Presidential role should give Pullman a star-making push, Hail to the fictional chief: Bill Pullman in By Frank Gabrenya, Independence Day Dispatch Film Critic, (July 12, 1996)

Lucky for Bill Clinton and Bob Dole that they don't have to face Tom Whitmore in this year's presidential election.

How does one campaign against an incumbent who has saved the world from an alien invasion? Somehow, promising to raise the minimum wage pales in comparison.

Whitmore, to the relief of Democrats and Republicans, is a fictional chief executive. Still, given the staggering popularity of Independence Day, he may receive more than a few write-in votes.

More likely, the actor who plays Whitmore, Bill Pullman, will become the beneficiary of all that grass-roots support.

Pullman has been seen on screen for 10 years, since planning the disastrous kidnapping of Bette Midler in Ruthless People. He has appeared in almost every sort of film: farce (Spaceballs), horror (The Serpent and the Rainbow), drama (The Accidental Tourist), film noir (The Last Seduction, Malice), fantasy (Casper), western (Wyatt Earp) and romantic comedy (While You Were Sleeping). He has acted in hits (Sleepless in Seattle) and misses (Mr. Wrong).

His roles have ranged from simps to psychos, with plenty of last-place nice guys tossed in, but he hadn't played a role of such pivotal power as the president who leads the counterattack in the flag-waver of the summer.

"There's something in this role that was right for me, something I could bring to the table," he said while meeting the press in New York.   "I don't want to sound as if I'm extolling some virtues, but I'm accessible to events. I felt comfortable as the person responsible for other people."

Despite the range of his credits, Pullman finds himself typecast in many minds.

"When I see a movie," he said, "I don't project that the actor I'm seeing is the person he's playing -- but a lot of people do, and it's been a particular bane of my existence.

"There are casting directors who only call me in for psychos. Bonnie Timmerman in New York, from the time I met her, only thinks of me for the guy who's sweating and ready to kill. I say, `Bonnie, I've been doing some comedies out there in Hollywood,' and she says, `I know; I don't like that.'

"I think transforming yourself is what it's all about, but I'm continually reminded that people identify you with what part you played before. The good side of that is that their memories are so short."

Pullman particularly remembers 1993, when he had key roles in three major releases -- each character different and complex.

In Sommersby, he was a Southerner "who has too much bile and becomes obsessive and dangerous." In Sleepless in Seattle, he was Meg Ryan's boorish fiance -- "a blue blood, amusing in his funniness." In Malice, he was Nicole Kidman's husband and the naive target of a ruthless scheme who exacts a plot-twisting vengeance.

"Somehow it all boiled down to `Bill is the guy who doesn't get the girl.' I really was amazed."

All the confusion -- even among the people who mistake him for Bill Paxton -- should evaporate as Independence Day continues to rack up box-office records.

"I think of it as a World War II movie in its soul," Pullman said. "It reminds me of how I spent my teen years. I watched a lot of John Wayne movies in those days, and, when I was off playing by myself in my fictional world, I was John Wayne leading the charge. All that stuff you did at 12 with a sword in your hand, you get to do in a movie like this."

Still, Pullman worried that the role wouldn't work -- especially in the scene in which Whitmore, as Earth's leader, communicates with a captured alien enemy.

"I had to ask these questions -- `Who are you?' `Where do you come from?' `And before that?' `Can there be peace between us?' -- and I thought: `This could be really stupid. This could really sink me. If people are laughing in the theater, then I'm out.'

"So I'm walking to the set with an AD (assistant director), and I would just go, `Where do your people come from?' just to see if it works conversationally. And he says, `We came from Jersey.' I said, `And before that?' I found it works like a great haiku that just pulls you in. I said, `Can there be peace between us?' and he's like `What?' "

Pullman will follow up his presidential role with two more departures: Lost Highway, a drama in which he plays a husband suspected of murdering his wife, from director David Lynch; and Mistrial, an HBO movie in which he plays a police officer who takes a case to court and finds himself on trial.

"People say: `Aren't you excited? So much is going to happen to you this year.' Well, I've had that before and it didn't exactly happen. Things go off on their own way."

Of course, he hadn't saved the world before.