Game Change -- Palin comparison

By Mustang Bobby

As playwright Peter Stone once noted, history writes lousy drama. He should know; he was one of the authors who took on the events surrounding the writing of the Declaration of Independence and turned it into 1776, a musical. Characters and actions in real life are complicated, and coming up with a simple story arc that reveals more than just what happened means that you have to create characters that are more than just echoes of the historical figures being portrayed on the stage or screen. Put simply, you have to start from scratch and create compelling characters and situations that reflect that core of the character and their objectives.

So turning a recent event into a drama requires more than just using the film clips and transcripts of interviews or even the background from a tell-all book. That's the background, but it's up to the writer and the actor to turn the characters into something worth listening to and caring about.

The HBO film Game Change, directed by Jay Roach from a screenplay by Danny Strong, is based on the book about the 2008 presidential campaign by John Heileman and Mark Halperin. The film focuses on the selection of Sarah Palin as the vice presidential running mate for John McCain and the realization on the part of Steve Schmidt, the McCain adviser who selected her, that they had created a monster. It wasn't the fact that Gov. Palin was unaware of the basics of foreign policy or geography, didn't read newspapers, or was uncontrollable on the campaign trail. It was the fact that they had chosen someone purely to shake up the dynamics of the presidential race with little or no thought about what would happen if they won and Sarah Palin became the Vice President of the United States.

There was a lot of pre-show chatter, including a preemptive raspberry from Ms. Palin herself. Well, that's not surprising, but it's also in keeping with the fact that a movie -- even if it's "based on a true story" -- isn't going to be historically accurate. Julianne Moore isn't Sarah Palin, and for all the method acting work she did studying the character she was going to play, she could never be Sarah Palin. But what she could do is create a multi-dimensional character, showing her strengths as well as her weaknesses, and making us care about her. Ms. Moore went to great lengths to look and sound like Ms. Palin, but she also created a role that went beyond the two dimensions that we saw on the news in 2008 or heard on her bus tour last summer. It is a brilliant interpretation of a flawed and tragic character.

Woody Harrelson did a masterful job with his role of Steve Schmidt, the Svengali of the campaign who was responsible for finding the "game changer" that would turn the election away from electing a "celebrity" -- Barack Obama -- to electing John McCain... by selecting their own celebrity. Picking a running mate has always been a political ploy -- who can we get to balance the ticket? -- but never before had it been so cavalierly considered: who can we get to get a great post-convention poll bounce? At the end of the film it's apparent that Mr. Schmidt realizes what he has done to the future of American elections, and the awareness of his actions dawns on him to a degree that frankly is lost on his counterparts in real life. After all, the current election cycle is providing us with candidates who have no business running for the presidency, and they're being advised and coached by people who took their lesson from McCain-Palin 2008. (No wonder the real Steve Schmidt got out of the business.) Watching the slow realization by Mr. Schmidt that what started out as a campaign tactic and grew into a disaster both politically and historically by truly changing the political landscape from considering what happens after the election to just winning it was thrilling, and affirms my belief that Woody Harrelson is one of the most underrated actors in the business. 

The real Sarah Palin dismissed the film as "fact-free." In a way, that's a compliment; movies like this are not supposed to withstand the test of historical accuracy. (The same can be said of films that glorify characters that Ms. Palin admires such as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady.) They use the events as the framing for the tales that reveal more about our true nature and what we learn about ourselves. That's the essence of drama. If you want history, Sarah, read a newspaper.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Out with the Good and in with the Bad: It's just so yesterday.

Guest post by Ramona

Ed. note: This is Ramona's fifth guest post for us. Her first four were on cruelty in America, abuse against women, the creepiness of Herman Cain, and Black Friday. -- MJWS

Ramona is a freelance writer based in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Her blog, "Ramona's Voices," is liberal-leaning, with such a small amount of navel-gazing you'll hardly even notice. She is also on the masthead at dagblog, a gathering place for dissidents and reprobates and other friendly people.

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Here it is nearing the end of January and at long last, after 17 Republican debates -- count 'em, 17! -- we're down to two actual contenders and a couple of valiant bench-warmers. While Ron Paul and Rick Santorum work hard to make some headway, it looks like it's Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, neck-and-neck, fighting it out for a chance to clobber the current White House occupant and show this country what a real president looks like.

Brian Blanco/European Press Photo Agency

Mitt the Peacemaker, the soft-spoken everyotherman, knows going in he'll never be able to out-mean Newt. Newt the Hysterian has perfected condescending bulldoggedness until it's a veritable political art form. Nobody does it better. His opponents drool at the scope of his talents, awestruck by his ability to use those tools to sidestep any attempt at a messy question. Bad Newt! Bad Newt! And (sigh) the crowds love him.

Poor Mitt stammers, stutters, fast-talks until he's blue in the face, ripping into Newt with all he's got, and nobody cares. So the decision has been made: No more Mr. Nice Guy! He goes for the jugular in the Tampa debate but barely strikes a nerve. It's anybody's guess where he'll need to go from here. It won't be pretty -- a thought that goes against gentle Mitt's Bain, um, grain -- but it's not as if he hasn't had to take people out before.

So there goes Good, off to fend for itself while the candidates get their Bad mojo going so they can become crowd-pleasers, too. Rick Santorum tried it the other day when a woman in his audience went off on President Obama's legitimacy. She wouldn't call him "President" because he shouldn't be there. "He is an avowed Muslim," she said, "and my question is, why isn't something being done to get him out of our government?"

Santorum could have done what candidate John McCain rightly if reluctantly did in 2008 when a woman in his audience repeated that same "Obama is a muslim" mantra. To McCain's everlasting credit, he stopped the woman dead, saying, "No ma'am, that's not true." But Santorum side-stepped it, feeding the woman's fears with, "Believe me... I'm doing everything I can to get him out of the government."

When the press called him on it later, he Gingriched it, huffing and bluffing, "It's not my responsibility as a candidate to correct everybody who makes a statement that I disagree with. There are lots of people who get up and say stuff in a town hall meeting and say things that I don't agree with, but I don't think it's my obligation, nor should it be your feeling that it's my obligation to correct somebody who says something that I don't agree with." (And he's appalled that they would even suggest such a thing. Appalled! Wait -- frankly appalled!)

Ron Paul says the housing mess is "all government manufactured. The best thing you can do is get out of the way." This from a man who wants to be president. Of the United States. Because the last thing we need is some huge honcho giving us advice. Or telling us what to do. So if you elect him, rest assured that he will not do his job.

But then, not 24 hours after that last debate in Tampa, Barack Obama gives his State of the Union address. It's an elegant, impassioned plea for fairness, a love song to the people, a nudge back to sanity. It's more than a promise to get things done, it's an outline of how it will happen. The scorched earth is greening up. Hope is on the horizon. And Gabby Gifford's smile lights up the universe.

AP photo/Saul Loeb

Krauthammer concedes that "Obama has set the right tone." Daniels rebuts with faint praise. The Twitterverse goes wild! Good is off the mat and on its feet, ready for another round.

And four horsemen can be seen riding off, their banshee howls echoing, then fading, then gone.