All The Rory Details | Director Rory Kennedy rocked last year's Global Visions with Ghosts of Abu Ghraib; she's back again with Thank You, Mr. President.
Directed by Rory Kennedy. Stanley Milner Library Theatre. Sat, Nov 8 (4pm).
***1/2
“She’s feisty — full of chutzpah,” says director Rory Kennedy of Helen Thomas, the dean of the White House press corps and the central figure of her new HBO documentary, (showing this weekend at the Global Visions Film Festival). “But she’s also really beautiful.”
At 88, Thomas is unlikely to show up in People’s list of the “50 Most Beautiful People,” but she shines with an uncanny radiance in Kennedy’s film. Famous for asking the toughest questions to presidents from JFK to George W., Helen Thomas has reported on nine presidential administrations in her 64 years on the job. She has covered every scandal, from the assassination of JFK to Watergate, Vietnam, Iran/Contra, Monica Lewinsky, 9/11, and the ongoing Iraq war. She is a walking, talking history book. And she is the one, that little lady in the front row of the White House press conferences, who has the presidents shaking in their boots.
“She’s not afraid of asking the tough questions,” Kennedy says. “I have admired her journalistic integrity and her perseverance for years, so I was very excited to get to make a film about her.” HBO approached Kennedy, whose previous film Ghosts of Abu Ghraib put her on the map, and Kennedy leapt at the chance to put questions to the ultimate questioner. Kennedy even asked her if she ever used her feminine wiles to get answers from the White House.
“She blushed!” Kennedy says. “She actually blushed. I made her blush.”
But Kennedy was most interested by the contradictions Thomas presents. “In one breath she says that the media can’t take down a president,” she says. “I happen to disagree. But then she goes on to say that the media didn’t ask critical questions about the Iraq war. She feels that if the media hadn’t fallen down on their job, we might not still be at war. With that, I agree.”
Although both Kennedy and Thomas have been branded as raging leftists by the American right, Kennedy maintains that Thomas is a fair and equitable journalist. “I have tremendous respect for her,” Kennedy says. “She is fair on both sides of the political divide. She was harsh in her treatment of Clinton during the Lewinsky fiasco, and she was just as tough on Nixon and the Bushes. She is nonpartisan in her quest for the truth — the truth the American people, and the world, deserve.”
If anything, takes pains to reveal Thomas’ humanity and humility. Kennedy describes a photo montage in the film, where Thomas’ face shines in awe as she stands next to each of the nine presidents she has scrutinized. “Tough as she is, she admits it’s hard not to be in awe of that kind of power.”
Kennedy herself knows something about that kind of power. As the youngest daughter of Bobby Kennedy, Rory Kennedy grew up in the spotlight, in a family that is perhaps the closest thing to royalty in American political life — which put her in an interesting position as she made a film about a woman who once covered her own family, often critically. Although she never met her uncle JFK (or her father, for that matter), Kennedy is close to the political action, and is an active supporter of Barack Obama.
“I’m so anxious,” she says during our interview, the day before the U.S. election. (She’s taking a quick break from the phone banks.) “I’m so tired of waiting. But I’ve been through the numbers and it’s next to impossible for Obama to lose. America is ready for a change. The whole world is ready, and we appreciate the support Obama’s been given from Canadians.”
Regardless of what changes Nov. 4 bring to the American political landscape, Kennedy promises Thomas will keep asking those tough questions. Although she was ill for several months this year, Thomas isn’t going anywhere. “She’ll keep putting it to them, for as long as she possibly can,” Kennedy says. “You can’t beat that kind of passion.”
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