The Lost Al Gore Documentary
Sat Feb 11, 2006 at 12:59:03 PM PDT
Q: Everyone who's seen this movie thinks it humanizes Gore in precisely the way he needed to be humanized. He got tagged as being cold and robotic, and this film shows him to be warm, very genuine, passionate even. There are a lot of people who think that if this had been shown on primetime, it could have really made a difference in the election.
SJ: I wonder. I don't know, really. I like Harold and Maude.
I heard about director Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich) shooting some footage of Gore, but I never knew what happened to it until yesterday's trip to the bookstore.
More below.
SPIKE JONZE: This campaign manager named Carter Eskew called me up and asked me if I would be interested in coming up with some campaign commercials. I'd never really been involved in politics at all, but I was starting to think about politics more and was wanting to participate. But I had a hard time deciding what kind of commercial to make because I realized, like the rest of the country, I didn't really know who Al Gore was. So I suggested that what I could offer would be to simply go down and get my impressions of Al Gore. And I just went with my video camera by myself, and just tried to gather, in a small unobtrusive way, a sort of video portrait--a day in the life, just to get to know who he is.
One of my favorite literary journals is McSweeney's, founded by Dave Eggers. It often comes in odd packaging (the last issue came with random bits of Icelandic junk mail; another one came with a plastic comb), and the latest came bundled with the first issue of something called "Wholphin - DVD Magazine of Unseen Things." One of the tracks on Wholphin is a 13 minute documentary shot during the 2000 campaign, which followed the Gores from their Tennessee home to a beach vacation in North Carolina. Apparently, it was shown during the Democratic Convention, but unless you happened to be there or tuned into CSPAN at the right moment, you've never seen it.
And what Jonze's interviewer says about it humanizing Gore is dead on. From his mother's Tennessee farmhouse (as cluttered with photographs as any grandmother's, the Gore matriarch clad in a housedress available off any rack) where Gore shows us his childhood bedroom ("This was my bedroom in here, moved out when I was 16 and the bed still hasn't been made up as you can see") replete with only-in-America-ugly-wooden-panelling; to the wonky Gore we all know and love ("This camera you're using is smaller, cheaper and better than the ones a few years ago. We can do that with factories, and power plants, and industrial boilers, and cars and trucks. They can be more efficient, more comfortable, more affordable and not generate pollution. And once we do it in this country, it's gonna happen around the world."); to a Gore family discussion about Al's irritating video watching habits ("You know my dad is a fanatic with group movie watching? No one can leave the room at all...If you leave the room, he pauses it...Pause, rewind, credits again..."), we're treated to an Al Gore that no amount of earth tones could ever bring out.
And one thing that struck me is the sound of dishes being washed. Tell me that the Bushes would even come near the kitchen, let alone do their own dishes.
Also included is an excerpt from David O. Russell's (Three Kings) Soldier's Pay, a documentary about looting by US forces in Iraq--also a must-see.
Heck, the footage of Gore bodysurfing is worth the price alone. The rest of the film of the one-time (and future?) candidate is just gravy compared to that.
Wholphin No.1 is available bundled with McSweeney's No.18, or through wholphindvd.com or McSweeneys.net.
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