“The Best Man” and My Dad’s Un-Conventional Idea

Posted on March 29, 2012 at 2:51 pm

I’m very proud of my dad’s piece in Politico today about the advantages of a brokered convention.

I’ve been at a brokered convention and worked for a candidate who came out of it. Even though my candidate lost the general election, it was still a far more robust and constructive process than the primary-caucus marathon of the past half-century.

My dad, who has been involved in national, state, and local campaigns since 1948, says that

primary voters push GOP candidates to the right, and Democratic candidates left. Independent voters, who occupy the center, wonder why the parties nominate candidates who don’t represent their views. The nominees then spend the general election recanting what they said in the primaries, to persuade the independents, who decide elections.

We thought getting rid of the brokered conventions would do away with smoke-filled rooms and backroom deals. We just substituted one set of bosses for another.

I also read today that a new production of Gore Vidal’s play, “The Best Man” is about to open on Broadway with an all-star cast that includes “Will and Grace” star Eric McCormack, Candace Bergan, James Earl Jones, Angela Lansbury, and, in a small role, Donna Hanover, who knows something about politics as the former wife of the mayor of New York City. Vidal, whose political expertise was in part based on his being related to Jaqueline Kennedy, penned a sharp story about two Presidential candidates at a brokered convention along the lines of the ones my dad wrote about. The movie version, starring Henry Fonda and Cliff Robertson, is one of my all-time favorite political dramas and as timely as the day it was written.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbJoI6yToc4

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For Your Netflix Queue Neglected gem

More “Hunger Games” Craziness

Posted on March 26, 2012 at 9:06 pm

It’s inevitable that any movie as high-profile as “The Hunger Games” would be grabbed for political advocacy by all sides. My friend Rebecca Cusey writes in Patheos:

It seems “The Hunger Games” is a bit of a Rorschach test for people politically. Do the districts represent #Occupy protesters? Ayn Rand workers oppressed by their government? Fodder for meaningless wars? Or something more?

Some will argue that the rebellion against the totalitarian state in “The Hunger Games” trilogy is an allegory for conservative principles in favor of limiting the role of government. Others will argue that it is an allegory for progressives fighting for the rights of the oppressed. That’s part of the strength and the appeal of fiction. The same thing happens with many powerful films. People are still arguing about whether the original “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” was an allegory of the fight against communism or the fight against McCarthyism.

It makes me sad to see the increasing efforts to impose reductionist templates Procrustean-style, making everything into “us” or “them.” The good thing is that the more both sides claim ownership, the clearer it is that fiction transcends such pettiness.

Speaking of pettiness, there were also some unfortunate problems with idiotic tweets from fans of the book who were disappointed that some characters were played by black actors. Hunger Games Tweets on Tumblr has a selection along with some funny responses. My favorite was “I hear that Donald Trump is trying to prove that Rue wasn’t even born in Panem.” Rue was my favorite character in the book. She was my favorite character in the movie. Amanadla Stenberg was perfect for the role. It is a tribute to the power of these books that some people project their own ideas of what the characters look like (in some cases disregarding the author’s descriptions) and are unable to accept the reality of the movie version. But it is unfortunate that these projections can reflect conscious or unconscious bigotry and even more unfortunate that they have the bad judgment to make it public.

Ides of March

Posted on October 6, 2011 at 6:03 pm

Beau Willimon took his experience on the Howard Dean campaign and turned it into a play called “Farragut North,” for the Metro stop near the fancy Washington D.C. offices occupied by political consultants. Working with George Clooney and Grant Heslov, it has become “The Ides of March,” named for the ominous date when Julius Caesar was stabbed to death by his political rivals in 44 B.C. The reference is that while the blood may be more metaphorical than literal, it still gets spilled.

Ryan Gosling plays Stephen, an ambitious but idealistic young campaign worker who is responsible for media in the midst of the Democratic primaries. His candidate, Mike Morris (Clooney) is a progressive governor. In Ohio, a key state, they are ahead but their toughest competitor is close enough to make them nervous, especially since a New York Times reporter named Ida Horowicz (Marisa Tomei) is trying to get a story out of it. Even if they win, she will spin them as losing if they win by less than they are predicting. So Stephen and his boss, Paul (Philip Seymour Hoffman) have to come across as confident and — most of all — sincere. They have to be friendly and open with Ida but they have to be careful with her, too, and careful about letting her know just how careful they are being. Not that she is fooled by it. A lot of faux charm is deployed in both directions.

And there is a young, beautiful campaign worker named Molly (Evan Rachel Wood) who is, as they used to say in the theater, the second-act complication.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McCt-_yYLpo

Co-writer/director Clooney as assembled a powerhouse cast and it is worth seeing the movie just to watch the way Hoffman and Paul Giamatti eye each other as opposing campaign managers. But in adapting the play he made some poor choices. In the original version, the candidate himself did not appear. Making the Governor an important part of the story and having the character played by Clooney throws the film off-balance, especially when he finds it necessary to give himself a chance to spout some political promises that are just a distraction. It was much more powerful when everyone in the audience could project onto the candidate whatever positions they wished (or feared) he would take.

And Clooney ramps up the scandal from the original so that it becomes melodramatic and less realistic. By the time he brings out the big, big flag (ironically), with the idealistic speech in front of the audience and the angry exchange backstage, and the people having sex while watching the news on television, it has gone past heavy-handed to preachy. Did I really hear someone say, “This is the big leagues?”

Poor Wood has to struggle with a character whose behavior is so bizarrely unrealistic that she seems to be playing two different people. But Clooney evocatively captures the combination of cynicism about the system, optimism that something can be done to improve it, and grim ends/means practicality about arbitraging the gap. You can almost smell the stale coffee and put on five pounds from campaign trail stress eating. He knows the snap and rhythm of political talk, the constant temperature-taking and ceaseless spinning, so much spinning that the words go 360 degrees and then go around again.

(more…)

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Based on a play Drama

Casino Jack and the United States of Money

Posted on May 6, 2010 at 8:29 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for some language
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Reference to mob hit
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters, ethnic slurs
Date Released to Theaters:	May 7, 2010

As print media crumbles and broadcast and cable media splinters, documentaries have become one of the most thorough and dependable formats for delivering long-form journalism. From the acid (in both metaphorical senses of the word)-tinged advocacy of Michael Moore and his imitators to the more straightforward, even-handed work of Irena Salina and Joe Berlinger, see-it-now, show-it-don’t-tell-it films, more widely available than ever before online and through Netflix, literally bring these stories home. Alex Gibney, whose brilliant work on “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” and “Taxi to the Dark Side” (about interrogation abuses in Iran), once again uses one disaster to illuminate more fundamental structural flaws with “Casino Jack and the United States of Money.”

The Jack Abramoff story is epic, even operatic, a classic story of the rise and fall of an ambitious man with a tragic flaw. He was an idealistic young man who became first corrupted and then a corrupter. It has the satisfying arc of a feature film (and is set to be one, with Kevin Spacey as Abramoff), but it is far more than a rise-and-fall or even a catch-the-crook film. It is entertaining but it is also a sober and sobering depiction that focuses less on the failures of the individuals than the failures of the system that did more than let it happen. This film argues that corruption is inevitable.

Abramoff was a college Republican whose passion and ability to attract supporters — political and financial — quickly brought him to the attention of party leaders. At some point, he surrendered principle to greed. He took more than $25 million in lobbying fees. And then what he didn’t keep he paid out illegally. Gibney does an excellent job of making a complicated story both clear and engrossing. He is even-handed, allowing participants like former Congressman Bob Ney (R-Ohio), who pled guilty to corruption charges and spent 17 months in prison, and Neil Volz, his former chief of staff, to tell their own stories.

The stories are shocking. I don’t know which is worse, how much money was taken from the unsuspecting clients, mostly Indian tribes, or how little it took to get crucial support from key members of Congress. A golf outing, a free dinner, a $25,000 contribution could mean hundreds of millions of dollars from casino revenue, especially if the competition could be shut out. Sweatshops on Saipan were characterized as free enterprise. Favors were traded. Abramoff dubbed appropriations committee the called “the favor factory” and he was very good at finding ever more pockets to stuff favors in. He was also very good at creating more pockets of his own for receiving money. Ultimately, his office set up a phony think tank to receive contributions in excess of the money given to them for lobbying. It was run by a lifeguard out of a house on the beach. Needless to say, no thinking went on.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case, invalidating much of John McCain’s campaign finance reforms and making it possible for unlimited corporate lobbying and other political expenditures — much of it undisclosed — makes this film even more timely and even more terrifying. Jack Abramoff will get out of prison at the end of this year and come back to a world filled with new opportunities.

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Documentary Movies -- format

State of Play

Posted on September 1, 2009 at 8:00 am

You need six things for a successful Washington thriller: a reporter, a Congressman, a dead girl, a choleric editor, some ugly secrets, and, for some reason, a chase inside a parking garage, not so sure why that last one seems to be so indispensable. “State of Play” has them all. You don’t necessarily need authentic Washington locations, but “State of Play” has that, too, and it is a pleasure to see more than the monuments, with real-life Washington landmarks like Ben’s Chili Bowl and the Americana Hotel providing an extra layer of realism.

There may be some of-the-moment gloss on this sharp Washington thriller, with references to hard times for newspapers and boom times for outsourcing national security, but its essence is struggles between power and accountability and that are always at the intersection of politics, money, and journalism and of course the movies about them, too.

Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck play former roommates with a lot of baggage — Crowe is a reporter for the “Washington Globe” and we can tell he has integrity because his apartment, car, hair, and clothes are such a mess no one would otherwise keep him around. The traditional cub reporter with more spirit than experience but who will show surprising grit and ingenuity before the third act has evolved into a blogger (Rachel McAdams). The traditional handsome young Congressman who may have compromised his ideals and his disappointed wife are played by Ben Affleck (good) and Robin Wright Penn (better). And the traditional peppery newspaper editor who wants copy NOW because every hour we delay print costs some astronomical sum and we’re losing our readers, dammit! (yes, that tradition stretches back to the movies of the 1930’s) is played with frosty fury by Helen Mirren.

There are chase scenes, including one in a parking lot, another standard for Washington thrillers. But the up to the minute details, sharp talk, smooth performances, and a couple of surprising twists hold the interest and keep us engaged.

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