RECOUNT an HBO Movie
Last night I finally saw Recount (HBO, debuting 5.25), and I feel no hesitancy whatsoever in calling it totally crackerjack -- a throughly engaging, first-rate political drama that gets you off. It's also fair to use the word "brilliant" as it's no small feat to make a gripping film that's mostly about a bunch of middle-aged political operatives bickering and maneuvering over vote counts, media statements, lawsuits, court decisions, dimpled chads and all that jazz. But director Jay Roach and first-time screenwriter Danny Stronghave pulled it off.
This despite the fact that in a flash-forward sense it's telling an essentially grim tale about how the George Bush forces managed to finagle things in their favor at the end of this fight. The result was that they took this country into economic ruin and international disrepute over the following eight years, a situation which ultimately led to my gassing up last night at the corner of Beverly and La Cienega and having to pay $53 dollars...good God!
The film is fabrication–malicious fabrication at that.
Danny Strong, known best for his stirring apearances in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was so anxious to have his first script picked up that he decided to make it up as he went along. He decided that the “facts” of the 2000 recount had to be made to look sexy to HBO. So he threw himself into cobbling together a storyline that had Bush winning the recount because the Dems–and, in particular, Warren Christopher –were wimps. This is the same Warren Christopher, by the way, who went to the streets during the DC riots of the 1960’s to keep the president posted on developments; who got seventy some US hostages out of Iran; and who served on a ship in the Pacific during WW II. In the NYT story published yesterday, Strong admits to waiting to contact Christopher until the the day the scenes involving his character were shot. He also admits not giving Christopher a copy of the script, even though he did so for Jim Baker and Ron Klain,who were also allowed to give notes and to veto lines and scenes. Danny wants us to believe he had the time to find and commission Christopher’s tailor to make a suit for Christopher’s character, but was too busy to talk to the guy whose measurements he was using. So much for accuracy and/or plain fairness. Strong should write a docudrama about what “really” happened on the Buffy set and leave the documenting of history to people like Ken Burns, who care more about getting things right than marketable.
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I can tell you that the previous post (by Matt) is incorrect. I know Danny, and was privy to his writing process on this movie from when it was just an idea. Your representation of his thought process and of the actual content of the film is not accurate in the least. He made every attempt to make the film as true-to-life as possible, and got input from as many of the actual people involved as was possible. Are you sure, Matt, that you've actually seen the film? Or are you cobbling together an opinion based on faulty news reports?
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