Episode 157 - The Cuckable Mr Blair (ft. Will Sloan & Luke Savage)

Jack, Yair and Geraint are joined by returning RP guest, Toronto's own Luke Savage, and his fellow Torontonian and co-host of the esteemed Michael & Us podcast, Will Sloan. The topic of discussion is the film released as The Ghost Writer in the United States, and The Ghost in most other territories, in 2010; a conspiracy thriller based on Robert Harris' thinly-veiled account of his former friend Tony Blair's potential troubles with international criminal law, with a screenplay by Harris himself, and directed by another friend of his, none other than well-known sex criminal and fugitive from justice Roman Polanski. We ask what this film tells us about its creators and their politics, about Tony Blair, cultural icon and international man of mystery, and its cooky central conspiracy that saw Twitter user oidptg famously describe the plot as "Blair gets cucked by the CIA". Along the way we run into some of Blair's contemporaries on the neoliberal scene, such as Jeffrey Epstein and Mike Gapes. Follow Michael & Us on SoundCloud @michael-and-us, and Will's other podcast, the excellent Important Cinema Club, @the-important-cinema-club. Both podcasts are also on patreon @ https://www.patreon.com/michaelandus and https://www.patreon.com/theimportantcinemaclub. If you're in the game of subscribing to Patreons, you might also wanna check out patreon.com/reelpolitik, where we have some bonus content with Luke and Will.