If there's one thing that moviegoers have made clear, it's that if Hollywood intends to green-light white papers from wonky think tanks and flesh them out with a performance from Meryl Streep, they are going to stay home in droves. But since there's no end in sight to politically-themed entertainment, at least one purveyor of such filmic wares understands that there's been a missing ingredient: fun. That's what HBO is promising with their upcoming feature, Recount, which...uhm--recounts the Florida endgame of the 2000 election between Bush and Gore.
And what a delightful time that was for the nation! One can imagine several fun scenes from the movie. There was that hilarious part when the GOP shipped in Potemkin protesters to inject some much needed British soccer hooliganism into the proceedings. Or that moment in the Supreme Court where William Rehnquist had to remind Gore's lawyer, David Boies, that he might want to attempt some kind of push-back on Bush's equal protection claim, seeing as how it was the centerpiece of their case. Speaking of, here's hoping that the filmmakers include scenes that took place after the Supreme Court case that show what super BFFs Boies was with Bush's lawyer Ted Olson! Why, those two just can't stop attending each others' weddings and hosting book-signing parties for one another - which is exactly what you'd expect of the two people who opposed one another in court on the case that rent the body politic in twain!
I guess it's like they say: Tragedy plus time divided by 9/11 minus an endless, intractable war in Iraq that our grandchildren will be paying for equals comedy. Har dee har!