WUSA 1970

A drifter named Rheinhardt, Paul Newman, arrives in New Orleans and quickly scans a shelter, where he discovers his old acquaintance Farley, Laurence Harvey, running a scam as a preacher and owing him money.

Seeing a familiar name on a shelter, he encounters Farley, Laurence Harvey, who is still deep in his con, and Rheinhardt takes note of the tiny debt he’s owed and the uneasy balance between old grudges and new opportunites.

Rheinhardt goes to a bar, where he sees a woman named Geraldine, Joanne Woodward, threatened by a pimp who misreads her as soliciting on his turf.

Rheinhardt and Geraldine move in together, living in cheap housing surrounded by hippies. He gets a job at a conservative talk radio station called WUSA. The owner, Bingamon, Pat Hingle, is a white supremacist who uses the station to spread propaganda, with the constant refrain that something is wrong in the country and that things were better in the past.

Rheinhardt reads the station’s reactionary editorials while he socializes with hippies who detest it. One of his neighbors is an earnest man named Rainey, Anthony Perkins, whose job is to survey welfare recipients. Rainey relies on a wealthy man named Clotho, Moses Gunn, to guide him to beneficiaries. Clotho introduces Rainey to several people who are scamming the welfare system.

Rainey eventually discovers that Clotho is working for Bingamon, making sure that Rainey’s survey finds rampant fraud. WUSA uses that fraud as content for their editorials, feeding the hate-filled atmosphere that the station helps cultivate. The more Rainey learns, the more horrified he becomes, and when Bingamon hosts a hate rally, Rainey tries to assassinate him but shoots and kills another man instead. During the ensuing chaos, Rainey attempts to flee with his gun, but the crowd beats him to death.

Rheinhardt is ordered to the lectern to calm the crowd, but he makes a speech that only adds to the din. As Geraldine flees the rally, she is arrested and found with marijuana. Threatened with years in jail for felony possession, she hangs herself in a cell. Rheinhardt visits her grave before leaving town as cynical as he was when he arrived.