A funny thing happened on the way from the Theater to our TV sets. Billed as its West Coast Premiere, tyro Documentarian Alexandra Pelosi's JOURNEYS WITH GEORGE was shown to a celebrity-strewn audience at the San Francisco International Film Festival, in late April 2002. (From a perch I'd seized in the Reserved Section, I noted a small, dynamic-looking woman of luminous glance, who slid past me with her late coming group, as Democratic Representative Nancy Pelosi. She is perhaps the most powerful woman in the House of Representatives, and Alexandra's proud mother.) A month previously, JOURNEYS WITH GEORGE had been shown for the first time at the Southwest Film Festival, in Austin, Texas.

Well over a year-old at that time, though a topic in Texan and other papers, JOURNEYS WITH GEORGE was not to be seen again until HBO screened it at 9:30 p.m., Tuesday, November 5, 2002, safely after the polls were closed on Midterm Elections Night.

The timing of opening JOURNEYS WITH GEORGE to the masses adds to an ambivalence this critic feels toward it.

Seemingly a small, bespectacled, mousy young girl -- a bit naive and goofy -- often swathed in royal purple during her movie, Alexandra Pelosi was, in person at the premiere, a tall, handsome, vibrant 31 year-old woman in a "power-white" suit. She told us that she had been working for NBC behind the scenes, when she decided that it would be fun to make a political documentary . . . about the Presidential Campaign of George W. Bush. With colleague Co-Producer, Co-Director/Editor Aaron W. Lubarsky (WAYNE FREEDMAN'S NOTEBOOKS, 1998) and Sound Editor Brian Bowles (MR. DEATH: THE RISE AND FALL OF FRED A. LEUCHTER, Errol Morris, 1999), Ms. Pelosi approached the Bush Braintrusters with the idea.

Apparently, they had no objections. "And they didn't know that I had Network connections!" Ms. Pelosi boasted. "Hard to believe," I said aloud. "It is, isn't it?" muttered the well-dressed man from the Pelosi group next to me. (Also hard to imagine, that canny Bush-handlers like Karen Hughes and Karl Rove would not have weighed carefully the pros and cons of allowing a daughter of the future Democratic Minority Whip to travel with George and Laura Bush.) In any event, the Bush campaign got along famously with Alexandra, who dubbed herself -- or was dubbed -- "The Purple Monkey."

The documentary, listed (interestingly) as lasting either 75 or 79 minutes at the IMDb, Epinions and other sources, but running 90 minutes on HBO, takes off in an Access Air press plane bringing our cast of characters to the New Hampshire Primary in September 1999. We see little of George W. Bush at first, less of the other Republican contenders: John McCain, Gary Bauer, Pat Buchanan, Alan Keyes Elizabeth Dole, Steve Forbes, Orrin Hatch, or Dan Quayle.

But we meet the Press Corps.

And in many ways, the version I saw was more about the reactions of the Media (almost all men, in Alexandra's lens finder) to her and each other, than it was about the ideas, background, and character of George Bush, our future President.

[Followers of my reviews who know of my disturbing encounters with the Byzantine origins of the Bush Nibelungen and their Walkure retainers -- the Nazi basis of the Bush Family fortune; the ironic conflict between its anti-abortion political base and its bizarre background in the history of Eugenics -- will be relieved, perhaps, to know that these subjects do not come up in JOURNEYS WITH GEORGE. The Ghost of Grandpa Prescott Bush, one of few American businessmen officially caught trading with Nazi Germany during War II, does not smoke his pipe on the de-icing wing tips of the Access Air press plane. William S. Farish, Jr, ghostly German sympathizer, friend of the Bush Family, founder of Humble Oil, who as Standard Oil of New Jersey President (Exxon) was fined in 1942 for continuing business collusion with Nazis, is not referred to by Alexandra. No Nixon-Reagan-Bush Nazi sympathizing operatives like Fred Malek are to be seen. And if George W. Bush's good friend, William S. ("Will") Farish III, trustee of the families' co-mingled Nazi fortunes, whom the new President would later name Ambassador to the Court of St. James, is present during any of the proceedings, Alexandra does not point him out.]


While ABC's Ted Koppel has a bit part -- and Tom Brokow 's NBC (which gave staff leave for this "independent" work of Journalism) monopolizes all TV monitors -- the two main second-leads of Alexandra's epic are skeptical, veteran Bush-watchers, R. G. Ratcliffe of the Houston Chronicle and Wayne Slater of The Dallas Morning News. They define many typical "bushisms" they have come to know ad nauseum, which Alexandra, in her little purple snood, had thought freshly coined.

Another very sharp major player in JOURNEYS WITH GEORGE is the sole foreign correspondent, Briton Richard Wolffe -- for all his Oxford English -- a kind of Greek Chorus. Wolffe puzzles and puzzles with a bright keen eye over the strange madness of an American Political campaign. Amid the miserably uncomfortable snows of an early winter, he can say that the Bush Campaign is the Greatest Story in the World, even if "most of our time is spent doing really stupid things, in stupid places with stupid people."

Alexandra, in her disarmingly modest and (having seen the lady at close quarters) misleadingly shy manner, gossips with us about the reporter's families and personal lives, chats to us about the endless plastic-wrapped turkey sandwiches, the difficulties of moving huge amounts of equipment, the anxiety over making deadlines, etc.

But the Star of the Show, indeed one of its Cameramen, almost its Author, is Governor George W. Bush of Texas.

It is he who gave the Movie its title, and when he strides out on the narrow thrust stage of a bus or airplane to address his mercenary chroniclers, there can be no doubt who thinks He is in command of the production. To the extent that this Auteur often decrees which of his scenes will be shot, and sometimes sets up the jump-cut, hand-held, deconstructed, half-framed images, George W. Bush creates his own Man Who Would Be Emperor!

This George W. Bush somewhat resembles the wisecracking President Bush that sixty-odd percent of Americans still admire, but in other respects, he displays some qualities they have not seen before in a President. Like his father, he can be "just plain folks" one moment and a patrician Knight of the Realm the next. Both 41 and 43 (as Ambassador "Will" Farish refers to them), of course, are really consummate actors. [President Ronald Reagan said, good Chief Executives must be.] The question is, who writes their lines?

Ms. Pelosi introduces us to this droll fellow, a regular guy, eager to kid the "stylishness" of Alexandra's purple eyeglasses, nails and clothing. At that moment, Great Bush has not set about rewarding his friends of Upper Five Percent Income, nor has he yet adopted the steely rhetoric of The Crusade, Operation Everlasting Justice, The War on Terrorism, his Father's New World Order, or Solar System Security (which is to come). It is late 1999, and the United States is prosperous, secure and enjoying the largest Budget Surplus in our History.

George W. Bush is just sailing along. He warms Alexandra, calling her pet names ("Baby"), sets up with her an "Us against Them" toward the rest of the "pack." He roguishly suggests that she and her current romantic interest, known to him and the other reporters as "The Newsweek Guy," will soon "be doing more than holding hands." She responds to his suggestions, and when she breaks up with "The Newsweek Guy," George is right there, sitting close to her, offering advice and counsel. At one point, when she asks what he will do for if she votes for him, he mockingly takes her absentee ballot away from her and gives her a consoling peck on the cheek. [She claims, in the cross-filing California primary, to have voted for New Jersey's ex-Senator Bradley.] Clearly, George and Alexandra appear increasingly during the year-long shoot suspiciously like a man and woman engaged in a flirtation -- the natty Governor, who champions Family Values, but has something of a lounge lizard past; and the extremely smart, sexy Alexandra, who is cultivating an ugly duckling persona.

Where is Laura Bush when all of this badinage is taking place?

She appears every-so-often, serenely carrying out her duties as Would-be-First Lady. However, there is an interesting moment -- staged or not, significant or not, we cannot say -- when Mrs. Bush stands in the aisle of the plane and intones with a slight long-suffering iciness: "Alexandra, I have to talk to you."

[Curiously, neither reviews in the San Francisco Chronicle nor the New York Times yesterday mentioned this moment. Perhaps, if the White House took an interest in the Broadcast Version of JOURNEYS WITH GEORGE, the producers may have been persuaded to delete the moment or place it in a different context.]

Alexandra also finds herself in trouble with her fellow reporters, who accuse her of sharing confidences with George.

Early in film, in between ceaseless rallies and photo-ops, Governor Bush tries to charm the press. He often comes back to shoot the breeze with them and drink a Buckler (non-alcoholic beer), but after he doesn't do so well as expected against Senator John McClain, who most of them like a lot, the reporters send him politely packing, saying that if he continues to "drink 'beer' with them," they are going to report it. After a few weeks, however, when he begins to do better in the primaries, he returns to the back of the plane, slyly swigging his Buckler beer, munching his favorite bologna sandwich. "I like a good baloney sandwich," he says, with a wink, and whether it's baloney or Cheetos, he demonstrates a talent for chewing, talking and spraying onlookers, all at the same time.

Later, he apologizes to the reporters for a swift takeoff from some place in the Northern Tier, which has caused an altercation with his staffers. He explains, his boys and girls "only wanted to have a good solid margarita and get hopping at 45,000 over Nebraska." After all, he says: "These are my people. It takes an animal to know an animal." But ". . .I'm not admitting I'm an animal, with 60 days to go in the campaign . . . Just that I like animals."

At times, he does his monkey imitation, sticks his face into the camera lens and crosses his eyes; at others, he grabs the camera and tries to make his own movie. (In truth, its irreverent tone to one side, JOURNEYS WITH GEORGE is the President's movie.]

He shamelessly cons them all, and they come to love it. He can just as well bring them up short with a shrewd analysis. But they give him little credit for that ability.

And so, like the American Public, who originally thought his father a "cracker barrel" country Maine philosopher (and a bit daffy), most of the Press Corps we meet, not just the hacks and flacks, consider George W. Bush either the harmlessly incompetent or mentally challenged nice guy you could shoot pool and drink with in a bar. However, Governor Bush will soon prove to them, the clever remarks of Erin Brockovich and Al Franken in JOURNEYS WITH GEORGE to the contrary, that his Yale and Harvard degrees were not entirely bogus.

It remains for the British correspondent, Wolffe of The Financial Times, to rather neatly sum up the message of JOURNEYS WITH GEORGE: "The Gore press corps is about how they didn't like Gore, didn't trust him, and that kind of filtered through to their stories. Over here, we were writing only about the trivial stuff because he charmed the pants off us."

[That statement is really an explanation of why the majority of American voters elect the people they do.]

And then in his Attention Deficit Disorder style, President Bush went on to charm the pants off the American People, if not before his Election to the Presidency, certainly after 9-1-1. It did not matter that he then declared his intention to attack preemptively 60 foreign nations . . .

Nor that he used "The War on Terrorism" as an excuse to curtail their Civil Liberties, abrogate our foreign treaties and revive Star Wars . . .

Nor that he rebated a trillion dollars of their taxes, most of it to the upper 5% of his class, with no discernible change in the decline of our Economy . . .

Nor that executives of that class, his personal friends, his running mate, his appointees, were implicated in the collapse of Stock Market and the loss of more than six trillion dollars of Stockholders' money . . .

Nor that he put our democratic society proudly on record as favoring American hit squads to take out whomever someone or other want taken out . . .

Nor that the interlocking directorates of which his Family is a part would continue to work for the economic hegemony of the American Empire over the World, and soon in Outer Space . . .

Nor that he and his Administration set about relaxing or weakening almost ever Federal regulation safeguarding our water, air, forests, and envionmental health . . .

Nor that he opposed or weakened pitiful public services and safeguards, such as health facilities for children (40,000,000 living at or below the poverty line), the elderly, and the citizenry in general, which other, poorer nations in the Western World enjoy in much greater abundance . . .

Nor, that he intended, if he deemed it necessary, to call up the first 250,000 reserves of a couple of million troops he requisitioned in his Executive Orders of September 12, 2001 . . .

Nor that he rejected the conclusions of an International scientific congress (which his own handpicked panel reluctantly and belatedly accepted) that massive environmental Global degradation, much of it our doing, is bringing dire consequences, not only in the distant future, but in the present. In fact, he now promises to take steps which will accelerate the process . . .

Nor finally, that in a year's time, he liquidated a substantial Budget Surplus and insured that our National Debt and Balance of Payments would become much worse, likely bringing catastrophic inflation and/or deflation, in a well-known classic pattern, within a decade . . . .

Right wing talk show hosts or participants, much in evidence on TV (and who dominate radio in major markets), continued during recent months to claim that all our troubles were the fault of Bill and Hillary Clinton, if not White Water. And the public continued to love George Bush's pugnacious manner, his true blue nationalism, his maniacal grin.

Alexandra Pelosi shows the how, if not the why, of that popularity in JOURNEYS WITH GEORGE. We find out how George W. Bush charmed the pants off reporters tougher than she, and how he continued to charm the pants off enough American voters to win the Presidential Election. And, more importantly, we observe his casual ability to lull totalitarian fodder like the majority of us, who were not sufficiently elated or disturbed by his actions listed above to be bothered to vote in the Midterm Elections.

[As English Novelist Evelyn Waugh summed it up with the title for his great satirical novel on civilian behavior in a democracy during wartime: Put Out More Flags.]

In this documentary, we see George W. Bush as we never saw him before -- as we shall probably never see him again.

An interesting question still remains: What was there in the innocuous documentary that the Bush Administration (or some other entity) wanted us to view, but not until the evening of Tuesday, November 5, 2002? Or, on the other hand, what was there in the original picture that they did not want us to see through, at least until after this election?

Alexandra Pelosi said that George Bush and his Advisors told her that, when he runs for re-election, she would have to negotiate any possible sequel.

------------------

UPDATE: December 2, 2002: When her Mother was elected House Democratic Minority Leader, Alexandra Pelosi was reported running about with a video camera in her hand. We may perhaps have at the next Democratic National Convention a little documentary entitled JOURNEYS WITH NANCY. It will be easier to make than MORE JOURNEYS WITH GEORGE.

-----------------------------------

If you wish to explore all of Macresarf1's reviews, indexed by title and category, many with URL's, paste to your browser and go to the following --

http://www.epinions.com/content_2514526340

-----------------------------------------------

UPDATE: June 12, 2005 -- I invite you to visit the "BLOG" which I now maintain on my Epinions Profile Page, where I occasionally discuss matters of the day:

http://www.epinions.com/user-macresarf1/show_~View_Profile#long_bio



Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older