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HBO Film Recounts 2000 Election Nightmares

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By WALT BELCHER

The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 25, 2008

TAMPA - There is a brief scene in the HBO docudrama "Recount" in which Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris is alone in her Tallahassee office looking out the window.

As played by Laura Dern, who appears to be channeling Cruella de Vil, this fictional incarnation of Harris has a pained look on her painted face.

She is gazing out at sign-carrying protesters waging a war of words in the street.

It's 2000, the year of the hanging chad and dimpled ballot, the year the presidential race between Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore went down to the wire and hung in the balance for 36 days.

There's no dialogue, and viewers are left to interpret Dern's facial expressions.

With so many questions raised about the voting process, does Harris have doubts about declaring Bush the winner of the Florida vote without a total recount of the votes?

Is she troubled by the ethics of being both the Florida secretary of state and having co-chaired Bush's Florida election campaign?

Or is she burdened by having become a favorite punch line for David Letterman and Jay Leno and a recurring skit on "Saturday Night Live"?

For some, the scene may invoke sympathy for a woman who obviously was not prepared for the media microscope that she was under during that confounding election where so many things went wrong.

"The scene is fictional, and it was put in there to let viewers draw their own conclusions," says actor-writer Danny Strong, 33, who wrote the "Recount" screenplay.

But how one interprets that scene and the rest of the film may depend on his or her politics, Strong suggests in a recent telephone interview.

"There have been a few screenings and I've heard from both sides," he says. "People come away with different observations usually clouded by their own political views."

The rest of the world can see the film and judge for themselves when it debuts at 9 tonight on HBO.

Strong knows that he will get criticism from conservative viewers, many of whom are expecting "Recount" to be a one-sided liberal Hollywood bashing.

That's fine with Strong, a registered Democrat from California who says he put his own politics aside in writing the screenplay. He says he has been given a thumbs up from real-life Republicans and Democrats portrayed in the film.

This is the first produced screenplay for Strong, who played nerdy Jonathan on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and college-newspaper editor Doyle on "Gilmore Girls."

For "Recount," he teamed up with director Jay Roach ("Meet the Parents"), and the result is a surprisingly entertaining political drama, considering we all know how the story ends.

It's major stumbling block is the two-hour running time. The viewer gets exhausted long before the U.S. Supreme Court weighs in.

"It's not about who should have won," says Strong, who views "Recount" as a cautionary tale during another election year.

"This movie is about some serious flaws in the electoral process, from mistakes in the mechanics of balloting to having people with partisan interests in charge of the process," he says. "We have been taught that every vote should count. But in this case, not every vote was able to be counted. So the American people need to ask if this is how we want to elect presidents."

Strong believes there should have been a total hand recount of the Florida ballots, that electronic voting without a paper trail is dangerous and that both parties have failed the American public with their win-at-all-cost attitudes.

Bush and Gore are bit players in this drama. They are voiced by unseen actors in telephone conversations. Real news clips of them are used throughout. Then-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (Matt Miller) is on-screen only about 20 seconds.

"Recount" is told from the point of view of Ron Klain (Kevin Spacey), Gore's former chief of staff. He was kicked out of the campaign and is not all that excited about being called back into service when things go sour in Florida.

The film recalls the confusion of the "butterfly ballots" in West Palm Beach, where more than 6,000 voters may have mistakenly voted for Pat Buchanan thinking they were voting for Gore.

As other questions arise about balloting in other parts of the state and with Bush's margin of victory slim enough to call for a recount, both candidates marshal their forces for a fight.

Led by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III (Tom Wilkinson), the Bush camp is focused, savvy and ruthless. Strong says Baker signed off on the script and liked the performance by Wilkinson, who was Ben Franklin in HBO's "John Adams."

Klain also has signed off on the script, noting that when he was first approached, he joked that he would only be interested if there were a different ending.

Strong says he interviewed more than 40 politicians, lawyers and players who were involved in the fight. He says he was unable to interview Harris, who didn't return his calls until it was too late.

In the film, Klain and Gore's field director, Michael Whouley (Denis Leary of "Rescue Me"), push for a statewide recount. But their efforts are stifled when Gore recruits Bill Clinton's former Secretary of State Warren Christopher (John Hurt) to oversee the campaign's wrangling in Florida. Christopher, who wants to "take the high road" and seek a compromise with the Republicans, is blindsided by Baker's aggressive tactics.

The Democrats' plan is to seek recounts only in the counties where Gore should have won. The Republicans' plan is to stall the recounts until Harris can declare Bush the winner.

Veteran character actor Bruce McGill plays Tallahassee Republican lobbyist Mac Stipanovich. He is recruited to get Harris to bring the election "in for a landing with George W. Bush in the cockpit."

Comparing herself to Queen Esther in the Bible who was "helping those lovely Jewish people," Harris is smitten by the attention. "Ten years ago I was teaching the chicken dance to seniors. And now I've been thrust into an electoral tempest of historical dimensions," she says.

In a recent interview with the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Stipanovich said "Recount" is accurate but has a "built-in bias."

He calls it "the myth of the lost cause" in which the esprit de corps of the Gore campaign encourages the viewer to root for the Democrats "versus the ruthless and humorless Republican machine."

Strong says he tried to achieve fairness, rather than balance.

"We just wanted to get the story right," he says. "And facts aren't always balanced. Sometimes the truth doesn't have two points of view."

ON TELEVISION

Recount

WHEN: 9 tonight

WHERE: HBO

Reporter Walt Belcher can be reached at (813 259-7654 or wbelcher@tampatrib.com.

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