It's a little surrealistic right now," said a dazed James Moll, a 41-year-old filmmaker who won an Academy Award for his Holocaust documentary, The Last Days. Mr. Moll is Steven Spielberg's in-house documentarian at DreamWorks SKG and now, crucially—"surreally!"—has become Senator John Kerry's official Presidential big-screen image-maker. On Tuesday, July 27, Mr. Moll had just wrapped the final editing session on the most important short film of the political year, an extract of Senator Kerry's life, meant to introduce him to the Democratic National Convention, and to as much of America as the television networks will allow, on the evening of July 29. Mr. Moll has been hunkered down for weeks inside the fortified compound of Universal Studios, in Universal City, Calif., where Mr. Spielberg got his start and from which the late Lew Wasserman once offered advice and support to many Democratic candidates, working right up until and during the Democratic National Convention. He had the massive and sudden task of sifting through 30 years of video footage, stills and film outtakes and constructing a thematic portrait that would solve the problem that various national polls say needs to be solved quickly: to introduce and define John Kerry, a fundamentally undefined persona, for the campaign, for the nation and for history.
| Drudge sez it will include the 8mm footage John Kerry filmed of himself in Vietnam, the one where he "recreated" his medal winning performance during a ambush. Wonder if it'll show him capping the wounded VC? Want to bet it'll gloss over the Winter Soldier testimony? |
That is why, throughout Hollywood, the purpose of the film has been thumbnailed after one of Mr. Spielberg's most notable projects: "Saving Private Kerry."| Rush has a better name; "Saving Kerry's Privates" |
The Republicans have been so prospectively upset by Mr. Moll's film, and by the Spielbergian reputation, that they have anticipated with an answer for a film not yet released 11-minute video propaganda montage meant to define Mr. Kerry as what they have called a "flip-flopper" showing Mr. Kerry's differing views on the war in Iraq.
| I think I'd use the VH1 "pop-up" video model, have him say one thing and a pop-up window shows the other position. |
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