Alexandra Pelosi takes a hard 'Right' turn in documentary
By Gary Strauss, USA TODAY
usatoday.com
Alexandra Pelosi films conservative talk-show host Sean Hannity during the presidential campaign. "Hopefully, the right wing will feel they got to be heard." Pelosi says.
By Michiel Vos, HBO
For those wondering why the "liberal media" rarely show interviews of conservative voters on TV, documentary director Alexandra Pelosi offers up a visceral counterpoint in HBO's Right America, Feeling Wronged: Some Voices From the Campaign Trail, a documentary premiering Monday night (8 ET/PT).
From the outset, when Right America opens as tearful supporters commiserate over John McCain's election concession speech, Pelosi focuses on the underexplored legion of Republican Party supporters.
"You don't see these people on television. I have to remind my liberal friends that this is what you find outside of California and New York," says Pelosi, who traveled to 28 states last summer and fall to examine the Republican Party's base.
Though there are campaign-trail snippets of media stars such as CBS' Katie Couric and conservative talk-show host Sean Hannity and glimpses of McCain, Pelosi aimed her camera largely at average citizens — the kind, she says, that stood in line for hours waiting to see McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin.
Sporting anti-Obama shirts and occasional vitriol, many of Pelosi's interview subjects, most of them unidentified, are dogmatic, profane and adamant in their contempt for Obama.
"I don't want anyone to think I'm trying to isolate an extreme perspective," says Pelosi, who interviewed hundreds of Republican supporters. "Remember, there are over 58 million people who didn't vote for Obama."
Pelosi, 38, is a seasoned observer of political campaigns, both from the trenches and party spin-meisters. As an NBC producer on the 2000 campaign trail, she managed to capture enough video to put together a behind-the-scenes look at George W. Bush's inaugural presidential campaign for 2002 documentary Journeys With George. That was followed by 2004's Diary of a Political Tourist.
Still, Pelosi might be considered an unlikely choice to illuminate viewpoints of conservatives. She's the daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat dubbed "Nazi Pelosi" by some of Right America's more extreme GOP partisans.
And visiting campaign venues in the heartland and South, the younger Pelosi wasn't just spurned by McCain campaign workers. Occasionally, she was pilloried, and even spat on, by some diehard McCain supporters.
"There were a lot of un-Christian moments, and people were nasty to me," Pelosi says. "But others invited me over for dinner and asked for autographs. Elections bring out passion in people. I felt like I was making an artifact of a moment in time in the closing days of the campaign."
Conservatives may not agree with Pelosi's politics, but some applaud her efforts.
"Conservatives have a point of view, but they've been turned into cartoon characters by the mainstream media," says Republican Party strategist Cheri Jacobus of Capitol Strategies. "The mainstream media doesn't acknowledge them or portrays right-of-center folks as abnormal. It's been a problem and will be a problem for some time."
Pelosi appears anxious about how Right America might be perceived. "I tried to be balanced; I don't want to stir the pot. But this is a country at war with itself. It's not cute or funny. It's serious." |
