The War Room “cast” today: Dee Dee Myers, Paul Begala, Michael Donilon, Mandy Grunwald, and Stanley Greenberg, at The Jefferson Hotel

 
  The Ragin’ Cajun, James Carville, at his home in New Orleans

In the spring of 1992, it was evident that the upcoming presidential campaign was going to be fascinating. The first President Bush was generating little enthusiasm for his campaign; wacky Ross Perot was showing up on Larry King Live with an 800 number; and the punditocracy wasn’t taking presumptive Democrat nominee Bill Clinton very seriously. I have this vivid memory of Cokie Roberts on This Week with David Brinkley laughing at Clinton, suggesting that he might as well throw in the towel. I remember thinking that no matter what happened, one thing was clear: The upcoming election was going to be one to remember. Someone, I thought, has got to make a film about it.

So I called my old friend and colleague Wendy Ettinger to see if she wanted to produce it with me. Neither of us had ever made a film before, but she embraced the idea immediately and said it would be great if we could get filmmakers like D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus to direct it. As quickly as the thought occurred, we found ourselves in the basement of the New York Public Library screening an old 16mm print of Primary, a film that Pennebaker had worked on in 1960 about Hubert Humphrey and John F. Kennedy. Next we watched Crisis, another Kennedy-driven documentary that Penne had worked on in 1963. They are both such beautiful films—Crisis in particular is a really moving film about the moral maturation of JFK in the final months of his life. When it was over, we were both crying.

We had to figure out how to track down Pennebaker—so we looked him up in the phone book. “Come on over,” he said, and off we went to a meeting with him, Chris (Penne’s filmmaking partner and his wife), and Frazer Pennebaker (their producing partner). We didn’t know what the film would be, but we knew the Democratic convention was coming to New York in a few weeks, and we figured if we could gain access to Clinton at the convention, then good things would happen. Chris said to us, “As long as you can get the money and the access, we’re on board.” She thought she would never see us again. But we could not have been more excited—we were on a mission.

Gaining Access
It soon became evident that the one person who could grant us access to Governor Clinton was communications director George Stephanopoulos, but time was running out. We did everything we could to get George’s attention, but let’s face it—he was managing the message for a presidential campaign on its way to the convention. Returning our calls could not have been high on his priority list. We called multiple times a day; we sent telegrams; we had mutual friends reach out. But we heard nothing.

Finally, the day before the convention began, we decided to call it quits. I was so tired that I fell asleep on the floor in our little office, disheartened and spent. I must have been out for about 45 minutes when the phone rang, and I groggily picked it up. On the other end of the line was George Stephanopoulos.

He told me that he had gotten my materials, he understood the pitch, and he was a huge fan of Pennebaker and Hegedus—but that his job, in all honesty, was to keep projects like this from happening. “I think it’s a great idea,” he said. “But there’s no way that the governor is going to go along with this.” Somewhere along the way, I had learned not to take no for an answer. “If you think it’s such a good idea,” I asked, “what if we film with you?” That seemed to turn the tide. “What do you have in mind?” George asked. At that moment, almost by accident, our film came into being; it was the desperate act of a filmmaker, but I somehow turned a no into a yes, and that was all we needed to get going.

Our access to Team Clinton at the convention was amazing. Penne was shooting with his Aaton 16mm camera and Chris had her Stellavox tape recorder, and my lord we were so unobtrusive. The drama that week was incredible. Clinton’s numbers started to soar, Perot dropped out of the race, and the whole landscape changed before our very eyes. When the convention ended, the Clintons and the Gores set off on this huge bus trip with their team in tow; we filmed them driving off, and we knew that we were onto something special.

Carville: A New Focus
A few days later, we got our dailies back. When we watched the footage, one thing became clear—James Carville was a star. Penne and Chris said, “Oh yeah, we can make a film about this guy.” And the vision was formed: a buddy movie about James and George, behind the scenes of a presidential campaign.

Our final hurdle was going down to Little Rock to get James on board. We sat with him and told him what we wanted to do, and he said, “I get it, I totally understand. But you have to understand that the only thing that matters in my life is getting Bill Clinton elected president. Anything else is a distraction. Why would I possibly want to do it?”

I thought I knew the answer to James’s question: You’ve got to do it for history; you’ve got to do it so that people can see how amazing you are; you’ve got to do it because you’re about the change the world. But I didn’t say anything. I was, after all, in the presence of D.A. Pennebaker, the master documentarian, and I deferred to him. After a moment, Penne said,“You know what, James? I make films about people who care a tremendous amount about what they do and who are doing it as well as they possibly can under high-stakes circumstances. I love telling these stories, and it’s become my life’s work. But I can’t possibly answer your question because it’s really none of my business. I can’t tell you why you should or shouldn’t make a film with us. That’s entirely up to you.” James paused. Then he said he wanted to think about it and that he would get back to us.

We went back to the hotel room and paced around for hours and hours. We were at a crossroads: This campaign and these amazing people were going to go on with or without us. At one point, I asked Penne why he didn’t do a harder sell to James. “The story belongs to him,” he said. “Only he can decide if he wants to share it with us or not. That’s the most important thing about making these films.”

A little while later the phone rang. It was James. “Come on down to the War Room tonight,” he said. “We can start filming then.” The rest, as they say, is history.

We shot about 20 days between the GOP convention and Election Day. The campaign team became a part of our lives and we became a part of theirs. They got used to us being there, and trust was built. The campaign itself went really well, but it wasn’t until that final week that everyone thought, “This is going happen—Clinton is really going to win this.”