(1967) “If I was a psychiatrist, which I am, I would say that I was turning into some sort of paranoid personality, which I am!” But then James Coburn has his reasons: not only does that flashing red Presidential anxiety-attack alarm keep interrupting intimate moments with his girlfriend, but an international spectrum of secret agents are on his tail to get those secrets the on-the-couch Commander-in- Chief has been pouring in his ears — talk about a dream job going sour! — even as the short, dark-suited, hat-wearing agents of the “FBR” are trying to kill him to keep his mouth shut. (“You can’t just go around shooting people. There’s a Constitution,” beefs Coburn.) Writer/director Theodore J. Flicker (his real name, and the creator of the improvisatory theater The Premise) lines up the late 60s bull’s eyes: African-American “CEA” agent Godfrey Cambridge, dressed in a “Dizzy Gillespie for President” sweatshirt, pulls off a midafternoon assassination in the garment district; gun-addicted suburbanites shouting “Muggers!” with glee as goons loom in Chinatown; a frenetic location chase through Bleecker and MacDougal Streets; shocked Soviet agent Severn Darden squawking “Every phone in the country is tapped? This is America, not Russia!”; Coburn’s memorably Freudian war cry “Take that, you hostile son of a bitch!” — while flashing the screen’s most crocodilian pair of choppers throughout — with the world’s then-most universally hated institution ultimately revealed as the final, dehumanizing power behind every throne. (Fearing a lawsuit, NBC deep-sixed the dénouement.) With Coburn’s echt flower power tryst in a grassy field with rock groupie “Snow White” (a helium balloon carries her filmy gown off into the stratosphere) while competing agents play mortal leap frog and Dylan-wannabe Barry (“Eve of Destruction”) McGuire jams solo. With bouncily-60s Lalo Schifrin score. “A terrific, on-target satire of virtually every sacred cow of the late 1960s.” – All Movie Guide. “If Philip K. Dick had worked for MAD magazine, he might have come up with The President’s Analyst… 1967 being the year of Sgt. Pepper and Monterey, it played straight to its youth audience... the ‘doors of perception’ you’d get if the title sequence of Get Smart included a Jim Morrison soundtrack. While leading us to the fade-out’s sardonic absurdist sight gag, Coburn stumbles into a demented backstage reality that predates Matrix head games by 30-odd years.” – Mark Bourne. “The sleeper of 1967... Cold War paranoia taken to its absurd extreme.” – Keith Phipps, The Onion. Approx. 104 min.
A PARAMOUNT PICTURES RELEASE.

Watch the trailer for the TED FLICKER: A LIFE IN THREE ACTS.
Produced by David Ewing, this documentary in progress examines the life of the once blacklisted PRESIDENT'S ANALYST director.

"Forty-one years late, The President's Analyst has come into its prophetic own."
– Vadim Rizov, The House Next Door Click here to read full article

"A wild time capsule... The President's Analyst reminds us once again of the gulf between intelligence and government 'Intelligence.' "
– David D'Arcy Click here to read entire review

"Surges past an ordinary hippie jaunt with assured Cold War nuttiness, a few gun-toting suburban liberals,
and a zany conspiracy theory that may ring true to current Verizon customers."
– Nicolas Rapold, The New York Sun Click here to read full article

"Recommended! A somewhat campy, extremely strange movie pitched perfectly to the tune of 1967."
– The Onion

"Zanily neurotic! Every time Coburn flashes those choppers, something magical happens.
Underseen and underloved... and unsettingly prescient."
– Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York