MICHAEL CIEPLY
Behind the wheel of a grey-green Land Rover,Rob Lowe was getting into the skin of his latest movie character,a political campaign consultant named Paul Turner. The cameras were rolling for a scene in the indie film Knife Fight,in which Turner crushes a hopelessly idealistic candidate with a litany of her failings,delivered while her moppet of a son listens from the back seat. Im in the business of winning, Lowe summed up,never glancing at the child as he judged his mother to be a loser.
And he plays the good guy.
Knife Fight joins two other high-profile Hollywood projects that look at the dark underbelly of politicians and their handlers. And in what may be a rare confluence for Hollywood and politics,the films are focused on Democrats who are wrestling with questions of conduct,character and pragmatic choices things that have come into sharp relief with the resignation of Anthony D. Weiner and the indictment of John Edwards.
Sony Pictures is set to release The Ides of March. George Clooney,who both directed and helped write it,plays a Democratic presidential contender snared by the wiles of a primary opponent,the ambitions of his own staff and dilemmas that are likely to heighten the debate about public men and their private morals. Clooneys character,while fictional,is bound to recall Edwards,whose considerable charm and political future dissolved in a scandal that found an aide,Andrew Young,claiming paternity of Edwards child by a mistress in a failed cover-up. In turn Youngs own book,The Politician: An Insiders Account of John Edwardss Pursuit of the Presidency and the Scandal That Brought Him Down is being adapted by Aaron Sorkin into a film that could be on screens before the 2012 presidential election.
This is not an accident, said Bill Guttentag,the director of Knife Fight,who spoke on the set of his movie last week about the urge of filmmakers like himself to capture the energy of a coming campaign year. We just want to be part of that mix, he said.
Politics has more often been the stuff of documentary than drama of late. Perhaps lacking heroes or an empathy factor,few narrative films poked at political innards. Among the handful Oliver Stones W. looked at George W. Bush; earlier,Primary Colors and Wag the Dog to different degrees put a comic face on the connection among elections,sexual shenanigans and public policy among Clinton-era Democrats.
The current crop promises a harsher view of Democratic politics and its practitioners,even if the critique comes largely from inside the family. In Clooneys hands The Ides of March evolved from a tightly wound stage work about the interplay among operatives into a full-blown political thriller.
Guttentag,whose film should be ready in time to submit to festivals like next years Sundance,said he first intended to make a documentary about candidates and their operatives. But the camera,he decided,would never be allowed to see the truth. In his words,You never get into the room you need to be in. So Guttentag teamed up instead with Christopher Lehane,a Democratic consultant who had been a White House aide to Bill Clinton and to the Al Gore and John Kerry campaigns,to write a story whose lead character,played by Lowe,is openly based on Lehane. Hes a less attractive version of me, Lehane said last week on the set of a film whose plot stitches together stories about three campaigns one for the Senate,two for governorships,all Democratic that test the tension between means and ends.
Adherence to the reality underlying politics drew Lowe to the project. As Sam Seaborn,the deputy communications director in the West Wing-version of the White House,Lowe had worked through almost every political situation imaginable. But the show,created by Sorkin,had a slight element of fantasy,he said. It was the way we wanted it to be, said Lowe.
As for the rough moments in Knife Fight,he noted,they only set up a loving view of the US and the sometimes sullied mechanisms that govern it. Not only does it redeem my character, Lowe said,it redeems the process.
