HBO's "Game Change"

Did anybody else watch it this weekend?

If you follow the news at all or have read the book, you'll already know most of the material. It ignores the Democratic side of things that was pretty prominent in the book and just focuses on the Sarah Palin narrative. Woody Harrelson (as Steve Schmidt) and Julianne Moore (as Palin) are both fantastic.

It's really fast-paced, but I thought it was compelling to see the Palin drama reenacted on the screen like that. She starts off being overwhelmed, then turns into a total beast after she clocks a decent effort in the debate against "O'Biden."

 

Thought it was pretty great. I liked the fact they didn't make Palin a one-note character, though I think they kind of lionized McCain a bit. Not quite as good as Recount (the one they did about the 2000 election) but easily could have (and maybe should have) been something that you saw the your local multiplex first. And man I just love Harrellson these days. He kind of owns everything he does.

 

Totally different take-- I thought Harrelson was stilted as Schmidt. Moore did okay, but her accent was so forced.

I agree it wasn't as good as Recount.

The book was amazing, so this pales.

I did see where the real Nicole Wallace said the film (and book) pretty much hit the mark in terms of getting the story right.

 

Random note: Danny Strong, who wrote the film, played Danny last season in Mad Men. Of course, folks here are more likely to remember him as Doyle in Gilmore Girls.

 

Or, depending on your nerd quotent, Jonathan in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

 

I found the bit at the end, where Nicole Wallace admitted she hadn't actually voted in the election after putting in so much time with Sarah Palin during the campaign, both hilarious and very telling. Supposedly, in addition to all the background in the book, the screen writers did interviews with 25 McCain staffers. So whatever details may've been imperfect or dramatized, that's too many people to shrug off as a couple of hacks with an axe to grind.

I'd somehow missed that Jonathan from "Buffy" wrote "Recount."

I haven't read the book, though after seeing this I'm interested to pick it up. I came away with the impression that Sarah Palin is a perfectly nice woman who should not be in power of anything. It also made me wonder where the Republican Party would be if McCain had run with Lieberman, like he apparently wanted to. Would the Tea Party have existed? Would it have put the country in a more bipartisan place post-election, or would the GOP have radicalized even further as a response to a loss it could blame entirely on the moderates (a loss whoever the veep pick was appears to have been pretty inevitable)?

It's hard not to be a cartoon when you're playing a figure like Pailn, but I thought Moore did a compelling job. The scene where she was on the phone with Palin's son in Iraq really got me.

 

I think my favorite line was when Schmidt/Harrelson looks at the screen during the Couric interview and shouts: "Just name one fucking newspaper!"

 

It impresses the hell out of me that Harrelson can be such a burned-out stoner in real life and be so amazing in movies like Rampart and The Messenger.

I haven't seen Game Change yet, but will if it's still on when we get our free HBO weekend in two weeks or so...

 

That's where I think they went a little wrong. She's not exactly a nice person. Her record of backstabbing and bullying is well known in Alaska.

 

I would disagree with J-School Blue's assessment to a degree. I think that they tried to humanize her a few times in the movie - the old Chekhov trick of giving the villain a dog that he loves. But overall she came off very, very poorly.

 

Interesting memo published today in Politico. It was written 10 days before election and discussed how to
preserve Steve Schmidt's reputation from the pending fallout of McCain loss.

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=9247F184-3283-4D54-9730-7159FD70F3F5