Miami Herald: Hollywood puts a spin on 2000 recount (Laura Dern as Crazy Katie)

http://www.miamiherald.com/458/story/297137.html

Florida's national election drama that put George W. Bush in the White House goes to the big screen with the filming of a movie in Tallahassee.


PHIL COALE/AP PHOTO
Actress Laura Dern, who portrays former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris in the movie 'Recount,' rides a horse during the filming of a scene Monday in Tallahassee.

BY MARC CAPUTO
mcaputo@MiamiHerald.com


TALLAHASSEE --
Seven years after the election drama that put George W. Bush in the White House, HBO is shooting the movie Recount in the town where the behind-the-scenes decisions were made and where the decision-makers are expecting as much Hollywood spin as political fact from it all.

''They won't be able to resist overdoing it because of Katherine Harris and because the way it usually happens is not the way it usually looks in the movies,'' said J.M. ''Mac'' Stipanovich, a top advisor to the former secretary of state during the recount.

. . .

'This place was packed in 2000 and the last thing you would have done is keep a waiter from serving people food. They were hungry,'' said owner Andrew Reiss, who also took down his Stella Artois table umbrellas because they interfered with the cameras.

Like a number of the behind-the-scenes shapers of the real recount, Stipanovich strolled by Andrews and said he got a kick out of being an outsider looking in and having little idea of what was going on behind the scenes.

The producers want it that way. Actor Kevin Spacey, signing a few autographs and posing for fan cellphone photos between shots, said he couldn't talk to reporters. He did, at least, say what he was doing seven years ago on Election Night.

''In 2000, on this night, I was celebrating Hillary's win,'' Spacey said. So did he vote for Al Gore? Spacey chuckled at the question and said he couldn't talk any more. Dern spoke briefly to a reporter, recalling she was ''literally watching and waiting'' for the 2000 elections returns while in Chicago.

She'll have to really exercise her acting chops.

:)

http://imdb.com/title/tt1000771/

Kevin Spacey ... Ron Klain (Gore's former Chief of Staff)

John Hurt ... Warren Christopher

Laura Dern ... Katherine Harris

Tom Wilkinson ... James Baker

Denis Leary ... Michael Whouley

Ed Begley Jr. ... David Boies

George W. Bush ... Himself (archive footage)

Al Gore ... Himself (archive footage)

That night was the beginning of a nightmare...one I don't want to replay.

I still have the Miami Herald paper AM headline that reads, "GORE WINS!" AND that afternoon paper that says something entirely different.

Come on I'll buy the popcorn and a drink, we'll have fun. :-)

I have to ask myself which one is
the bigger horse's ass?

this could be good.


edit: stupid typo.

Said an off-the-record production insider:
"After seeing how lifelike their gravity-defying
CGI characters looked in the last StarWars film,
they were our first choice for the job."