Word: bios
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With an intellect unencumbered by a comparable ego, Stephanopoulos was able to bridge the chasm separating the campaign's often mismatched personalities. He made sure that Hollywood's laid-back producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, who made the convention bio-film, was on speaking terms with chain-smoking, laser-intense Grunwald; he doled out face time on television among aspiring talking heads; not least, he soothed the brilliant, tightly coiled gonzo strategist James Carville by watching infomercials and Julia Child with him when Carville was too nervous to work...
...BOTTOM LINE: Don't expect all the dirt, but this musical bio is surprisingly honest and lavishly entertaining...
...film takes Sinatra from his childhood days in New Jersey through his back-from-retirement concert at Madison Square Garden in 1974. Most of the familiar movie-bio cliches are here -- young Frank argues with skeptical parents over his show-biz dreams ("I can do this! I can be someone!") -- but so is a lot of flavorful, crisply told detail. The young singer goes on the road as part of a quartet put together by Major Bowes; picks up work in a club where he has to wheel his own piano accompanist around the room; is discovered by bandleader Harry...
...film and speeches. It was necessary, says Carville, because focus- group research had found that many voters had no idea that Clinton had come from a poor family in Hope, Arkansas, and had had an alcoholic stepfather; they thought that a rich father had got him into politics. The bio might have seemed corny to some observers, but it and the thunderous reception Clinton and his family received when they paid a dramatic visit to the convention floor on Wednesday night put the capstone on a remarkable transformation. The candidate who a few weeks earlier had been drawing only about...
...then the awards. Most of them are big-time honors. One wonders, though, why the bio includes the "Golden Plate Award." And why exactly does it mention the celebrity shootout at the Boston Garden--"he hit 13 free throws in 90 seconds? Nice shooting, but who cares? The end of the bio is a copy of a special "Dersh" card from Trivial Pursuit...