Tanner on Tanner

It is now sixteen years later. Tanner lost the nomination (it inexplicably went to the totally colorless Michael Dukakis, the worst Democratic decision until 2016), and his daughter is trying to make a documentary about her father’s run for the White House. She is pretty much a disaster at all aspects of filmmaking. Her rough cut is shown at a film festival and falls totally flat. She is naturally devastated. But frankly, it really, really sucked, from what we see of it. Robert Redford stands up in the audience and tells her what he thinks is wrong with it, and how it might be fixed, but not even Bob can help this turkey. As before there are cameos, even more this time. How about this list: Al Franken (before he was a Senator) Janeane Garafolo, Joe Leiberman, Tom Brokaw, Ron Reagan, Jr., Michael Dukakis, Chris Matthews, Dee Dee Myers, Dick Gephardt (in a major role) Barack Obama (while he was still running for the U.S. Senate), Michael Moore, Steve Buscemi, Bill Clinton, Charlie Rose, Mario Cuomo, and Martin Scorcese. The political people here were mostly shot on the convention floor of the Omni in Atlanta, while it was actually happening, and they were all happy to pretend to know and like Tanner.

Buscemi and Scorcese are having dinner at Elaine’s, and naturally poor little Alex Tanner has to bother them to get them into her picture. They take it gracefully. Being as it was Elaine’s, I thought it would have been cool to have Woody Allen show up, but alas, it was not to be.