WH Campaigns Need Shot of Hollywood

By Jeffrey Ressner, Politico. Posted May 1, 2008.

With all that's gone down between Washington and Hollywood, it's a shame that politicians still don't trust their showbiz supporters. For the most part, D.C. treats L.A. as a gigantic ATM machine and the movie business as a means to pick up campaign cool points -- while trying to keep potentially radioactive celebrities at arm's length. But as candidates exploit moguls and movie stars for cash and cachet, they often reject creative assistance from the artists and executives at Hollywood's dream factories.

Political experts cite a number of different reasons why candidates have ignored moviemakers' offers to help. For one thing, campaign professionals insist they alone understand which scripts and images work best to move independent or undecided voters, even though their ads generally have all the originality of a breathless airport novel.

Perhaps more important, media consultants receive a cut of their candidate's television buys, often totaling millions of dollars, so they don't want anyone else -- especially an Oscar-winning talent -- encroaching on their turf.

Take Steven Spielberg. Aside from contributing the maximum amounts early on to the primary campaigns of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards, Spielberg has also qualified as a "HillRaiser" by bundling $100,000 or more for Clinton's presidential run.

Nevermind that his DreamWorks partners, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg, have both strongly endorsed Obama. Spielberg, like many others of his generation, has remained loyal to the Clintons. Yet sources close to the director feel he was rebuffed several months ago after offering creative help to her struggling campaign.

To be fair, some minimal creative crossover has occurred this election season. Actor-director Rob Reiner helped facilitate Jack Nicholson's endorsement of Clinton in an amusing viral video earlier this year. And talk about meta -- last October, Reiner appeared in a humorous Clinton campaign video mocking his zealous attempts to help volunteer recruitment efforts.

But what could Spielberg -- or, for that matter, any top Hollywood director -- really do for a political candidate? For starters, he might provide invaluable advice on communications, ranging from dialogue coaching for speeches to lighting and staging suggestions for rallies.

Whether you love or hate his films, it's hard to deny that the guy knows how to manipulate audiences, from the giddy whip-crack action of the Indiana Jones series to the soul-stirring heart tugs of dramas such as Schindler's List. Other directors backing Clinton include The Day After Tomorrow helmer Roland Emmerich and Brett Ratner of X-Men 3. The mind reels just imagining what these guys could do with her image.

Then there's the advertising -- top directors routinely have to sell big $150 million movies with 15- and 30-second spots, targeting broad audiences as well as specific demographic quadrants. It's not only the tent-pole guys who excel at these things, either. Look at what director Jesse Dylan did with $30,000 over a couple of days -- he and some pals shot Yes We Can a four-minute viral video that got 17 million hits and added greatly to Obama's mystique.

Politico asked a top marketing vice president at one of the leading motion picture studios to explain just how he might help the three current candidates in each of their respective quests for the White House. As an executive responsible for commercials, trailers, print ads and posters aimed at enticing you to see his big movie opening this weekend, he requested anonymity due to studio politics and other factors.

For Obama, the executive suggests he begin showcasing his strongest surrogates and placing himself in spots with more experienced, elder statesmen. Since the candidate already locked up the youth vote, he could go after McCain's and Clinton's senior citizen supporters by matching himself up with older, familiar faces.

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Jeffrey Ressner is based in Los Angeles, California, where he reports on the nexus between Hollywood and Washington for Politico. A longtime follower of the film industry as well as national politics, he joins Politico following a 14 year stretch as a West Coast correspondent for Time Magazine, where he covered entertainment as well as social issues, cultural trends, business news, health, immigration, science, education, and the environment.