Sarah Palin film strives for accuracy

March 7, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

By Luaine Lee

McClatchy Newspapers

PASADENA, Calif.

What really went on in that smoke-filled room when John McCain chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate in the 2008 presidential campaign?

HBO is here to tell you. While it may be liberal politics as usual for HBO, the folks who created the film, “Game Change,” insist they were fixated on veracity.

Julianne Moore, who morphs into Palin without a slip, reports she did exhaustive research on her subject. “The first thing I did was hire a vocal coach because, for me, she has an incredibly idiosyncratic way of speaking, and I really felt I needed to capture that,” says Moore.

“So I worked with a coach. We looked at hours and hours of footage. I listened to her on tape. I read her book. I read ‘Game Change’ [on which the film is based]. I read her assistant’s book. I read absolutely everything I could get my hands on. You know, it’s a really daunting task to play somebody who is not only a living figure, but a hugely well known one. So, for me, the most important thing was accuracy. I wanted to be as accurate as possible, as I could in my characterization, I mean, certainly even her physicality.”

She says Director Jay Roach (the “Austin Powers” films) proved a tremendous help.

“We would sometimes just have the computer there when I was doing the debates, to be able to watch things very precisely, like beat-by-beat, to get the gesture just right because we are all very familiar with her and with those, sort of, iconic moments. I mean, it was just four years ago.”

Danny Strong, the writer who adapted Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s book, pursued his own research.

“I interviewed 25 people from the campaign. Every character in the film, I got to interview except for Palin, who declined,” he says.

“But I was fortunate enough to have her book, ‘Going Rogue,’ which was her beat-by-beat account of how she felt about it. John McCain and [McCain adviser] Mark Salter ... didn’t respond to a request for interviews. So I interviewed everybody else. And then I interviewed many people that were in the campaign that aren’t characters in the film, as well. When you dive into a subject the way you do for a project like this, and you are interviewing all of these people, you get a perspective on them that is so much more profound than the character that we get from the media, just from Internet clips,” he says.

“So the portrayals are based on thorough research and interviewing as many people as possible, and we are trying to be as truthful and capture the essence as close as we can possibly get it. Jay and the actors and everyone [are] just doing everything they can to get to the truth of it.”

Woody Harrelson plays Steve Schmidt, McCain’s senior campaign strategist. It’s a role which hurls Harrelson against type. “Well, you know, I’m not a Republican or not really a Democrat — probably more an anarchist,” he says.

“So the concept of playing this guy who, I think, ideologically, couldn’t be much further away from me, just felt like a real challenge.”

Strong, who is an actor as well as a writer (“Mad Men,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”), says he doesn’t think his teleplay will actually change anyone’s view on the subject.

“I think people are just locked in how they feel. And it’s not designed to change anybody’s minds. It’s designed to just show you the truth and what happened and then to discuss American politics on a macro, kind of, bird’s-eye view level about what this incident means or what this campaign means toward our entire political process. So there’s not an agenda here of trying to get anyone to change their minds one way or the other.”