Pop Culture Politics

Al Franken: God Spoke

Directed by Nick Doob & Chris Hegedus

During their 30-year collaboration, documentarians Nick Doob and Chris Hegedus (often working with D.A. Pennebaker, Hegedus' husband) have chronicled America's sociopolitical issues (The War Room, Town Bloody Hall) and profiled pop culture icons David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Elaine Stritch and others. In God Spoke, the accomplished doc duo follow Al Franken as he campaigns for John Kerry in the 2004 presidential race.

They'd met Franken on their previous film, The First Amendment Project, which documented the Fox News lawsuit filed against this popular SNL jokester for issues regarding his 2003 book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.

"We hadn't planned to make God Spoke. Like many of our projects, it just evolved. We wanted to do something on the election: Al was involved with it, and it just felt like an interesting time to jump in," explains Hegedus. "We don't work with scripts or outlines because we can't predict what'll happen. God Spoke was especially that way-unlike The War Room, which inherently had a beginning, middle and end structure. In this film we'd no idea where it was going."

"Al said, 'If you want to hang out with me, come film me at this Playboy shoot for my book. And that's our film's beginning, where Al's dressed up as God or Moses. Then we filmed him at a NY primaries debate-all the candidates knew him, asked him to speak for them. That was an eye opener for us; we saw how connected Al was and knew following him would be an interesting challenge."

MERIN: You say you wanted to document the election, but the film seems to focus more on Franken than the campaign. How'd that happen? HEGEDUS: We were filming through the election and waiting to see how that played out. When Kerry lost, it just didn't seem like the ending of our movie. Al seemed to be transformed by Kerry losing. Several months later he went to Minnesota, and we went with him. That was when he decided to explore the idea of entering the political ring. I felt that was the ending-because can he be true to himself as a comedian and someone who acts on their political beliefs in a way that represents the people of a state. That's a big responsibility. Is he ready to take it on? Witnessing such an important life transition interested us?It's where the filmmaking process took us.

DOOB: We were devastated when Kerry lost; it was a disaster for us and for the nation. But, frankly, it was good for our film. Al's transformation's what makes it interesting.

Franken's obviously media savvy. If he runs for office, some of his behavior in the film-his penis joke, for example-might bite him in the butt. How'd he influence your shooting and/or editing of the film?

DOOB: Al couldn't have been more hands-off on this film, on this project. In fact, he gave us no advance notice of his schedule-where he was going, what he was doing-which was sometimes problematic because we had to scramble to keep up.

HEGEDUS: He gave us uncensored access, complete freedom to film-even when his wife woke him on election morning, for example. But we didn't intrude too much on his personal life.

DOOB: He wasn't in the editing room-didn't see the film until it was finished.

How'd you get permission to film Sean Hannity and other conservatives? HEGEDUS: We had press access for the conventions-where almost everyone allows you to film them for a while, then tells you to go away. It was challenging, but we got the footage we used.

You must get an enormous amount of footage, along with original news and other footage you use. How do you share editing responsibilities? HEGEDUS: It's a completely collaborative process. Nick's background's more technical than mine: He began as a cameraman; I started out as an artist. But we think alike. Of course, we have differences of opinion-which lead us to discuss issues and try different things that ultimately get us where we agree we should be.

How's the current interest in and proliferation of documentories affecting your work? DOOB: It's great. Five years ago, theatrical release of documentaries was minimal. I think television reality shows-although they have nothing to do with what we do-opened a door. It's a big change, and I think it'll continue.

HEGEDUS: People now think of documentaries as entertaining and compelling in a way they didn't before. The success of that penguin film was a real eye opener, although the distribution model is really in flux because of the Internet and other innovative marketing...Right now, we're so involved in distributing this film, and distributing independent films is a difficult thing to do, especially if you have a subject that's polarizing-like Al Franken.