Behind ‘Poliwood’ Part 1: Defending Castro, Chavez and Penn

by Christian Toto

Actress Rachael Leigh Cook entered the lion’s den in the summer of ‘08 – the Republican National Convention in her home town of Minneapolis. For a dyed in the wool liberal, that took some effort. But she’s a member of the nonpartisan Creative Coalition, and she figured it was only right to visit the RNC after making a stop in Denver for the Democratic National Convention.

“A lot of people didn’t even wanna go,” Cook says of her fellow coalition members. “I was really curious to go.”

86858615Rachael Leigh Cook

Director Barry Levinson covered Cook’s visit to both political conventions as part of Poliwood,” his film essay on actors who speak out on the issues of the day. Leigh, who chatted with me earlier this week along with fellow coalition member Richard Schiff (“The West Wing”), says she learned more in an hour at the RNC than her entire time at the DNC. 

“These are people who are generally small business owners,” she says of the GOP convention visitors she met during her visit.

“Poliwood” follows coalition members as they visit the two conventions. The actors discuss why they speak out on political issues, share their hardscrabble roots and, at one point, debate Republican pollster Frank Luntz on how they express themselves in public.

That last moment set off some fireworks. Some of the actors resisted Luntz’s advice, a few rather heatedly.

“What doesn’t come through the in film is that he had a real air about him,” Cook says of Luntz. “We all respond to people’s energy and he walked in looking down on us … and he had such an attitude.”

“My hackles went up on the back of my neck as soon as he started,” says Schiff, who calls Luntz a friend. “He doesn’t understand this room … he was under the assumption that we wanted to know how he could help us.”

Schiff has no problem with actors speaking out on political matters. Even if they do so in an in-your-face style like Oscar winner Sean Penn
often does. The veteran character actor says Penn is a close pal and someone who should speak out in precisely the fashion he does.

“He is devoted and dedicated and obsessed with fixing certain wrongs in the world. His perspective is extreme, but not outrageous,” he says.

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Richard Schiff

Schiff defends Penn’s positions on two of the most controversial figures in modern politics – Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.

“The fact of the matter is [Chavez] is not an enemy of the the state. We‘re trying to make enemies out of people who aren’t our enemies,” Schiff says. [Penn] is intensely curious as to why these political figures are being vilified.”

“Fidel Castro went to elementary school in New York. He’s a Yankees fan, a New Yorker,” Schiff says of the former Cuban leader. [Note: I checked in with several online biographies of Castro and could not find information to confirm this. If a reader has more information, please include it in the comments section.]

“You gotta take a look beyond the obvious, beyond what people are trying to make you think and ask questions, and to me that’s what [Sean] is doing,” he says.

Schiff says sometimes public figures need to turn up the volume in order to be heard – and to make an impact.

“Obnoxious people like Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan were spearheading the feminist movement. Why? Thirty years later Hillary Clinton almost became the first female president of the United States,“ he says. “You need people who are loud, people who are gonna say, ‘wait a second, I’m not accepting the truths because it was taught to me in elementary school.’”

“Poliwood” also features a scene in which people in a focus group harangue celebrities for talking politics with the press. One woman in particular sounded offended by people like Cook and Schiff.

“I heard so much hurt in her voice,” Cook says, remembering how the woman accused actors of thinking they were better than she.

“’How come no one is listening to me,’” she recalls the woman saying, adding her anger is misdirected. “She should be mad at the system.”

[Editor's Note: Tomorrow we look behind "Poliwood" from the right with an interview with actor Robert Davi.]


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Posted Dec 2nd 2009 at 4:48 am in Celebrity News, Featured Story, Politics | 147 Comments