The War Room
US, 1993, 35mm, color, 96 min.
Before their days of political punditry, James Carville and George Stephanopoulos seemed to come out of nowhere to orchestrate one of the biggest upsets in election history. In D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus’ 1993 film The War Room, Carville and Stephanopoulos are shown running Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign from the New Hampshire primaries, through the Democratic National Convention, and on to his election night victory. Veteran filmmaker Pennebaker excels at both showing how campaigns are won, and divulging the true natures of the people that win them.
Leacock and Parmentel examine the grueling day-to-day activities of John Grenier, the twenty-eight-year-old executive director of the Republican National Committee, credited with engineering the Goldwater takeover of the 1964 Republican Presidential Convention in San Francisco.