Hollywood pitches in for Obama

Published on Sunday 6 July 2008 21:57

HIS film turned millions of Americans on to the challenges of climate change and transformed the reputation of former vice-president Al Gore. Now Davis Guggenheim, the Oscar-winning director of An Inconvenient Truth, is working on a new film intended to boost the image of presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Guggenheim and a large film crew were spotted in Butte, Montana, filming Mr Obama, who made a campaign stop there over the 4 July holiday weekend. The documentary will tell the story of Mr Obama's life and his African and American heritage, as well as spelling out how Democrats believe they can win in the American West.

Filming took place at the Freedom Fest Independence Day celebration. Additional scenes with Mr Obama were shot in the Clark Chateau Museum, a mansion from the glory days of Butte, which was once a wealthy mining town.

Mr Obama, criticised earlier in the campaign for being unpatriotic and not wearing a flagpin, was in Butte with his wife, Michelle, their daughters, Malia and Sasha, and his sister and her family. The occasion coincided with Malia's tenth birthday but she didn't seem to mind spending it helping her father's campaign as the whole family waved American flags for the cameras.

The film will premiere at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, next month. Democrat strategists hope that the film, which may then go on general release, will "sell" Mr Obama to the American people after wide concerns that a lot of voters don't yet "get" the Democrat nominee.

It will also address many of the persistent false rumours which circulate around the candidate, such as the persistent belief amongst 10 per cent of registered voters that Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim.

Mark Blumenthal, the editor of Pollster.com and a longtime Democratic commentator, said: "There are still a lot of voters don't know about him, particularly those voters who make up their minds last. Obama needs to do something to fill out what people know about him and to get rid of the fear."

The film is shrouded in secrecy. When asked what was going on, Mr Obama's camp repeatedly said that the candidate was doing a routine video shoot for the campaign's media department.

Guggenheim, whose TV credits include 24, NYPD Blue and ER, said he had been interviewing Mr Obama but added that he could not reveal more until he had consulted with the Obama campaign.

This is not the first time a candidate's life and bid for the presidency has made it on to the screen. In 2000, Democrat congresswoman Nancy Pelosi's daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, made Journeys With George, featuring behind the scenes footage of George Bush's campaign.

Guggenheim, whose name is listed as having made a personal cash donation to the Obama campaign, is carrying on a family tradition. His famous father Charles Guggenheim won four Oscars, including one for his 1968 chronicle Robert Kennedy Remembered. Charles Guggenheim also acted as a media adviser to many Democratic political figures.

But the Obama film needs to be more than just a flattering biopic. Like Hugh Hudson's film of Neil Kinnock, which was shown during the 1987 UK election campaign and was credited with transforming the image of the then Labour leader, Mr Obama needs an image pep-up.

There's no guarantee that the message of a sympathetic film will reach the public in large numbers, however.

Despite the success of An Inconvenient Truth, political films rarely make big box office in the US.

Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry, made by supporters of the last Democratic presidential candidate in an attempt to rebut allegations that he had exaggerated his Vietnam war record, enjoyed a very limited cinema release – even in Kerry's home city of Boston.

Far more effective in shaping opinions was Stolen Honour: Wounds That Never Heal, a film which was highly critical of Kerry and was broadcast on television across the US, thanks to the financial backing of a Bush sympathiser.

From Monroe to Reagan – making politics more like the movies...

ONE of the most famous and controversial links between the White House and Hollywood sprang from screen legend Marilyn Monroe's connections to the Kennedy brothers.

Alleged to have been involved with both the president and his attorney general brother, she even made her last significant public appearance with John F Kennedy, famously singing 'Happy Birthday' to the president in 1962.

Though JFK was often likened to a Hollywood actor, the relationship between the the world of politics and movies reached what seemed to many to be its inevitable conclusion when Ronald Reagan ascended to the presidency in 1981.

However, Reagan's film career – he was credited in more than 20 'B' movies – was a distant memory by the time he reached the Oval Office, having served out the 60s and most of the 70s as Governor of California, and run twice to become the Republican presidential candidate before securing the nomination in 1980.

California's residents took Hollywood to their hearts once again when they elected the all-action hero Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of the state in 2003.

Despite an at times indifferent performance during his tenure, his name has been linked with the White House on several occasions.

Unfortunately, for the Austrian-born former body builder, the American Constitution prevents non-natural-born US citizens from running for president.

However, he has been a vocal supporter of a campaign to allow anyone who has been a US citizen for 20 years to run for office.

In 1999, Warren Beatty said that he had been giving consideration to running for the Democratic nomination.

At the time he also voiced concern about the party's candidates in the run-up to the 2000 election.

But perhaps the most bizarre collision between Hollywood and the White House occurred in 1970, when Elvis, having finished the very last of his 31 movies, visited the Oval Office to meet Richard Nixon.

The sight of the singer-turned-actor dressed in a maroon cape shaking hands with Tricky Dicky was an incongruous one.

He asked the president to appoint him as a Federal Agent at Large – a role that did not exist – so that he could do battle against the drug culture.