This film could not be more timely or relevant in light of the recent mid-term elections. But it’s about a presidential hopeful and an incident that brought him down that most people don’t even remember.
Director Jason Reitman (Whiplash, Up in the Air, Thank You for Smoking, Juno) uses the rise and fall of Gary Hart to show how candidates, campaigns, and coverage of them, changed in 1987 to start the ball rolling for politics-meets-tabloid news. That’s what we’re seeing more and more today. The film is based on the book All the Truth is Out by journalist Matt Bai who also co-wrote the screenplay with Jay Carson and Reitman.
Hart was on his way to probably being nominated for the Presidency when he was photographed on a boat called “Monkey Business” with a young pharmaceutical sales and sometime actress, Donna Rice. She became tagged as the married man’s love interest. Is Donna Rice a bimbo party-girl, or an innocent sexual harassment victim of a powerful male? Reitman implies a little of each. Miami Herald reporters played by Kenneth Nance, Jr. and Bill Burr ambush him after seeing he and Rice together at Hart’s townhouse. Within one week, his political career was over.
In our interview with Reitman, he talked about working with Hugh Jackman, who plays Hart. The Australian actor knew nothing about the presidential candidate. But Reitman told us he never saw an actor dive into researching his subject as much as Jackman. The actor came on set with huge stacks of research. Reitman set up scenes of press conferences Jackman would handle without a script as Hart. He didn’t miss a beat. It is impressive. So is Jackman throwing an ax on the campaign trail in Colorado. He hit the target smack in the middle. Reitman says he did in one take!
This is the 9th film Reitman has worked with J.K. Simmons who is hard-hitting as the campaign manager. He and the candidate go head-to-head more than once. Two young actors who were in one of those scenes described it as like watching a championship title fight.
Reitman admitted to having a massive script. He added to it by passing around news articles from that time and actors cast as campaign workers would talk about that content as cameras captured their sound to set the frenetic pace and organized chaos of the campaign headquarters. Your ear follows the action rather than the visuals and that’s what Reitman was going for.
If you listen closely to the snippets of conversation and some of Hart’s own assertions, there are many historical inaccuracies. For instance, Hart talks about the fall of the Soviet Union four years before it happens and campaign workers banter about the origin of the “teddy bear” and misname facts about Teddy Roosevelt. Maybe this points to how information gets twisted inside the whirlpool of a fast moving political campaign.
The film stops twice, in scenes with Donna Rice and with Hart’s wife (Vera Farmiga). Lee walks into the hotel room to have her heart-to-heart with her husband about his infidelities. She knew but only asked that he not embarrass her. Donna Rice (Sara Paxton) is framed as somewhat of an innocent victim. The real people were all contacted by Reitman in making this film. Jackman actually stayed with Hart and his wife at their home for 3 days to get to know him.
Farmiga is genuine as Hart’s wife, Lee, who is trying to maintain some semblance of dignity through it all. Women’s roles in political campaigns were very different than they are now, with even less power to speak up. Reitman cast Ann Devroy as Irene Kelly. She plays a campaign worker who is an astute observer who knows the score. But she is always in the background and has little power to influence the handling of Hart, nor his scandal.
Was Hart set up? There’s no definitive answer here. But you get to see how reporters work the story with Washington Post’s Ben Bradlee (a strangely cast Alfred Molina) to see if their reporters (Mamoudie Athie as A.J. Parker who represents a combination of different reporters) can get the proof they need to scoop their competitors with the story. This is when journalism changed. It was no longer a matter of the three main networks, newspapers and wire services getting the story. Now there was CNN, and other cable outlets, plus paparazzi going bonkers to get compromising or sometimes misleading pictures to sell an inflammatory story, true or not. Now with social media, it’s even more difficult to get to the truth.
There used to be a friendly relationship and a pact between high profile political figures and the press. There are many who had affairs or just acted silly, but there was an unspoken agreement to keep private lives private. There are no sex scenes in this film, so you don’t know what actually happened on the boat or in Hart’s townhouse. After Gary Hart, political figures and celebrities became fair game. But being found out, with pictures or even words, doesn’t always stick now, depending on the person and the day.
This is not a picture of Gary Hart as a man as much as it is a look at a short period that changed his life, as well as all of ours. But it’s also important to note that the constant drone of the never ending news cycle began with this story. As riveting and compelling as it was at the time, this story is virtually unknown to the majority of today’s audience. But shows shows how that week in 1987 changed Hart’s life and news coverage forever. Jackman takes this role very seriously and it shows. If he was running today, we’d vote for his performance in a “Hart beat.”
Sony/ Columbia Pictures 1 hour 53 minutes R
