For Gore Film, Staff Sought the Man Behind ‘Malkovich’

A surprisingly relaxed, down-home and often funny Al Gore appeared on screen Wednesday at the Democratic National Convention, thanks to a hot young movie director who exposed American audiences to the inside of John Malkovich’s brain.

Spike Jonze, director of the quirky, Oscar-nominated comedy “Being John Malkovich,” was hired by the Gore campaign to make a brief documentary about a day in the life of the candidate. The 13-minute film played to a small convention crowd before prime time, but a national audience caught segments of it that night and the next morning on television talk shows.

The soft-spoken Jonze said he was shocked to receive the call from Gore’s staff in mid-July asking him to do the film. He was even more surprised to find out the vice president loved “Being John Malkovich.”

“Somebody recommended me to Al Gore--which is crazy!” said Jonze in a telephone interview.

So three weeks ago, Jonze packed his camera and flew to Tennessee, where he filmed the vice president and his family for one day.

“It was not a big production at all,” he said. “It was such an out-of-the-blue idea. It was wild. He liked [‘John Malkovich’] a lot so we talked about that. I was just hanging out with him and asking him questions.”

The grainy documentary, which Jonze shot with a hand-held digital camera, is strikingly unlike most slick and over-produced election videos. Jonze captured Gore at his farm in Tennessee, joking around with his kids, sitting around the dinner table discussing movies, addressing his “stiffness” problem with an aplomb and self-deprecating humor rarely seen by the public.

For example, when one of his daughters asks him if all vice presidents are as motionless standing behind the president as he was, Gore responds: “No . . . no. . . I did it really well.”

At another point, while on Air Force Two, Gore looks at his wife, Tipper, and says, “It’s actually very hard to be stiff when your wife is going around barefoot,” as the camera pans down to her feet and then up to her smiling face. “It completely ruins my image,” the vicepresident says in a deadpan voice.

Jonze said he was allowed to ask Gore anything and that none of the documentary was scripted. Jonze asked him why he got into politics and what issues he feels passionate about. Gore takes the filmmaker--and the audience--through a tour of the Gore house in Tennessee, even showing off--to the horror of his wife--a self-portrait painting of a very pregnant and naked Tipper Gore.

Indeed, even Jonze said he was pleasantly surprised to see that Gore is really not as stiff and boring as he seems in the campaign coverage.

“No, he’s totally different,” said Jonze. “I liked him. He seems really impressive, really smart and approachable.”

On “Good Morning America” and other shows, the documentary got great reviews from people who worked with Gore in the White House. George Stephanopoulos and others said the film captured Gore’s deadpan style and his loving relationship with his family. The Gore campaign, noting the good reaction the film had received from delegates and observers, said it was likely it would be shown again at later campaign stops.

Jonze admits he was a little nervous about the job initially, but he said he ended up having fun hanging out with the Gore clan.

“You just think of Washington and the government as such a different world,” he said. “But when I hung out with him, it was just like going over to a neighbor’s house.”