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Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story (2008)
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Reviews Counted: 27
Fresh: 25
Rotten:2
Average Rating: 7.5/10
Consensus: Boogie Man is a complex, absorbing study of the contradictory life and times of architect of modern smear politics.
Theatrical Release:Sep 26, 2008 Limited
Synopsis:
Boogie Man is a comprehensive look at Lee Atwater, the blues-playing rogue whose rambunctious rise from the South to Chairman of the GOP made him a household name. He mentored Karl Rove and George...
Boogie Man is a comprehensive look at Lee Atwater, the blues-playing rogue whose rambunctious rise from the South to Chairman of the GOP made him a household name. He mentored Karl Rove and George W. Bush and played a key role in the elections of Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He wrote the Republican Party’s winning playbook which the McCain campaign is currently using.
In eye-opening interviews with Atwater's closest friends and enemies, Boogie Man re-examines Atwater’s crucial role in the remaking of the Republican Party. To Democrats offended by his cutthroat style (to say nothing of the 1988 Willie Horton controversy), Atwater was a political assassin dubbed by one Congresswoman "the most evil man in America." But to most Republicans he remains a hero for his deep understanding of the American heartland, his expert manipulation of the media, and his unapologetic vision of politics as war. Director Stefan Forbes offers a timely documentary for this election year as he examines the charming yet Machiavellian godfather of the modern negative political campaign.
--© Official Site
Starring: Tom DeLay, Michael Dukakis, Sam Donaldson, Ishmael Reed
Starring: Tom DeLay, Michael Dukakis, Sam Donaldson, Ishmael Reed
Director: Stefan Forbes
Director: Stefan Forbes
Producer: Noland Walker, Stefan Forbes
Studio: Interpositive Media
Reviews for Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
Fascinating to a political junkie like me who wasn't aware of the game back then.
A morality tale about the sewer politics of the Republican Party since Reagan and very relevant to the 2008 elections.
Director Stefan Forbes has assembled a brilliantly complex portrait that shines an unnerving light on the man who painted the landscape of contemporary American politics.
By the end of Forbes' brisk, economical portrait, Atwater has been revealed as a repugnant and pathetic soul--and a political visionary, among the first to fully understand and harness the raw power of voters' fears.
A cinematic smear job against Atwater would be the easiest thing in the world, but Forbes is more interested in presenting a complex character study than a piece of liberal agitprop.
Stricken with brain cancer in 1990, Atwater renounced his Machiavellian ways, but as Forbes points out, his legacy lives on in his eager proteges Karl Rove and George W. Bush.
Both fascinating and upsetting, and makes you wish politics weren't so, well, political.
Positively brims over with sour-grapes hearsay and character assassination. But you just know he deserved it, right?
Lee Atwater is remembered as brilliant or shameful, effective or destructive, his life part American Dream, part horror movie.
Boogie Man does not inspire pity for Atwater but sadness that a man of such talent wasted his life and learned his lesson too late.
Instead of attempting a character study, Boogie Man returns an indictment.
Atwater's career is viewed here with fascination and some sympathy, and the pic is sure to win votes in election season with specialty distribs and public tube mavens.
Boogie Man has an awful lot to say about where America finds itself at the 2008 moment of decision.
It's refreshing to see a political documentary that's not just boosterism or political propaganda. If anything, this is an argument for 'cleaner' campaigning.
It's good the film exposes his methods, especially with the final stretch of our current election cycle upon us.
Forbes adroitly fills out his picture of this “marsupial” little man with “the eyes of a killer” through the testimony of those who admired and/or loathed Atwater.
Latest News for Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
September 26, 2008:
Late Republican hatchet man remembered in damning documentary. ![]()
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