OPINION: Senator By Day, Extra By Night

By Casey Seiler, Times Union, Albany, N.Y.

Jun. 22–If you’ve seen the trailer for the upcoming Batman film “The Dark Knight,” you might have noticed something familiar about one of the actors being roughed up by the Joker’s thugs at a high-society gala. If you thought the frightened man in the tuxedo looked like the chairman of the U.S. Senate judiciary committee, go buy yourself a $7 bucket of popcorn.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., a diehard Batman fan, previously appeared as another imperiled party guest in 1997′s hideous, high-camp “Batman & Robin.” (The senator apparently doesn’t worry about being typecast as Man Who Attends the Wrong Galas.)

Although it’s odd that one of the nation’s top lawmen should be gaga for a costumed vigilante, I’ve always admired Leahy, who was my senator for the six years I lived in Vermont. Even so, I’m on record arguing that everyone connected to “Batman & Robin” with Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze and George Clooney in a big-nippled Batsuit ought to be flogged.

Politicians have been appearing in dramatic films for decades, usually in the margins and for very low pay. Gannett News Service recently noted that both Leahy and Vermont’s other senator, the independent Bernie Sanders, received their only non-Senate pay from film or TV appearances: Leahy collected $2,000 for his “Dark Knight” cameo, while Sanders earned $900 for talking about global warming on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.”

Less money, true but Sanders talks about such things all day for no extra pay, and he didn’t even have to wear a tux. One of the Senate’s genuine mavericks, Sanders is a major ham who prefers to take roles in no-budget movies: He played a rabbi in the little-scene 2001 comedy “My X-Girlfriend’s Wedding Reception,” a film I and many members of the director’s family have seen.

These senators donated their 2007 outside paychecks both drawn from Time Warner properties to Vermont nonprofits: a historic library for Leahy; a battered-women’s shelter for Sanders.

I wish I could report that New York’s Senate delegation was doing its part for in-state charities by taking on more paid acting work, but it’s just not so.

I’m letting Sen. Hillary Clinton off the hook for 2007; she’s been too busy to take on the role of, say, Stately Woman at Awards Ceremony in “Iron Man.” But Sen. Charles Schumer, a man who loves the camera almost as much as clean drinking water, needs a better agent.

Schumer’s 2007 financial disclosure form indicates that his only non-Senate income was $94,000 in royalties from Rodale Press for his book “Positively American: Winning Back the Middle-Class Majority One Family at a Time.” (Schumer’s spokesman reported that those proceeds, after taxes and expenses, went to his daughter’s college expenses.)

I’m sure Schumer had a good time writing his book, but will it still be in print 25 years from now, when filmgoers are still delighting in the 1997 horror film “The Devil’s Advocate,” in which Schumer’s predecessor, Alfonse D’Amato, shakes hands with Satan (Al Pacino) at a dinner party?

So far, Schumer’s only fictional dramatic work was an appearance on “K Street,” the curious 2003 lobbying drama that starred James Carville and Mary Matalin as themselves, sort of. Needless to say, it ran on Time Warner’s HBO.

With New York’s nonprofits facing great financial challenges in the months ahead, it’s time for every high-profile Empire State politician to make sure they have a current head shot and promo reel ready for casting agents. The success of this summer’s comic book films ensures 2009 and ’10 will bring even more movies in which masked thugs disrupt parties attended by, say, Kirsten Gillibrand or Andrew Cuomo. Perhaps Joe Bruno could play a kindly grandfather or dyspeptic cabbie; Sheldon Silver was clearly born to play a high school math teacher.

Get to work, politicos: Time Warner’s money is yours for the taking.

Casey Seiler can be reached at 454-5619 or cseiler@timesunion.com.

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