Coming off a rousing screening of his "film essay" PoliWood at New York's TriBeCa Film Festival, Barry Levinson is psyched to bring it to the Maryland Film Festival on Sunday. Levinson considers this multifaceted look at politics and Hollywood an ideal festival attraction "because it's the kind of piece that opens up discussion. It's full of ideas."
With a cast of real-life characters ranging from New York Gov. David Paterson and Republican pollster Frank Luntz to Susan Sarandon, Josh Lucas and Anne Hathaway, the movie depicts the dangerous yet also humorous confluence of politics, celebrity and media. "You don't have to agree with anything in it," says Levinson. "The fun part is that it opens up a subject so you can talk about it."
The festival will give viewers an opportunity to do just that as Levinson heads up a panel after the movie. The participants will include Sun columnist Dan Rodricks, reformed conservative hit man David Brock and actor Matthew Modine. Levinson depicts Modine within the movie as an unpretentious, hard-working guy, who got his first job at age 11 and speaks out on subjects he actually knows about - such as taking up bicycling as an effective step toward going green.
Yet PoliWood doesn't reserve its sympathy for Democrats. It includes one of the final screen appearances of Ron Silver (who died March 15), the often great actor (Enemies) who found that he couldn't persuade left-wing friends and members of his family to listen to his pro-Bush arguments. "There's nothing you could say that could change my mind," they'd tell him.
Polarization and its power to short-circuit communication are what made Levinson want to shoot this movie.
In 1989, Silver helped found the nonprofit, nonpartisan Creative Coalition, which (as stated on its Web site) "educates and mobilizes leaders in the arts community on issues of public importance, specifically in the areas of First Amendment rights, arts advocacy and public education." Under the TCC's auspices, Levinson filmed the Republican and Democratic conventions and the Inauguration,often traveling with TCC members such as co-presidents Tony Goldwyn and Tim Daly or Ellen Burstyn, Susan Sarandon and Rachel Leigh Cook.
When he went to a Frank Luntz focus group filled with people who considered themselves average Americans, their brutal resentment of Hollywood's "limousine liberals" shocked him. Levinson says he wondered, "Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin supported John F. Kennedy; do you remember anyone getting that angry at the Rat Pack?"
