Game Change (film)

Game Change - The Sarah Palin Effect ( Original title: Game Change ) is an American political drama of the year 2012 was directed by Jay Roach and written by Danny Strong. . The first broadcast took place on 9 March 2012 on HBO. In Germany the TV film was first shown on November 6, 2012 from Pay- TV channel Sky Atlantic HD.

Based on a part on the book of the journalist John Heileman and Mark Halperin, which was published in 2010, the film describes the events in the final stages of the presidential campaign in 2008 from the perspective of the team of John McCain (played by Ed Harris), from the time when this surprising the governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin (played by Julianne Moore), makes his candidate for the office of Vice-President, until the evening of election day and losing to Barack Obama.

Action

The film begins with the enactment of a sequence from an interview that gave the head of John McCain's campaign team, Steve Schmidt (played by Woody Harrelson ), after the election for the political program 60 Minutes to the CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. Cooper asked Schmidt whether the decision for Sarah Palin in hindsight was a right, and whether he would select if in doubt again.

The following is a flashback to the year 2007. Sen. John McCain, the back is apparently hopeless in the primary campaign of the Republican Party, Steve Schmidt brings to his team. It succeeds Schmidt, still to help the nomination of the Republican Party for the 2008 election the Vietnam Veterans McCain. As part of the Democratic Party, however, the juvenile Senator Barack Obama permeated from Illinois, with his demand for change ( change ) begins to roll up the field, and to hundreds of thousands of enthusiastic people in Berlin talks, growing in McCain's team nervousness. Man decides to drop the plan to make an experienced man like Joe Lieberman or Tim Pawlenty as a candidate for the office of Vice- President, and to seek a woman who compensates McCain's backlog of independent and female voters against Obama and is also surprisingly enough, the cards in the campaign to re- mix: a game changer. They believe in the person of Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska to have found. Your charisma and their arch-conservative orientation convince the team of McCain and the candidate himself. The necessary vetting ( checking the political positions and personality ), however, turns out extremely superficial. First, however, the charismatic, unused and direct style of Sarah Palin gives McCain the candidate the necessary boost in popularity to catch up with Obama.

During the election campaign, the team of McCain, led Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace (played by Sarah Paulson ), quickly becomes clear that Sarah Palin has concealed not only legacy from her political activity in Alaska, but also enormous gaps in our knowledge in all sorts of areas of fundamental national and has international politics, which is a catastrophic risk to the presidential campaign. You can, for example, not even tell the difference between the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq and believes the Queen is the head of government of the United Kingdom. First, keeping Palin away from the press, but know that you will not be able to hold out long this strategy. One tries hurry to give her a crash course in the basics of contemporary politics and its historical foundations, but the time is not enough, and remains the risk of a flop.

Finally she gives Charlie Gibson of ABC, a first national interview, in which she holds still pretty neat, but draws attention to the question of its foreign policy experience on the geographical proximity of Alaska to Russia ( "(...) you can Actually see Russia from country here in Alaska (...) " ), which is taken in the media as an opportunity for public ridicule. In particular, the satirical exaggeration of Sarah Palin's lack of knowledge by Tina Fey in the legendary comedy show Saturday Night Live and the mass distribution and lasting availability of media content in online portals such as YouTube make McCain's team has a hard life.

Man tries to correct a second national interview the image already with regard to the major party convention, but Sarah Palin makes the campaign team for their bad press responsible and blocked further attempts to prepare accordingly. The interview, with Katie Couric of CBS Anchor, therefore, is expected to be messed up, and the media continue their mockery and criticism of Sarah Palin's suitability for the post of Vice President with increased intensity.

These obvious shortcomings, coupled with the challenges of the banking and financial crisis after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, lead in the final stages of the election campaign to the fact that Barack Obama pulls ahead in favor of the voters again what McCain's team takes the occasion to launch a negative campaign against Obama. However, McCain quickly realizes that the dull prejudices and hatreds that he responds so as not correspond to his understanding of political style and stifles this kind of campaign against Sarah Palin's resistance. Then Schmidt 's campaign manager comes up with an idea: He suggests Sarah Palin for major televised debate with Joe Biden just let the answers to the previously announced list of questions to memorize so that they may be there. The plan works, and Palin's popularity among Republican voters to rise again. Overtakes John McCain even in the favor of party supporters and drives virtually their own election campaign.

On the evening of the election Palin wants to keep after the defeat even its own speech, which never defeated vice presidential candidate was allowed before yet. Schmidt and McCain ultimately prevent this.

The film ends with the continuation of the first scene, followed by the interview by Anderson Cooper with Steve Schmidt and the answer to the question of whether Schmidt Sarah Palin would suggest again. He says, " You do not get to go back in time, Anderson, and have do- overs in life. " ( You can not go back in time and start all over again. )

Production

HBO in early 2010 secured the rights to the book by John Heileman (journalist for New York Magazine ) and Mark Halperin ( a journalist for Time). The pre-production began in February 2011 with the commitment of Jay Roach as a director and as a screenwriter Danny Strong, who had also worked together in accordance with the political drama Recount on the election in 2000 for HBO. It was originally planned to film the book completely, but quickly turned out that the plot would have become too complex for a two-hour TV movie. In addition to the requirements of the book led Danny Strong talks with about two dozen participants.

The casting of roles was announced in March 2011, with Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin and Ed Harris as John McCain. Woody Harrelson as Steve Schmidt came just added to it. The film was mostly shot in the state of Maryland, some scenes in Delaware. The preview took place on 8 March 2012 at the Newseum in Washington, DC, instead, means the initial two days later in prime time on HBO.

Some excerpts from archival footage of the campaign, such as CNN, MSNBC and FOX News, were used in the film and partly by Technology trick and stood -ins associated with the recordings of the performers. Thus, inter alia, in the film Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Anderson Cooper, Wolf Blitzer, Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson of the action.

Synchronization

The German synchronous processing was full made ​​in 2012 by the synchronous Interopa film company in Berlin under the dialogue director of Antonia.

Reviews

David Hinckley of the New York Daily News wrote: " Julianne Moore's representation has even more resemblance to the real Sarah Palin as the version of Tina Fey. " Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that the film " kess raises the question of whether Sarah Palin is mentally unstable. " He calls Julianne Moore's performance " virtuoso ( and extremely Emmy suspicious) ".

The website Metacritic lists for Game Change 74 out of 100 possible points, based on about two dozen professional reviews. The critic Roger Ebert awarded 3.5 out of 4 possible points. Entertainment Weekly rated the film with A- (roughly equivalent to a grade of 1 -).

Viewing figures

Game Change recorded an audience of about 2.1 million in the first showing. For the pay-TV channel HBO was the highest number of viewers for the debut of a self-production since 2004.

Awards

  • Award for Best Mini - Series or TV Movie
  • Award in the category Best Actress - Mini - series or TV movie for Julianne Moore
  • Award in the category Best Supporting Actor for Ed Harris
  • Nomination in the category Best leading actor - Mini - series or TV movie for Woody Harrelson
  • Award in the category for Best Miniseries or TV Movie: Danny Strong, Amy Sayres, Steve Shareshian, Gary Goetzman, Jay Roach and Tom Hanks
  • Award in Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or Dramatic Special TV: Jay Roach
  • Nomination for Lead Actor in a Miniseries or TV Movie: Woody Harrelson
  • Award in the category Lead Actress in a Miniseries or TV Movie: Julianne Moore
  • Award in the category script in a Miniseries, Movie or Dramatic Special TV: Danny Strong
  • Nomination for Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or TV Movie: Ed Harris
  • Nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie: Sarah Paulson
  • Award in the category Best Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for Julianne Moore
  • Nomination for Best Miniseries or best TV movie
  • Nomination for Best Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for Woody Harrelson
  • Nomination in the category Best Supporting Actress for Sarah Paulson
2012 in film Screenplay Film score Recount (film) Emmy Award Golden Globe Award for Best Miniseries or Television Film Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture 17th Satellite Awards The Campaign (film)
360093
de