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 |  Chicago Tribune -
Nov-03-2009No theatrics: Obama camp ran tight ship(topic overview)
CONTENTS:
- Being in the right place at the right time helped Barack Obama go from obscure state senator to president in less than five years. (More...)
- As you might expect, the Obamas come off as a very likable, laid-back, relatable family, but any strain felt from the election process is mostly glossed over. (More...)
- Take, for instance, the case of documentary filmmaker Amy Rice, who in early 2006 was looking for a project with political resonance and decided that the junior senator from Illinois might make an interesting documentary subject. (More...)
- Obama is shown riding in an elevator after having just clinched the Democratic nomination and a film crew member remarks, "You must be feeling pretty good." (More...)
- Ultimately, "By the People" is not political propaganda. (More...)
- Buffoons don't strategically mount a campaign for President of the United States and take down a machine like the Clintons. (More...)
- Some right-leaning performers, including the late Ron Silver - one of the Creative Coalition's founders - are part of "Poliwood," which also travels to last year's Republican convention to find famous friends of John McCain. (More...)
- Of course, the campaign turned an up-and-coming Democratic politician into an American legend, a Paris fashion icon, an African hero. (More...)
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Being in the right place at the right time helped Barack Obama go from obscure state senator to president in less than five years. It helped two newbie film directors get themselves positioned to chronicle his remarkable ascent -- resulting in a behind-the-scenes campaign documentary now getting a splashy launch from HBO. "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama," debuting Tuesday night, has drawn buzz for the insider access directors Amy Rice and Alicia Sams got during the 2008 campaign: The candidate daydreams on a sunny campaign stop and nearly misses his intro to speak. [1] The makers of "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama," which premieres Tuesday — Election Night — on HBO, wouldn't mind the same status. "That was our hope — that we would create something for history," said filmmaker Alicia Sams, who made the documentary with colleague Amy Rice and a key assist from actor Edward Norton. Rice was inspired by Obama's speech to the Democratic National Convention in 2004 and wanted to do a film about him as an up-and-coming political leader. Her friend Sams signed on, but they couldn't get their phone calls to Obama's office returned until Norton called on their behalf. He's still involved as a producer. They got lucky. They wound up with a far more important story than they had dreamed about. Even though they began filming nearly a year before Obama announced his candidacy in February 2007, being on the ground early didn't guarantee them anything. They were nearly shut down when the campaign began.[2] By the People: The Election of Barack Obama, an ostensibly all-access documentary culled from two years in the shadows of the Obama campaign (and premiering Tuesday on HBO ). Produced by Edward Norton and directed by the rookie tandem of Amy Rice and Alicia Sams, it's got class and scope to spare. Now if only it could find its teeth. It starts with promise as Sen. Obama swaggers into the Capitol on the night of the 2006 midterm elections, offering playful asides ("I love elections! They're so much fun!") between congratulatory phone calls to Nancy Pelosi and begging off interviewers' questions about his potential presidential candidacy. Jump ahead to February 2007, not long after he's lobbed his hat in the ring and has established his base camp in Iowa nearly a year ahead the presidential caucuses he would eventually win.[3]
Filmmakers Amy Rice and Alicia Sams got permission to film Barack Obama back in 2006, when he was a freshman Senator from Illinois. They stayed with him when he announced his seemingly Quixotic candidacy for the presidency a year later and continued to film the ups and down of his ultimately successful and historic campaign. Throughout "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama" (HBO, 9 p.m.), we meet a number of the hopeful key workers in his organization, the zeal and success of some can't help be moving (one organizer, a son of a immigrant, lived in a car early in his life). We see his offices grow from stark empty Iowa storefronts to jammed hotbeds of activity.[4] At 9 p.m. Tuesday on HBO comes the first airing of "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama." This two-hour documentary, pulled together by filmmakers Amy Rice and Alicia Sims, is a nice piece of work that will be warmly received by Obama supporters and either ignored or reviled by his detractors. It's a long way from "nice piece of work" to definitive, and "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama" is too deferential to Obama to be the latter. As someone who diligently followed the campaign, I am reluctant to accept as gospel truth this film's portrayal of Obama as a candidate able to maintain preternatural calm in the face of withering attacks by Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primaries and even more lacerating broadsides by Republican opponents in the general campaign. Maybe these filmmakers got "handled" by Obama and his senior advisers. Maybe Rice and Sims didn't get handled and made a film they are convinced is a fair accounting of what they witnessed through long months on the campaign trail. I'd be more willing to consider that second scenario if the documentary's cameras had captured Obama in moments when his face, voice and body language betrayed frustration or anger.[5] Then neither are filmmakers Amy Rice or Alicia Sams. Rice has said she became interested in politics, and later in Obama particularly, after an older brother died in the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, while Sams told an HBO interviewer "that I wanted to put my skills toward something that would help motivate people." If you were looking for a warts-and-all depiction of the Obama campaign, or even one that showed the candidate in unguarded moments, you probably wouldn't come to these people. "We didn't set out to make a campaign film, but I think at a certain point it became clear to us that it was a document of how this momentous piece of history was achieved from a certain perspective," Norton told TV critics this summer when asked about the timing of the project. "And I think my feeling about that is that, you know, whatever President Obama goes through, whatever the struggles and the ebbs and flows of success or failure in his presidency, I don't think anything will ever diminish the significance of the achievement of his election." If "By the People" is any indication, it's an achievement that owes much of its drama to forces outside the campaign, and to people like Hillary Clinton. Obama, Rice told reporters, "was always. even calmer than I think we see him on TV. And that's actually great for a president, but it's really hard when you're making a documentary."[6] What started out as a documentary of a senator turned out to be one of the biggest undertakings Norton and the filmmakers have ever experienced. The team worked on By the People for over three years, chronicling the life of the Obama family and those who gave their all for Barack to get elected. The result is a sensationally moving depiction of the campaign trail that displays the strength of Obama and those he inspired. We caught up with Norton and filmmakers Amy Rice and Alicia Sams to hear about their experience making the film and being given an all-access pass into the life of our president-to-be. Amy Rice: I watched his convention speech in '04 and I was really impressed with what he had to say. I felt for the first time that he was a politician of my generation. If you think back at that time. the country was so divided. and he was saying something new and something different.[7]
Filmmakers Amy Rice and Alicia Sams started shooting film in 2006 with an Illinois Senator who had made a popular speech at a convention. As it progresses into the primaries, the filmmakers got a probably unmatched amount of time with Obama's family'''particularly daughters Sasha and Malia, who have since been in the press only sparingly'''and with his campaign operation, which provides the film's real meat and emotional impact. Spending late nights with exhausted volunteers who gave themselves to the campaign'''and watching them as they gradually discover they actually have a chance to win'''the film puts a human face on an often-maligned job. I watched By the People at a screening over the summer, and while I was impressed with the access and sometimes moved, I was also'''and I say this as somebody'' who voted for Obama '''a little unnerved by the general feeling of self-congratulation in the film. (The title is one hint.) As the film moves into the general election, the candidate and the mechanics of his campaign move into the distance (a result, probably, of the access drying up in the national stage of the campaign), and the film starts to take a hagiographic tone, as if honoring its viewers one last time for electing Obama President.[8] Filmmakers Amy Rice and Alicia Sams knew they found someone great when they first heard of Sen. Barack Obama in 2004. They began filming him six months before he had decided to run for president, and were given exclusive access to him and his campaign staff throughout the entirety of the campaign. They set out to capture the intensity of feelings, the spastic schedules, and the audacity of hope that was best described in the movie as crazy democracy in action. The movie follows Senator Obama and his staff from their small grassroots start to Election Day. It shows Obama in a more human light than ever seen before. He sits, yawning on a curb, as he is announced to give one of his early speeches. He sticks his tongue out at a baby, goes on rides at a local fair and asks a crowd to put more corn stubbles in his jar than in those of his political competitors. Michelle discusses her fears of the time commitment, the economic and personal costs and the strain on the family. She said, "Now's the only time to run because we're still almost normal.[9]
Nearly a year before he even announced his candidacy for President, BARACK OBAMA allowed producer EDWARD NORTON and directors AMY RICE & ALICIA SAMS into his inner circle to shoot a documentary about the behind-the-scenes workings of a political campaign. BY THE PEOPLE: THE ELECTION OF BARACK OBAMA, is one of the most thrilling docs to hit the screen this year.[10] "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama" (''''''''' 1/2 stars; 8 p.m. HBO) is a shoo-in for a spot in U.S. political history, right alongside the documentary "The War Room" and the books "The Boys on the Bus" and "What It Takes." Unlike those past efforts, the film by Amy Rice and Alicia Sams isn't terribly interested in strategy.[11] We were really trying to document the experience of the campaign." The film does offer a rare glimpse of Obama's goofier side as he preps for the final debate. His sleeves are rolled up, the tie is gone. He looks spent. "Let's talk about what my plan does," he begins, only to stop and ask his colleagues, sitting offstage behind a bank of laptops, to refresh his memory. "Hopefully that won't happen during the debate," Obama jokes, and then starts mocking himself: "Huh? I don't remember my plan, but it's a really good plan." ctc-live@tribune.com Alicia Sams, left, and Amy Rice attend a screening Saturday of "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama" at the Cadillac Palace Theatre.[12]
Filmmakers Amy Rice and Alicia Sams attached themselves to Barack Obama's campaign for President months before it was officially a campaign for President, and some of their new documentary film's finest moments detail the retail politics leading up to the moment when the long-shot next-to-nobody becomes a contender.[13] Tomorrow will mark one year since President Obama's historic election as the nation's first African American president. A new documentary tracks Obama's seemingly improbable road to the White House with an unprecedented look at his campaign. Filmmakers Amy Rice and Alicia Sams began following Obama in May 2006, eight months before he announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination. Their film is as much a look at the campaign behind the scenes as it is at the grassroots movement of supporters that propelled Obama to victory.[14] A "special kit with all the tools" is offered to that end via download. Filmmakers Amy Rice and Alicia Sams began following Obama a year before he became a presidential candidate, when he was just a newish senator from Illinois who had made a celebrated speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention and seemed worth looking at. They got lucky -- with each victory, their story got bigger, their movie more epochal. This could have been a film merely about the first serious African American contender for his party's nomination, or a film about the Democrat's first black nominee, or, as it turned out, the country's first black president. It would have been worth watching in any case.[15] "I learned my lesson." Norton, his directing team of Amy Rice and Alicia Sams, and his producing partners at Class 5 Films weren't looking to make a film about the inner workings of a presidential campaign. The original idea was simpler: to document a young senator's experiences throughout the course of his term. They first followed Obama during the summer of 2006 on a trip to Kenya, where the actor's instincts made him feel "sort of tingly." "Obama walked out of a clinic in a slum and there was this huge crowd, and they just erupted into all this screaming and crying," Norton recalls. "I got this sudden insight that he might have a unique kind of potency as a politician." That moment didn't make it into the movie (although it'll be on the DVD), because after shooting for nine months, the junior senator changed the game. "We started before he was a candidate," Norton says. "And then we realized he was going to run for president."[16]
Sasha and Malia chatter away to "Daddy" over the phone. Poll workers don't recognize David Axelrod as he goes in to vote on primary day. How'd they get into those rooms? Partly by being the first to ask. Rice, 33, had mostly worked as a cinematographer on student films and reality shows when she saw Obama's 2004 convention speech. "I thought, 'This guy could be the first African American president, and wouldn't that make an interesting documentary?'." She mentioned the idea to Sams, a producer of TV documentaries she had worked with before. ("That's a great idea -- don't tell anybody!" Sams replied.) Rice couldn't get anyone from the new senator's office to return her calls. That's where knowing the right people helped. Through her close friend, director David Wain, she knew his childhood pal Stuart Blumberg. and his Yale roommate, the actor Ed Norton. Norton (scion of the Rouse family, whose Enterprise Foundation is a giant in affordable housing do-gooding) was able to get the meeting with Robert Gibbs that got the fledgling directors in the door; he and Blumberg signed on to produce. (Rice's pal, the actor Tate Donovan, helped out as an assistant director.) Did it help that, well, the team was clearly crazy about Obama? (Both directors voted for him; Norton gave tens of thousands to Obama and Democratic campaign funds during the race.)[1] Among highlights: Early vote solicitors, including an amusingly frustrated 9-year-old, trying to explain who Illinois Sen. Barack Obama was; an Obama cell phone call to congratulate then-rival (and eventual Secretary of State) Hillary Clinton on a win along the primary trail; and the openly emotional reactions of Obama staffers, including then-chief strategist and now-senior adviser David Axelrod, as the returns came in on election night. Along with such exclusive sequences, the two-hour project incorporates historic moments now familiar to millions, such as Obama's acceptance of the Democratic nomination at Denver's Invesco Field and his victory speech at Chicago's Grant Park. "I thought they did a great job," says Axelrod of Rice and Sams' film, which he first saw in rough-cut form. "They poured their hearts into it, and I think they've produced something of lasting value. "It's moving, particularly because it so heavily chronicles the journey of two of our young campaign staffers, Ronnie Cho and Mike Blake. "In many ways, they reflected the essence of our campaign. They were very idealistic, they anguished over every setback, and they reveled in every triumph. They represent hundreds of thousands of people across this country who committed themselves to the kind of change they were hoping for. They're the heroes of the story." Rice and Sams knew they wouldn't be the only documentary makers pursuing the Obama story; in fact, they learned their competition included two-time Oscar winner Barbara Kopple ("Harlan County U.S.").[17] The result of Rice's impressive foresight -- and more than three years of hard-slogging, in-the-trenches filmmaking -- is the fascinatingly revealing two-hour documentary By the People: The Election of Barack Obama, which premières tonight at 10 on HBO Canada. "I remember watching the speech (by Obama at the 2004 Democratic Convention) and kind of being blown away by what he said," Rice explained last summer during HBO's portion of the U.S. networks' semi-annual press tour in Los Angeles. "I felt like, wow, this guy could be my generation's Kennedy or King. "I thought he could be the first African-American president. I thought, 'That would be a great documentary.' So there was, of course, a hope that he would run (for president), but we didn't know. He was an underdog. When we first started talking about this film, people would go, 'That's a really great idea, but he's not going to run for many years, and he won't win,' or 'America is not ready to elect its first African-American president'. Well, I hoped (and) I didn't know enough to know that he wasn't going to run. I just thought, of course he's going to run."[18] It's been a year since the election of President Obama, so it's as good a time as any for HBO to debut its documentary "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama." While HBO subscribers can watch the film from their couches Tuesday night, a private screening is planned here in Washington that will bring Ed Norton into town and administration figures to the theater.[19] Obama's campaign intuitively challenged outmoded political conventions and led the nation to embrace paradigms of hope and change that on a national level was ready for acceptance. It could not be more appropriate that a year from the date of that given specific and historic moment in time that the release of a new documentary, "By The People: The Election of Barack Obama," makes it's debut tonight on the HBO cable network channel at 9 p.m.[20] Tonight, Poliwood, a documentary essay about the intersection of politics and celebrity, premieres on Showtime. Tomorrow night, By The People: The Election of Barack Obama, a celebratory look at Obama's campaign, premieres on HBO. Together, they provide a look at the buoyant optimism that swept Obama into the White House, while making you wonder about the effect of TV on the political process. It takes a director as smart as Barry Levinson ( Rain Man, Diner ) to make so bold a documentary about Hollywood and politics as Poliwood.[21] "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama," which debuts on HBO Tuesday night, doesn't include any of that Africa footage. It follows 19 months of daily ups and downs of a presidential campaign that ends in the White House. The filmmakers were on board early, gaining them cred with Obama and campaign organizers. "It was never a clearly defined proposal and then a blanket acceptance," said actor Edward Norton, one of the movie's producers. "It was access by stages and slow increments."[22] HBO and Edward Norton's production company have teamed up to produce a record of Barack Obama's historic campaign, By the People: The Election of Barack Obama, premiering November 3.[7]
How you react to “By the People: The Election of Barack Obama,” a new documentary premiering tonight on HBO, will be largely a matter of how you feel about Obama himself, and his election and presidency. (Birthers, come not here.) That the film itself is partial to its subject -- not just Obama but the army of campaign workers and supporters who put him in the White House and who are the meat of the film -- is clear even before you watch it: Taking a cue from the campaign's own playbook, HBO's website asks viewers to "spread the word" and "promote this film from your blog or Facebook page."[15] There are three things you should know about the HBO documentary "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama." This two-hour film is the document in all likelihood by which the landmark presidential campaign of 2008 will be known to future generations.[23] The documentary film " By the People: The Election of Barack Obama," was screened at the Cadillac Palace Theater in downtown Chicago Friday night, and will premiere on HBO Tuesday. "It was a wonderful journey -- at a time when -- this country was so starved for idealism and a sense of purpose and a renewed sense of energy in our politics," said Presidential Advisor David Axelrod before the film's screening.[24]
E dward Norton is worn out, and no wonder -- the guy's just done two marathons. One was on the streets of New York, with Maasi warriors as his running mates, and the other was on the screen -- or behind it -- as the producer of the HBO documentary By the People: The Election of Barack Obama. "When we set out, I thought, 'Oh, this will be easy,' " Norton says of the film.[16]
As Rolling Stone notes in an interview with Norton, ]] As Rolling Stone notes in an interview with Norton, the film actually started out as a documentary about a young freshman Senator named Barak Obama, with initial footage shot in 2006. Along the way Barack Obama, guided by national political dynamics, his own hunches, his advisers' beliefs, plus his ambitions and own sense that his candidacy could succeed, got a bit sidetracked. Make no bones about it: a preview of By the People is a film that is no"Making of the President," covering both sides. The camera and filmmakers clearly are enamored with Obama, his supporters and his campaign staff.[25] By the People works on two levels but falls a bit short short on another. As a piece of documentary film making, it's world-class cinematic art, featuring sublime editing, quick-pacing, wonderful visuals all the while communicating the perspective and emotions of Obama's staff and supporters. As a chronicle of the campaign the hopes so many had in Obama's candidacy, the struggles, their surprise as they advanced and shocked as they suffered setbacks, suddenly having to deal with issues such as Obama's associations with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, and the sweat and commitment that goes into ANY campaign it certainly succeeds. It doesn't totally succeed as a historical film because the bulk of it is about Obama deciding to run, and running for the nomination. Once he gets the nomination, the film seemingly moves faster, omitting what would have been a useful segment pegged to the economic meltdown and how it altered the campaign. It's as if the filmmakers had to cut mercilessly to fit airtime so they decided to make big cuts from the time he got the nomination to his election.[25]
Rice and co-director Alicia Sams were present for that moment, and for thousand of other moments that followed along the campaign trail. What makes By the People so fascinating is the access Rice and company had to the candidate, his family and his entire ever-expanding political machine simply because they guessed right and got in early. At a time when politics is all about spin, maintaining a well-crafted message and keeping cameras and media as far away as possible from actual real-life goings-on, this film manages to capture genuine human interaction, real emotions, and up-close and very intimate moments involving Obama, wife Michelle and even their young daughters, Malia and Sasha.[18] You have to speak up." Sams and her collaborator, 33-year-old Amy Rice of New York, both independent filmmakers, started following Obama nine months before he declared his run for president. They had unique access to Obama, his family and key campaign staffers as they celebrated the thrill of their first victory in Iowa and slogged through the draining battles that followed. Among the intimate moments captured are Michelle Obama at home playing with the kids, her husband blanking as he prepares for a debate, chief strategist David Axelrod confessing primary angst at Chicago's Manny's Deli, and young speech writer Jon Favreau tweaking the iconic words Obama would later deliver to thousands of supporters. It turned out it was. "The campaign was so full of energy, and then all of a sudden, it's like watching paint dry," said Davie Decoursey-James, an Obama supporter who lives in Bronzeville. Decoursey-James, 45, said he'll wait to assess until halfway into the presidency. "I won't allow myself to be disappointed because I just don't think there's been enough time yet," he said.[26] Our credit cards were maxed out; we had no investors. We were trying to convince everybody that there was a really interesting story here, even if he lost. "And then finally Edward Norton and his team found these really great people who agreed to finance us in stages. When Obama won Iowa, that was when we felt like, even if he doesn't go all the way, we have a really great film about this kind of retail politics process in Iowa." Though Rice and Sams had previous experience, "For both of us, this was our first time directing a theatrical documentary. I had directed some television half-hours, but never a full documentary," says Sams, who grew up in Washington, D.C. During filming she started dating someone in Chicago.[12] "There was never a very clearly defined proposal and then a blanket acceptance," Norton, the Maryland-born actor, says when asked about access. "It was very much sort of access by stages and slow increments. We never said, 'We want to follow your presidential campaign.' We started talking to them in early 2006 in terms of a long-term political diary of sorts that chronicled his experiences as freshman senator as he confronted the realities of government and politics." Norton says he and Rice told Obama and his advisers in their first meetings that they thought there was a "trend toward disengagement with politics by younger generations." They attributed that in part to lack of interest and appeal of "political candidates of the baby boomer generation." They said it was their belief that Obama "represented the new face of politics" and that they would like to try and "use him as a vehicle for introducing new generations to the political experience." That sensibility -- a point of view that looks at the promise of Obama through the eyes of youth -- permeates the film. It extends well beyond Cho.[23] The film provides an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of a presidential campaign including the support networks set in place to further augment that one cohesive purpose. Highlighted are campaign strategies, debate and speech preparations, dedicated workers, Obama's insistence on adhering to his given roots in persona, an emotive moment as the candidate contemplates the words of Martin Luther King preceding his attainable rise by twenty years, affable familial moments, and Obama's impact on a younger generation. "He was the first person who had made a big political splash who was more of our generation than of our parents' generation. It was particularly compelling because our generation had in many ways hesitated getting deeply involved in politics. We hadn't had someone who represented our generation throwing his hat into the ring on a national level.[20]
"I love elections," the non-candidate tells Sams, who's standing off-camera. "They're even more fun when you're not on the ballot." That's pretty much how Obama is whenever the camera is on him. (Michelle Obama is seen from time to time here, too, but in much more controlled settings.) Almost all the footage of Barack Obama seen in "By the People" could have come from C-SPAN. The takeaway, I guess, is that there hasn't been a time in his public life when he wasn't as cool as the other side of the pillow. The second scene in the film is in Des Moines, five months later, nine months before the Iowa caucuses, where a campaign worker named Ronnie Cho is calling voters, building support for the newly declared candidate. Cho, whose parents emigrated from South Korea, and who remembers living in a car with them for more than a year, is the face of the Obama transformation. Change is a palpable thing for Cho, who gets more and more responsibility during his 21 months with the campaign. It is these stories, from those on Obama's Iowa team, that give "By the People" its appeal, its sense of motion. Obama is so relaxed, you have no idea that, over the course of the film, those two women with handheld cameras have been joined by thousands of media and onlookers and power-seekers around the world.[27] The result is surely the most intimate view of the transformational effects of the Obama campaign as any documentary we’re likely to see. “By the People,” as its name suggests, also tells the story of the ordinary people who took part in that epochal event and were themselves changed. “They’re even more fun when you’re not on the ballot. Almost all the footage of Barack Obama seen in “By the People” could have come from C-SPAN. The takeaway, I guess, is that there hasn’t been a time in his public life when he wasn’t as cool as the other side of the pillow. Cho, whose parents emigrated from South Korea, and who remembers living in a car with them for more than a year, is the face of the Obama transformation. Change is a palpable thing for Cho, who gets more and more responsibility during his 21 months with the campaign. Obama is so relaxed, you have no idea that, over the course of the film, those two women with handheld cameras have been joined by thousands of media and onlookers and power-seekers around the world.[27]
In a few days, it will be exactly one year since Barack Obama proved a lot of people wrong and emerged victorious in the 2008 presidential election. That election, and the campaign leading up to it, were compelling chapters in the ongoing saga that is democracy in the United States. They were chapters crying out to have a riveting documentary made about them.[5] One year after the 44th and first African-American president of the United States was voted in, the path to that result is retraced today in the new HBO documentary "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama."[17] "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama," debuting at 9 p.m. EST Nov. 3, captures the improbable ascent of an inexperienced junior senator from Illinois to the highest office in the land. HBO's documentary slate typically veers left, so it's hardly breaking news that "By the People" is a two-hour valentine to President Barack Obama.[28]
Photo by Pete Souza/courtesy of the White House President Obama talks with filmmakers Amy Rice, center, and Alicia Sams, co-directors of the new HBO documentary "By the People."[29] Norton served as a producer on the documentary and helped filmmakers Amy Rice and Alicia Sams get access to then-Sen. Obama. Filming started a year before Obama announced his intention to be president.[19] Years from now the film produced by actor Edward Norton, with directing team of Amy Rice and Alicia Sams, and his producing partners at Class 5 Films will likely be a prototype for filmmakers and depending on how Obama's political saga ends a chronicle of either one of the greatest let-downs in American political history or a turning point.[25] The film, co-directed by Amy Rice (From Ashes) and Alicia Sams, documents Obama's journey from a young African-American Senator of the state of Illinois to the highest office in the United States of America. The simple inspiration for the film, produced by actor Edward Norton ( American History X, Primal Fear), commenced after Obama's charismatic 2004 Democratic National Convention Address, which introduced the relatively unknown political figure to the national public, and unbeknownst to those involved in the film at the time that it all would have led to Obama's monumental resolve in pursuing presidency of the United States of America.[20] "By the People" is produced by actor Edward Norton, a megabucks contributor to Obama nd the Democratic Party. The two directors, Amy Rice and Alicia Sams, are both Dem Party contributors.[21]
Produced for HBO by actor Edward Norton, in consort with independent filmmakers Amy Rice and Alicia Sams, By the People began following the man who would be president nearly two years before election day.[30] As skeptical as I am about anything born of an alliance between Hollywood and Washington, especially when it might shape national memory of a landmark event, I believe that producer Edward Norton and filmmakers Alicia Sams and Amy Rice have created a documentary that will stand the test of historical scrutiny. The film establishes its fly-on-the-wall, cinema verite credibility instantly with an atmospheric backstage opening on Nov. 7, 2006, the night of mid-term elections.[23]
REASON TO WATCH '' A long look back at the Obama campaign. WHAT IT'S ABOUT Filmmakers Amy Rice and Alicia Sams - the latter associated with actor Ed Norton's production company - follow the campaign over 19 months, beginning just before the senator from Illinois announced in February 2007.[31] For virulent Obama opponents, the documentary represents just another opportunity to paint the media with an extra-large Obama-lovers brush. For supporters, it's a chance to relive the president's rise to power. Taken as a documentary apart from politics, it's a surprisingly affecting portrait of a campaign, especially so because viewers know the outcome. Directors Amy Rice and Alicia Sams wisely focus on many of the youngest campaign staffers, allowing viewers to witness history through their determined, idealistic eyes.[32] Directed by Amy Rice and Alicia Sams, the film goes through many highlights of Obama's 2008 presidential campaign with very emotional scenes.[24]
After hearing Barack Obama speak in 2004, cinematographer Amy Rice (center) and her producing partner, Alicia Sams, sought out Obama for a documentary.[27] President Obama (left) with "Election" creators Amy Rice (center) and Alicia Sams (right).[6]
Cho's story is one of the narratives that makes "By the People" soar. Following him on and off all the way to election night in 2008 was a brilliant choice by Rice and Sams. Cho represents so many of the themes of this film and Obama's campaign: hope, youth, change, multiculturalism and unbridled optimism. He wears all of his emotions on his sleeve -- calling home to his mother from rental cars and motel rooms on the campaign trail, speaking from his heart about what he feels. One measure of the greatness of this film: When Cho cries, you feel his joy, you feel his pain. On election night, his ecstatic, tearful inability to do anything but sob into the phone is overwhelming. It also helps explain why Sams and Rice got access instead of others.[23] The film introduces audiences to the people around Obama, not just top aides like Axelrod and David Plouffe, but the enthusiastic Ronnie Cho, Obama's Polk County organizer. Their discipline and meticulous planning were evident. It was the birthplace of a movement, and whether Obama eventually won or lost the presidency, Rice and Sams felt Iowa gave them a film. "It was part of the story nobody knew," Rice said. "When he won Iowa, people started to pay attention." Norton said the campaign's emotional restraint impressed him.[2] EN: When I watch it, one of the first things I saw that I was most pleased about was that it succeeded as a film apart from access to Obama. I think when it really started to gel for me is when these guys showed it to me, and things like the Iowa sectionI really had never understood caucus politics until I saw it. AR: It's also a modern-day lesson in civics, how this campaign really changed how people run things, with the involvement of the internet and engaging the youth.[7] There's more timidity than I've ever seen." That kind of fearfulness isn't something Norton shares. He understands being politic, though. He's long avoided questions about his personal life (he's currently seeing producer Shauna Robertson). Asked for a report card on the Obama administration's first 10 months, he resists, saying only that "you never want to call the game too early on him. I think he's seeing things much further down the road than most people." Norton says, he does think that "no matter how this presidency is judged and that judgment is going to be fluid his election was a seismic event, period. We had this incredible opportunity to get a camera inside that. My hope is that whether you are an Obama devotee or a Republican strategist, you're going to want to see this film, and how these people pulled it off. I would think you'd want to see it even if you were Karl Rove if only to try to figure out how you could beat them."[29]
On the eve of Edward Norton's By the People: The Election of Barack Obama's HBO premiere, Showtime rolls out Barry Levinson's Poliwood, a documentary examining the positive and negative effects that celebrities have on politics.[33] Getting nearly unfettered access to a winning presidential campaign could make for a dynamite documentary no matter one's political leanings. "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama" squanders such access for the chance to remind voters why they fell for Obama while the memories are still fresh in mind.[28] HBO's By the People: The Election of Barack Obama, airing tonight, is better made and more engrossing, mainly because it had extensive access to an actual political campaign.[8]
Obama's key campaign rivals during campaign 2008 Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton and Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain are seen in brief snippets. By the People shows in behind-the-scenes and in-the-scenes footage about how a Senator became involved in a grassroots movement that morphed into a roller coaster of a campaign marked by its youth, soaring hopes and desire for political change and how, in the end, Obama found himself giving a victory speech to a mind-boggling crowd on election night. It captures some poignant moments, etching out key campaign figures' personalities so you see them as human beings with actual lives versus talking heads reciting talking points on Sunday morning TV. Meanwhile, it's not hard to watch this and be charmed by Barack and Michelle Obama as people. Love Obama or hate Obama? No matter: after viewing this you feel you now know a little more about how the man behind the speeches interacts and reacts.[25] The early scenes of the then-obscure senator provide the most revealing. Obama works the phones, chats with people on the street and attends local fairs to spread the message of his candidacy. He's a quick study on how to connect with people from all walks of life, and to see his political gifts on display is truly impressive. He goes through the motions with an avuncular spirit, never looking like pressing the flesh is beneath him. His campaign slowly gets traction, thanks to his poignant life story and impressive elocution. It helps that he motivates a swath of young campaign workers who hustle from one event to the next on his behalf. Once Obama proves he can hang with the presumed Democratic nominee, Sen. Hillary Clinton, the candidate's campaign ignites with potential. His campaign from that point on seemed almost flawless in execution, although having a compliant mainstream media on your side is the kind of benefit that's impossible to measure.[28]
The following morning, pundits all over the U.S. were speculating that the charismatic senator from Chicago could be the front-runner for the Democratic Party in the 2008 presidential election. During a meeting with Obama in early 2006, Norton and Rice suggested they begin shooting a video diary. "At the time he wasn't a candidate," said Norton. "They weren't trying to insulate him. They were, in some sense, trying to elevate his profile." As shown in the early stages, the pre-candidacy Obama was a relaxed and garrulous man, and the camera crew had seemingly full access to his home life with wife Michelle and their two daughters. By the People changes tone markedly after Obama made his candidacy official.[30] By the time Obama was an actual presidential candidate, Rice and Sams were well known to the senator and his campaign advisors, David Axelrod and David Plouffe, and communications director, Robert Gibbs.[22]
The literally corny moments pressing the flesh in Iowa. The low-level campaign workers sweet and committed and idealistic who can't contain their exhaustion-fueled emotions when their guy's early success seems to make ultimate victory a possibility. The literally unguarded early moments of solitude that Obama and his family experienced probably for the last time in their lives leading up to that Iowa experience that made the campaign kids cry. Despite the gradual but inevitable disappearance of the candidate inside his campaign superstructure, it's a fine documentary -- close in revelatory quality to “The War Room,” the film about Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign that made stars of George Stephanopolous and James Carville; less quirky but just as charming as Alexandra Pelosi's hand-held “Journeys with George,” which tailed George W. Bush on the 2000 campaign trail. Think and say and blog what you will about Obama and his job performance so far, but his campaign made history.[13] You can learn all of this and more in "By the People," an affectionate documentary about Obama's historic campaign that teaches, well, not much of anything. The film does offer excellent access to the big man based on the South Side, spending a lot of time with him along the campaign trail. It just provides no insight about the struggles he faced or the reasons so many people were excited by Obama and volunteered to help. The message is merely that people wanted to see him take the lead because, you know, he's a born leader. (There is, however, a funny scene of a 9-year-old volunteer doing a pretty impressive job on a cold-call, with his professional demeanor fully contradicted by funny, frustrated facial expressions.)[26]
Early on in "By the People," a behind-the-scenes documentary chronicling Barack Obama's presidential campaign, viewers meet Ronnie Cho, a field organizer making calls from a cubicle in an Iowa campaign office.[26] On Election Day, HBO will broadcast a documentary about Barack Obama's presidential campaign.[34] As U.S. President Barack Obama prepares to mark the first anniversary of his historic election, a new documentary reveals what was happening behind the scenes on the campaign trail.[35] As we approach this week's first anniversary of Barack Obama's election as the 44th President of the United States, it's a time for remembering the past, contemplating the future and, of course, exploiting whatever random Obamaesque goodness we can find in between.[3] As a shared TV experience, watching the American public vote a black man into the White House magically transcended politics, culture and borders, however briefly. There's probably some irony in the fact that most people in this country can't recall when our last federal election took place, but every Canadian knows exactly where they were and with whom the night they watched Barack Obama become the 44th president of the United States.[30] "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama," getting an Election Night premiere, is slick and well-produced and either two years late or two years early for Obama's campaign committee. It opens with Obama enjoying the 2006 midterm elections.[36] Memories of that night flood back vividly when watching the HBO original film By the People: The Election of Barack Obama (Tuesday, HBO Canada at 9 p.m.).[30] "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama," airing 8 p.m. Tuesday on HBO, chronicles what happened next. Obama unexpectedly jumped into the 2008 race and quickly recruited a cadre of young people willing to put their lives aside to elect him.[27] HBO's By The People: The Election of Barack Obama which airs at 9 p.m. tonight offers viewers the perspective of a revealing fly, indeed.[25]
Are the enthusiastic, idealistic young people working on Obama's campaign staff. Notwithstanding its flaws, "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama" primes the pipeline that will surely produce a more rounded, warts-and-all account of the Obama campaign and the 2008 election.[5] On Tuesday November 3, in communities across the country, people will be gathering with neighbors and reconnecting with old campaign friends to watch By the People: The Election of Barack Obama '''and enjoy the one-year anniversary of this historic election.[34]
"By The People: The Election of Barack Obama," is above all in essence the art and mastery behind political campaigning.[20]
Andrew called me as Barack was giving the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. My first reaction was, 'His name sounds like Osama !' But the next day I bought his book Dreams From My Father, and immediately started leaving messages with his press people. SAMS: Edward Norton finally got us in the door, and we began shooting in May 2006, with an eye toward this being a very long project. I grew up in D.C. and am more cynical, and I thought, 'There's no way this guy is going to be president. We'll be at this for twelve years.' After Obama published The Audacity of Hope, we went to Africa with him; that trip kind of cemented our relationships.[37] Tuesday at 9 on HBO. A documentary produced by Edward Norton follows Barack Obama from freshman senator to president of the United States.[29] With help from actor/producer Edward Norton, Rice was able to negotiate deep-inside access to the political career of Barack Obama, beginning almost a full year before he declared his intention to run for the U.S. presidency.[18]
"Amy and Alicia had a pretty firm commitment to verite filmmaking from the beginning. They were never going to be Michael Moores imposing themselves or questions and points of view on the film. They were both clearly inclined -- both in their influences and references and personalities -- to be true documentarians." Norton says their goal was "to absorb as much as possible with the cameras." He believes, "The objectivity of the film is very clear when you watch it." That "objectivity" is rooted in what the filmmakers termed "man on the street" marching orders from Norton and his producing partners, Stuart Blumberg and Bill Migliore. "We always kind of held onto the notion that Barack was going to be a prism through which the country would reveal itself -- that his candidacy would reverberate through the country in a way that would reflect where we are," Norton says, explaining the directive given Sams and Rice to constantly record reaction to Obama along parade roots, on front porches, on the press plane, and up and down Main Streets across the country.[23] The Iowa caucus was a turning point. Up to then, Rice and Sams felt they had some interesting footage but that was about it. "It wasn't until he won the caucus," said Rice, that we thought, 'OK, we can make a film. While Obama's meteoric rise to the White House has been well documented in the press, the filmmakers also focus on the behind-the-scenes story of the passionate campaigners who helped him attain the presidency. One of Sams' favorite moments in the film occurred on the night of the March 5 primaries, a night when Obama backers were hopeful that he would win a number of states and move closer to wrapping up the nomination.[22]
Once Obama agreed, Rice and co-director Alicia Sams started filming. When he announced his candidacy for president, they switched gears to focus on that from the first, grass-roots efforts in Iowa to the final decisive victory in November 2008. Other candidates appear only briefly; the cameras stay exclusively with the Obama crew. It's an eye-of-the-storm approach and, the first thing you notice is that, as in the eye of any storm, there's a strange calm in the midst of all the chaos.[29] "I believe that we have a righteous wind at our backs and that as we stand on the crossroads of history, we can make the right choices and meet the challenges that face us." Like millions who heard those words, Rice realized she could be listening to a man who some day -- 2012 maybe, or 2016 -- would be elected the first African-American president. She and her producing partner, Alicia Sams, sought out the junior senator from Illinois and began filming him, collecting video that they hoped would come in handy in a few years.[27]
The film's genesis began in 2004, when Rice watched live coverage of Obama's stirring keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. "I remember watching the speech and being blown away by what he said," Rice said. "I felt this guy could be my generation's Kennedy or King. I bought his book the next day and I was really taken with his story. I thought he could be the first African-American president.[30]
"We just wanted to create a historical document for future generations to see and learn from and I'm pretty proud with what we ended up with," Sams told Chicago's NBC 5. The documentary also shows never seen before footage of both Obama and First Lady Michelle talking about the months and weeks leading up to the Election Day victory. "I had, you know, a lot of practical questions that I needed answers to before I could say, definitively that this is something that I could handle," Michelle Obama said. Other interviews with key campaign organizers and staff members are also included in the movie, which shows the 24-hour coverage dedicated to the Obama's campaign.[24] Fast forward to Election Day, when Obama loomed large as a beacon of hope for a newly enchanted generation. As the ballots rolled in and Grant Park crackled with an electric euphoria, Cho called his mother, crumpled into a chair and wept uncontrollably. "By the People," which screens Friday at Chicago's Cadillac Theater before premiering Tuesday on HBO, captures Obama's meteoric rise to the presidency through the previously unseen vantage point of the campaign staffers whose sweat and tears helped get him there.[26] By the People opens in the fall of 2006, on the evening of the mid-term elections that would shift power in Washington into the Democrats' hands. Obama is seen making congratulatory phone calls to Democrats whose campaigns he has supported; there's no hint in what he says to them that he's forming bigger plans for himself. Three months later, of course, Obama declared himself a candidate in the race for his party's presidential nomination.[18] Understand that "By the People" is ultimately a celebration of Obama. Given the intense involvement in the lives of a candidate and campaign that such a documentary requires, it at least raises the question of how objective the filmmakers were able to remain after two years of traveling alongside Team Obama as it battled to win the White House.[23] Thank goodness, then, for Ronnie Cho. Given the filmmakers' diminishing access to the candidate, "By the People" quickly becomes more and more about its most reluctant participant, Obama adviser David Axelrod, and about Cho, a particularly animated campaign worker with a compelling backstory who this past year has gone from teaching dance moves to volunteers to working for the Department of Homeland Security.[6]
As primary season wears on, Obama seems to be a supernaturally level fellow, cool in victory and defeat. The closest he comes to showing even a trace of irritability occurs as he sits on a campaign bus. "How can the Patriots game be blacked out?" he asks his aides. If the filmmakers don't get much spontaneity or insight from Obama, they find it in his supporters. "By the People" demonstrates how his campaign captured the imagination of the young, people of color and those who had felt frozen out by George W. Bush's eight years in office.[36]
The only blemish on Obama's campaign, according to "By the People," came when the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's hateful comments finally broke through the mainstream media's filter. The moment is quickly spun here into a positive for Obama, as his subsequent speech on race defuses the potentially campaign-ending revelations. The documentary summons a few talking heads -- both voters and journalists -- who remind us of Obama's great save while neglecting the full impact of Wright's relationship with the candidate.[28]
The team assembled nearly 800 hours of footage, with the most revealing moments along the campaign trail showing up in the finished product. "We didn't set out specifically to make a campaign film," said Norton at the TV critics tour in Los Angeles earlier this fall, "but at a certain point it became clear to us that this would be a document of how this momentous piece of history was achieved. Whatever President Obama goes through, nothing will ever diminish the significance of the achievement of his election."[30] The New York Times ' Brian Stelter called the film "One of the most candid reflections yet of what happened to Mr. Obama during the 2008 presidential election campaign and what it signified for the United States."[38] Rice was well-positioned to catch a tear trickling down Obama's face that night, a view that news cameras penned farther back missed. On Election Night, Rice shadowed Axelrod and David Plouffe, the aides that once didn't want her around until she wore them down. She catches the emotional scenes of a headquarters where an implausible dream had come true. She followed the men to an elevator and into Obama's hotel suite as the campaign architects congratulated the new president-elect.[2] CHICAGO (WBBM) -- A year after President Obama's election, David Axelrod and other former Obama campaign staffers are back in Chicago for a red carpet screening tonight.[39] The youthfulness and ethnic diversity of Obama's staff. At one point at a meeting Obama asks "Are any of the people here over 30?" (A good sign and bad sign for Obama in the future such as 2010 elections, not a Presidential year when it may be harder to get out the youth vote). Obama bigwig David Axlerod declaring:"These kids are going to win it for us. They think they're changing the world, God bless 'em."[25] The access negotiated in D.C. during a sit-down with Obama and his staff pre-candidacy -- an easy feat when no one else had wanted it -- suddenly became an issue. While Norton was on set for films such as The Hulk and the upcoming Leaves of Grass, he was playing phone tag with the then-president-to-be. "It was the project that kept going and going and going," Norton says. "I was perpetually on the phone with Barack or David Axelrod saying, 'Here's where we'd like to be and why.' I think the key to our success is that we started before he was a candidate.[16]
OUCH oh, OUCH Teddy, you hurt my feelings so bad. Anyway as to the substance of what you said (you know, the stuff before you let the voices in your head take over) who determines what is "independently produced" and what isn't? Did GOP dollars officially go to the Clinton project? Sure it was an advocacy piece, but I'd include election day part of the "campaign," even if not the primary (as if the primary status would matter)? And while Obama isn't running, one could make the argument that a program like this could help the Democratic candidate pretty easily.[38] Senior advisor David Axelrod, communications manager Robert Gibbs and campaign manager David Plouffe figure prominently (but obviously reluctantly) in the film, as do several members of the ground-level team that went state to state as part of Obama's battle to defeat Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries.[18]
In that sense, the film will foster comparisons with the campaign hope and promise with the 2009 (and beyond) reality. Then, Obama's journey isn't over yet so By the People could wind up as being an accurate foreshadow of Presidency yet to come, or yet one more example of an instance where passion and rhetoric soared higher than the governing reality which is weighted down by those big, fat cement bags called "political process," "bureaucracy," and "partisanship." It's too early to tell.[25] "The debate preparation footage is very rare and very hard to get," Sweet said. "It's important for the historic record." Rice lost her brother in the 9/11 Twin Towers attacks, an event that galvanized her political awakening. In 2004, she saw Obama's Democratic convention speech. "That's when the idea of making a political documentary came into my mind," Rice said. "It was clear Obama was inspiring people to think differently about politics.[22] Wouldn't it be awesome to get in with a guy like that early, and start filming before things really take off?' And we said, 'Um, yeah,' but didn't think much more of it." Rice kept pushing, and Norton who is active in conservation circles and housing initiatives made a point of meeting Obama the next time he was in Washington. Norton pitched the documentary to the freshman senator, he recalls, as "not really being about you it's about what politicians of your generation are going to run into."[29] The 47 seconds of screentime given over to Lorenzo, a 9-year-old volunteer "working the phones" for Obama, are priceless. By way of ultra-sharp contrast, there's the sad scene with two white guys in their late teens of early 20s saying Obama can't get elected because, as one of the doofuses says with a straight face, "he's black and associated with terrorists." Rice and Sims do some of their best work in the middle of the documentary, with accounts of Obama's primary losses to Clinton in New Hampshire, Ohio and Texas. "I think this is a good thing. We have to earn this," Obama says in a soft, somber voice. Obama's wife, Michelle, and their two daughters, Malia and Sasha, are featured throughout the documentary.[5]
Then there's this the moment when his staff hears the official news that Obama won. It'll be interesting to see how this documentary will be perceived in coming years by historians after some more time has passed in Obama's term. It could be argued that the documentary is a great boon to Obama and the White House, reminding viewers and history) of how inspiration and perspiration led to the Demmies winning the 2010 election. Pundits on all sides now say they see a different Obama in governance mode a far more deliberative, inside player, and perhaps ready to go along to get along Obama.[25] If it had been that the film would have dwelled on a key aspect of the campaign which is mentioned in passing and not given much time at all: America's Fall 2008 economic melt down. It's a quintessential fly-on-the-wall documentary told through exclusive footage of Obama and his staff shot over 19 months.[25]
On Christmas Eve, just days before the caucuses themselves, we are in the makeshift Iowa headquarters at night with the staffers and volunteers. Most are far from home and you can sense an uncertainty about the price they are being asked to pay to help get Obama elected. It is faith, hope and mainly volunteer charity that keeps them hitting the phones and the computer keyboards on the candidate's behalf. A short time later, it is easy to get caught up in the film's celebration of Obama's surprise victory, because through our identification with the young staffers and volunteers, we see it as much as a vindication of their belief in American politics as we do a victory for the candidate.[23]
One election day ago, Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, and TV is marking the anniversary with two earnest documentaries'''and an alien invasion.[8] On November 4, 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States.[20]
In a very early test of President Barack Obama's political influence, two states.[36]
B y the People is not a warts-and-all political expos, a War Room'style breakdown of behind-the-scenes counterattacking, or a rigorous analysis of Barack Obama's political platform and fund-raising.[37]
Some people revved up during the campaign have lost interest. Adam Wolf of Uptown said Obama's campaign got him more involved than he'd ever been before--but now that it's no longer in his face, Wolf, 26, said he's been paying less attention, as his life is busy enough holding down four jobs. One of those jobs is as founder of Waggish Apparel, maker of funny T-shirts for dogs and their owners, which in its own way reflects the dampened passion about Obama. As press about Obama turned negative, Wolf said, he avoided featuring the "Bark Obama" and "All Barack, No Bite" T-shirts at marketing events. The drop in popularity hasn't discouraged Cho, the campaign field organizer, who said he still feels Obama can unite the country in ways no other politician has or could.[26] The issue for viewers may be one of been-there, seen-that. From February '07 on, Obama was so intensely covered that many may think they already got that long, intimate behind-the-scenes look. This feels like a repeat. What's best about "By the People" are the rough diamonds strewn throughout; they are often visual, not verbal. The candidate absent-mindedly picks at his daughter's jacket. He yawns just before giving a speech. He calls Hillary Clinton to congratulate her on some primary wins, but ends up mostly listening as she talks. These are wonderfully organic, human glimpses. There are just not nearly enough of them.[31] "Obama set the tone very early on, and I don't think you can fake that. You see him after clinching the nomination and there's no jubilation, no preening, no reaction at all. I thought, this guy is really the coolest customer. He's got ice in his veins." That's not something many people would say about Norton. Whip-smart (he was a history major at Yale, before moving on to their graduate school of drama), and fiercely committed (rarely simply an actor for hire, he has often rewritten and, on "American History X" and "Down in the Valley," re-edited the movies he appears in), he takes few things lightly. It applies to causes, too. He didn't just write a check to that African conservation project; he ran with three Maasai marathoners to raise money and awareness (they're currently rooming with him, too). He doesn't just go to charity galas; he persistently lobbies legislators.[29] The film unrolls in the thick of things, without the benefit of retrospective comment or perspective, a series of ups and downs, reverses and advances that reminds you of what a long trip it was. With its succeeding climaxes -- it is like a three-act play in which every act is the third act -- the film does seem to want to end sooner than it does. Any leg of the journey might have stood as a movie on its own. If there is a lesson to the film -- and it's a lesson the Obama camp seems to have understood early -- it's that if you are running for president, you should probably not get too worked up over what people say on television, because, though it is a professional necessity to project certitude, no talking head really knows what it's talking about.[15]
There have been controversial U.S. presidential elections, like in 1960 and 2000, where the result has been in question. "Yes, it's true that every election is by the people," director Alicia Sams agreed. "But our story, the narrative we found, was very much by these people, by the organizers, by the volunteers. "That was the narrative we wanted to tell in this film. Not the day-to-day political news cycle, but how these guys pulled it off."[40] The new film, directed by Amy Rice and Alicia Sams, doesn't reveal enough candid moments to make us want to relive it again so soon.[28] You know how the story goes; filmmakers Amy Rice and Alicia Sams have to make the journey compelling enough to re-live it. Their purported access to our sitting president is questionable.[36] Throughout the candidacy, filmmakers Amy Rice and Alicia Sams had behind-the-scenes access that can only be deemed remarkable.[17]
Filmmakers Amy Rice and Alicia Sams were in the right place at the right time.[22] Logan Hill talked to filmmakers Amy Rice and Alicia Sams about riding the tour bus all the way to the White House.[37]
We weren't the campaign's No. 1 priority. First and foremost for them was winning." Axelrod admits he initially opposed granting Rice and Sams such access. "I was one who argued strongly that we shouldn't," he says, "but over time, they wormed their way into our confidence. That was partially because I learned about Amy Rice's story; when she explained what motivated her to do this project (her brother's death in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001), it was very hard to turn them away.[17]
When it premieres Tuesday at 9 on HBO, it will be the culmination of years of work. "It was after Obama's convention speech in 2004," Norton says, picking at a muffin in a midtown office. "A friend, Amy Rice, told us, 'This guy's the future of the Democratic Party.[29] Well, at least part of the time. During a stop at a barbershop (depicted in the doc), Obama turns to the press corps, tells them that this is one of his "quiet times," and asks them to leave. "I actually thought he was going to let Amy stay," Norton says, "but he told her, 'You too.' " And once the election is won, there's a brief glimpse inside the hotel suite -- but the documentary-makers are shut out once again.[16] For many Obama supporters, the high may have subsided, but the hope has not. "I still am a strong believer that he is going to do the right thing," said Lupe Jimenez, 27, of Clearing. "I think it's just going to take some time for us to get there." Nikki Snodgrass, 28, who was in the ecstatic crowd at Grant Park on election night, said that while Obama's promised changes are "kind of slow-going," that's to be expected given the obstacles on his plate and the nature of governing. She said, Obama hasn't lived up to all her expectations. Her biggest letdown was when Obama said he wanted to "move forward" rather than demand accountability in response to the memos he released detailing CIA torture. "That really bothered me," said Snodgrass, who lives in Lincoln Square. "He always seemed to be such a humanitarian."[26] Hyde Park resident Joseph Dozier, 22, thinks there's plenty to be disappointed about already, including failure to act on gay rights and privacy rights. Dozier, president of the University Republicans at the University of Chicago, voted for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the election, but said he was "very happy" about Obama's victory and hoped he'd live up to his campaign rhetoric.[26]
Senator Obama became a candidate for president. Sams says it put them in a unique position to gain access to the inner workings of the campaign.[39] The filmmakers had terrific access to all aspects of the campaign including moments with the Obama family, a phone conversation with the candidate's grandmother and debate preparations.[22] What's most remarkable is how even-keeled the campaign strategists seem, reflecting Obama's renowned equanimity. Or maybe that's just what the filmmakers had access to and the screaming fits took place off camera. Obama is featured throughout, and viewers get glimpses of just a few candid moments, including debate prep where he freezes up, joking, "I don't remember my plan, but it's a really good plan."[32]
Access was a constant concern. Iowa became their centerpiece. They stuck close to Obama through his early campaigning there, catching moments like a 9-year-old boy making phone calls to drum up support. After three hours of shaking hands, a weary Obama says, "It's like I've been through a wrestling match." Through the crowds and contact, the filmmakers sense Obama catching on as he moved toward an impressive victory in the Iowa caucuses.[2]
Obama is a cool customer, for sure, but no one is that cool. "By the People" begins its tracing of the Obama campaign in November 2007 as candidate and staff gear up for the Iowa caucuses in January 2008.[5] For balance, By the People follows two tireless Obama campaign staffers, Ronnie Cho and Michael Blake, through the gruelling primaries and general election campaigns.[30]
"When I first heard (the title), I responded to it as sort of an acknowledgment that the film was a portrait of the movement that elected (Obama) as much as it was a portrait of him," said actor Edward Norton, one of the producers of By The People.[40] History is lucky that Rice and Sams were inside and up close, for awhile at least. The filmmakers got their initial access through actor Edward Norton ("Fight Club," "The Illusionist"), who served as the film's producer. "My recollection '''of it is that what we kind of suggested was just that''' he represented a generational shift in national''' politics and that we thought there was value in''' documenting his experiences as he entered the''' political fray," said Norton, during summer's Television Critics Association TV Tour in Hollywood.[13] "Axelrod didn't want us to do it," acknowledged Sams. "He thought it would change the way people behaved. He didn't know us, so why would he trust us? We had to convince them that we weren't there to make news, but to chronicle the whole experience." The filmmakers had to combat concerns that they would release their footage on YouTube during the campaign. "We also didn't want to make a film that was interpreted as trying to get him elected.[12] Rice says, "The campaign was always growing and changing, and new people were coming onboard. They wouldn't know who we were, so we always had to explain that we were filmmakers, not journalists. We'd have to build new relationships, even though they'd already been told it was OK that we were filming.[17]
Obama aides like David Axelrod didn't want Rice and Sams around. He worried about leaks and whether the presence of cameras would cause people to act like they were in a reality show — concerns that proved amusing in retrospect.[2] Difficult decisions with the war in Afghanistan and health care loom. The documentary has a laudatory tone; after following Obama for two years both Rice and Sams said they voted for him.[2]
Co-director and Chicagoan Alicia Sams says the project was conceived just after Barack Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate.[39] One sultry day in the summer of 2004, the phone rang. It was Andrew, watching the Democratic convention on cable. You've got to see this, he said. "Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope?" she heard Barack Obama say.[27] In case you didn't remember the excitement and media frenzy that surrounded Barack Obama's election, now there's a movie to refresh your memory.[24] The filmmakers focus on the fervor, fatigue and fortitude required to survive (and thrive) modern-day campaigning. The crew was both stubborn -- and lucky -- enough to be there in the early days, when Obama was trying to drum up interest at country carnivals, to election night, when cameras get a peek into the hotel suite where the family learned they'd be moving to the White House. Obama dissenters are not likely to change their stripes during the movie.[11] Cried? Sams doesn't quite believe that. That's what makes extraordinary her footage of an Obama speech the night before the election, after he learned that the grandmother who helped raise him had died a day before seeing the ultimate dream come true.[2]
What better time to summon the energy and excitement of last fall than Election Day, one year later, as Obama seems increasingly slow to act and his legislative initiatives are slow and stalling.[38]
The office is almost empty, reflecting a time, at the start of the Democratic primary, when many had never heard Obama's name. "It's surreal to think that at one point I had to beg and plead for people to come to a house party in Iowa to meet him," Cho said. "That actually took real convincing."[26] Quick cut to a snowy Iowa in February, 2007, with Obama on the ballot for president of the United States. Inside the modest campaign headquarters, it's about work, not fun, as viewers meet staffer Ronnie Cho, a twentysomething organizer handling Iowa's Polk County for Obama.[23] "Not Diana, Obama. He's running for president." Splicing clips from MSNBC amid their own footage, they create a tense and fast paced atmosphere. After seeing his volunteers dedicate their weeks to the campaign, just prior to the Iowa primaries, campaign manager David Plouffe quoted Obama as saying, "I don't care about winning for us.[9]
There are texture and atmosphere here where most TV news is flat and remote. This is less a story of strategy than of energy: What is said is less interesting than how it's said. The twitching leg of campaign strategist David Axelrod, communications director Robert Gibbs working with his son on his lap or his shoulders, the postgraduate slouch of speechwriter Jon Favreau (not, as he must be tired of pointing out, the actor of the same name) convey their own sorts of valuable information. There is an eye for detail and the well-framed shot, a feel for the light of an Iowa winter, the cushioned hush of a hotel. When the historians of the post-post-apocalyptic future look back, films like this will tell them more about how we lived now than will a thousand hours of CNN. robert.lloyd@latimes.com[15] Some snippets can't help but sound flat upon closer review. "It's not about fear, it's about the future," he says, and after watching his administration declare war on a news organization that dares to critique him such sentiments now land with a thud. When a campaign worker tells his staffers via speakerphone Obama will beat "whatever a-hole they nominate" it sounds like the surly administration tone we've gotten to know since late January 2009.[28]
No, HBO's adoring documentary (premiering November 3 on HBO) about Obama's campaign plays more like an all-access-pass concert tour documentary.[37] Do we get to see Obama puffing away on a cigarette?'' If this is documenting his campaign that should definately be part if it since he is a smoker.'' Oh I forgot, the word documentary doesn't mean there is any truth to this at all'' My bad.[34] The result is surely the most intimate view of the transformational effects of the Obama campaign as any documentary we're likely to see.[27]
First and foremost when we proposed it to him, it wasn't about a presidential run. It was about chronicling a senator's experiences in his first term. We had nine months to keep telling them that we were not engaged in an expose on Obama. Then when it became a campaign, they already knew us, and there was definitely a moment of transitioning.[7] The movie captures Obama's change from just a caring human being into total presidential material, from likeable to quotable. The movie centralizes on the role of the volunteers and their role in making the campaign successful.[9]
Obama early in the campaign: "I love elections. It's so much fun. It's even more fun when you're not on the ballot." The passion, excitement sheer energy of of Obama's supporters, including a baby boomer who supported RFK and says "there just hasn't been anyone as exciting" for him to have gotten so involved until Obama.[25] The reason, Norton thinks, is that "No Drama Obama" wasn't just a nickname but a mission statement. "The character of a campaign comes from the top down," he says.[29] "I think the principal achievement of the movie is that it really documents who the people were at all levels of the campaign," Norton said.[22] Norton has too much to do. There's that script for Lethem's "Motherless Brooklyn" (which he plans to direct and star in). There's his last film, "Leaves of Grass," a stoner-comedy/thriller Norton compares to "Pineapple Express." It showed at the Toronto Film Festival to enthusiastic audiences, but is still like many offbeat films these days looking for a distributor. "We're going into a bad period where people's tolerance for complexity is really getting low again, the way it was back in the mid-'80s," he says.[29] Oh for Christ's sake, it'll just be another glowing infomercial for "Teh One" that they'll re-run 24-7/365 on the "All Things Baracky Channel" debuting next year from The White House News Network. You guys are really gonna regret giving Barry this much latitude, because as always, a Republican will be in the Oval Office again someday, and Congress will shift back as well and all the "powers" and "latitude" you've given these morons will fall into the hands of people you don't like at all. Picture the media war from the white house, only it's President Palin, or some other Republican you loathe threatening the voices at NBC,CBS,ABC, MSNBC etcwhat goes around comes around and your "tolerant liberal leaders" are setting a precedent you ain't gonna like at all when you are on the receiving end, and as history shows, you will be on the receiving end again.[38]
Political partisanship remains the rule in Washington, and some of Obama's greatest supporters complain that promises of change remain unfulfilled. Amid fights about health care reform and an unemployment rate pushing 10 percent, Obama's job approval rating slid nine points between the second and third quarters of the year, to 53 percent in October--one of the biggest quarter drops in the first year of an elected president, according to Gallup, and a steady decline from the 68 percent approval he enjoyed just after the inauguration.[26] When did you first decide that Obama was the real deal? RICE: I grew up in Oklahoma, not in a political family at all. That changed when I lost my brother on 9/11. That day, my other brother Andrew and I woke up to the world around us.[37] Obama -- first an outsider, then an underdog, later a frontrunner and, finally, the victor -- remains at centre stage throughout. All because Rice had a hunch, and made sure she was in the right place at the right time.[18]
For filmmaker Alicia Sams, the documentary is coming at the right time. "What I hope happens is that people see it and remember how engaged they were," said Sams, 45, who lives in Oak Park. "It's not enough to grumble.[26] Kudos to HBO in this deciededly right orientated news and media atmosphere to step up to the plate in celebration of this momentious event. The historic election that occured this past november has been left to die in our memories as this low key champion of the American way has quietly but determinatly lead us since January. Taking on the washington insiders and throwing out coruption, allowing the American people a unique insiders look into how''D.C.' s fallen have been operating in this unprecedented transperent administration. It was time that HBO bring the name Hussain back into our homes once again and remind us of who gave us the hope change and prosperity we are currently enjoying as a nation.[34] Showtime's Poliwood, directed by Barry Levinson, which aired last night, possibly deserves credit for passionately trying to make the thankless argument that Hollywood celebrities do so have the right to inject themselves into politics. The film, which largely tracked celebrity efforts in the 2008 election, had a reasonable enough premise: that celebs interested in politics are no more or less automatically vapid than plenty of others who get to stick their oars in (donors, other politicians, many pundits), but ultimately a film defending the fairly privileged from the oppressive experience of people saying snarky things about them has to be exceptional to be compelling, and Poliwood wasn't.[8] The film has been promoted as an all access pass for regular audience members like ourselves to see how high-profile celebs roll in the political arena. The second season of Diddy's reality quest for a personal assistant begins tonight with 11 new contestants including a female beauty queen, a pro footballer and a few smarmy PR types. For anyone that remembers that episode of Making the Band where the music mogul forced his aspiring performers to prove their dedication by hoofing it to Diddy's favorite Harlem bakery to pick up his favorite baked good, you know that tonight's opener will be equal parts ridiculous hazing rituals and shots of Diddy's cushy Bad Boy headquarters. Last week, Jimmy Fallon flew relatively under the radar with a 30 Rock cameo and tonight, the Late Night host makes another, less expected cameo in Gossip Girl when Olivia (Hilary Duff) says something she regrets during an appearance on his talk show. Nate (Chace Crawford) is concerned with the lengths his grandfather is willing to take to help Tripp (Aaron Tveit) win an election. Blair (Leighton Meester) tries to make Serena (Blake Lively) jealous by befriending a new "It Girl."[33] The candidate himself seems a little elusive, as usual. Mostly the access means seeing him sitting by himself and collecting his thoughts before he goes out and delivers speeches judged historic. The directors do catch one moment that all the other cameras did not: the tears streaming down his face in a rally as he remembered his grandmother, who died just before Election Day. Considering the attention given Hillary Clinton's moment of emotion in New Hampshire before the primary there, pundits would have made special programs out of this kind of emoting.[4] Airing a day shy of the one-year anniversary of the election, the documentary concludes with footage of the new president-elect's victory speech before a quarter-million people in Chicago's Grant Park.[30] The "By the People" documentary allows viewers to re-experience an emotionally charged election night.[12]
Obama disarms voters one by one, season after season, and his charm takes root in swelling throngs of activists. It's bittersweet stuff, earnest enough to make you long today for the old, organic dynamism of the guy waiting his turn to speak in gyms and on courthouse steps, and who, by the time he reaches Election Night '08, doesn't even let the cameras in the door of his hotel room.[3] While the film's release triggers memories of a historic night, it may not be well-timed for Obama. It reaches TV screens less than a month after Obama's selection for the Nobel Peace Prize, a prize that left many Americans and even the president puzzled about what he had achieved to earn it.[2] The film could leave Obama fans pining about potential yet unfulfilled and give opponents another example of the media fawning over the president.[2]
At all times, without fail, Obama is shown as the calm in the centre of the storm. "Throughout the entire process he was always so calm and focused, almost in a Zen state," said Norton. "Those are pretty good qualities to have in a president."[30] The filmmakers also fare better in vignettes with Michelle Obama. She recalls how she sat down with her husband and questioned what a campaign would do to their family before finally deciding, "We are now running for president." Later, Michelle works an undecided voter by turning on the charm: "You know you love me," she grins.[36] Some scenes do offer a side of the president's family we rarely see. His daughters frankly discuss his potential candidacy with childlike innocence. His wife stares at her husband during his big speech on race, her jaw clenched, her hands nervously folded in her lap. It's certainly creepy to see a 9-year-old campaign volunteer working the phones on Obama's behalf, especially when he deals with a caller who doesn't appear to have all of his or her faculties.[28]
At the very least, By the People will help remind many Americans (including Obama himself) of what the historical campaign was originally all about.[25] Funding didn't come easy. "First there was this initial enthusiasm, and then Obama had a slow period, and people who were supposed to be writing us checks lost faith a little bit. That's when we ended up with the classic independent film situation.[12] The film's first two hours provide a remarkable video diary of Obama's long, hard road to get there.[30]
There's actually a fair bit of humor throughout the film, from an exasperated 9-year-old making calls on behalf of the campaign ("Who's Diana? No, OBAMA!") to speechwriter Jon Favreau succinctly and humorously describing the high points of any Obama speech during the primaries: "Thank you, thank you.[32] "When you got around behind the private spaces with them, it was the same." Obama saw a rough cut of the film and sent back word that he cried upon seeing the emotional reactions of his staff members to his election.[2] I'm sure this film would provide some interesting behind the scenes moments. The film will surely be a cheerleader for Obama with all negative footage these filmmakers caught on tape cut out of the final product.[12]
Edward Norton said it himself - the "zen" of Obama is magnificent. This film I'm sure will be subjective in nature and will offer nothing critical about Obama. (Why, most comedians STILL can't find anything funny about Obama because he's so "flawless.")[12] And, in the best tradition of true fly-in-the-wall moments, Norton and his crew manage to capture some moments that linger (no matter what your view of Obama today is) after the documentary has ended.[25] Running man: HBO’s documentary looks at the ‘Election of Barack Obama.[36] Even the reddest red stater would have to admit Obama can charm the socks off a voter in no time. That isn't enough to power a full-length documentary.[28] I checked the production notes to make sure Glenn Beck was not credited as the screenwriter, and that the aliens are not secretly from Kenya. I'm not sure if V intends these parallels to be a running theme of the series, or if they were just played up in the pilot to get attention from writeups like this one. (Also, some of them may ring familiar because certain of Obama's critics have been throwing around the same kind of'' fascism comparisons that were in the original V.) Either way'''again, speaking as an Obama voter'''I have a hard time getting particularly worked up over the B-movie politics of V. They're not always entirely coherent, either.[8] I exaggerate, but only a little. ABC's V, which debuts tonight, may not be intended as an Obama allegory, but it has enough parallels with the issues, concerns and paranoid fantasies of today's politics that they were either included to pique interest, or created accidentally by the typing of a million monkeys who had never seen cable news.[8] Then-Senator Obama arrives in a hotel war room just as CNN's Wolf Blitzer announces on TV that Ben Cardin has been elected senator from Maryland. Obama and aide Robert Gibbs exchange smiles at the news as the senator from Illinois announces his goal of wanting "every candidate" for whom he campaigned to win.[23] The main attraction in By the People is, of course, the creation of Obama as the people's candidate.[30] "By the People" never shows Obama taking so much as a wrong step. He's always affable and cool, and nary a foul word is spoken about him save some ugly comments by a few token GOP voters.[28]
As you might expect, the Obamas come off as a very likable, laid-back, relatable family, but any strain felt from the election process is mostly glossed over. It's disappointing to get only a surface-level look at a monumental election, but the movie does at least provide this hilarious nugget from Chris Matthews, responding to Obama's win in the very, very preliminary Iowa caucus: "For Clinton, what was once considered inevitable now seems barely likely." [26] The first scene in the movie shows Obama in a "war room," watching returns come in during the 2006 mid-term elections.[27]
The operative: "playfulness." A truly telling shot of Michelle Obama, almost teasingly trying to win over with humor a voter who is not inclined to vote for her husband. His phone call to his grandmother, who died before the election. ("I know this is hard on you. Well, I love you sweetie") Later, when she dies a day before his election and he gives a speech mentioning her, the camera captures tears trickling down his face as he tries not to acknowledge them.[25] The overture ends with Obama in a moment of joy saying, "I love elections. It's so much fun. It's even more fun when you're not on the ballot."[23] Interwoven with the drama of the corruption is never-before-seen footage of Obama behind the scenes, paling around with a wide-ranging assortment of far-left radicals and nefarious characters, as well as interviews and candid moments with wife Big Arms, the couple's young daughters, Malia and Sasha, and ethically-tainted/challenged senior campaign staff, volunteers (wonderful Acorn'ers, "organizers", black panthers, etc.), reporters that love The Dear One, supporters who drool and get that oozy and creamy feeling (and rightfully so), and opponents who are rabid town-hall shouters and racists and bigots and neanderthals who need to be corrected or eliminated.[34] Watching Obama campaign mavens David Axlerod and David Plouffe work on the campaign. What emerges: chemistry with their boss. Shots of campaign workers at all levels portray technical seriousness yet having some fun while it's happening. Obama calling Hillary Clinton to congratulate her on her campaign wins.[25]
As the Iowa caucuses heat up, the film catches fire. It is in part because the cameras of Sams and Rice take us into the trenches with the young campaign workers.[23] Think Theodore White's book on the 1960 campaign of John F. Kennedy, "The Making of the President." I am astonished at the visceral and profound ways in which this film affected me.[23] There is so little of John McCain in the film you almost think that a Republican opponent is a minor hurdle to jump; but there is enough of a reminder of the campaign dynamics (particularly McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as V.P.) to remind you of what an epic ride it was that came to an end a year ago today.[4]
People were so shocked to get a call from an 8 year old little girl. I got yelled at a lot, but still love phone banking for campaigns to this day.[21] Obviously, an independently-produced campaign documentary released a year after an election is not the same as an advocacy piece released during a primary campaign.[38] Being elected the first black American President was an event in itself. This documentary is an Obama-worshiping trifle at best. His presidency itself will bring about problems and issues that we will spend years trying to repair. His campaign/election reminds me of a line from the original Jurassic Park movie - ". were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."[29] A great President, focused on what is right for all Americans. And, he will not fail them. I think he might exceed their very high expectations because great leaders inspire more leaders to higher levels. He truly inspires the populace and the rest of the world. Right now he is making great progress in his first year while negotiating the blind and stupid enmity of the extreme right wing.[23]
AR: I think what was surprising for me was that I didn't really grow up in a political family, so I just experienced what was going on behind the scenes and what a campaign entailed, and the back and forth between the media, and what a grueling process it was. EN: And she was surprised at what a political junkie she actually was. I was surprised at what an undertaking what you thought was such a small project turned out to be. AR: It's too soon to tell. He's only been in office for nine months. From what I experienced with him on the trail, there was always a plan, there was always a long-term goal. I assume they have that same mentality right now.[7]
Take, for instance, the case of documentary filmmaker Amy Rice, who in early 2006 was looking for a project with political resonance and decided that the junior senator from Illinois might make an interesting documentary subject. [18] "Andrew and I woke up to the political world that day," Amy Rice recalled. Andrew was working in Toronto for the BBC. He quit, returned to the family's hometown of Oklahoma City and started a nonprofit. Then he ran for the state Senate. Last month his Democratic colleagues elected him as their leader for the 2011-2012 legislative session.[27] Remember when 9/11 was supposed to have changed everything? Well, it did for Amy Rice and her brother Andrew after their older brother David, an investment banker, went to work at the World Trade Center and never came home. Then he ran for the state Senate. Last month his Democratic colleagues elected him as their leader for the 2011-2012 legislative session.[27]
Obama is shown riding in an elevator after having just clinched the Democratic nomination and a film crew member remarks, "You must be feeling pretty good." [2] In the film, which premieres at 9 pmET on HBO, we meet a whole host of characters, including Edith Childs, the city councilwoman from South Carolina who was the inspiration for Obama's recurring ' fired-up, ready-to-go ' pep talk.[38] If the Senator ever misspoke, tripped or otherwise looked remotely human, the footage was left on the cutting room floor. The film wisely includes some of Obama's greatest hits, including the soaring speeches which helped him sway both Democrats and Independent voters alike.[28]
The Democratic Party wanted "change for the sake of change" and to make history either with a female (Clinton) or black (Obama) president.[29] IMO Obama has done a terrible job so far, however the fact that he is the first African American President is a major accomplishment.[34] In one sense I get it: the movie was made in the spirit of Nov. 5, 2008, the generalized, post=election good feeling and best wishes for the Obamas, plus happiness that'''politics aside'''a country with a history of race troubles had elected an African American president.[8] I think this plays nicely with the NEA president who wrote that boot-licking article about "Julius Ceasar" Obama - they're receiving millions and millions in "obama-money".[34]
Today at the pharmacy I saw a commemorative magazine put out by Essence magazine marking Obama's first year in office. We will of course have to ignore the fact it's only been 10 months, not a year, but these are liberals we are dealing with afterall.[34] Political wonks may enjoy the greatest news hits compilation, but most viewers will long for more personal peeks at Obama and his staffers.[28] Hopefully it will tell the truth including all the political corruption that got Obama elected.[40]
Ultimately, "By the People" is not political propaganda. It's a look at a long, hard journey by dedicated filmmakers who probably would have created an equally fascinating film about John McCain. If more politicians allowed this kind of access, we'd have smarter documentaries -- and a smarter country. [11] We're so used to seeing the world through the filter of "the news," that we forget that the news is not the world but only the world refracted, packaged and spun. There are filters here, too -- what the filmmakers have decided to show, what they were allowed to see in the first place. Their unusual access to the campaign is a selling point, but there is access and there is access.[15] NEW YORK Edward Norton is running. Running to keep in shape and raise awareness for a conservation project in Africa. (He ran in Sunday's New York City Marathon, finishing in a little over three hours and eight minutes). Running to HBO, for meetings on an upcoming miniseries he's producing with Brad Pitt about the Lewis and Clark expedition. Running, also, to finish a long-developing screenplay based on Jonathan Lethem's novel, "Motherless Brooklyn," slated to be his first directing job in a decade. The only thing he's not running for, it seems, is office. That's okay. The 40-year-old New Yorker's most important project these days is about someone who did.[29] Where politics and show business intersect a bit more effectively is at a place like HBO, whose documentary division also showed us "Journeys with George," an offbeat account of George W. Bush's first run for president from the perspective of Alexandra Pelosi, the daughter of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.[6] When I first saw the preview of the documentary that is going to air on HBO I laughed so hard at the frustration of that young boy. He reminded me so much of myself at that age when Bill Clinton first ran for president and I did phone banking.[21]
Buffoons don't strategically mount a campaign for President of the United States and take down a machine like the Clintons. You may not like the man's politics, but a buffoon he's not. [12] You can't really put "politics aside" when discussing the election of a President. Seeing the film this summer'''after the realities of governing a country full of contention had settled in'''the film already seemed anachronistic.[8]
Some right-leaning performers, including the late Ron Silver - one of the Creative Coalition's founders - are part of "Poliwood," which also travels to last year's Republican convention to find famous friends of John McCain. With the exception of Ronald Reagan, little attention is paid to those - from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Sonny Bono - who've actually stepped away from their high-paying day jobs to run for public office, many under the banner of the GOP. For all the eye-rolling that goes on as noncelebrities weigh in on what they believe is Hollywood's undue influence, "Poliwood" doesn't pack much of a punch. One reason may be that most of us - left, right or center - tend to discount celebrity endorsements, whether they're for candidates or products that promise to flatten our abs in five minutes a day. An actress like Hathway may fret, as she does in "Poliwood," that the single question she answered about politics gets nearly equal billing in a story with the many she fielded about her latest movie, but unless she wakes up one morning and discovers she's Oprah, her vote probably doesn't count any more than yours or mine. [6] “I believe that we have a righteous wind at our backs and that as we stand on the crossroads of history, we can make the right choices and meet the challenges that face us. She and her producing partner, Alicia Sams, sought out the junior senator from Illinois and began filming him, collecting video that they hoped would come in handy in a few years.[27]
Ronnie Cho, an organizer who began with the campaign in Iowa in April 2007, proves to be an especially astute choice. He has a fantastic back story -- his parents emigrated from South Korea; the family lived in a car for about a year when he was a child -- and Cho is enthusiastic, leading campaigners in an "O" dance, but at the same time responsible and dedicated to the cause.[32] "By the People" then charts nearly every step of the campaign using CNN news snippets to fill in the gaps.[28] Unlike "The War Room" -- which followed an uninhibited James Carville and George Stephanopoulos during Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign -- "By the People" offers a very workmanlike account.[12] By the People has already drawn inevitable comparison to The War Room, the 1993 film from renowned documentarian D.A. Pennebaker chronicling Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential run.[30]
Of course, the campaign turned an up-and-coming Democratic politician into an American legend, a Paris fashion icon, an African hero. "By the People," as its name suggests, also tells the story of the ordinary people who took part in that epochal event and were themselves changed. [27] {"comments":,"media":{"isPublicTaggingAllowed":false,"uploadToAkamai":"","categories":"","pathToMedia":"388834_67967397","adminTags":"cid_67967397,ct_article,sid_388834,sid_389184,sid_389199,sid_521662,sid_521677,sid_521682,sid_521712,sid_521717,sid_521732,sid_522082","uploadedByPhoto":"116995/icons/defaultMember_116995_portrait.jpg?t=1248875781749","views":549,"uploadedByName":"nbc_editor","isAdultContent":false,"updatedAt":"2 Nov 2009 18:28:00 GMT","country":"","pathToPreview48X48":"user/defaultAudio_48x48_A.jpg","inappropriateFlagCount":0,"isRatedByMe":"F","tags":"bored,furious,intrigued,laughing,sad,thrilled","originalFileFormat":"","isFavorite":"F","userId":7918858,"name":"Obama Documentary Screened in Chicago","description":"An HBO movie shows never-before-seen footage behind the campaign."[24] According to Norton: "Initially, it wasn't even about a presidential campaign; the idea was simply to examine the political experience of a promising young politician of our generation."[20]
SOURCES
1. Reliable Source - Six degrees of Ed Norton
2. The Associated Press: HBO filmmakers get inside Obama campaign
3. On TV: By the People: The Election of Barack Obama | Movieline
4. On Tonight: Close Look at Obama's Run - Roger Catlin | TV Eye
5. TV Views: HBO's look at Obama election doesn't quite get this person's vote - The News-Herald Life : Breaking news coverage for Northern Ohio
6. Ellen Gray: Showbiz politics | Philadelphia Daily News | 11/02/2009
7. Ed Norton on Trailing the Obama Campaign - BlackBook
8. TV Marks Obama Anniversary with Documentaries, Aliens - Tuned In - TIME.com
9. HBO documents Obama election - Arts & Entertainment
10. WITH 'BY THE PEOPLE' HBO PREMIERES HISTORY AT ITS BEST - Hollywood Celebrity and Entertainment Daily News
11. Shoo-in for a spot in U.S. political history | StarTribune.com
12. No theatrics: Obama camp ran tight ship -- chicagotribune.com
13. HBO debuts Obama-campaign documentary 'By the People' | New Orleans Television - - NOLA.com
14. "By The People: The Election of Barack Obama": New Documentary on Barack Obama's Historic Presidential Run
15. 'By the People: The Election of Barack Obama' on HBO -- latimes.com
16. Edward Norton's Incredible Doc: Behind His Barack Obama Film "By the People" : Rolling Stone
17. TV News: HBO retraces Obama campaign | The News-Sentinel - Fort Wayne IN
18. Filmmaker's foresight gave her deep access to Obama - Winnipeg Free Press
19. Big screen: HBO documentary on Obama 'By the People' debuts | Washington Examiner
20. 'By The People: The Election of Barack Obama' Premieres Tonight On HBO - Starpulse Entertainment News
21. 'Poliwood' and 'By The People: The Election of Barack Obama': Two documentaries that are going to make Glenn Beck's eyes bleed | EW.com
22. Filmmakers picked the right pol to profile :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Television
23. 'By the People: The Election of Barack Obama': 'By the People: The Election of Barack Obama' transplants viewers back to election night -- baltimoresun.com
24. Obama Documentary Screened in Chicago | NBC Chicago
25. T.V. Review: HBO's By The People: The Election of Barack Obama | The Moderate Voice
26. Obama today: Documentary travels road to White House - RedEye
27. 'By the People' gives behind-the-scenes view of Obama's rise - KansasCity.com
28. HBO Gives Two-Hour Valentine to Obama in 'By the People' - HUMAN EVENTS
29. HBO film documents the Obama drama | New Jersey Entertainment - TV & Film - - NJ.com
30. By the People: The Election of Barack Obama - The Globe and Mail
31. 'By the People': HBO trails candidate Obama
32. Documentary gives inside look at Obama on campaign trail
33. What's On: The Land of Poliwood | Movieline
34. HBO To Air Documentary About Barack Obama Tuesday | NewsBusters.org
35. BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Arts & Culture | On the campaign trail with Obama
36. HBO's 'Election of Barack Obama' not for all the people - BostonHerald.com
37. Q&A With 'By the People' Filmmakers Amy Rice and Alicia Sams -- New York Magazine
38. HBO Premieres Obama Campaign Documentary on Election Day | Online | Mediaite
39. HBO documentary: Obamas road to the White House | KansasCity.com Prime Buzz
40. Obama doc shows how the People made history | TV | Entertainment | Winnipeg Sun
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