Celebrity trumps ideology
Movie
It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that the publication
you’re now perusing leans ever-so-slightly to the left. So if you read this
paper solely for the pleasure of yelling at it and then stomping on it, then you’re almost certainly not an Al Franken fan. On the other
hand, if you flip through these here pages and occasionally high-five them as
they turn, then you’ve no doubt been enjoying the second career of the former Saturday Night Live writer-performer as
liberal talk show host, best-selling author, and Bill O’Reilly tormentor. As
Franken himself puts it, “I’m a little bit showbiz,
I’m a little bit journalism.”
Actually, he’s a lot showbiz, and in the entertaining — if
completely one-sided — documentary Al Franken: God Spoke, the cameras
of Chris Hegedus and Nick Doob
trail the left-wing pundit over the course of about a year that finds Franken
making new friends, taunting old enemies, and fantasizing about the utopia that
will ensue “when Kerry wins.” The film opens around the time of the inception
of Air America, a liberal radio network on which Franken hosts his talk show,
which he had considered titling “The O’Franken
Factor” because…well, you know why.
It takes exactly 30 seconds for Franken to invoke the name
of his most famous archenemy, Fox News commentator O’Reilly, and God Spoke watches as each man takes
shots at the other from the safety of their respective mediums: Franken titling
his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who
Tell Them and then slapping O’Reilly’s face on the cover, O’Reilly
convincing Fox to sue (the judge is still laughing) and gloating on air over
the setbacks suffered by the fledgling Air America. Franken also mixes it up
with terrifying Republican pin-up Ann Coulter, who fondly recalls Senator Joe
McCarthy, as well as the smug Sean Hannity, offering
a glimpse behind the stubborn facades of the ultra-conservative analysts.
Much of God Spoke concerns itself with the 2004 presidential campaign, with Franken setting up
broadcast camp at both the Republican and Democratic national conventions (he
gets gooned at the RNC), attending Democratic
fundraisers and parties on both sides. Franken gets a little choked up watching
Kerry’s concession speech, and we can see the seeds being planted for a 2008
congressional run from his home state of Minnesota for the seat once held by
Franken’s friend, the late Paul Wellstone, whose memorial service/Democratic
pep rally gets offered up here as the reason for Republican control of the
Senate. Will it matter that Franken is a comedian by trade? Did anyone care
that Reagan was an actor? Show business and politics have much in common,
though passion, while necessary for both, should be displayed in one and
controlled in the other.
Filmmakers Hegedus and Doob also collaborated on 1993’s Clinton campaign
documentary The War Room, with Doob as cinematographer and Hegeduscodirecting with her husband, legendary documentarian D.A. Pennebaker, an
executive producer here and the individual responsible for 1967’s Bob Dylan doc
Don’t Look Back and 1972’s Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Hegedus and Doob spend time at
home with Franken and his wife, Franni, who keeps
veritable dossiers on her husband’s counterparts to the right and whose
no-nonsense approach would lend itself to the demands
placed on a political wife. But Franken has much to learn about playing the
government game (God Spoke shows him
dining with Minnesota’s elder statesman Walter
Mondale), though Minnesota
did once elect a professional wrestler as their governor, so that’s a smart
place to throw your hat in the ring. As Franken observes, “Celebrity trumps
ideology.”
Until relatively recently, politics (along with religion and
finance) was a topic to be avoided in polite company, but those days are a
fuzzy memory. It seems the tiniest bit of fame entitles one to a public forum
and adds compelling relevance to even the least informed opinion, though in
this era of blogging and YouTube,
us lowly serfs possess the means to infiltrate this
country’s consciousness. So now you get to hear what everyone thinks about
everything, whether you want to or not. But would you have it any other way?
Thomas Paine is way more eloquent than me: “Those who expect to reap the
blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”
Al Franken: God Spoke (R), directed by Nick Doob
and Chris Hegedus, opens Friday, October 13, at the
Little Theatres.
This article appears in Oct 11-17, 2006.
