602 The War Room

[hearthesilence]

Before watching the Criterion edition, I hadn't seen this in years. Two things that were pretty weird: seeing a young Rahm Emanuel before he was a congressman (and later, Obama's Chief of Staff, then Mayor of Chicago), and also seeing George S as a guest on This Week, which he now hosts.

[knives]

It's depressing how similar the problems with the political machine is in the film to now. My jaw dropped when Carville started talking health care identically to how it is now a days.

[hearthesilence]

Infuriating, yes, but it should also underline how ridiculously difficult it is to make progress on those issues. Look at what Obama accomplished with his healthcare plan. I don't think it's the complete solution, but it's a lot more than anyone else has ever done, and yet the Supreme Court may strike it down altogether (at the very least, they'll probably strike down the mandated healthcare, we'll see).

[movielocke]

Just caught up with this, I've only sampled the extras, and will go through them all this week, but I really hope they address how they put together the film if they only got permission to film at the DNC, half the film is pre-convention, so that is some stunning editorial work (I saw in the liner notes that they got some outtakes from another documentarian, is that film readily accessible?), does anyone know if the shot of Bill Clinton in a T shirt and shorts on the phone, that zooms in on his eyes just before they cut to Ginnifer Flowers was for that other film?

[zedz]

They go into a lot of detail about how the film was assembled. The round-table discussion among the filmmakers is particularly great in that regard, with Hegedus seemingly reliving the nightmarish anxiety that they kept missing essential material, while Pennebaker seems to have been completely (and no doubt infuriatingly) laid-back and confident about the whole thing all the way through. It gives a great insight into just how resourceful and intuitive documentary filmmakers have to be, since the finished film seems beautifully structured as a narrative and in terms of character dynamics. According to Hegedus, when they got to the end of the filming, she was despairing that they even had a film, since the narrative's natural conclusion (which gets described like a slow-motion car accident) happened with most of the crew stranded outside the venue and the sole cameraman running out of film.

As I said elsewhere, Criterion has assembled a terrific collection of extras for this release, so it's unlikely that you'll have many questions unanswered by the time you get through them. As I recall, the borrowed material covers the War Room stuff at New Hampshire at the very beginning.

[teddyleevin]

Loved this set; especially the round-table discussion. The film really put me in the mood for Tuesday. Couldn't get through 1 minute of the Greenberg interview because of the way he inhales. Once you notice it, it cannot be ignored... much like someone's debate sniffing...

[DeprongMori]

Based on the subject matter and the talented documentary crew behind it, I'm sure I would just love The War Room. Unfortunately, I can't bear to watch or listen to James Carville. At all. Maybe I'll just catch it on FilmStruck.

[tarpilot]

I am of the opposite persuasion and actually wish he'd do more scripted comedy (as opposed to riffing on Real Time). His 30 Rock cameo is one of my faves

"Stealin' candy from a vending machine? Lemme show you how it's done...Cajun style."

[Zumpano]

"K Street" endeared him (and everyone else in the show) to me forever.

The War Room is a terrific documentary, and interesting to watch in election years (especially this one!).

[flyonthewall2983]

I remember seeing him on Conan once, and colorfully described what he wouldn't do if Rush Limbaugh were on fire in front of him.

I mentioned Return of The War Room here before. One really kind of funny scene to me now is how they talk about how much faster information spread in 2008, without specifically mentioning social media like Facebook or Twitter (which was just in it's infancy at the time), two avenues which have made a marked difference in this last cycle.

[flyonthewall2983]

They go into a lot of detail about how the film was assembled. The round-table discussion among the filmmakers is particularly great in that regard, with Hegedus seemingly reliving the nightmarish anxiety that they kept missing essential material, while Pennebaker seems to have been completely (and no doubt infuriatingly) laid-back and confident about the whole thing all the way through. It gives a great insight into just how resourceful and intuitive documentary filmmakers have to be, since the finished film seems beautifully structured as a narrative and in terms of character dynamics. According to Hegedus, when they got to the end of the filming, she was despairing that they even had a film, since the narrative's natural conclusion (which gets described like a slow-motion car accident) happened with most of the crew stranded outside the venue and the sole cameraman running out of film.

As I said elsewhere, Criterion has assembled a terrific collection of extras for this release, so it's unlikely that you'll have many questions unanswered by the time you get through them. As I recall, the borrowed material covers the War Room stuff at New Hampshire at the very beginning.

I think the filmmakers' roundtable could have been helped by footage from the film to illustrate the stories they're telling as they unfolded on film. A commentary track would have been the better option.

The Clinton Foundation footage is pretty good. When Bill is speaking and you occasionally get a glance of Carville watching him speak, you can see the admiration that helped pull him through back in '92

[hearthesilence]

Infuriating, yes, but it should also underline how ridiculously difficult it is to make progress on those issues. Look at what Obama accomplished with his healthcare plan. I don't think it's the complete solution, but it's a lot more than anyone else has ever done, and yet the Supreme Court may strike it down altogether (at the very least, they'll probably strike down the mandated healthcare, we'll see).

Hah, kind of sad reading this now. I remember the shock when the mandate was upheld...and of course, that victory was pissed away when Trump became President, allowing the GOP-controlled Congress to do away with it in the budget bill.

Anyway, it's amazing seeing this film now because the 1992 election wasn't considered a particularly nice one - and yet, it feels comparatively polite and civil to the rancor we're used to now.

[flyonthewall2983]

Watching it in the light of what's going on now is not just a time warp, but perversely it's also foreshadowing what was to come as well. This is underlined in the follow-up piece where you have Mark McKinnon and Frank Luntz talking about the steps they took in their own work that were borrowed from how the Clinton '92 campaign ran things.

How many other docs were there of this election? I remember watching The Last Party on IFC (specifically Robert Downey, Jr. talking about being fed LSD as a child). It seemed, even at the time as an 8-year old oblivious to politics, that the pop culture element (MTV doing more coverage, Bill on Arsenio) took the whole process up a notch.