any media counts
I haven’t heard reports about how Fidel Castro felt about people who portrayed him, but it’s interesting to note that people in the 1960s didn’t actually plat Castro – they played someone like him, but with his distinctive army uniform, beard, and cigar. Peter Falk played such a dictator in the Twilight Zone episode “The Mirror” in 1961.
John Vernon (Adolphus Raymundus Vernon Agopsowicz, better known as Dean Vernon Werner in Animal House) played the Castro-esque Rico Parra in Hitchcock’s 1969 film Topaz.
The only case I’ve seen where someone actually portrays Castro is in Watchmen, where John Kobylka depicts him in a line-less part (although I know there are other films with Castro, like Che! and the TV movie Fidel , but I haven’t seen them)
I haven’t been able to find anything about how he sees these depictions of him.
Actually, as a matter of fact, Fidel seems to have quite a few named appearances in fiction, rather than just an analogue, or veiled references to “the chairman” or “the premier” or even “the [US] president,” like other world leaders often get, for some reason. I guess he just hits a blind spot in the dramatic convention.
I think the one I liked the most was his appearance in the UPN scifi action series Seven Days, where he was actually a major character with lines (!).
But, sadly, I don’t have any info on his reaction to said representations, if any. Though I think I heard Cuba wasn’t happy about the “assassinate Castro” mission in the Call of Duty: Black Ops game, a couple of years back.
