John Sayles' Silver City now enters the political arena, with its finely crafted parody Silver City. Chris Cooper portrays a politician from Colorado who constantly fumbles for the right words. His own father, Colorado's venerable Senator Jud Pilager (portrayed by Michael Murphy), says Dicky never cared much for reading, but as we're told early in the film by the editor of an alternative news Web site, Dicky Pilager is the real thing.