Scandal rejuvenates film as life and art overlap in Clinton drama

At the same time, the real Clinton story is also being readied for celluloid in a film called Primary Colours, a thinly-disguised roman-a-clef that stars John Travolta as Jack Stanton, a womanising southern governor who becomes the President despite the scandals.

But it’s Wag the Dog that has tongues wagging. The dark satire, which had grossed a modest $ 15 million in the first three weeks it opened, was already flagging at the box office when it was rejuvenated last week thanks to real life Washington eerily imitating the movie script.

In the film, the media begins to sniff at a claim by a girl scout that she had bedded the President, just two weeks before elections.

Horrified Presidential aides then hire a Hollywood producer to conjure up a war to deflect attention from the scandal.

The media is manipulated to make them believe that the US is going to war against (of all countries) Albania, because fundamentalists there have acquired a suitcase nuclear bomb.

Although the story is implausible and full of holes before it finally peters out, superb acting by Robert De Niro and Anne Hecht as presidential flunkeys and Dustin Hoffman as the Hollywood producer holds it up at least till mid-way. As the real life Washington drama unfolded over the weekend, crowds returned to the movie and laughter riffed across the theatre as Americans saw the parallels with life outside.

Unfortunately though, the Clinton administration’s best efforts to up the ante against Iraq is not deflecting attention from the scandal at home. The American media is doggedly, and salaciously, chasing the Monica Lewinsky story with each new lurid detail adding to the President’s misery.

The newspapers in distant Baghdad though have seized upon the scandal to cry wolf warning that Clinton will attack Iraq to deflect attention from his domestic worries.

Meanwhile, Primary Colours, the presidential roman-a-clef by Joe Klein, is ready for release in March although its producers must be wishing they can rush it to the cineplexes right now.

In the film, John Travolta is a Clinton look-alike and sound-alike, a southern governor who is running for President but cannot stop running after women. Emma Thompson is a dead ringer for Hillary Clinton. In one particularly powerful moment in the film, Thompson slaps Travolta when she discovers an adulterous affair. But she then rallies his campaign to ensure he becomes President.

The real Clinton though must be wishing the script in life was closer to movies like Air Force One or The American President, where the chief executive is cast as a dashing hero and a romantic. A film buff himself, Clinton spent the weekend watching The Apostle while the sex scandal swirled outside and the paparazzi made a meal of the White House’s immaculately manicured lawns.