The War Room (1993) on Netflix

PG19931h 36mDocumentary History

Bill Clinton runs for president in 1992. Strategist James Carville and communications director George Stephanopoulos spin the news for his campaign from its Little Rock, Arkansas headquarters.

Netflix4.2/5
IMDb7.3/104,756 votes
Rotten Tomatoes96%

Trailer

Plot summary

Only the Clinton campaign allowed cameras in during the 1992 presidential race. The access was largely limited to James Carville, the lead strategist, and George Stephanopoulos, the communications director, and to events inside its headquarters in Little Rock, Arkansas, so the project's scope narrowed from the whole election to mostly one room. Over about four months of filming, roughly 35 hours of footage were shot. Earlier events of the cycle reach the screen through newspaper headlines, television news clips and other footage, among them the Gennifer Flowers scandal and the New Hampshire primary. Much of the documentary is about the way politics and the news media feed each other, and how the Clinton and Bush camps each tried to shape the reporting of events and news stories.

Cast

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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The War Room (1993)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

Only Bill Clinton's campaign opened its doors: R.J. Cutler and Wendy Ettinger got D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus access mainly to James Carville, George Stephanopoulos and the Little Rock "war room", narrowing a film about the whole 1992 election to one room.
In April 2008 a YouTube clip of the film was misread as Clinton official Mickey Kantor telling James Carville and George Stephanopoulos that Indiana voters were "shit", and even as a racial slur; Kantor said the footage was doctored and D. A. Pennebaker said he actually said "Those people must be shitting in the White House."
The election events that happened before the Democratic National Convention were covered not with new footage but with montages of newspaper headlines, TV news clips and, according to Chris Hegedus, unused footage from Kevin Rafferty's documentary Feed about the New Hampshire primary.
George Clooney, Ryan Gosling and the rest of the cast of The Ides of March watched The War Room while preparing, using it to "get their bearings" on their characters and on life on the campaign trail.