Synopsis

Disillusioned California Senator Jay Billington Bulworth hires a hitman to kill him and takes out a life insurance policy for his family. As he waits for the assassination, he abruptly abandons political caution and begins speaking with startling honesty, often in rap-inflected language. His candor transforms his campaign, drawing him into an unlikely relationship while threatening the interests that once supported him.

Factoids & Trivia

• Warren Beatty conceived the basic premise in 1992: a depressed politician arranges his own assassination so that his family can collect the life insurance. The film's broader political ideas developed afterward.

• Beatty used hip-hop and rap as a deliberate contrast to the polished language of traditional political campaigning. The style also allowed the senator's sudden honesty to feel both comic and disruptive.

• The film marked Beatty's return to acting in a theatrical feature after *Love Affair* (1994).

• Ennio Morricone composed the score, but the finished film relies heavily on rap and other source music. Only a relatively small portion of Morricone's complete score appears in the final cut.

• The soundtrack's best-known track, "Ghetto Supastar (That Is What You Are)," became a major hit. The album reached No. 10 on the Billboard 200 and was certified platinum in the United States.

• *Bulworth* was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, one of Beatty's rare screenwriting nominations.

• The film's political ideas have remained part of its reputation. In 2013, The New York Times reported that President Barack Obama had privately used "going Bulworth" to describe the desire to abandon political restraint and speak freely.

• A proposed follow-up titled *Bulworth 2000* was discussed as a satire of the 2000 presidential election but was never produced.