E-mail a friendJay Roach
airdate May 20, 2008
Filmmaker Jay Roach is known in the business for having a magic touch. He made his directorial debut with the Austin Powers film series. He also directed and produced the hit comedies Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers. The New Mexico native trained at Stanford and the University of Southern California, where he was nominated for a student academy award. Roach's latest film project is HBO's Recount, which explores the story behind the headlines of the controversial '00 presidential election in Florida.
Filmmaker discusses the importance of the 2000 election and how his film reminds us of the impact it had on democracy. (2:35)
Jay Roach
Tavis: Jay Roach is one of Hollywood's most successful directors, with blockbuster films like "Austin Powers" and "Meet the Parents." His latest project is a look at the Florida election crisis of 2000, remember that? (Laughter) How could you forget? The film is called "Recount," featuring an all-star cast that includes Kevin Spacey, Laura Dern, and Tom Wilkinson.
It premieres this Sunday night at 9:00 on HBO. Here now, a scene from "Recount."
[Clip]
Tavis: Jay, good to see you again, man.
Jay Roach: Good to see you.
Tavis: You been all right?
Roach: It's nice to be back. Yeah, very good.
Tavis: I can tell you been all right. First of all, can I just say, I was thinking when I saw that you were directing this, Jay has directed so many beautiful and brilliant and successful and funny feature films.
Roach: Oh, thanks, man.
Tavis: Why is Jay hanging out with HBO? Now I love the folk at HBO - I love HBO - but, like, why is Jay hanging out at HBO? And then it hit me - HBO is the absolute best at marketing and promoting projects. You can't avoid this "Recount" film - you can't avoid it if you want to. It's everywhere.
Roach: They are good at it. They also do the kinds of films I always thought if I was going to do a film on TV that was a little outside of my normal arena, what a better place to do it than HBO? Because they take on tough projects, sometimes very controversial ones, and this one will almost certainly be a little bit controversial.
Tavis: Yeah, it already - in case you don't - memo to Jay, it already is. (Laughter)
Roach: Yeah, yeah.
Tavis: He's like "it will be." No, it already is. It's a brilliant place to start our conversation. How do you approach a topic like this that is so controversial? There are so many opinions on it, how do you know where to start?
Roach: Well, you trust the research to be honest. That's how we - we knew we'd want it to be compelling and suspenseful. When I read the script I just couldn't put it down. But I knew that it also had to be real, based on fact, based on solid, solid research. And Danny Strong, the writer, interviewed some 40 people, read 15 books, and we hired four guys from the most acclaimed books, which I think you guys have the book thing.
Tavis: Yeah, I'm sure they'll pop it up. There it is right there, yeah.
Roach: Jeffrey Toobin, who wrote "Too Close to Call," David Kaplan, who wrote "Accidental President," Jake Tapper wrote "Down and Dirty, the Plot to Steal a Presidency," and "The Washington Post" political staff wrote "Deadlocked." And they were the four books that everybody talked about as being the most authoritative and told the story entertainingly too, but very, very factual.
And so we - HBO - wisely brought those guys in plus Mark Halperin, and they all helped us going in and then they watched the film coming out and vetted it and said we have little things, but you got the big ideas right. And when you have that many different sort of people arguing about what should be in and what should be out it's difficult, and you're always going to upset somebody because there were thousands of people.
And mental note, don't make films about people who are still alive and have a lot to say about it. (Laughter) So that's when we got into -
Tavis: So as a director, then, you said earlier you read the screenplay, you can't put it down. As a director - inside baseball here - when are you as comfortable as you can be taking on a project like this that you know is going to be controversial?
Roach: Yeah, for me it's about finding the essence of the characters, and I got hooked on this guy Ron Klain, who's sort of the central character, and James Baker and a lot of the other players. But there was something about Ron Klain's approach to just getting the votes counted that I thought was kind of noble and sort of doomed at the same time, because they were always behind. They never got ahead in the recount.
And I just identified with that situation. He wasn't a well-known guy, he wasn't a big political operator, particularly, and he had to take on James Baker. So it was the two of them, and I just got - I tried to study all the archival footage and sort of get how people carried themselves, how they dressed, how they - and all the details of what their day-to-day activity would be like, and to make it as real as we possibly could.
Tavis: Some projects you want an all-star cast for certain reasons. Some projects, you don't want an all-star cast, you want to introduce this person or these persons to the audience. You chose an all-star cast for this project why?
Roach: I chose them only because they were the very best actors for those roles. They in some cases looked a lot like the real guys.
Tavis: I did not - to your point, not to cut you off, I'm just turned on by this. I had no idea that that was Laura Dern. She played Patricia - the look and everything. Her Patricia Harris character was perfect.
Roach: Katherine Harris, yeah.
Tavis: Katherine Harris, yeah. Dead on.
Roach: She studied her and we read her book, and she got not only the look but sort of the personal mythology, if you will.
Tavis: That's a nice way to put it, Jay. (Laughter) That's a very nice way to put Katherine Harris, yeah.
Roach: She had a vision of her own destiny to step into a crisis and be a leader. She identified with Queen Esther from the bible, and we didn't make that up, she used to put that in a lot of her emails. And she was very much a person who saw herself stepping in, and she obviously stepped in maybe a little further than she expected, and I thought she looked sort of scared and vulnerable, and I thought that was an interesting way to try to go at the character, instead of the parody thing, which people are used to, I think, with her.
Tavis: Is America - this is what, 2008? Is America ready for this, number one, and number two, is there anything we learn from this movie?
Roach: It's a great question. I think we forgot. After 9/11, we kind of shook it all clear because we wanted to be patriotic right after and nobody wanted to talk about an election that wasn't quite - didn't feel right. So what I think, the best I could hope for it is that it reminds people how terrifying it was.
It really was kind of terrifying. It felt like the whole country was at stake, or at least the Democratic system, in a way, to not know if the vote counts were accurate, to not know who was going to be president, and to not see any quick resolution. It just kept going and going and going.
One hundred and seventy-five thousand ballots thrown out, a million and a half never counted, didn't go through the machines.
Tavis: Hanging chads, dimpled chads, pregnant chads.
Roach: Yeah, people probably were - probably won't necessarily love being reminded of every aspect of it, but just to capture that suspense and to treat it like a political thriller and remind us how precarious it all was I think is a good thing.
Tavis: That's a perfect word, precarious. It's not just a political thriller. I'm not talking about the movie now; I'm talking about the whole incident, the whole moment. It wasn't just good fodder for a political thriller. This was our democracy at stake. As a director, how do you tackle a project that really is central to the notion of what democracy is or is supposed to be?
Roach: Yeah, that's a big question. I'll tell you one funny anecdote about that is that when I called Kevin Spacey to try to talk him in to do it, I said, "Listen, I know you have other things to do, but if you really care about democracy, I don't know why you wouldn't do this film." (Laughter) "And if we become a dictatorship or something, don't worry, it won't be your fault."
Tavis: Yeah. And it worked, obviously.
Roach: And it worked. But it was tough, because I believe in democracy and I think people want to believe that when they go to the polls, their votes will matter. That's the basis of our spirit and our enthusiasm for participating. And there's so much apathy and cynicism about politics anyway. It's just - people should work harder, I think, to make it so that everybody feels enfranchised and everybody feels like they're part of it, they are actually registering their will with the government through the voting process.
And we should just be able to do that better, and I think that's what the film wants to remind people.
Tavis: You mentioned apathy. Let me raise two other words: antipathy and empathy. And I wonder whether or not, when we get a chance to see this, whether or not we have greater antipathy towards certain of the major players - not the Ron Klains of the world, respectfully - do we have greater antipathy towards certain characters that we know, and/or greater empathy for other characters that we know?
Roach: Well, I think you'll certainly be invited to empathize a little bit more with Katherine Harris through, I think, James Baker actually is a really interesting and complicated guy. And he was a Democrat for many years and he talks about that in the film, about how he transitioned partway through. And I think it's easy if you're on the left to dismiss the philosophy behind some of their maneuvers during the election, but you will see some thoughtfulness, obviously, from that side, and you'll see thoughtfulness, I think, from the Gore team.
Which, by the way, people were very tough on Warren Christopher and Bill Daley and some of the other guys during the time because they accused them of making decisions that compared to the Baker machine weren't strong enough or good choices.
And I did try to show an empathy for being there at that time, looking at 67 counties where you had to go and fight for a recount at every single county, and facing a state where the candidate's brother was the governor and the woman who ran the campaign was the - so the idea that you would have empathy for guys who were just trying to do the best they can and making decisions overnight with no sleep. And I think people were too tough on the Democrats, actually.
Tavis: How do you keep the Democrats from looking like wimps on a project like this, since they ultimately lost? How do they not look like wimps, and have you heard from anybody who you made to look like a wimp in this project?
Roach: Well, we've heard from Warren Christopher that he wasn't happy with the way it came off, but again, I didn't see it that way. I think it's more of a measure of our kind of professional wrestling approach to politics and how we want the fighter and the brawler, and a really noble, wise statesman like Warren Christopher, when he says lines like, "There's no shame in putting country above party," that sounds so philosophical, but guess what? I believe that.
And when he speaks it, we cast John Hurt, and I thought he had a lot of gravity and power. And I don't see him as a wimp, I just see him with an attitude that compared to James Baker's was somewhat destined for trouble, because they were trying to be cautious and diplomatic, and Baker had other ideas. Al Gore echoed his sentiments in his concession speech, which was fantastic that year. So that's how I felt about it.
Tavis: Jay Roach is the director of the new HBO film "Recount," as if you haven't seen the ads all over the place. I close where I began: HBO does a great job of marketing, promoting whatever they do. So check out "Recount" on HBO. Jay, nice to have you here again.
Roach: Thank you so much, love coming here.
Tavis: Oh, it's my pleasure, glad to have you here.
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