George W. Bush, Movie Star
LABASH, MATT
George W. Bush, Movie Star A private screening of Alexandra Pelosi's forthcoming documentary BY MATT LABASH New York It's Valentine's Day, and though I'm a married man, I'm standing on the...
...So I didn't psychoanalyze him," Pelosi says...
...She's purple, for one...
...Hopelessly lowbrow, Bush is blessed with matchless comic timing...
...The pack is very serious," says Pelosi...
...They often end up hating not only him for it, but themselves as well...
...You're sick in the head...
...exclaimed her sister...
...Okay...
...I'm about 5'11...
...At a sub-freezing airport rally in Iowa, the Houston Chronicle's R.G...
...The fact that Bush regularly ate peanut butter sandwiches revealed that "he preferred the old to the new, the tried to the untested...
...And you felt like you had to hold his hand in order to amplify the discussion...
...A piece, baby," she says...
...He eats cheese doodles out of plastic airline cups...
...According to Paul Taylor's book See How They Run, at one press conference, after a reporter asked a hostile question by saying his news desk wanted to know, D'Alesandro pressed his ear to his own desk, pretended a secret was being imparted, then announced, "My desk wants me to tell your desk to go f— itself...
...It's all they had," she says, genuinely peeved...
...But it's already caused quite a stir...
...Unhappy that I, the hunter, have become the hunted, I ask her if she used that line on George Bush...
...What do they want...
...He proudly models his western wear...
...In press notices, Pelosi's film has inevitably been twinned with Bruni's book...
...She is so pleased with this line ("I love it, it's really working for me") that she has made it one of her six permanent talking points, which she allows me to read off a printout that sits next to the Mac computer where she and her editor Aaron Lubarsky cut her film...
...My brother's 6'3...
...By the time I have cleared all the requisite hurdles and we have talked for several hours, Pelosi is ready to let the movie speak for itself...
...When her advisers inform her that I once performed a knee-cap job on Rep...
...I'm now a statesman...
...Bush, ever the gossipy girl, one day turns the camera on Pelosi after noticing her taking a walk with Gegax...
...It's what you journalists do," she says, before remembering that she is one...
...While Pelosi eschews serious policy debates ("there's not one moment of political substance in this movie"), she's not only the daughter of the House minority whip, but the granddaughter of a three-term mayor of Baltimore, Thomas D'Alesandro Jr...
...What better way to attract attention and a deep-pockets distributor (which Pelosi still lacks) than spraying the leg of what many deem an unbearably respectable post-9/11 George Bush...
...If publicists were advising Pelosi on how to optimize buzz, they would probably encourage her to cause more pain...
...She didn't fit the typical profile of a Washington press corps member," he says...
...Because I know how much pain we cause," she says...
...It rankles Pelosi that journalists are so grossly reductive...
...For Pelosi is a force of nature, a large presence, a disco inferno...
...Promising that her film is not a "Bush blooper reel" (another of her talking points), Pelosi is adamant about not discussing what she left on the cutting-room floor...
...There's nothing to be shy about...
...He lobbies Pelosi for her vote, telling her, "If I lose, you're out of work, you're off the plane, baby...
...But these people aren't your friends...
...But in an act of kindness, Bush did...
...I'm on a journalistic suck-up safari, and my quarry has warned me that I'd better not come empty-handed on such a hallowed day...
...While Pelosi has shown portions of her film to several reporter friends, I aim to be the first to preview the final version in its entirety...
...White House sources, understandably concerned that the president will look less than presidential, have begun sniping at Pelosi...
...She's the sort of person who's turned inside out—all the emotions are right there...
...The truth is, in the end, I had a very nice relationship with [Bush], and that was the beauty of it...
...Whip it out," she commands...
...Bush adviser Mark McKinnon, the only member of Team Bush who has seen the film, and who loves it, says Pelosi was better than nearly anybody at drawing Bush out...
...He cocks his head, joylessly holding his Buckler near-beer, and with a resigned sigh, unaware of what the next year will bring, he says, "Let's see, I started off as a cowboy...
...You don't like me...
...From his airplane seat, Richard Wolffe once again nicely sums up the whole experience: "The great thing about this story is that we can pretend that it's somehow serious...
...Bush asks, incredulous, his head popping into the frame like a groundhog emerging from his hole, late to the party...
...When she asks why she shouldn't vote for someone who will protect the little guy, he earnestly declares, "I am the little guy...
...Stop filming me, you're like a head cold," Bush barks at one point in the film...
...No journalism is supposed to be committed during this trial period, but as her door opens, camera whirring, I reflexively reach for my microrecorder in a Mexican standoff...
...He's a simple guy...
...Ratcliffe, who possesses a walrus mustache and a hangdog disposition, explains, "The only reason we're out here is in case Bush comes out, slips on the ice, and falls down...
...But at the same time, most of our time is spent doing really stupid things, in stupid places with stupid people...
...After following George W Bush on the campaign trail for a year and a half, she quit her NBC job, formed her own company (Purple Monkey Productions), and culled hundreds of hours of candid trail footage, shot on her autofocus Sony camcorder, much of it containing the future president of the United States monkeying around with reporters...
...But it's a fight she has no stomach for...
...While everyone knows of Bush's penchant for dispensing nicknames like Pez candies, we have seen the real George W. only through a glass darkly—thanks to circumstantial necessity and his control-freak handlers...
...I'm not a liar...
...I'm not a journalist," Rove calmly replies...
...You call this objective journalism...
...Is this thing on...
...Bill Kristol, are you listening...
...For this reason, she has taken special care not to embarrass anyone in what many expect to be a mockumentary...
...I almost brought a fruit basket, but it seemed so Connie Chung...
...I tire of all this journalism about journalism—it's starting to feel as though we're play-acting a Janet Malcolm essay...
...It's all here: the go-to-hell gastronomic excesses (one female reporter eats seven donuts in a sitting), the folksy wisdom of the American people (a voter moons Bush's whistlestop train tour with gluteal graffiti reading "Raise Minimum Wage"), the random acts of senseless celebrity (in one post-debate spin room, Erin Brockovich shows up for no apparent reason, while the Financial Times's Richard Wolffe sums up the scene as "a lot of really well paid people trying to convince a lot of other really well paid people that we know what's going on in ordinary people's minds...
...he presses...
...Even deciding where to eat sends her into existential crisis...
...Relying on Pelosi friends who've seen it, Time magazine described scenes of Bush reverting to Deke-house form on the press plane: predicting that Pelosi's crush on another reporter would "result in a relationship that goes beyond hand-holding," bumping his way down the aisle while wearing a sleep mask, hoisting his non-alcoholic beer and pushing his way into a boozy press throng while declaring, "These are my people...
...Of course, it is serious...
...We settle on her favorite neighborhood greasy spoon, Joe Jr.'s, since she fears if we go vegetarian I might portray her as one of "those crazy liberal chicks that can't find a man...
...Pelosi seems much truer to Bush's own spirit...
...It takes an animal to know an animal...
...But she presses him for a serious answer...
...And since she didn't have the luxury of going home, she says she was forced to purchase Kmart's "Hello Kitty" underwear...
...Why are you lying...
...Mooooo," groans the Dallas Morning News's Wayne Slater, as he is again herded like cattle...
...They can say what they want about me...
...Inside, Pelosi's apartment is a constant bustle of activity...
...But Bruni tends to assign Big Meaning to the smallest gesture or preference...
...Somebody leaked the results to outside media...
...That's the meanest thing I've ever had read to me," she says...
...Pelosi had conducted a super-secret margarita-fueled straw poll among reporters in the back of the plane about who they thought would win the election...
...Most predicted Al Gore...
...We see him reprising his male cheerleader days, pretzel-ing his body into letters to spell "Victory" after Super Tuesday...
...As a precondition for viewing her documentary, I've agreed, in a fit of postmodernism, to be filmed myself after a brief getting-to-know-you session, from which she will decide if I seem like the trustworthy type...
...It's a recurring theme all day...
...But among its finest moments—and the entire film is almost nothing but fine moments—is one that she simply narrates...
...I don't think it means you're not qualified to be leader of the free world because you don't watch Sex and the City...
...Her documentary is set to debut March 8 at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas...
...Alexandra may be on the verge of cinematic stardom...
...It's easy to see why the New York Times's Frank Bruni—himself just out with a Bush campaign book, Ambling Into History—describes Pelosi as "the unrivaled queen of the pack when it came to self-amusement and consequences-be-damned diversion...
...But I'm a person, not a pack...
...Embarrassed by the disclosure, and fearful that it would cost them access to Bush, most of the pack refused to come near Pelosi the next day...
...Have you noticed that...
...For a year, Bush lugs Pelosi and company around the country, from a candlepin bowling meet-and-greet to a snowmobile photo op in New Hampshire...
...It's none of my business what your private life is like," he winds up, "But let me ask you this question, was that just a social encounter with Newsweek man...
...Swiping my recorder, as she'll do freely throughout the afternoon whenever she wants to stress a point, she says, "Testing...
...Perhaps so...
...An old-school machine pol from Little Italy, he was every bit as colorful as Alexandra...
...At one photo op, Pelosi accosts Karl Rove with her shaky hand-held camera...
...I compliment her digs, telling her that her apartment looks like a May Day parade at Studio 54...
...As I knock on Pelosi's door, my integrity (such as it is) already compromised, she continues the hazing...
...In her year and a half as NBC's on-the-bus Bush shadow, she didn't make it back to her Manhattan apartment once...
...He jokes that his daughters went off to college, that the Rangers are in last place, that his hair is turning gray...
...Though she has so far rebuffed screening overtures by everyone from USA Today to the Tonight Show (first television dibs go to her old colleagues at Dateline and the Today Show), she mysteriously allows me to talk my way in, though not without making my life miserable first...
...Pelosi often favors purple garb.] She's irreverent...
...she asks...
...She rolls her eyes, then dictates what she assumes will be my lead, insinuating that she is a Greenwich Village pinko...
...She pops the tape in her VCR, then slinks off to her room, all of a sudden the shy artist...
...After numerous hours of set-up work on the phone in which the deal is nearly done, she turns difficult...
...Thus, Bush is a pop culture illiterate because he's unfamiliar with HBO's Sex and the City...
...Post that they were under the impression these sessions were off the record, a claim that taxes credulity since Bush is repeatedly filmed referring to her "documentary...
...But at least I know who I am, and I know who my friends are...
...Before she can gather her wits, he moves in for the kill: "Is it true you believe a person of your stature can go one solid week without bathing...
...But the main story is the playful jabbing between Pelosi and Bush...
...A girl who had been indoctrinated in the Democratic party, who'd been raised to believe Democrats were always right, actually developed a good relationship with this Republican son of a president whose father's positions my mom would go on the House floor and attack...
...Someone grabs the camera and turns the tables on Pelosi, prompting her to distance herself from other journalists by saying "I don't like these guys...
...It may be her political lineage that explains her atypical respect for politicians...
...I ask her why she's so distrustful of journalists, considering she is one...
...She didn't, but easily could have...
...The Weekly Standard...
...All told, Journeys with George lets George be George, or as George as he can be, considering that he was withstanding the constant scrutiny of hypercritical observers whose best days at the office came when Bush announced that he wanted to eliminate trade "bariffs and terriers...
...They told both Time and the Washington Matt Labash is senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...I AM NOT the vast left-wing conspiracy...
...Cause we're vicious predators...
...He even went to the trouble of giving it a title—"Journeys With George"—which Pelosi ultimately used...
...My reportorial blind date is with former Dateline producer Alexandra Pelosi, the 31-year-old daughter of California Democratic congresswoman and minority whip Nancy Pelosi...
...It all seems a fairly clever ploy on her part: play a manic babe-in-the-woods (even though we're in the same profession), put the reporter on defense until you crush his will to play offense, ensure that he is so beholden to you for granting him access that he writes a nice story...
...We see him posing as a chirpy male steward, welcoming reporters on the plane, then angrily snapping at them when they ask for peanuts...
...Get out of it...
...Each provides as vivid a picture of the at-ease towel-snapping merry-prankster Bush as has been drawn...
...Patrick Kennedy, a personal friend of hers, she insists I call the story up on Nexis and read her all 3,500 words...
...A source of constant chiding was Pelosi's unrequited crush on Newsweek's Trent Gegax...
...We take the most extreme thing, and make it look like the norm...
...I ask, protectively...
...The rest of the calls are from her coterie of family and friends, many of whom are making sure their girl isn't getting worked over by me...
...While his descriptions of her read like harmless throwaway color (she'd pretend to be the campaign's cruise director, when not heading off to Kmart to buy "festive underwear"), Pelosi bristles at such characterizations, saying she was extremely dedicated to her work...
...She tells me that at least a dozen of her friends have nixed me, suspecting a writer from a conservative political magazine could be up to no good with the daughter of one of Congress's most liberal Democrats...
...In Pelosi's telling, he said, "When they see me talking to you, they're gonna act like they're your friends again...
...In an unexpectedly poignant moment on the plane, Bush tries to swim around Pelosi's queries as to what's changed since their odyssey started...
...Through it all, Bush commands the stage in the back of the plane...
...I don't want you to have it yet," she says...
...I'll show you mine if you show me yours...
...She has delivered a tautly paced, visual Boys on the Bus...
...The phone rings incessantly, a groveling procession of journalists...
...But maybe he just liked peanut butter sandwiches...
...But Pelosi's full airing of his charm offensives is superior to previous accounts in the way eating chocolate is superior to reading about someone else eating it...
...You wanna see the movie that no one in the movie has even seen," she scolds, "And now you have the balls to ask for outtakes...
...She makes me repeatedly assure her that I'm not out to do a hit piece...
...George W. Bush, Movie Star A private screening of Alexandra Pelosi's forthcoming documentary BY MATT LABASH New York It's Valentine's Day, and though I'm a married man, I'm standing on the sixth-floor landing of a Greenwich Village apartment building with a box of Russell Stover candy that's intended for a woman I've never met...
...Complementing her bemused voiceovers is a supporting cast of weary newspaper hacks who perfectly distill the absurdity of the never-ending campaign...
...It's not...
...In her bathroom hangs a giant, mirrored disco ball, hardly an oddity considering the rest of her apartment décor: the Reform School Girls movie postcard on her refrigerator, the purple velvet couch ("It's aubergine," she corrects), the campaign-rally photo of her in a University of Texas cheerleader outfit and rubber Bush mask, the Soviet-era propaganda artwork that lines the walls...
...Pelosi helpfully suggests that a good talking point for me regarding her movie would be to say that "it's better than Apocalypse Now...
...Pelosi replies that she was merely discussing Bush's tax plan with a fellow member of the press corps...
...After you bend me over in your article, I've got to get a publicist...
...Hold on," says the raspy voice from behind the door, "I've got to turn my camera on...
...He hates to be psychoanalyzed...
Vol. 7 • March 2002 • No. 24
