A panel of directors and producers who have worked on either films of a political nature, or films about actual politicians came together at the DGA for a frank discussion of the director's role in an increasingly influential media.
The stage was taken by panelists Thomas Schlamme, director of Kingfish: A Story of Huey P. Long about the Louisiana politician, and director and co-executive producer of the DGA and Emmy Award-winning White House drama, The West Wing; Lawrence O'Donnell, a former Washington insider who became an Emmy-winning writer/producer of West Wing, creator and executive producer of Mister Sterling a drama set in the U.S. Senate, and is currently MSNBC's senior political analyst; and John Milius, director of the Theodore Roosevelt-era film The Wind and the Lion, the Soviet invasion story Red Dawn, and writer of Vietnam War classic Apocalypse Now. The panel was moderated by Chuck Workman, whose theatrical short Precious Images, made for the DGA, won an Oscar. His film history of the American presidency, Images of Glory, was shown earlier in the evening.
Turning his first question to Teddy Roosevelt fan Milius, Workman asked if he picks the subjects of his films for their heroic content.
"I think you always pick something that's interesting to you," said Milius. "Most people see their lives, and the lives of others in these heroic terms, otherwise we wouldn't go to movies. But there's a danger in the fact that you can turn almost anybody into a hero."
Schlamme agreed, adding, "Hopefully you're finding someone that's worthwhile to make a hero. Someone asked why [West Wing President] Bartlett was a Democrat. If he were a Republican, it would've been hard to end the pilot with the swelling music as he goes to his people who have been working so hard for him, that have been drilling the Artic Wildlife Preserve. The theme of a lot of movies is where the man is fighting for the underdog. I don't think it's that Hollywood is so liberal, it's just better drama for the masses. We wanted to portray people who at the end of the day make decisions that would make our lives better. That was the clear bible throughout the show."
Milius, however, had a differing point of view. "I want my characters to have a lot of edges on them, and not be so particularly noble all the time. I liked the fact that TR gets a little carried away with himself occasionally and says, 'I want respect, and I'll send warships wherever I need to, to get respect.' He's willing to occasionally go a little too far and I sort of trust somebody who does that. I don't trust noble people, and especially not noble liberals."
Drawing parallels between Roosevelt's problems with the media over his exploits in the Spanish American war and the troubles John Kerry experienced over his swift boat operations in Vietnam, Workman asked if the tendency to look for heroes and villains was harming the political process.
"The media has become like the movie Network," said Milius. "They're not giving you the news, they're giving you entertainment. You turn on O'Reilly so that he can rail about something or other, and you turn on CNN so they can rail about something or the other. They're entertainment, and if you see them as entertainment, then that's okay."
However O'Donnell felt that the actual political influence of cable news was over estimated. "100% of the shut-ins watching cable news shows had their minds made up about every single political issue before they bought their TV, so there's no way we can have a political impact."
On the subject of whether filmmakers owed more responsibility to actual facts over entertainment value, O'Donnell gave an example of a West Wing storyline where a congresswoman died and her husband was appointed to fill her space. "The only problem was that in the history of the republic, no one has ever been appointed to the House of Representatives. They just have a special election. But it was a authorial choice and I backed it up and to this day, no one has ever noticed, in Washington, or anywhere else. And the reason is because the show feels so right. That's what Tommy and the cast brought to it. We would send scripts down to that set that they would make better every time. That's the great artistic achievement, delivering the feel of a situation."
Schlamme believed that no matter what the political leanings of the people within the corporate structure, the only pressure was brought to bear came from consideration of the bottom line. "I think right now what they're most afraid of is offending anybody, on the right or the left because they feel they'll lose half their audience."
Perhaps O'Donnell couched it best when asked to compare the experience of dealing with Hollywood politics versus what he'd experienced while working on Capitol Hill. "Politics in Washington are real. In Washington they're about these giant issues that are mostly grid-locked, like the distribution of income in the United States and the world, trade balances, defense policies, all really important stuff."
Following the panel, there was a screening of all four episodes of the Robert Altman-directed political satire Tanner on Tanner, preceded by an introduction by Tanner's producer Wren Arthur and its writer, political cartoonist Garry Trudeau..
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