I celebrated my birthday with my family last month. Some friends wanted to celebrate it here, and I was glad to oblige, so we arranged to have a date for dinner and a movie. The movie was (the 2006) All the King's Men with Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Talia Balsam... etc.! :)... I don't live in Louisiana nor in the 1930s (though the novel, I believe, and certainly this film take place later on) so I can say nothing about accuracy...
and I have seen at least part of an earlier version of the film--
but I liked this one, the cinematography the acting the script the drama the gestalt... a whole lot. I knew how it ended and I was still frightened (and the film's mainly about personalities, politics, and a very complicated character, impelled to enter politics by real outrage but also corrupt and in many ways no saint (so to speak) and very much a demagogue as well, a character based (with fictional license) on Huey Long (1893-1935)...
Note: according to http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0405676/releaseinfo the film isn't out yet in the UK and a number of other countries. (Hasn't been getting great reviews from site users, either- pft! Tant pis.)
Further edit: "Warren disassociated himself from the comparison, stating to interviewer Charles Bohner in 1964, "Willie Stark was not Huey Long. Willie was only himself, whatever that self turned out to be."" (from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_Long. Originally said "Lewis disassoc..." but Lewis died in 1951, didn't write the book, making it seem a bit unlikely he would have said anything about it, whereas Robert Penn Warren -did- write it and might have been interviewed about it... so... my mistake, I think!)
