With clips from films spanning most of the twentieth century, Canning presented amusing examples of mangled geography and cultural tone-deafness, along with some notable cases where the filmmakers actually got it right. He also featured a number of scenes shot on Capitol Hill.
A longtime Hill resident, Canning worked for 28 years as a press and cultural officer for the U.S. Information Agency both in Washington and overseas, and began writing movie reviews for the Hill Rag upon his retirement from the Foreign Service in 1993. Beginning in 1999 he also served as a programmer and commentator for the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop's classic films series. In addition, he has published a number of articles on the treatment of Washington and the U.S. Congress in American feature films, including a paper delivered to the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in 1997.
