In 1988, Gary Hart was the front runner for the Democratic ticket to face George H.W. Bush for the presidency. Unfortunately, Hart made a few poor choices, mostly involving model and pharmaceutical saleswoman Donna Rice, and the fall out from that tryst not only created the first tabloid scandal to be covered by big outlets like the Washington Post and New York Times, but it sank Hart’s campaign quicker than a Howard Dean scream.
In the new film, The Front Runner, Hugh Jackman stars as Gary Hart, a Senator from Colorado that had the nation buzzing. Vera Farmiga stars as Lee, his wife, and Sara Paxton stars as Donna Rice. These three principal characters are the focus of the film, even if Paxton’s Rice doesn’t even get her face on-screen until the end of the second act. The film opens with Hart losing the Democratic bid in 1984 to Walter Mondale, and then, in 1987, making his run again. His campaign manager, Bill Dixon (JK Simmons) leads a team of young people who believe in Hart, but no one could see what would happen when Hart attended a Florida fundraiser on a boat aptly called Monkey Business. It’s there that Hart meets Donna Rice and the affair begins — as affair that will end Hart’s political ambitions just as they were getting started.
The performances in The Front Runner are strong, with Simmons and Farmiga setting the pace, and Jackman doing what he can with an unfortunate wig. Hart was known to have great hair and this wig does not represent that, even for a film that takes place in 1987-88. Molly Ephraim also stands out as a young staffer charged with keeping Donna Rice under wraps as the scandal explodes.
The script by Matt Bai, Jay Carson, and Jason Reitman, who also directs, is based off Bai’s book, All The Truth Is Out, and it does an admirable job of getting behind the scenes as the scandal begins to take over the nightly news cycles. The most interesting aspects in The Front Runner comes from Hart’s shock that his extra-marital affair would make news in the first place. He simply cannot believe that he’s being strung up for it, after figures like JFK and LBJ, the latter of which is even mentioned in the script, all had a side thing going with a woman. What Hart never understood was that by 1988, CNN was almost 10 years old, and the 24/7 news cycle was becoming commonplace.
Stories like that of a candidate caught in an affair transitioned off the National Enquirer and into mainstream, and it can be argued that Gary Hart was the front runner of that too. Hart’s scandal also paved the way for other presidents, like Clinton and Trump, to have well-known and well documented affairs and not have it sink their respective careers. This sentiment beats beneath the surface of The Front Runner from beginning to end, and begs the audience to examine how news is framed and delivered, and how it is accepted. These are all issues we deal with now on a daily basis.
Jason Reitman does an admirable job of presenting all of this in an easy-to-swallow film, and his cast makes it easy for him. All in all, we can see current events echoed in the drama of The Front Runner, and that says a lot about us, as a body politic, as much as the people we are all watching and dealing with each day. Heady stuff, no matter what side of the aisle you’re on.
The Front Runner does a decent job of telling Gary Hart’s story, and releasing the film so soon after a contentious election both helps and hurts the film and its message. On one hand, it was interesting to see the parallels to today, on the other, I think all of us are “electioned” out. Either way, This film begs to be watched by political and news junkies to see how far we’ve come, and to gauge it was ever a journey worth taking.
The Front Runner is rated R and is in theaters now.
