Both movies are about drunken single parents (Costner, Barrymore) who through a quirk are in the position to decide an election with their single vote. Both become celebrities and are courted by politicians to the point of bribery; and both finally see the light thanks to their children. ...
But I believe there may be very oblique nod in the movie itself that only an extremely hard-core movie buff like myself would pick up. It occurs in a scene where the Democratic president candidate, uncomfortably played by Dennis Hopper, is pretending to be knowledgable about trout fishing in a conversation with Costner's character, a fishing buff whose vote he is trying to reel in. Hopper's campaign manager, played by Nathan Lane, at one point slips Hopper some handwritten notes that he secretly reads from. In real-life Barrymore was a drunk who, by the time he made The Great Man Votes — released two years before his death — was in such bad shape he couldn't memorize lines (but could still act the pants off Costner). Garson Kanin, who directed Great Man, wrote in his memoirs that Barrymore read his lines from small blackboards that were strategically placed around the set.Le scandal!
