BOOKS AND ARTS MAY 23, 2008
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Recount, a dramatized take on the controversial denouement of the 2000 election, premieres on HBO Sunday at 8 p.m. TNR’s
Jonathan Chait, who covered the Florida battle eight years ago and is
still seething about it, discusses the film with its director, Jay
Roach (of Austin Powers and Meet the Parents fame), and its screenwriter, Danny Strong.
Chait begins the conversation below. Click here for Roach and Strong’s responses.
Dear Jay and Danny,
It's a triumph. Congratulations. Watching Recount was one of
the most powerful film-viewing experiences I can ever remember. Of
course, I’m biased, because I’m one of the people who never let go of
the events it depicts. Inevitably, I was going to be either furious or
gratified with whoever made the first movie about it. I was gratified.
The Florida recount was one of the most important political episodes
in American history. Let me try to make my historical argument as
quickly and un-boringly as I can. American politics used to have an
establishment, filled with elites who believed in bipartisanship and
consensus, and who held together the center in American politics.
Conservatives spent decades discrediting and circumventing that
establishment. But the establishment remained in place, and it could
bring to heel even so popular a figure as Ronald Reagan. The recount
was the moment when the Republican Party fully realized that, beneath
the still-imposing edifice, the old institutions had rotted away and
could be brought down with a few swift blows.
Yet the Democrats still believed in the power of the establishment and its ideals. This is a major theme of Recount. Al Gore and his lieutenants agonized about their reputation, their duty, and winning the approval of The New York Times,
while Republicans saw the episode as a pure street fight. The
Republicans were teeming with rage and paranoia, well-captured in the
movie by the “Brooks Brothers Riot” and the bitter commentaries of GOP
recount lawyer Ben Ginsburg. This was the political culture of the
moment. Liberal editorial pages studiously urged both sides to fight
fair, while conservative organs like the Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard printed deranged conspiracy theories and urged Bush to do whatever it took to win.
After the recount ended, there was intense pressure to look away
from what had happened, a pressure that grew after September 11. And so
this unbelievably consequential event virtually disappeared from the
public discourse. I suspect that the cratering of the Bush presidency
is what allowed this movie to be made. Bush’s failure as a president is
an irony that hangs over the whole film, giving even mundane events
black humor.
The humorous tone of the movie is one of the most interesting
choices, and I’d love to hear both of your takes on it. The events it
depicts--while presented straightforwardly and
non-propagandistically--are a bloody outrage, and yet the tone and feel
of the film is extremely light. I love the end result--hypocrisy,
irrationality, and moral callousness are often best captured by humor.
But I’m curious what drove this not-obvious decision--is the episode
still so touchy that HBO decided it had to be approached in a funny way
to make it palatable? In any case, I think it actually drives home the
outrage more effectively than it would if it was an earnest, Bill
Moyers-style “Shame of the Blah Blah Blah” documentary.
If I haven’t given you enough to chew on, let me toss out some more
questions: How is it that a comedic director took on this project? Was
there a calculation that the subject was still too delicate to approach
with a heavy touch? In any case, it’s an utterly devastating indictment
of Katherine Harris, the Bush recount team, and the Supreme Court--but
all the more persuasive because it is presented as a series of wry
observations.
(Speaking of Katherine Harris, Laura Dern’s impression is fantastic.
There was one scene where she walked to the podium and I thought I was
looking at footage of Harris. There must be something distinctive about
the way Harris carries herself that Dern was able to capture, because
the similarity was spooky.)
What made you two decide to take on this project? What research did you
conduct? What was the reaction at HBO? What reaction have you gotten
from Republicans?
Also, I suppose that for the sake of the appearance of balance, I
should make one criticism of the movie, so here goes. How did you not
include the scene where John Bolton burst into a Tallahassee library
and announced, "I’m with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the
count!”? That always struck me as the most cinematic moment of the
whole episode.
Best,
Jonathan
Click here for responses from Recount director Jay Roach and screenwriter Danny Strong.
Jonathan Chait is a senior editor of The New Republic. Jay Roach is a director and producer whose films include Recount, the Austin Powers series and Meet the Parents. Danny Strong is a writer and actor who wrote the screenplay for Recount.
Read Jonathan Chait's original coverage of the Florida recount:"Fall Guy" (11.20.00)"Count Down" (11.26.01)"Losing It" (12.11.00)"Not Equal" (12.25.00)
By Jonathan Chait, Jay Roach, and Danny Strong
13 comments
yes, those noble Gore lawyers, high fiving each other when they got 500 votes from the army thrown out by some technicality or other. I was too young to vote at the time, I'd vote for Gore if he ran again, but Chaits synopsis here is laughably dumb. This is possibly the poorest piece I have seen in TNR (excluding certain blog posts).
- krayman
May 23, 2008 at 3:58am
Could you please quit using this format for responses, it's god-awful.----"But I'm curious what drove this not-obvious decision (using humor)"----Jon, don't you think Monty Python did one of the better send-ups of the British upper and ruling classes along with the hard-lock class stratification in place there during the 70's? I mean, it was a humorous take on a fairly serious and while waning, still entrenched culture back then. I read Roach's response, and it seems all the more an appropriate form for the movie.
- jet
May 23, 2008 at 10:06am
Krayman - you have apparently not been reading Chait long enough. He lives in a fantasy world in which democrats are always the noble nights on white horses (unicorns?) and republicans the slavering orcs intent only on ravaging the comeliness of the saintly democrats. Chait will twist and spin and say anything, no matter how ridiculous, to make a left-leaning interpretation the "right" one. The simple fact that he is "gratified" by the movie "Recount" says one thing and one thing only - it portrays democrats in the filtered light of Chait's fantasy.
- reb
May 24, 2008 at 2:26am
Chaits makes the recount sound like some sort of political Woodstock, with standard stock villans. But it disappears into history once it was determined that there was no plausible (real) scenario that gave Gore more Florida votes than Bush. Fewer votes, you lose. A non-event. I suppose some people have to blame the Republicans for everything, up to and including missing the bus to work in the morning.
- pashley
May 24, 2008 at 3:05am
In the unlikely event that a reader actually cares about the facts --those stubborn things-- behind this docu-drama, they might like to read Howard Kurtz's Media Notes column in today's Washington Post.
- Lou Sernoff
May 24, 2008 at 10:35am
The nail never gets hit on the head by you guys. The Supreme Court voted 7-2 to discontinue the counting because the Florida Supreme Court was in violation of the state (Florida) constitution. The "reading" of the chads ("What did Vivian Taylor mean when she half-punched this one?") was an imbecilic exercise. Who amongst us can divine what a person meant by his/her hand-applied manipulations on the card itself? A cough? A tic? A hesitancy? PUHLEEEZE ! I really don't care who won at this point but I do recall that some major newsfolks called it for Bush well after the final decision. This leg was broken in both directions but the left ain't any more pure than the right. Right?
- swampfox61
May 24, 2008 at 11:49am
Jon, Good post. Obviously, for many of us, the wound still throbs. Without getting too out of control here, I think that this sordid episode painfully showed that Gore got robbed and very few people cared. You are right: There seemed to be a feeling, starting on election night, that even though Gore won, Democrats were supposed to do the "right" thing, which meant roll over. Whenever Gore's team got aggressive, they got hammered. And, when you factor in that what we all ended up with was 8 years of one of the most incompetent, secretive administrations in modern history, is it any wonder that this would will continue to throb?
- thejauntyboulevardier
May 25, 2008 at 11:31am
Your own New York Times put this to rest in their investigation of the recount. The Left's love of conspiracies matches the Far Right paranoia the Left used to mock.
- ChanRobt
May 26, 2008 at 4:30am
"But it disappears into history once it was determined that there was no plausible (real) scenario that gave Gore more Florida votes than Bush." If the overvotes had been counted, Gore would have won by hundreds of votes. And Judge Lewis said he was prepared to count them if the USSC hadn't pulled the plug.
-
May 26, 2008 at 3:48pm
reb, why would you waste your time reading someone so much whom you have such little respect for? 6 plus billion people in the world and you can't waste your time reading someone you consider more worthy? I try to read differing opinions, but at least I try to read people whose intellect I respect even if I disagree with their conclusions. I really can't ascertain any motivation on your part besides you are basically an idiot who has no discernment.
- blackton
May 26, 2008 at 6:00pm
I voted for Gore in 2000, but my reaction during the recount itself was more or less the same as the Republicans' apparently was: that the Democrats were trying to steal [back] the election. I remember the Brooks Brothers Riot, but I also remember the Dems suing local election boards over recount methodology, the USSC swatting down the Florida SC unanimously (the details of which I cannot recall), and Boies before the USSC not being able to come up with a coherent interpretation for "count every vote." Rather, for the Dems, the first "reasonable" interpretation would have been the one that gave Gore the victory. I may have voted for the guy, and still wish he had won, but I have a deep-seated loathing of cheaters. PS: don't ask me what I think of Bush today. I hold my nose, with both hands, and wait for him to leave.
- George W
May 26, 2008 at 11:15pm
I do normally like Chaits stuff though, so maybe, like everyone, a few issues just drive him mad.
- krayman
May 27, 2008 at 12:31am
So, in other words, its a movie for deranged leftists completely divorced from reality. "The wound still throbs?" Good God! The Supreme Court found in a "bipartisan" 7-2 ruling that what Al Gore was attempting to do was unconstitutional...robbing Americans of their right to equal treatment under the law in order to steal the election. The narrow 5-4 decision was only about the remedy. Bet that didnt make it into the movie. Gore tried to steal the election. He was stopped. Case closed. Get a life.
- FactCheck
May 27, 2008 at 3:37am