USA,
2002, 79 min
Shown in 2002
CREDITS
- dir
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Alexandra Pelosi
- prod
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Alexandra Pelosi
- cam
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Alexandra Pelosi
- editor
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Aaron Lubarsky
- source
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Purple Monkey Productions, 45 West 11th St. 6D, New York, NY 10011. EMAIL: pelosi@journeyswithgeorge.com.
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COMMENTS
Alexandra Pelosi and Aaron Lubarsky in person.
OTHER
If you want to get to know George W. Bush better, former NBC news producer Alexandra Pelosi’s revealing documentary of Dubya’s campaign will supply you with the “instimacy” you crave. Pelosi, daughter of congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, proclaims early on that this is a “home movie” of her year-and-a-half-long road trip with Bush in his race to become president. Pelosi’s “home” was a 757 filled with several hundred sleep-deprived, laptop-addicted journalists, along with Bush and his strategy team. What is truly fascinating about this film is the camaraderie that develops between the press corps and Bush. Like cops and criminals who share the same world, the journalists and their cowpoke candidate become inevitably more intimate—joking over Bush’s malapropisms, his taste in junk food and clothes and the bizarre reality of a candidate’s quest. The absurdity of jet plane whistle stops, mass-produced “homemade” campaign signs, and Bush’s handshake demonstrations are very funny—and very alarming. Pelosi’s movie succeeds in many ways: as a compelling and candid portrait of Bush and the passionate, cynical press corps tailing him, as a portrait of the limitations of the substance-sucking maelstrom of 21st-century network news and as a deceptively simple doc about a complex process—becoming intimate with people you are covering as a journalist.
—Nancy Fishman
FACTOID #1
The Festival has screened many debuts, both short- and feature-length, by some of cinema’s most influential artists including Juan Antonio Bardem, Jane Campion, Roman Polanski, Melvin Van Peebles and Lina Wertmüller.
