The first trailer for The Front Runner, featuring Hugh Jackman as presidential candidate Gary Hart, has landed and it’s everything you’d expect and so much more.
Hart was a senator from Colorado. After challenging former Vice President Walter Mondale in the 1984 Democratic Primaries, and almost pulling it off an unlikely victory, he was widely seen as the one to beat heading into the 1988 presidential campaign.
The Front Runner tells Hart’s tale, specifically through the lens of that 1988 political race and how it all came undone and inadvertently ushered in an era of tabloid political journalism that we are still grappling with today.
Jackman could not be a better choice to portray the candidate, whose campaign sank when it was revealed that he had engaged in an affair. Some of us remember those fateful photos of Hart with Donna Rice aboard a boat that could not have had a better moniker—Monkey Business. The candidate had Rice in his lap and was even photographed kissing her on said boat.
Hart was blindsided by the allegation and never expected that his “privacy” would be invaded. A discussion ensued at major newspapers across the country as to whether this was pertinent to the campaign or not. Clearly, as history has shown, it was and before long… Hart was out, and the Democrats chose Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis—who eventually lost big-time to George Bush, Sr.
Jason Reitman (Juno, Tully) directs the political drama and this thing has Oscar potential written all over it. The Front Runner also stars Vera Farmiga as Hart’s wife, Lee. Sara Paxton takes on the role as Rice and J.K. Simmons is the political operative in charge of Hart’s fateful campaign, Bill Dixon.
For me, this is a truly tragic tale. I recall volunteering for Hart in the 1984 campaign as a kid and truly believed he was what the Democratic Party needed to topple Reagan. Instead, the party ran a candidate in Mondale whose “turn” it was to shine the brightest. America rejected him wholeheartedly as Mondale only won one state—his own, Minnesota. Reagan took all 49 others!
Therefore, it set up Hart to be the presumptive nominee in 1988 and you guessed it—I volunteered once again. You can imagine how crushed I was when this story came out. Hart had all the characteristics that America yearned for in a leader. He was young. He was charismatic. He had policy opinions that were right for the country at that time. Instead, America had to chose between the governor of one of our smallest states and the current Vice President in Bush. We all know how that worked out.
Then again, if Hart hadn’t fallen, we would not have gotten Bill Clinton. Then again, he himself suffered his own affair issues…
Look for Front Runner in theaters November 21.