Monday, August 25, 2008
Film raps Obama as 'Hype'
The conservative group Citizens United will greet Democrats arriving for their convention this week in Denver with a new documentary skewering the party's presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama.
"Hype: The Obama Effect," the group's latest film polemic, charges the senator is neither the unifier he claims to be, nor the political moderate who can rally the masses.
But what impact, if any, can a partisan feature have, especially at a time when any documentary not directed by Michael Moore struggles to gain a wide audience?
This wasn't the documentary David Bossie, president of Citizens United, expected to debut before the convention. His team spent 18 months creating "Hillary - The Movie" for the occasion.
"Her campaign had a limited shelf-life," Mr. Bossie said with a chuckle.
"Hype," which debuts Sunday, will also be screened during the Republican convention in Minneapolis next week. After that, it will play in theaters during September and October, according to Mr. Bossie.
The film questions the senator's stance on key issues like abortion and challenges his ability to reach across the aisle in Congress. "Hype" also ridicules the mainstream media for what it claims is preferential treatment given to the first black presidential nominee.
"We try to dispel the myth that is Barack Obama," he said.
Mr. Bossie, a self-described "accidental filmmaker" who started producing documentaries in the wake of Mr. Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," said his company has gotten smarter and leaner over its short history. Its previous films include "ACLU: At War with America" and "Broken Promises: The U.N. at 60."
He said Citizens United Productions can now stretch the budgets of its films, which hover around $500,000, further than before to produce more polished documentaries. And while the company often distributes its own films on DVD, its illegal-immigration feature, "Border War," was picked up by Genius Products, a video company owned by movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.
Still, the group's films have a far lower profile than mainstream documentaries like the current hit "Man on Wire," about a tightrope walker.
A spokesman for Sen. Obama's campaign said he wasn't aware of the film and preferred not to comment about the documentary.
Mr. Bossie is realistic about the impact a film like "Hype" will have on its audience.
"People who are Obama supporters aren't going to be transformed. I don't kid myself," he said. "But your average American, who doesn't know who Obama is, might."
"I believe all of our films have an ability to have impact on the public policy process and the people's level of education before they make an important decision," he said, adding that the trailer for "Hype" got more than a quarter of a million hits on Youtube.com in the first few days after its debut.
Darrell West, vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said political documentaries have "the potential for impact if they reach a sufficient audience."
But "99 percent of documentaries never reach that threshold," Mr. West said.
The timing of the release of "Hype" will certainly help the film, he said, since voters are clamoring for information about the nominees. But he said swing voters are hard to reach through polemical documentaries with a pronounced point of view.
Matthew Nisbet, an assistant professor at American University's School of Communication, said a political documentary has the potential to amplify the news of the day.
"People might not actually directly see the film, but the movie itself becomes part of the media discourse," Mr. Nisbet said. That could happen if something on the campaign trail mirrors or reinforces an argument made in the film.
A film like "Hype" also could serve as a mobilizing force for the conservative base. Mr. Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" proved to be an "intensifier" for supporters of Sen. John Kerry in 2004, he said.
Political documentaries often take complex issues and boil them down to easily digested narratives that appeal to the base.
"Preaching to the choir isn't necessarily a bad thing," Mr. Nisbet said.