Last night I finally saw “The War Room” after all these years. It was OK, though not as good as friends had led me to believe. But I did come away with one question: Why was every word spoken by James Carville perfectly understandable? These days you practically need subtitles to follow him. What happened?
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Anonymous
One word: Prozac.
Art Kane
Your disappointment with “The War Room” may result from what I call the “Shane” syndrome. I didn’t see that movie until YEARS after it had opened to wide acclaim as a watershed Oater, and could only say of it, “is that all there is?” (pace Paggy Lee). Of course, what had happened in the interim was that every other subsequent Western produced had — in one way or another — stolen from the original, thereby transforming Shane itself into a creaking cliche.
Aaron Read
Never underestimate the power of post-production editing, Dan. 🙂
Tobe
“A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”‘The War Room’ wasn’t a particularly good movie, but it was, and still is, an important document showing the “let no charge go unanswered” strategy central to the Clinton 1992 primary and general election campaigns. This introduced the paradigm shift that remains at the core of most contemporary election campaigns. What happened to Carville is what happens to every figure in modern pop culture. They are overexposed in the media and become caricatures of themselves.