A Mockumentary Pulls In Real Players
Jane Edith Wilson, an actress,
was able to convince politicians like Mitt Romney during the Republican
presidential primaries that she was a conservative worried about the
direction of the country.
By JOHN ANDERSON - Published: September 30, 2012
TORONTO — During the Jan. 3 broadcast of ABC’s “World News Tonight”
Diane Sawyer introduced a heartbreaking segment from the Iowa caucus,
featuring a distraught voter being consoled by Mitt Romney. “Save the small families of America,” she begged through tears, as Mr. Romney hugged her and promised he would.
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The actress Jane Edith Wilson with Michele Bachmann in 2011
As audiences at the Toronto International Film Festival recently discovered, that was no conservative Christian in Mr. Romney’s arms. It was the actress Jane Edith Wilson, star of “Janeane From Des Moines,”
which might be called a mockumentary but which features a rather
prestigious lineup of supporting players, including Mr. Romney, Michele
Bachmann, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. They were running
in this year’s Republican primaries as “Janeane” went shopping for a
candidate to support.
ABC was certainly not the only news organization taken in by Ms. Wilson’s performance, nor Mr. Romney the only politician. As Juana Summers of Politico reported
during a campaign stop by Mrs. Bachmann, “Janeane Wilson, 47, who drove
from near Waukee, Iowa, to see Bachmann got more than 10 minutes with
the presidential candidate but finished still unsure.” Kathie
Obradovich, a political columnist for The Des Moines Register, blogged about Janeane and her indecision about whether to vote for Mr. Santorum, Mrs. Bachmann or Mr. Perry.
ABC News and Ms. Summers declined to comment, as did the Romney and
Bachmann campaigns. But Ms. Obradovich was good-natured about the ruse.
“I do remember there was a camera hovering over her, but as far as I
remember, I don’t think she went out of the way to get my attention,”
she said, adding with a laugh, “When I interview people, I don’t usually
ask for a driver’s license.”
The license would have said that Ms. Wilson is 48, has red hair and
lives in Los Angeles. What it wouldn’t say is that she has appeared on
“Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “ER,” “The Bernie Mac Show” and “Seinfeld,” and
can currently be seen in commercials for Tide and Hyundai. Until she
became a mother, she was a regular on the Los Angeles stand-up comedy
circuit.
She met the filmmaker Grace Lee during the making of Ms. Lee’s tongue-in-cheek “American Zombie”
(2007), and they reconnected while attending a seminar on the
crowd-funding of documentaries. Ms. Wilson had wanted to make a film
about the Christian left (she is a socially progressive Episcopalian).
Ms. Lee had another notion.
“I knew she was a great actress, and a great improviser,” Ms. Lee said.
“We were talking about politics and Iowa; she comes from Iowa
originally. And I thought this would be a more interesting approach to
these topics.”
The topics include the Obama health care plan, Planned Parenthood and
gay marriage, all of which the fictional Janeane fiercely opposes, until
her husband, Fred (Michael Oosterom), loses his health insurance, she
receives a diagnosis of breast cancer, and Fred turns out to be gay.
As
schematic as the plotline may be, Ms. Wilson’s stealth performance as
the frumpy, frazzled Janeane seems singular, and exhausting: not only
did she have to bulldog her way to the front of the press corps to get
close to the candidates, she also had to stay in character even when the
camera was elsewhere.
“It was an elongated improv, for hours on end,” she said. When she was
waiting to meet the candidates, she was improvising with strangers. “Iowans are friendly, and you have to be friendly too,” Ms. Wilson said.
“I like to think I’m a friendly person. And I don’t have contempt for Tea Party patriots or people who are very conservative or different from me ideologically.”
She never abandoned the masquerade, not in Iowa. Which was occasionally
frustrating. “When I was at a Santorum event, a woman told me this
harrowing story about all these emergency room visits she’d been through
and how she owed $20,000 and how she’s going to pay it off on an
installment plan,” Ms. Wilson said. “And then she immediately says how
much she hates Obamacare and how much she loves Santorum and hopes he
wins. And there’s a part of me that wanted to say, ‘Are you crazy?’ ”
On the other side was an Iowa woman who responded to Janeane’s litany of
woes by pressing her phone number on Ms. Wilson and briefing her on
health care options. “She said, ‘Call me, and I’ll walk you through
it,’ ” Ms. Wilson said.
Both actress and director had experience with the caucuses. In 1988 Ms.
Wilson was performing stand-up to entertain volunteers in both parties,
and Ms. Lee was covering them for the University of Missouri student
newspaper.
“We knew it was a media circus,” said Ms. Lee, who grew up in Missouri,
“and an interesting place for political theater. We were frustrated
about what was going on in the election. We said, ‘What tools do we have
as artists?’ We don’t have money, we don’t have Super PACs.
But I know how to make a film, and she knows how to act. We thought we
could combine those things and start a conversation.”
Some of the conversation has been heated. “Two guys got really mad at
one of our screenings here, and one said, ‘This is the most deceitful
movie I’ve ever seen,’ ” Ms. Lee said, referring to a showing at the
Toronto festival. “The crowd booed them. When Jane mentioned, ‘I’m a
Christian,’ one of them said, ‘Aren’t you ashamed as a Christian?’ ”
Critics’ reaction has been less fevered on the festival circuit, where
the film, which will be released in New York on Oct. 12 and on several
online platforms before the election. “It admirably refuses to go the
predictable route of ‘punking’ the candidates for easy satire or cheap
laughs,” Dennis Harvey wrote in Variety, while the entertainment Web
site Toronto Film Scene said, “This film makes Michael Moore look
subtle.”
Ms. Lee, whose credits include “The Grace Lee Project,”
a documentary about women also named Grace Lee, said the intention was
not to deceive. “I never ever say it’s a documentary,” she said,
pointing out that it wasn’t showing as part of the festival’s
documentary section. “I make documentaries. I think I know what they
are.”
For Ms. Wilson it was a job like no other. “It’s the craziest thing I
ever did in my life,” she said. “If something crazier than this comes
along, I welcome it.”
Ms. Lee added, “I have some ideas.”
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