Movies in the Movies. Warren Beatty stars as newspaper reporter Joe Frady in the second installment of director Alan J. Pakula's "paranoia trilogy." Inspired by the assassinations of John F. and Robert Kennedy, the film depicts the assassination of a fictional presidential candidate. Years later, the witnesses to the assassination are dying mysteriously, one by one. As Frady becomes more deeply involved in his investigation, he is led to the assassin-recruiting Parallax Corporation and begins to uncover a vast corporate and political conspiracy. Vision remains a central theme throughout, as action is obscured by curtains, fences, glass, and shadows. The indoctrination sequence is foundational in the exploration of film editing and recalls a similar sequence in 1971's A Clockwork Orange.