HBO Campaign Doc Shows Same Cool Obama

A new documentary on Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign depicts not much more or less than the restraint and measured response we’ve come to associate with our president, Ted Johnson writes for Variety. HBO’s By the People, to air Nov. 3, was not intended as an “exposé,” producer Edward Norton says, but rather as “a document of what the internal reality of the movement was.”

“The most important stuff in this movie is the stuff that shows Obama talking about Obama,” adds reporter Lynn Sweet. Though there is some drama (Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, the Rev. Wright scandal), the film mostly portrays a disciplined campaign. “These are people who have a kind of instinctive restraint,” Norton says. They “know the presence of a camera affects the way people talk and behave.”