“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.”
Oh good, fake controversy! Everyone’s pointing to Jeffrey Ressner’s Politico piece on Boogie Man, the Lee Atwater doc screening here at LAFF. “Atwater doc makes conservatives groan,” cries the headline. But, as AJ Schnack points out, those groaning conservatives were actually Ressner’s invited guests, conservative plants who would likely be hostile towards the subject matter regardless of its actual treatment.
On to controversy-baiting classics: “The 7-minute film has a hero called Eveready Harton (sometimes spelled “Hardon”), a fellow with a very large penis who, throughout the course of the film, lets his manhood lead him into contact (mostly sexual) with a naked woman, an unfortunate man, a farmer, a donkey, a cactus and ultimately a cow.” A brief history of dirty animation from Nick Dawson at Film in Focus; behold the adventures of Mr. Harton above.
Finally, WTF? Sequel Controversy: Corey Feldman strenuously attempted to defend the existence of a sequel to The Lost Boyslast night at LAFF, but even the sequel’s director seemed unconvinced: “I still think no matter what, it’s not like Citizen Fucking Lost Boys Kane.” More from Stu at Defamer.
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.
filmcouch-114
