Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!spool.mu.edu!telecom-request From: 0004133373@mcimail.com (Donald E. Kimberlin) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Movie Review: The President's Analyst Message-ID: Date: 3 Jun 91 09:46:00 GMT Article-I.D.: eecs.telecom11.421.5 Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Organization: TELECOM Digest Lines: 53 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 421, Message 5 of 11 describes the closing scenes of a film that ought to be in the curriculum of every student of telecommunications. Rob asks for recall of earlier scenes, all of which probably run on and on to the casual viewer. The earlier scenes do, however all build the thread that the world has some all-pervading, all-knowing super spy organization called TPC. Because the President's analyst knows what's on the mind of the President of the U.S., every spy organization wants to capture him for interrogation. For most of the film, James Coburn (the actor who portrayed "Our Man Flint" in a number of 007 spoof films) is chased, captured and escapes from every major spy organization in the world. Through all this plot-building, no matter where Coburn is, on land, at sea (indeed at one time under it in a Russian sub) or in the air while being chased by one spy service after another, he is under constant color video and audio surveillance by TPC. Truly, TPC has telecommunications ability equalled by no other organization on the planet. But, threaded through every adventure the President's analyst embarks on is a non-stop series of "telephone gags." Many of these are "inside jokes," hilarious to anyone who was ever inside the monopoly U.S. telephone esablishment; perhaps puzzling and boring to a non-initiate. Among the more obvious gags are a scene in the Washington bar where spies of all nations meet for a drink at the end of a hard day. Each has to check in with their respective national HQ, comparing notes about how rotten the phone company is in their home nation. In the scene Rob mentions, the President's analyst has finally escaped bearing nothing but but his undershorts, and finds himself along a road through open Canadian wheat fields - with nothing in view but a telephone booth. His attempts to place a collect call to the White House, but lacking the demanded coin the idiotic operator is only going to return after taking the call order, are the penultimate example of Lily Tomlin's "Ernestine the Operator." Whoever the author of "The President's Analyst" was, that person certainly had to be "on the inside" in the bad old days of the monopoly era of telecommunications. Today, it can be found in the "oldies and classics" section of many video rental stores for a very low rental price. I heartily recommend viewing this film to every serious student of telecommunications as a very entertaining object lesson in what the study all came from. It's a great way to pick up on what the cognoscenti are talking about here in the Digest!