Taking us, unswervingly, to their leader
HBO's 'By the People' and ABC's 'V' share some eerie inclinations

By Hank Stuever
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 3, 2009

There are some twisted little microbes living in the algorithms of the television programming grid, which might explain the delicious scheduling of "V" and "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama" back-to-back on different networks Tuesday night. It's a nice night of hope, change and delayed ironies -- if you watch both with a suspicious mind.

You can dive into the paranoid, things-are-not-at-all-what-they-seem world of "V," ABC's exciting new science-fiction drama, and then, after a quick potty break, hop over to "By the People," HBO's uplifting but stultifyingly naive, please-drink-a-little-more-Kool-Aid paean to the historical highlights of President Obama's campaign and election.

The telltale alien behavior is everywhere. In "V" (a remake of the early-1980s series), the otherworldly "visitors" want to bring us universal health care. They possess a knack for speechwriting and managing the message. In "By the People," well . . . same thing! It's all about happy people flying in from strange places, smiling at complicitly available TV cameras.

"By the People" is a documentary from filmmakers Amy Rice and Alicia Sams, who've both worked in film production and had the lucky idea of asking Obama's people if they could follow the Illinois senator around with a camera during his involvement in the pivotal 2006 midterm elections. It is here that Obama -- oozing his trademark confidence and still living in a world of coach airline flights and minimal entourage -- calculates his odds in 2008. Soon enough, he decides to go for it. History takes over.

Rice and Sams (with funding and guidance from actor Edward Norton, and what appears to be some heavy lifting and shaping in the editing room from the folks at HBO) tag along for the duration of the Obama campaign. Access is everything, and what's plain in "By the People" is how hard the filmmakers and their crew worked to get every moment they could. They are never not there.

But being there is not everything. At a recent VIP screening in Washington, the campaign's advertising director joked that Rice and Sams wound up in the way of all best shots of America's Obama moments. The audience -- made up mainly of political reporters who lived through the campaign, and some White House staff -- laughed at that, mainly because, as almost everyone acknowledged, "By the People" is really just a very long commercial for Obama.

The vast amount of footage gathered for "By the People" needed to sit in a cellar for a few years and ripen. It's all still too fascinating -- still unfolding -- to require this sort of documentary, which is really more like a souvenir for campaign staffers. For all their access, Rice and Sams capture an awful lot of situations with Obama's minions that go a lot like this:

Filmmaker: Hey!

Obama campaign staffer or volunteer: Hi! Oh, hi!

Filmmaker: How are you?

Staffer: Tired! But it's all good! How are you?

Filmmaker: Great.

Obama gets caught in these exchanges, too -- it's exhausting, but exciting, and hey! The most revealing moments, of course, come early in the film, when Rice and Sams had access to things like Obama's kitchen table and his precocious daughters, and the small-time Iowa press conferences that built a movement. Gradually, their access seems to dry up without them really knowing it. They're on the plane, but not as close. They're outside the hotel suite, in the hall. Quite a bit of "By the People" seems rebuilt from cable news footage, either by necessity or dramatic conceit -- it's difficult to tell.

What "By the People" lacks is a point of view, a la Alexandra Pelosi's "Journeys With George" from the 2000 campaign. Some will rightly view "By the People" as a missed opportunity -- one of several. So far, the reporters, videographers and writers who had the best access to the Obama campaign have failed to produce a defining document, but you know why? Because the opportunity to get inside a campaign is really never that much of an opportunity. There's too much "observer effect" going on in all those hotel meeting rooms.

And it's too soon, or the wrong people had the right access. I'm thinking here, of course, of D.A. Pennebaker's much better 1993 documentary, "The War Room," from the 1992 election, or Richard Ben Cramer's book "What It Takes," which came out four years after the '88 campaign and reflected time and craft.

But you know what is good in "By the People"? The people.

Along the way, Rice and Sams collected what would appear to be a lot of garden-variety, man-on-the-street quotes, in Iowa especially, but this is actually a lot harder than it looks.

From the frat boys on an Iowa porch swearing that America isn't ready for a black, "terrorist" presidential nominee, to the Hillary Clinton devotee who promises to leave her husband of 41 years if he doesn't vote for Clinton in the caucuses, I was once again charmed by the messy, personal side of process. It would take courage to edit Barack Obama, whose message has grown stale, out of his own momentous documentary. But you sort of wished they had.

* * *

As for "V," what a delicious dovetail: Elizabeth Mitchell (whose Juliet character on "Lost" was blown to kingdom come last May) plays federal counter-terrorism agent Erica Evans. She lives in an America (and a world) that has been suddenly visited by enormous flying saucers that have parked over all the planet's major cities.

Fear not, earthlings (and people who normally hate sci-fi): They come in peace. Lead by the knockout ethnic surprise named Anna (Morena Baccarin), the visitors quickly assuage any worries that they are here for violence. It's a cultural exchange. It's community organizing. In return for some of our resources (whaaaa?) the aliens want to enlighten us, advance our science, eliminate disease, build schools and housing, and be our BFFs.

Of course they don't. This is not a spoiler to anyone who saw the 1983 version or knows what happens when flying saucers the size of Lower Manhattan show up. Under their sexy human disguises, the visitors are lizards.

Television production simply doesn't move fast enough for the producers and writers of "V" to have reacted to this summer's town-hall wackiness in such a deliberate way, but it's all here:

The teenagers and college kids just love the aliens and start wearing the T-shirts and joining the movement. The adults are horrified, suspicious and, worst of all, cranky. ("What's happened to my country?" etc.)

The media are naturally charmed. Scott Wolf (aged slightly since "Party of Five") plays a network anchor who is summoned by Anna for an exclusive interview. Just before they go live, she cautions him not to ask any question that would portray her in a negative light.

Gulp. So now he's making "By the People: The Arrival of Our New Friends."

Which really should be called "Eat the People." Because that's why they're here! Shhh, they're listening! A small rebellion forms -- and Agent Evans is swept up in it, while her teenage son falls head over heels for a comely blond alien. Rather quickly, Evans confirms her worst fears: We don't know where these aliens are from! Where are their birth certificates?

Turns out there's a whole other conspiracy going on, which I won't get into, except to say: "Lost" fans, you've found your tide-me-over until Season 6. ("V" airs for four episodes this month as a sweeps appetizer; it's scheduled to return in March.)

And birthers? You've finally got something to watch besides Glenn Beck.

V

(one hour) debuts Tuesday at 8 p.m. on ABC;

By the People: The Election of Barack Obama

(two hours) airs Tuesday at 9 p.m. on HBO.