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Documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker (
Don't Look Back) and Chris Hegedus shot behind-the-scenes at command central for Bill Clinton's 1992 election campaign and came up with this film. You won't find the kind of daily damage-control and skirt-chasing indirectly alleged in
Primary Colors, but the filmmakers do give us a strong sense of the uphill battle of a presidential campaign. The center of the film is really James Carville, who steered the machine for Clinton's '92 run and who comes across in this film as a deeply passionate, complex, and somehow timeless man who could have fit into any chapter of American history.
--Tom Keogh
From The New Yorker
The somewhat deranged charm of James Carville, the chief strategist of Bill Clinton's Presidential campaign, dominates D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus's exhilarating documentary. Although the film may not supply many new insights into the process of choosing a President, it gives us plenty of fresh data about the nature of political commitment and it does justice, too, to the sheer reckless pleasure of electoral gamesmanship. And Carville is the largest, most resonant character in recent American movies, someone whose work is such a complete expression of his personality that you can't help laughing: the unity of this life and this art seems too good to be true. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006
The New Yorker