LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Whatever the present Bush administration
has done or not done to the nation's credibility abroad and political
divisions at home, it has apparently done a world of good for
documentarians.

By triggering seething rage among a host of filmmakers, President Bush and
his crew have inadvertently inspired a renaissance in political
documentaries. Joining such recent, high-profile documentaries as Michael
Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" and Robert Greenwald's "Uncovered: The War on
Iraq" is "Bush's Brain" by Joseph Mealey and Michael Paradies Shoob.

The subject this time is Karl Rove, quite possibly the closest political
adviser any U.S. president has ever had, a man who can rightfully take
credit for the creation of George W. Bush as a politician and president.
Certainly no one else saw the potential in "Dubya" way back when.

If a recent public screening at the American Cinematheque is any indication,
the film will play almost exclusively to anti-Bush audiences. Michael Moore
is enough of an entertainer that he will always engender a certain crossover
factor even among his most ardent detractors. Mealey and Shoob's film is a
little too "Inside Baseball" as it takes a deep dive into arcane Texas
politics as discussed by a series of talking heads. Yet what they say -- and
much of it is hard to refute -- is devastating stuff.

The film is based on a book by journalists James Moore and Wayne Slater. The
film, as the book, takes as its theme that Bush without Rove is, as Moore
puts it, "a ship without a sail." Interviews with political journalists,
Democratic opponents and even a few Republicans courageous enough to appear
on camera lay out a stinging indictment of the ruthless tactics Rove pursues
to bring his boss to power. The film all but accuses Bush and Rove of
invading Iraq as a marketing tool: Rove, the filmmakers insist, wanted to
turn Bush into a "war president" for the 2004 presidential campaign.

The film's thrust is twofold. First, that Rove manufactured Bush: He turned
a former president's underachieving son into a politician who looks and
sounds like a viable candidate and grasps enough of his minder's notes to
stay "on message" no matter what question gets thrown at him.

The film's second and more depressing but not surprising point is that Rove
is a foremost proponent of the current political obsession with not simply
defeating one's opponents but destroying them. Which, as the filmmakers see
it, is exactly what Rove, an otherwise personable fellow, has done his
entire political life.

It goes back to a dirty trick during a 1986 Texas gubernatorial campaign --
in which Rove allegedly planted a bug in his own office, then accused his
opponent of planting it -- to the very recent outing of a CIA agent to get
back at her husband, a critic of the Bush administration. Fellow Republicans
are not immune to Rove's dirty tricks, as witness the 2000 South Carolina
primary campaign against Sen. John McCain, one of the dirtiest in memory.

For the record, Rove denies all these allegations. But as one political
commentator points out in the movie, Rove is completely in charge of any
George W. Bush campaign. Therefore, he must take credit or blame for all
aspects of those campaigns, not just those that pass the smell test.

The film leaves any opponent of the current administration with a
discouraging ambivalence: On one hand, one wants to vehemently decry such
tactics in American politics. On the other, one wants to know where the hell
is the Democrats' Karl Rove?

Tantan Films, BeBe Films.

Directors-producers: Michael Paradies Shoob, Joseph Mealey; Based on the
book by: James C. Moore, Wayne Slater; Co-producer: Elizabeth Reeder;
Camera: Joseph Mealey; Editor: Tom Siiter; Music: Michelle Shocked, David
Friedman. Narrator: Jacques Vroom.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter


08/17/04 13:47 ET