Fear, loathing and Philadelphia
Awhole chunk of time ago when I worked nights as a proof reader the upside of the job was having the whole day free to attend the film festival.
In the early years it wasn’t unusual to knock off three films a day before rocking into work at 6pm, my head reeling under the influence of images and of other cultures.
Now that I’m poorer, older and possibly more discerning, I have limited my attendance hoping that the good ones will come back after hearing about them from reliable word of mouths.
This year the first week of the film festival fell on the same date as the Democratic National Convention broadcast on CNN. It felt like I had my own private political film festival parked up on the couch at home watching the show build to a crescendo while madly texting friends about the high quality of the speeches and the commentary.
Sure the convention was awash with slebs, including Meryl Streep, who spoke of female leaders having ‘‘grace and grit’’, and singers like Alicia Keys pounding away on the keyboard to belt out Superwoman just before an image of a glass ceiling was cracked and the first American woman in history was made the presidential candidate of a major political party.
Whoever directed the show with its fill-in background David Letterman style music romping away between the speech, absolutely must be in charge of the next Oscars.
Ma and Pa Obama rolled out speeches that had the crowds weeping with ‘Stronger Together’ness American pride, while a commentator gave us the skinny on how the President, after hearing his wife’s speech and not wanting to be out done, sat up till 3.30am revising his sixth draft along with the help of personal speech writer, Cody Keenan.
The speech writers are the unsung,’ or as in Melania Trump’s case, the unsacked hero/es behind the rolling rhetoric. Keenan’s parents were both advertising executives, he worked in Ted Kennedy’s office, and his speeches, according to the New York Times, are notable for their lofty big picture themes focusing on the individual hard worker who can still dare to have the ‘‘audacity to hope’’.
First Lady Michelle Obama’s speech writer is Sarah Hurwitz, formerly Hillary Clinton’s speech writer, responsible for giving Clinton, in her 2008 run for the Democratic presidential nominee, the line ‘‘18 million cracks in the highest, hardest ceiling’’.
Incidentally, Lady Bird Johnson was the first First Lady to enlist a speech writer, so hats off to the autodidact Eleanor Roosevelt who penned over 1300 speeches when she was the power behind the throne.
The present putative power behind the throne, or the possible first First Gentleman aka the Explainer in Chief, Bill Clinton delivered his signature Country & Western style speech feminising wife Hillary speaking of their lives of public service together when, ‘‘She was doing everything I was doing but just like Ginger Rogers, it was backwards in heels’’.
Bill Clinton may be gaunt, more thin of face making him a dead ringer for actor Dick Van Dyke, but he hasn’t lost any of his easy rocking chair, old dawg chats on the porch appeal.
I don’t know if former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s has a speech writer but he had a straight-from-the-hip-lip saying he was a New Yorker and knew a con man (Trump) when he saw one. Appealing to his fellow Independents not to back a ‘‘risky, reckless and radical choice’’ in Trump, he implored them to back Hillary because, ‘‘she understands this is not reality TV – this is reality.’’
Bloomberg was the first speaker to talk of choosing democracy over a demagogue, while Hillary’s running mate, Tim Kaine, with his distracting hand gestures and fist pumps reminiscent of Auckland Mayor Len Brown’s ticks, talked of Trump ‘‘stiffing’’ students in his colleges and universities, how he pocketed the money of retirees who’d put down payments on his condos, and only gave pennies on the dollar to contractors. He also addressed Bernie Sanders’ malcontents entreating them, ‘‘We should all feel the Bern – but not want to get burnt by the other guy.’’
It was easy to see why the CNN coverage of the DNC far out-rated the coverage of the Republican convention, as senator after senator, governor after governor,