JOURNEYS WITH GEORGE

D: Alexandra Pelosi.

Documentary First Films, World Premiere Alexandra Pelosi calls her Campaign 2000 documentary a “Rorschach Test” on George W. Bush: If you love him you’ll find him lovable, and if you hate him … well, it might be more difficult to sit through this up-close-and-personal diary of a Year in the Life. Pelosi’s Bush is diffident, charming, bumbling, manipulative, calculating, and ingratiating, and her film shares most of those adjectives. Since the candidate himself is almost always seen in self-staged “casual” moments, there is probably more insight here into the sheer, relentless artificiality of a campaign’s press coverage: The Dallas Morning News’ Wayne Slater and the Houston Chronicle‘s R.G. Ratcliffe offer biting commentary on that score. When even the best journalists are effectively reduced to the role of court scribes, the aura of unreality is magnified — and in endless close-up, Bush starts to look like a cross between Alfred E. Neuman and Max Headroom. That’s scary. (3/15, Paramount, 10:15pm) See austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2002-03-08/screens_feature4.html for Anne S. Lewis’ interview with filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi.

This article appears in March 15 • 2002.

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Contributing writer and former news editor Michael King has reported on city and state politics for the Chronicle since 2000. He was educated at Indiana University and Yale, and from 1977 to 1985 taught at UT-Austin. He has been the editor of the Houston Press and The Texas Observer, and has reported and written widely on education, politics, and cultural subjects.