Southampton Arts Center

Sat, 12/7, 4:00pm, 90 min
DIRECTORS Chris Hegedus, D.A. Pennebaker

PRODUCERS: R.J. Cutler  Wendy Ettinger  Frazer Pennebaker
EDITORS: Chris Hegedus,  Erez Laufer, D.A. Pennebaker
CINEMATOGRAPHERS: Nick Doob, D.A. Pennebaker

In 1992 Pennebaker and Hegedus requested permission from the Bill Clinton campaign to film the campaign’s progress as they raced towards the hoped for presidency prize. They got the nod to film from Communications Director George Stephanopoulos and lead strategist James Carville, with limited access to Bill Clinton. Pennebaker told The New York Times in 2003 that Clinton didn’t even know they were there. “If Clinton had known I think we would have been asked to get the hell out. There was no press allowed in the War Room. You can’t sell access. If they want you to be there, you can do anything.” Actually the filmmaking duo weren’t even sure they had a good subject. “It was just two of us with dinky cameras. George Stephanopoulos O.K.’d us being there, but we weren’t sure we wanted to do the movie until we ran into James Carville. He was like someone’s drunken uncle. He said, ‘George Bush is an old calendar,’ and we knew we had something.” The film covers the New Hampshire Democratic primary, where Clinton came in second, and the campaign run out of Clinton headquarters in Little Rock, Arkansas.
War Room spans a period of four months, but Pennebaker and Hegedus only shot about 35 hours of film during that time; proving yet again that quality far outweighs quantity.