Summary

A series of terrible dreams unhinge a man in power. The Rancher is a parafictional newsreel film featuring an anonymous president during wartime. The reworked footage, sampled from newsreels about Lyndon Baines Johnson, presents a more fraught portrait of the daily life of this archetypical president. As he escalates military involvement, the president is plagued by terrible dreams that result in the unraveling of public opinion about the war. The narrative of The Rancher largely parallels LBJ’s administration as well as ones from more recent history.