June
3 - In early 2001, journalists Joe Conason and Gene Lyons published a
nearly 450-page book outlining what they called a well-funded and
well-organized effort by the enemies of former president Bill Clinton
to damage the reputations and careers of Clinton and his wife. "The
Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and
Hillary Clinton" became a New York Times best seller. After
reading it,
producer-director Harry Thomason began his efforts to turn the book
into a documentary. But the Arkansas native, a longtime friend of the
Clintons who directed the "Man from Hope" campaign video for Clinton in
1992, almost immediately ran into roadblocks. Major film
distributors turned him down, more than 100 Republicans refused his
requests to speak on camera and critics charged that Thomason was
making another propaganda film. Thomason's solution was to keep
his
opinions to himself and to let the dozens of subjects who do appear in
the film (and the narrator, Morgan Freeman) do the talking. The
90-minute documentary, which tracks Clinton's troubles from his
gubernatorial days in Arkansas to his impeachment trial in Washington,
will be released in New York next week and screened throughout the
country during the summer. NEWSWEEK's Jennifer Barrett spoke to
Thomason about the new film and the lessons it may hold for this
year's
presidential candidates. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK:
When did you first
come up with the idea for this film?
Harry Thomason: A long time ago. [Laughs.]
It was not too long after Clinton left office. I'd read the
book and
I'd thought, there is such a story here. But there was so much
material
flying at everybody then. I went to distributor after distributor, and
no one wanted to hear about it because Clinton had just left office and
the new president was popular. Finally, we got this little distributor.
It took two years after that to try and make the thing and make it make
any sense. We had a small crew, and it was a painstaking process of
wading through all the information that was out there.
Before
you read the book and began work on the film, did you really believe
there was a systemic, calculated campaign to destroy Clinton?
I
did believe that because I knew a lot of the players and because of the
things I read. It never occurred to me that the former president
Clinton was without any guilt on some things, but overall there were
people out there trying to make something happen that in South America
you would make happen with guns. If you are able to get a person out of
office [this way], you are just as effective.
Are
there revelations that
came out during the course of interviews and research for this film
that surprised you?
Some
of the most startling revelations are, that on the extreme right, how
willing people were to do anything to try to get this guy out of
office. I knew there was some element of the populous that had a
knee-jerk hatred of Clinton, but I didn't realize how deep it
went.
Ruth Fremson
/ AP
Then-President
Bill Clinton takes a
call on Air Force One
Was it
hard to get
people to talk to you?
We
run a large list of names at the end of the most recent version of the
film. There were 137 people on the right who, to a person -- with
the
exception of Jerry Falwell -- refused to talk to us. It was really
hard to
get people on the right to talk. And a lot of news people
didn't want
to talk to us.
The
documentary
shows that even the mainstream media was quick to pick up negative
stories on Clinton without scrutinizing the sources as well as perhaps
they should have. Could that happen again today?
I
think, unfortunately, the same tactics would work --
It's driven by the
marketplace. It's driven by the bottom-tier newscasters and
reporters
who are not as good, who are willing to take something with less
sourcing and go with it, and that forces the mainstream papers to go
with things before they would normally. It affects the chain all the
way up.
What
was it about
Clinton that encouraged such a sustained and well-funded effort to
discredit and defeat him? Was it his reckless behavior or his
popularity that made him a target?
It might have ended
up his behavior, but in the beginning, it was his popularity. You have
to understand that the Republicans and the conservatives had had the
White House for so long that they didn't want to give it up.
They had
gotten used to the fact that, while the Democrats might have the House
and Senate, they had the White House. So they were stunned when they
had to give it up. In the 1970s, with President Nixon, they
[Republicans] had begun to build out all these political organizations
and this was the first time that they could now band together and focus
on one person.
Were
you concerned about how
this documentary might be perceived because of your personal friendship
with the Clintons?
We
knew that my relationship with Clinton would be a problem but we
thought, if we don't do it [the film], nobody is going to do
it. So we
thought we would just try not to have one single opinion of ours in the
film and just let people talk. Morgan Freeman, too, has almost no
opinion and is just a straight narrator. Then people can only come at
us because there is something that is not factually true. And almost
everything in the film was in the book and they [the authors] have not
had a single court action brought against them, so we felt pretty safe.
Why
did you think nobody else
would do the film if you didn't?
It
was at a time right after the election; I just think that no one was in
the mood for it. They had heard enough about Clinton already and nobody
wanted to tackle the project. We actually wanted to have this out six
months or a year ago.
What
happened?
We were slow.
But
your timing is pretty
good, with the election coming up in November.
The timing is not bad, but that's not why we
did it.
What
kind of reaction to the
film have you had from Republicans?
We
only read things that people have said -- mostly, that this guy
[Thomason]
is a friend of Clinton. We went in aware of all that, though. I get a
lot of calls too asking why all these films are coming out bashing
George Bush before the election. But we don't think
we're Bush bashing.
We actually wanted to lower the rhetoric in this country.
What
reaction have you gotten
from Clinton?
I
have been a friend of the former president for a long time, and I
really worried about what he would think about this. But I'd
made up my
mind pretty early on, and I said to him: "I am going to make this film
and we are not going to talk about it." I assume he's seen the
film
now, and he is still speaking to me, so I guess it turned out okay.
Clinton
hasn't said
anything at all to you about the film -- not even that
he's watched it?
We
made a pact a couple years ago that we would not talk about it and we
haven't. We don't think it [the film] is even
necessarily about the
Clintons.
Would
you say it's
more of a commentary on the media?
I
think it's a cautionary tale to the press. The press affects a
lot of
things in this country and they need to learn to be more careful about
what they say [or publish].
You've
described the process of putting the documentary together as a
"nightmare" and indicated it may be your last foray
into the political
genre. Why?
Well, I don't know that I said it'd
be my last foray, but the material would have to be awfully good. These
things [documentaries] are so much more difficult to make than a
regular film, and they take such a longer amount of time to do. And you
are under so much more scrutiny.
So
what subject are you
tackling next?
I'm producing "Southern
Comfort" with Sissy Spacek. It's about transgendered
people.
You're
kidding.
Nope. [Laughs.] We are always out there on the edge.
©
2004 Newsweek, Inc
