HBO's Game Change

[DarKush]

^
It's out on DVD now. I saw it in Best Buy (I think) earlier this week.

[Greg Cox]

Thanks! I'm waiting for it to show up in RedBox or at our local library.

[Gaith]

I don't know if HBO TV movies ever go to redbox, hombre... I don't see it on their site...

[DarKush]

Gaith wrote:

---

I don't know if HBO TV movies ever go to redbox, hombre... I don't see it on their site...

I don't do Red Box, so I wouldn't know, but it's a good bet that Game Change will probably show up at a library.

[DarKush]

Greg Cox wrote:

---

Thanks! I'm waiting for it to show up in RedBox or at our local library.

You're welcome.

[Greg Cox]

Gaith wrote:

---

I don't know if HBO TV movies ever go to redbox, hombre... I don't see it on their site...

Damn. Well, I'm already second on the waiting list at the library . . . .

[FPAlpha]

Gaith wrote:

---

It is strange that a retired Navy captain was so reluctant to assert his authority. At first he just didn't want her screwing up so badly, but by the home stretch, as the movie shows, he was genuinely afraid of ticking her off.

By the time she was announced and gained popularity through her looks and folksy ways it was too late to reign her in. McCain was going against the political powerhouse that Obama was back then.. a charming, intelligent (and admit it or not.. african american because it was a huge factor with minorities and the african american communities) man and McCain couldn't afford the slightest public hitch in his campaign because he was already on the ropes as old whitey.

As time progressed and Palin become more erratic and self-assertive it was already way too late. She was a very public figure and replacing a VP candidate was unheard of and would have immediately sealed the campaign for McCain.

So it was smile through clenched teeth and hope for the best and the movie portrayed that perfectly.

[Gaith]

^ True. I guess it was really Wallace's and Schmidt's fault for not demanding authority from McCain to correct her performance immediately after the Couric interview. If she melted down as badly as shown in the movie, and I fully believe she did, she should have been canned, even though, as you say, it would have been total electoral surrender. But then, Schmidt was the one who failed by clearing her in the first place. And so was McCain.

But then, there was really nothing they could ever have done to beat Barack without some disastrous act of God or completely unexpected discovery of impropriety on his part. One thing that really struck me about the movie was how clearly the campaign perceived the scale of the odds against them vice the apparent shock and bewilderment that the Romney gang faced on their election night. Wrath of the Game Change is gonna be great also!

[Trekker4747]

I got my DVD of this a couple days ago, will likely give it a watch tomorrow.

[Greg Cox]

Yay! Just picked up a copy at the library.

I know what I'm watching tonight.

[Gaith]

In an article at the AV Club, Noel Murray entirely fails to grasp the movie's subtext:

Game Change appears to go out of its way to make McCain look like a decent (if opportunistic) guy, and make McCain’s campaign strategist Steve Schmidt look like a noble idealist...

But while Game Change makes the story of the ’08 election entertaining, it’s telling that at no point in the film do the “good” Republicans—the ones openly exasperated by Palin, in other words—express strong political convictions. This doesn’t appear to be an intentional commentary by the filmmakers, either. In real life, Schmidt and many of the other advisors to the McCain campaign are rock-ribbed Republicans, but in Game Change, none of them express any vision for the country or for its government—not even “tighten our belts” platitudes. It’s as though no one involved with making the movie could imagine what any of these people actually believe, or why. So in the process of “humanizing” them, they end up cutting off a huge part of what defines them.

That’s a major flaw.

Noel, Noel, Noel... that's the movie's whole point! Instead of picking the best available potential-subsitute president VP nominee, the "noble idealist" Schmidt embraced Palin while knowing almost nothing about her based almost entirely on her gender, looks and charisma. What "defines" these Republican operatives (and even, to a large extent, McCain himself) isn't their beliefs at all, but rather only their desire to win. If anything, the scene in which they nervously acknowledge, through the cover of jokes, Cheney's creepiness, shows how tenuous their ties to actual right-wing ideology really are.

Duh!

[DevilEyes]

Yeah, that review really missed the point. I don't think that the movie tried to say anything about the values of different political beliefs and ideologies. The whole point was that elections and campaigns are often more about image, charisma, presentation, looks, and other superficial qualities including appropriate gender/ethnicity/family situation, in other words, it's just like any other marketing/advertising campaign where you try to sell a product. Palin was an extreme example of where that can take you (but certainly not the only one).

[Trekker4747]

Finally got around to watching it. Good, interesting, movie with great performances by everyone on the cast. Julianne Moore and Woody Harrelson did especially great jobs. I also think the movie really showed (many) of the problems in that 2008 election and the selection of Palin.