Hours after Al Franken’s latest victory in the 2008 Minnesota senate race, Thom Powers hosted a special screening of Chris Hegedus and Nick Doob’s documentary Al Franken: God Spoke at Stranger Than Fiction in New York. Though the film, released in 2006, only extend into the very beginning of Franken’s senate run, thanks to recent events it plays as an invaluable portrait of the bridge Franken travelled from Saturday Night Live mainstay to Fox News punching bag, from humiliated Kerry supporter to quiet victor in a vote that his opponent won’t let lie.

Early on in the film there’s footage of a public spat on some kind of book panel between Franken and Bill O’Reilly, which basically ends when the Fox star aggressively tells the then-comedian to “shut up!” At that point in their careers, they’re both personalities. The story of the film is Franken’s evolution up the food chain, from being a dog nipping at O’Reilly’s ankles to being his more-or-less equal,  and on to Franken’s determination to grasp an actual position of power, thus putting him in a different league altogether from a media star whose power is largely percieved and mostly conferred by his associated institution. And though it ends not long after the 2004 re-annointing of George W. Bush, seen a full election cycle later God Spoke feels like the beginning of the story of the rise of the left as an organized mainstream media presence, and the eventual triumph of the Democratic Party. (Which is not to say that it’s not occasionally dated; at one point Tucker Carlson, who spent much of the 2006 and 2008 election clouds associated with liberal bastion MSNBC, is here held up as a tool of the right via his then-role as anchor of Crossfire on CNN).

A strong throughline of the film is Franken’s increasingly adversarial relationship with Norm Coleman, who was elected to the senate in Minnesota after Paul Wellstone, a friend and political mentor to Franken, was killed in a plane crash shortly before the 2002 election. When Franken saw the organized right pounce on Wellstone’s passing (not to mention a memorial held in his honor, which Ann Coulters of the world insisted was an implicitly partisan affair) to help push the Republican party towards a small majority in congress, what began as protest in defense of his deceased friend evolved into a kind of revenge mission after the failure of the left to make a dent in Republican control in 2004.

It’s not an entirely glowing portrait. Seen years after the period that the film covers, the most telling portion seems to be the coverage of Election Day 2004, when Franken, full of bravado regarding what he thought was a surefire Kerry win, fretted over how he’d tell his final jokes about George W. Bush without gloating. The filmmakers cut from a writers meeting, in which Franken looks incredibly foolish in hindsight, to the comedian literally stumbling over his burden when his backpack gets caught in a chair. In the very next scene, Franken gets the devastating news that the election has been called in favor of Bush. A long shot of Franken absorbing this blow serves as a mirror of the many Americans who put their best efforts behind preventing a second Bush term, and were left feeling impotent in the face of the Rovian machine.

In the post-film Q & A, a member of the audience expressed surprise over the restraint Franken has shown in his public handling of Norm Coleman’s never-ending appeals of the 2008 vote. The documentarians concurred. “I think we’re all surprised,” said Doob, calling Franken’s public persona during the recounts and court battles “kinda tame. I think they’re probably trying to let it get settled in the court, but it is a little nutty right now.”

Another member of the audience asked the filmmakers how they imagined Franken as a senator, and it seems like a valid question: as depicted in this film, a big part of his personality seems to be based on obstinately refusing to listen to criticism or even suggestion, whether it comes from obvious detractors or even people on his side. In the film, Franken describes his modus operandi as “jujitsu — they say something ridiculous, and I subject them to scorn and ridicule.” How’s THAT gonna play out across the aisle? Hegedus and Doob seem pretty convinced that, should Mr. Franken go to Washington, his senatorial style will surprise.

“I don’t think he’s going to be a trailblazing radical,” said Nick Doob, noting that Franken initially supported the invasion of Iraq before turning against the war as executed. “He’s pretty conservative in a lot of ways.”

Which is not to say that once sworn in, Franken will leave his star persona behind entirely. Chris Hegedus sees the skills the comedian learnt and practiced as a media star as coming into direct application as a public official. “He has that joke, ‘Celebrity trumps ideology.’ From his years at Saturday Night Live, he knew polititans from both sides of the aisle and could really talk to any of them.”