Phillip V. Caruso/HBO
Julianne Moore as Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, running for vice
president in 2008, and Ed Harris as Senator John McCain, the
presidential candidate, in "Game Change," Saturday on HBO.
By BRIAN STELTER
Published: March 4, 2012
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CloseDiggRedditTumblrPermalink "Game Change" the book is an
authoritative 448-page retelling of all 500 or more days of the 2008
presidential campaign. "Game Change" the film, to be shown by HBO on
Saturday night, is a reconstruction of the two months when Sarah Palin
was running for vice president on John McCain's ticket.
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Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Sarah Palin, as the governor of Alaska. Her 2008 run for vice
president is the subject of "Game Change" on HBO.
The difference between the two has sparked conspiracy theories among
conservative allies of Ms. Palin, who comes across in both the book
and the film as woefully unprepared for the campaign and for the vice
presidency. The film, they assert, was conceived by Hollywood liberals
to undermine a future run for president by Ms. Palin, who has
pre-emptively attacked the film as a work of fiction, though she says
she has not seen it.
Others also have questioned the focus on Ms. Palin, among them the
conservative columnist Byron York, who wrote last month, "Why did
Hollywood focus on only one-half of 'Game Change'? The other half
would have made a great movie."
The answers are numerous — and probably disappointing to
conspiratorialists. "There were a number of films in the book," said
Len Amato, the president of HBO Films. "Our job was to zero in on the
best one."
HBO at first tried to translate the hard-fought primary campaign
between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton into movie form, but
the script for it was unwieldy (and the prospect of casting an actor
to play a sitting president was noxious to some people involved). On
the other hand, the selection of Ms. Palin, then governor of Alaska,
as a vice presidential candidate was compact enough for a two-hour
movie.
"From a storyteller's standpoint this was doable," said John
Heilemann, who, with Mark Halperin, wrote the book and were
extensively consulted on the film.
It's not unusual for a book adaptation to assume a life of its own on
film. But HBO's "Game Change" sits right at the intersection of
politics and storytelling, so it faces an unusual amount of scrutiny,
just as the book did upon its release two years ago.
Julianne Moore plays Ms. Palin and Woody Harrelson plays the campaign
manager Steve Schmidt in the film, which was written by Danny Strong
and directed by Jay Roach. In some scenes Ms. Palin is depicted as a
inspirational leader who impressed campaign staffers with her
Republican National Convention speech; in many other scenes she is
portrayed as unable to answer basic political questions.
In the film, while Ms. Palin prepares for her first television
interview, Mr. Schmidt asks her, "Governor, do you know what the Fed
is?" and she stares blankly at him. When he asks, "Governor, do you
know why we're in Iraq?," she says, incorrectly, "Because Saddam
Hussein attacked us on 9/11." Then Mr. Schmidt says to a senior
adviser to Ms. Palin, Nicolle Wallace, "Well, she's a great actress,
right?" Ms. Wallace answers, "The best," and he says, "Why don't we
just give her some lines?"
Discussing the depiction of Ms. Palin, Richard Plepler, a co-president
of HBO, said in an interview last week: "Danny, Jay and Julianne did a
brilliant job in conveying what made her compelling, empathetic and
interesting to a certain part of the citizenry. I think they also made
it clear how far over her head she really was. I don't think the most
loyal Republican would disagree with that."
Mr. Plepler and Mr. Amato denied that the film had a political agenda
or that its release during the 2012 Republican primaries had any
strategic purpose. Although no evidence exists to suggest otherwise,
they know the accusations will be made. In a Fox News interview on
Saturday, Ms. Palin cast the film as a product of a "pro-leftist,
pro-Barack Obama machine," and added, "Hollywood lies are Hollywood
lies."
Mr. Strong's rebuttal is simple: "The film's true." He said he
supplemented the book with 25 of his own interviews. Because more time
had passed since the election, he said: "Some people who weren't
comfortable talking right after the election were now ready to talk
about it. And, boy, did they talk."
Related
In Video, Palin Rebuts Portrayal in HBO Movie (March 1, 2012)
Breaking news about the arts, coverage of live events, critical
reviews, multimedia and more.
Go to Arts Beat »
A sortable calendar of noteworthy cultural events in the New York
region, selected by Times critics.
Go to Event Listings »
The film feels like an update to the book's Palin chapters. For
instance it plays up Ms. Palin's preoccupation during the campaign
about her standing in Alaska. "In my interviews it just kept coming
up," Mr. Strong said.
Ms. Palin's own memoir, "Going Rogue," was also a source for the
screenplay. "The whole movie was informed by having her point of view
read out loud to us in her voice," Mr. Roach said.
Mr. Roach first suggested dramatizing the McCain-Palin campaign on
Sept. 27, 2008, while schmoozing at HBO's lavish party celebrating its
Emmy Award wins. Mr. Roach had just received an Emmy for directing the
film "Recount," about the disputed 2000 election, for HBO.
"I'm fascinated by the rooms where political strategy is worked out,"
he said in an interview.
Mr. Roach was interested in the campaign that year, and in Ms. Palin
in particular, because she was a surprise pick for vice president and
was seen as a fix for a flailing Republican Party. Unbeknownst to him
Mr. Halperin and Mr. Heilemann had already pitched their book to HBO
executives with the hope that the network would buy the movie rights.
HBO did, and had an Obama-Clinton script commissioned, but it did not
satisfy the people involved. "I found it to be very interesting,
compelling, but it just seemed like it needed a mini-series to cover
it all," Mr. Roach said.
In the spring of 2010 at another HBO party — this time for its film
"The Special Relationship," about Bill Clinton as president and Tony
Blair as the British prime minister — Mr. Roach talked with executives
about pivoting toward the McCain-Palin chapters of the book.
Then he called his friend Mr. Strong. When screenwriters like Mr.
Strong read books, they naturally imagine how they would rewrite the
scenes as a movie or TV show; when he first read "Game Change," months
before Mr. Roach's call, he doubted that repetitive Democratic and
Republican primaries would work well on screen. "You're having the
same sequence over and over again, and that's the death of a
screenplay," he said.
Furthermore, he thought, the tension between Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton
was just as evident in public as it was in private, spoiling some of
the thrill for viewers who had already watched the campaign play out
on television. But in the Palin chapters, he said, "what was happening
behind the scenes was 10 times more amazing than what was happening in
the public eye." When he reread the chapters after Mr. Roach's call,
"I was amazed by how beautifully it was going to beat out as a movie."
And so the writing commenced, then the casting and producing, and
"Game Change" became, in Mr. York's words, "a Palin biopic."
To Mr. Roach, at least, it makes perfect sense. "No one," he said,
"changed the game more than Sarah Palin."
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
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