The War Room

I first saw this at Doc Films at the University of Chicago. I was expecting it to be interesting, but dry. Wow, was I wrong. The entire audience was enthralled and frequently laughing their heads off. You couldn't make up comedic characters like these if you tried. James and George are just amazing. (Of course, there would be times where HALF the audience was laughing, split along party lines. :-) )

The filmmakers also liven up the proceedings with good choices of music and little bits of Americana tossed in here and there. Invite over all your political junkie friends, get a few beers, rent this movie, and enjoy.

The War Room does a good job of extolling the skills of James Carville and George Stephanopolous. Clearly, their work had much to do with Clinton's victory. A little known fact about the film is that the actual campaign manager, David Wilhelm, refused to participate in it. He didn't like the idea of a camera crew roaming the headquarters and recording conversations that he felt should have been private. Clinton overruled him, of course. As a result, the documentary skews history a bit. The nuts and bolts of running a campaign are ignored while the craft of spin doctoring is glorified. In a visual medium, that's not altogether surprising, and it may even have been unavoidable. But the misrepresentation -- or rather, the selective representation -- has had the unintended consequence of contributing to public cynicism about political campaigns, which now appear to be all about the spin, the framing -- the very things that make voters feel like they're being manipulated. Perhaps a stronger emphasis on the heavy lifting of door-to-door canvassing, phone banking, meetings with interest groups, outreach to local officials, event set-up, and the like, would have given a more complete picture. Then again, those aren't exactly telegenic activities, and documentary filmmakers may have been hard-pressed to incorporate them even if Wilhelm had cooperated. But the troublesome implications remain, and are worth considering.

There is a moment in 1964's "The Best Man" in which Gore Vidal's script has Henry Fonda watching a presidential convention on television. The audience bursts into prolonged applause. Fonda rises to his feet and remarks, "There will now follow four minutes and thirty seconds of a carefully choreographed spontaneous demonstration" (or something like that). The scene was evidently intended to instruct the audience that not everything in a presidential campaign or, by extension, in politics is what it seems. We've come a long way, baby. That audience is now a LOT more -- well, either "sophisticated" or "cynical," depending on your view of human nature.

"The War Room" covers the Democratic side of the 1992 presidential campaign and election in which, you'll remember, Bill Clinton was pitted against George Herbert Walker Bush and Ross Perot. Kids -- Clinton won.

Some of the calculation that went on in the war room, the collective name for Clinton's campaign staff presided over by James Carville and George Stephanopoulis, surprised even me. I'll give one example, with rough quotes.

Carville is sitting around with his dozen or so co-conspirators and one of them brings up the idea of flooding the floor at the Democratic convention with signs in favor of gun control. "We've only got twelve hours," somebody says, "so where are we going to get signs?" "Can't we get the people to print the signs themselves?" Somebody says, "No, no. That way you're going to get a scattered couple of signs. Some will be red on white, other will be white on blue. It will send a mixed message. I just don't think it will have the same impact as a whole SEA of identical signs all over the floor." They're talking about this problem as if they're trying to solve it for the delegates and visitors on the floor of Madison Square Garden -- just being helpful, you know? -- whereas the WHOLE THING is their own idea! For all they know there may not be a single gun-control thought among the multitude of Clinton supporters, let alone enough to create a sea of signs! They carry on in the same way about most of the issues of the time and most of the current events. Bush's campaign is having its posters printed in Brazil. Can this fact somehow be turned against them? Not that the other side is virgin pure. Stephanopoulis has to deal with someone on the phone, evidently a journalist, inquiring about a rumor that Clinton has had a child by a black prostitute. Curiously similar to the rumor circulated about McCain when he opposed Bush during the 2004 primaries. In McCain's case, the rumor was accompanied by photos of "the black child," who was actually a Bengladesh girl that McCain and his wife had adopted. Nineteen ninety-two was only thirteen years ago but things have gotten a lot dirtier in that time.

As a movie, "The War Room" is informative, shot casually as the events transpired. There are no long speeches. But it's unfocused too and the editing sometimes leaves out important developments, which we learn about later. I suppose this can happen when you're just pointing the camera around and not providing a voice-over. And the film makers must have faced the additional problem that there is no logical narrative to the story. Stuff happens, abruptly and unexpectedly. It's not the careful reconstruction of an historic contretemps, like "The Thin Blue Line" or Ken Burns' "The Civil War." The candidates aside, the most memorable people in the film are James Carville, George Stephanopoulis, and Mary Matalin, Carville's opposite number on the Republican side. The two of them are from different political poles. Someone should be doing a cinema verite copy of their MARRIAGE. But they have a lot in common too. They're thick-skinned, devoted, have a sense of humor, and are animated. Carville's face is so curiously constructed that it looks devilishly lively even in repose. He comes from an old New Orleans family. The hospital for lepers at Carville is named for his ancestors who founded it.

I can't say I like George Stephanopoulis too much. He looks like the president of my senior class in high school. He's self-contained, intelligent, thoughtful, clean-cut, handsome, and is much younger than I am. I could live with all the other stuff, but his youth is inexcusable. I'd have liked him a lot better as a stuttering, kyphotic octogenarian who was able to touch the tip of his nose with the tip of his tongue. And his hair was styled so boyishly that I didn't like THAT either.

The personality that's most memorable is Carville's though. He sits there smiling on election eve and begins imagining what Clinton would say at his concession speech should Bush win. And between the chuckles he spins out an improvised, absolutely spot-on by-the-numbers speech for the Governor. I would like to congratulate President Bush on his victory tonight and assure him that all of us are behind him and that this will be a better America with our help and God's and my family most of all my wife Hillary and Chelsea and all those of you who have worked so hard on this campaign I'd like to mention So-and-So and our prayers are with the President and let us all cooperate now and move together towards a greater American co-prosperity sphere, no not that, but a more prosperous and happier American which with God's blessing and blah blah blah. I couldn't stop laughing.

As a student of Political Sciences, I believe this to be one of the most fascinating and introspective documentaries regarding the subject of campaigning. The first modern campaign, the 92 Clinton war is an amazing melodrama of quick rises to power, downfalls, villains, heroes, and the precursor to one of the most vicious political battles of our nation's history. In the film, if you look hard enough, you see the seeds of weakness being sown which would lead to an awesome political showdown which is more grand, more high-stakes, and more dark than the plotline of any film in this database. Note: If you like "The War Room," read Woodward's "The Agenda."

This is one of the great political films since All the President's Men, and one of the best documentaries I've ever seen. The story is fascinating, the characters are very interesting, and its all real. Even the music adds to the frenetic pace of the film.

The documentary follows the 1992 Clinton Campaign from the doldrums in New Hampshire, through the Democratic convention in New York to its summit on election night in Little Rock. But Clinton spends very little time on the screen. The film captures the behind-the-scenes action of James Carville, George Stephanopolis, and the rest of the cast and crew of Clinton campaign headquarters. The film shows how TV spots are written, how interviews are managed, how the candidates' message is distributed, and how the "spin doctors" do their stuff.

The pace is quick. Staffers come into and out of scenes constantly, and there is a great deal of off-camera dialogue, much like an emergency-room scene from E.R. The mix of standard documentary footage with news reports and interviews is terrific. Some of the best scenes are of the pols watching the news reports and reacting to what they see.

The central character is James Carville, who is more interesting than anyone else in the campaign, much moreso than the candidates themselves. He reveals that his "Ragin' Cajun" image is genuine, for he is truly passionate about his work. But it also reveals a mind working on overdrive, and a sensitive nature that you wouldn't expect to see. His "people will say you are lucky" speech to staffers at the end of the film is as moving as anything written for the studio, and moreso because it is genuine.

Stephanopolis came off less well. Behind his youthful looks and seeming intelligence comes a certain shallowness. Much of his contribution was more of a "me too" nature than anything truly creative or deep. He also had a moment at the end of the film when, in a room with a starry-eyed female staffer, he's describing how he feels. And the conclusion is, not much. It is not hard to understand why years later George was a washout in the Clinton White House, never managed another campaign, and is now earning his living in front of the camera.

After all is said and done, it is clear that the candidate is secondary in a modern presidential election. He's like the hand your dealt in a game of poker. It's important, but what you do with it once it is dealt to you is much more important. And these guys are pros.

So are the filmmakers. There were several times when I had to remind myself that this was a documentary, and not a work of fiction. In fact, if you see it immediately after seeing "Primary Colors" you'll see that truth is not only stranger than fiction, but it can be more interesting as well.