Word: stantons
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...center of the story. He asks them to slaughter their first principles, hurls plagues of tabloid headlines their way, gives their lives meaning and hope with his captious majesty. Except, of course, that Jack isn't God. In luring his team toward corruption, twisting their idealism into realpolitik, Stanton is Satan...
...novelist's expectations may be modest, but while writing he can afford to do what a reader does: cast the movie version. Some of Klein's daydreaming proved prescient. "In my mind Libby Holden was Kathy Bates. I was also thinking of Emma Thompson as Susan Stanton--because Emma Thompson can do anything!" On his directors' list were Jonathan Demme (Philadelphia), Michael Apted (Gorillas in the Mist) and, at the top, Mike Nichols...
...little. Nichols and May's film of Primary Colors faithfully distills the 366-page book, excising a few colorful critters (like the caricatures of Mario Cuomo and Jesse Jackson) but bringing the rest to seductive life onscreen. The major elision is the one-night stand Henry has with Susan Stanton...
Casting was a series of sensitive political negotiations. Nichols considered Mel Gibson and Liam Neeson for Stanton, but his first choice was a fellow Clinton sympathizer, Tom Hanks. "He was eager," the director recalls. "Then he said the more he looked at certain things in the script, the less he could see himself doing the film. It was the philandering, I think. He's an at-home, family guy." (Carly Simon, another friend of Bill's, also withdrew as provider of the film's music.) Thornton, an Arkansas homeboy, took the Jemmons role only after receiving Clinton's dispensation...
Nichols and his wife, ABC News star Diane Sawyer, are friendly with the Clintons; Nichols and May have been hosts of benefits for the President. But the director insists he neither spoke with Clinton about the film nor softened the case against Stanton. "We're all supposed to be friends of the President, which is nuts to begin with," Nichols says, bristling. "The movie is about a man with a talent for the job and the things that get him into trouble. That's the story. Softening it or hardening it--forgive the expression--doesn't come into...