“Lee Atwater destroyed the business of politics by going negative,” said Terry MacAuliffe yesterday, introducing an Impact Film Festival screening of Stefan Forbes’ Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story. “Democrats don’t fight hard enough. They play tougher on the other side. The bottom line is that these guys will do anything to win.”
Forbes’ film, which caused such a ruckus at its premiere in June at the Los Angeles Film Festival, essentially functions as an ideological ink blot––people see what they want in it. It’s possible (and, based on the director’s comments after the film, probably preferred) to see Boogie Man as a vicious indictment of the political operative who mentored Karl Rove and George W. Bush whilst helping the latter’s father overcome the Iran Contra scandal to win the presidency, destroying Michael Dukakis’ political career in the process. But Forbes, to his credit, also clearly explicates Atwater’s appeal. You might need to put blinders on a bit, but it would be possible to walk away from this film cheering McCain to turn Obama into the new Dukakis
In fact, after the screening, Forbes acknowledged that there are lessons the left could learn from the enemy. “When a fight gets dirty, do you have to join? If you just play defense, you end up looking guilty. You have to turn the attacks into a referendum on the other party.”
On Monday, I’m flying to Denver to spend a couple of days hanging around the Democratic National Convention before heading up to Telluride on Thursday. If I was reading that sentence unawares, two questions would inevitably come to mind. First: “Why, Karina, are you going to a political event when you have a movie blog to write?”
Answer: there actually are two major film events happening over the three days that I’ll be in town. The first, the Denver Film Society production Cinemocracy (previously mentioned here), will screen ten finalists in a short film competition that’s been winnowing down submissions online for months. You can watch the films and vote for your favorites here.
The second event is the Impact Film Festival. Founded this year by Jody Arlington, Jamie Shor and Kimball Stroud, IFF will screen “socially-themed documentary and dramatic films” every day at both the DNC and RNC. Films on the program include Battle in Seattle, I.O.U.S.A., and Flow. Check out the Bside page for info on the full lineup.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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On Monday, I’m flying to Denver to spend a couple of days hanging around the Democratic National Convention before heading up to Telluride on Thursday. If I was reading that sentence unawares, two questions would inevitably come to mind. First: “Why, Karina, are you going to a political event when you have a movie blog to write?”
