Inside the Bubble

Lloyd Grove says Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) loyalists “are kicking themselves for cooperating last year with filmmaker Steve Rosenbaum on Inside the Bubble, a potentially devastating behind-the-scenes look at the Massachusetts senator’s failed presidential campaign.”

“I’m also told that Hillary Clinton partisans are licking their chops to see the film, which ‘could end up being the silver bullet that kills Kerry’s presidential chances for 2008.”

The film won’t be seen publicly until Thursday, but a press release claims the movie “turns a harsh but deeply revealing mirror on the campaign … a disorganized, contentious, self-absorbed team that thought they could win by ‘not making mistakes,’ and keeping their candidate in the public eye without clarifying a position on anything.”

Key highlights from those who’ve seen it privately: “Clinton scowling and rolling her eyes over an apparent Kerry gaffe during a presidential debate; Kerry pretending to interview himself and babbling in Italian while waiting for a real interview to begin; Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) cursing at reporters during a campaign stop, and Kerry message guru Robert Shrum confidently declaring a few days before the 2004 election: ‘Zogby just announced who’s gonna win. Us!'”

“There’s no intention to make a film that’s either controversial or a political endorsement,” Rosenbaum said. “This cannot be a political commercial or we lose. This has to be honest, revealing, questioning, fun and entertaining. It has to show the ride of the campaign experience with all the peaks and valleys.”

“In all election news, the media covers the candidate, not who the guy really is,” Rosenbaum told Daily Variety. “We’re going to try to bash the edges off that media box and show how John Kerry is when he’s with the people he likes and trusts.”

…Rosenbaum will examine Kerry via his interaction with the immediate sphere that surrounds him, including his personal assistant, trip director, press secretaries and strategic advisers, all of whom will be key characters in the movie.

“We want to give people a chance to form opinions that are not based purely on stump speeches,” Rosenbaum said. “Cameras are usually on John Kerry when he’s giving a speech or a press conference or in a photo opportunity.

“We realized that in none of these moments do you get to see him in anything but performance mode,” he added. “The idea of our film is to show all the moments in between.” link