Word: stanton
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Lewinsky, the film comments on the scandal in ways that are downright eerie. Just as the public doesn't know what actually happened between Clinton and Monica--or Clinton and Gennifer Flowers, for that matter--so the movie refuses to spell out what did or didn't happen between Stanton and the women he is accused of bedding. Since unresolved questions and muddied waters are hallmarks of the Clinton presidency, glossing the indiscretions and lingering over the cover-up feels just right. The film moves from Stanton's bimbo containment and opposition-research operations (anticipating the defense lawyers and gumshoes...
Ultimately, the movie makes the case that Clinton and his mouthpieces are too squeamish to put on the record: strong leaders have strong libidos; the President may be flawed, but look what he has done. "You don't think Abraham Lincoln was a whore before he was a President?" Stanton asks his aide Henry Burton. "He had to tell his little stories and smile his s___-eating back-country grin. He did it all just so he'd get the opportunity to stand in front of the nation and appeal to the better angels of our nature." It's enough...
There's a poignant little scene halfway into Primary Colors. It's primary night in New Hampshire, and candidate Jack Stanton (John Travolta) stands alone on a rainy street, knocking on car windows and importuning drivers for last-minute votes like a squeegee guy cadging a dollar. To hell with the odds; this man won't give up. He will keep asking, charming, wheedling, until people finally collapse under his will to be loved. As a character says in the Joe Klein novel on which the film is based, "The heart is a lonely hustler." But hustling--hey, that...
...story, not Stanton's, so much so that the film could be called Regarding Henry (a 1991 Nichols movie that Klein particularly admires). Henry--a young black man so properly educated, so fully integrated into the political elite that another black pegs him as "the white man's Burton"--is the soul up for grabs in Primary Colors. He joins the Stanton campaign because he thinks, "This guy could be the real thing." Delicately played by British stage star Adrian Lester (As You Like It, Company), Henry is a can-do Candide, a fixer who keeps hoping Stanton...
Richard Jemmons, the self-proclaimed redneck spin surgeon (played by Sling Blade's Billy Bob Thornton), is transparently James Carville. Daisy Green (Maura Tierney in the film) shares resumes with campaign adviser Mandy Grunwald. Libby Holden (Kathy Bates), the manic "dust buster" who tries to cover up Stanton's peccadillos before they make the tabs' front pages, is similar to Betsey Wright, Governor Clinton's chief of staff and trigger-happy troubleshooter. Lawrence Harris (Kevin Cooney), the New England Senator who runs against Stanton until being felled by a heart attack, could be the physically frail Paul Tsongas. Cashmere McLeod...