If you need a reason to find fault with HBO's election process flick Recount, boy do we have ample talking points for you.
Also, if you want to find a reason to defend Recount, we've also got your manifesto.
Like a Choose Your Own Adventure, in this Kevin Spacey flick, you can choose what you want to believe.
Arguing for Recount's critics:
But the movie also relies heavily on dramatization, blending factual events with fictional dialogue and scenes. The person perhaps most ambivalent about its approach is Klain — played by Kevin Spacey as a once-exiled aide who fights vigorously to keep Gore's chances alive.
"It does a really powerful job of capturing the feel of the 36 days and the insanity of it all," Klain said, noting that in the nearly eight years since, "no one has succeeded in bringing this to a mass audience in an accessible way. I think that's a very important thing to do."
Still, Klain, now general counsel for a private investment firm, said the movie overemphasizes his role. And he cautioned that it should not be viewed as a journalistic enterprise. "If people watch the film and think this is the complete story of what had happened, they're going to be missing a lot," he said. "A lot of really complex and nuanced debates we had about strategy ended up getting oversimplified into 10-second conversations.
"It's a film," he added. "Not a history book."
Still, Klain was so uneasy about the approach that he suggested the filmmakers create fictional characters instead of using the names of real people, a notion they rejected as unrealistic. He's most bothered by a scene in which his character, at a low point for the Democrats, tells field director Michael Whouley (played by Denis Leary): "I'm not even sure I like Al Gore."
"I didn't say it and I do like Al Gore," Klain said. "Obviously, I'm not thrilled to see it in the movie. But I hope the point that scene makes is that we were in Florida fighting for something bigger than our loyalty to one person. We were fighting for the principle of every vote counting."
The dramatization particularly rankles Christopher, who was Gore's emissary in Florida during the early days of the recount. He has not seen the film, but he read transcripts of scenes featuring his character, who is portrayed as a high-minded but naive statesman.
In one scene, Christopher, played by John Hurt, suggests to Baker — who was spearheading Bush's Florida legal team — that they try to resolve the recount through "diplomacy and compromise."
"That's absurd," Christoper said in an interview. "Both Baker and I knew this would be a fight to the end that only one side could win."
(Baker agreed that the film exaggerated his rival's stance: "He's not that much of a wuss.")
For Christopher, "Recount" is part of a troubling trend of docudramas purporting to be historical documents. "They're publicized in a way that indicates they're based on exhaustive research of the record, but they're in fact written in a way that produces drama, rather than an accurate version of history," he said.
Strong interviewed Christopher just once, after production on the movie had begun, and he did not send him a copy of the script to review, as he did Klain and Baker. But he defended his depiction, saying it was largely based on Toobin's book "Too Close to Call."
Arguing for Recount's supporters:
But Strong was not interested in rewriting history. He conceived of "Recount," which premieres Sunday on HBO, as a dramatic retelling of the 36-day legal battle between Gore and his Republican opponent, George W. Bush, through the varied perspectives of the players in both camps. The movie would not take sides; it would hew to the historical record.
"The film is not about who should have won," said Strong. "This movie is about our electoral process and gives us an intimate look at how this process went down in one particular state. And then it sort of asks the American people: Is this how you want to elect a president?"
In defending the movie's accuracy, HBO has touted the amount of research that went into its making. Strong interviewed 40 people who were directly involved in the complex legal fight, and he relied heavily on four books about the recount penned by journalists. The authors — the New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin, Newsweek's David A. Kaplan, Time's David Von Drehle and ABC News' Jake Tapper — were all consultants on the film.
"We wanted to make this feel as authentic as possible and rooted in the best journalism that we could," said Colin Callendar, head of HBO Films.
In crafting the script, he relied heavily on public documents and interviews with the key players.
In an unexpected twist, top Bush campaign officials have given the movie largely good reviews, despite its pedigree. (Strong and Roach are both Democrats, as are many of the leading actors.)
"It's a really intelligent, really well-done movie about a complicated subject," said Ben Ginsberg, who was national counsel for Bush's 2000 campaign and who is played by Bob Balaban in the movie.
[LAT]
Editorial Director
If you look at how this film was researched, it's hard to conclude that it's a whole lot more fiction than fact. Here's one view of the record:
Danny Strong, a first-time screenwriter, apparently felt the story of what actually happened in 2000 was not sufficiently compelling to attract Hollywood interest, so he conjured up a story line that had greater dramatic potential: George Bush won the 2000 recount battle because the Democrats–principally Warren Christopher and Bill Daley–were too weak, too genteel, to withstand the Jim Baker-led steamroller. Not even the heroic, efforts of the only Democratic operative in Florida with the fortitude to take on Big Jim could save the ship.
But Strong had a problem–how to establish the ineffectuality of the Democratic side of the fight. He decided to it by creating a scene or two in which Warren Christopher would utter words of compromise, naivete and illogic. In just a few screen minutes, Strong could establish a major, overarching theme of the film and, if he were lucky, could manage it without ever talking to Christopher.
When push came to shove, it looks like Strong realized that he had to cover himself by making contact with Christopher. He's admitted that he waited to do so until the day the scenes involving the Christopher character were shot. He also admits that he refused Christopher's request to review a copy of the script, even though he accorded that courtesy and beyond to Jim Baker, Ron Klain and others depicted in the film.
Christopher learned that the film was in production when his tailor told him he'd been retained to produce a suit for the actor who was to play him. In other words,Strong felt it was important to get the wardrobe right for the Christopher character, but didn't regard the facts as rising to the same level of importance.
Strong obviously didn’t not want Christopher to know that the script contained scenes in which his character declares that the recount dispute can be compromised and that no lawsuits will be filed on behalf of Gore. Strong knew that once Christopher read or was told of such scenes, the jig would be up–that he'd have to confront the fact that he was about to distort beyond recognition the character of a man universally regarded as a quintessential litigator. A scrupulously ethical lawyer? Yes. Weak-kneed? Never.
The truly weak-kneed are those who blithely chalk off to "dramatic license" the gross distortions of the sort Strong has embraced, while simultaneously proclaiming reverence for the faithful preservation of history. Like it or not, today's viewing public increasingly treats as fact what is fed to them as "docu-drama," unaware that in most cases they are consuming an ounce of “docu” to every gallon of “drama.” And like it or not, what they treat as fact becomes fact for others in this generation and those following. HBO knows what it’s doing when it promotes the film as “the story of the 2000 presidential election.” It’s encouraging its audience to swallow as absolute truth everything it’s chosen to put on the screen.
The HBO movie "Recount" may have some relatively minor character differences, but the facts remain the same. Arthur, you can try to gloss over the stolen election and the facts depicted in this film, by claiming it's more Hollywood drama, however, that opinion really doesn't hold up when there is plenty of actual video footage and physical evidence that proves the Republican machine screwed with not only the voting process but the Florida recount. While Jim Baker deserves some credit and Warren Christopher may or may not have been more assertive in real life, the real kingpin was Katherine Harris. I have yet to read that she was depicted incorrectly. That's probably because HBO has tons of proof that her portrayal and the facts surrounding her involvement were dead on accurate! Not to mention the endless hours of real video footage that exists showing Republican lawyers objecting to every ballot being counted and trying to intentionally stall the process. Or maybe it's the footage of that band of idiots that were allowed by local Miami police officials to storm in and harass Miami-Dade ballot counting officials. You must forgetting that the frustrated Palm Beach officials held a press conference in which they claimed Harris would not allow them 4 more hours to count the remaining 1000 votes, after they had tirelessly counted 460,000 ballots. Did HBO also fabricate the US Supreme Court halting the recount for no justifiable reason? Perhaps you should watch the film again and do a little more research!