HBO premieres its controversial political movie Game Change tonight about the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign based on the book by journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin and directed by Jay Roach and starring Julianne Moore and Ed Harris. On Friday, Palin sent this email to ABC News: “I believe my family has the right priorities and knows what really matters. For instance, our son called from Afghanistan yesterday and he sounded good and that’s what matters. Being in the good graces of Hollywood’s ‘Team Obama’ isn’t top of my list.” Palin also Palin also told Fox News: “I’m not going to go see the movie, neither is the good Sen. John McCain. We’ve discussed this and realized that Hollywood lies are Hollywood lies. They’re going to do what they can to drum up their money and their machine, and their machine happens to be a very pro-leftist, pro-Barack Obama machine there at HBO that created this movie. And those campaign staffers who essentially threw John McCain under the bus, I think that they should feel some shame, and they should feel some embarrassment, because the movie is based on a false narrative, as you can see in the trailer.”
McCain said “it’ll be a cold day in Gila Bend, Arizona” when he views the film.
Palin’s former aide Jason Recher called the movie a “false narrative cobbled together by a group of people who simply weren’t there.” Randy Scheunemann, who advised Palin during the campaign, said that “to call this movie fiction gives fiction a bad name.” And the Sarah PAC website posted this reaction:
Despite HBO’s best efforts, we have all seen the movie Game Change. We stand by everything we previously said on the record. The movie is at best ‘historical fiction’ – historical only in that Sarah Palin was nominated and campaigned for the office of Vice President. The movie is a series of scenes where the dialogue, locations and participants are invented or rendered unrecognizable for dramatic effect. HBO and its surrogates continue to argue that they spoke to 25 sources. None of them are on the record nor is their level of involvement in the campaign disclosed. Not one source is on the record in either the book or in the movie and it is clear why. The authors of the book never even traveled on the campaign with Governor Palin. We call on HBO to add the fiction disclaimer.
