Tag: Robert Redford

Jason Reitman knew exactly what was wrong with Matt Bai and Jay Carson's script the moment he held it in his hands. Starring Hugh Jackman as Hart, the movie (which screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and will open in theaters November 21) is a fast-moving, fast-talking look inside Hart's campaign for president, which starts with him being the favorite to the White House and three weeks later comes to a screeching halt when, in April of 1987, The Miami Herald runs a story from an anonymous source that Hart is having an affair. The movie's look at how the reporters got the story, and how Hart dealt with the backlash, is a fascinating moment in politics as it was new for everyone. "It's like writing non-fiction but much harder in the sense that you're importing a lot of information without wanting anyone to feel you're talking at them," Bai said. Often Reitman, Bai, and Carson would sit in a room and just talk about campaign life. At some point Reitman would love something that came up in the conversation and write a line of dialogue on a white board. "In the movie, there's a conversation about where to get beer before the stores close, but there's another about who is going to Miami, and they both are going on at the same time," Reitman said. "Everyone talks over each other, we tried to make it feel like that. But what does Gary Hart think about his past coming back to the fore 31 years later? And Lee was like, 'Yes, that's exactly how you talk.'

Some say our country has never been more divided politically than it is now. My parents practically disowned me when they found out I went to the convention riots in Chicago in 1968. When my father got a thank-you note from the CPUSA for the work he'd done circulating a petition to put them on the ballot in 1972, that was the last straw. My father and I have the same name. None of us remember the Civil War. You want to talk about divided? It was about Mary Surratt, a boarding-house owner with Confederate sympathies who was hanged for being a part of the conspiracy that resulted in President Abraham Lincoln's assassination even though she almost certainly had nothing to do with it. We don't talk about politics, religion or money. I've never understood why the most vocal anticommunists like to talk about politics so much. After you vote, love your bothers and sisters no matter how they voted.