SUNDANCE CHANNEL 'Tanner' sequel lampoons the press
The ex-candidate's daughter has made a film about her dad's campaign.
By FRAZIER MOORE
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK -- How time flies!
It was 16 years ago that Robert Altman and Garry Trudeau joined forces to create a Democratic candidate for president, along with a satirical comedy series -- "Tanner '88" -- that documented Jack Tanner's imaginary run for the White House.
And it was eight months ago that Sundance Channel retrieved this series from the Reagan era and gave it a fresh airing.
Now Sundance is premiering "Tanner on Tanner," a sequel that revisits Tanner, his daughter, Alex, and others from so long ago as a four-week follow-up in this election season.
In "Tanner '88" (just released on DVD) the primary target for satire was politics. But with "Tanner on Tanner," it's the press -- self-absorbed, self-deluded and all-invasive -- that gets most of the lampooning.
Setting the scene
Former teen Alex Tanner is now a documentary filmmaker living in Manhattan and (like Cynthia Nixon, reprising the role) all grown up. She's completing "My Candidate," a film tribute to Dad (again played by Michael Murphy) who, now a university professor, looks back on his quixotic race with a mix of pride and dread.
"When my students ask about '88," declares Tanner in a clip from his daughter's film, "I always tell them the only thing worse than the indignity of campaigning back then is the horror of campaigning now."
That doesn't mean Tanner isn't itching to attend the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
And so is Alex, who, as we see in the series' first half-hour (Tuesday at 9 p.m.), is dismayed to learn that "My Candidate" needs major repair after it flops at a New York film festival.
Rallying her bare-bones production crew, she will hit the road for Boston on next week's episode to shoot new footage of Dad with other veterans from campaign wars. She even aims to wangle an interview with John Kerry!
Then things fall apart. Though Dick Gephardt, Howard Dean, Tom Brokaw and Al Franken are among the real-life players in the "Tanner" narrative, Alex has trouble grabbing people for her camera.
Crushing blow
The last straw is when she finds out Kerry won't be available. It's a crushing blow, especially since, in the "Tanner" tradition of reality intertwined with make-believe, Kerry's campaign manager is T.J. Cavanaugh (in an encore performance by Pamela Reed), who ran Tanner's '88 campaign.
"Do you know what I went through to get here?" explodes Alex, who, in her desperation to finish her film, is charging everything on her Discover card.
Fires back T.J.: "Do you know what John Kerry went through to get here?!"
Often funny, sometimes poignant and always shrewd, "Tanner on Tanner" finds Alex no less stymied in her chosen field than was candidate Tanner by the campaign process 16 years ago. Now, as before, scriptwriter Trudeau and director Altman tell a tale of dashed dreams and good intentions gone awry.
"Alex is an honorable character," says Trudeau, "but she has many flaws, and life hasn't worked out for her in many ways."