NEWSWEEK: When did you first come up with the idea for this film?
Harry Thomason: A long time ago. [Laughs.] It was not too long after Clinton left office. I’d read the book and I’d thought, there is such a story here. But there was so much material flying at everybody then. I went to distributor after distributor, and no one wanted to hear about it because Clinton had just left office and the new president was popular. Finally, we got this little distributor. It took two years after that to try and make the thing and make it make any sense. We had a small crew, and it was a painstaking process of wading through all the information that was out there.
Before you read the book and began work on the film, did you really believe there was a systemic, calculated campaign to destroy Clinton?
I did believe that because I knew a lot of the players and because of the things I read. It never occurred to me that the former president Clinton was without any guilt on some things, but overall there were people out there trying to make something happen that in South America you would make happen with guns. If you are able to get a person out of office [this way], you are just as effective.
Are there revelations that came out during the course of interviews and research for this film that surprised you?
Some of the most startling revelations are, that on the extreme right, how willing people were to do anything to try to get this guy out of office. I knew there was some element of the populace that had a knee-jerk hatred of Clinton, but I didn’t realize how deep it went.
Was it hard to get people to talk to you?
We run a large list of names at the end of the most recent version of the film. There were 137 people on the right who, to a person–with the exception of Jerry Falwell–refused to talk to us. It was really hard to get people on the right to talk. And a lot of news people didn’t want to talk to us.
The documentary shows that even the mainstream media was quick to pick up negative stories on Clinton without scrutinizing the sources as well as perhaps they should have. Could that happen again today?
I think, unfortunately, the same tactics would work … It’s driven by the marketplace. It’s driven by the bottom-tier newscasters and reporters who are not as good, who are willing to take something with less sourcing and go with it, and that forces the mainstream papers to go with things before they would normally. It affects the chain all the way up.
What was it about Clinton that encouraged such a sustained and well-funded effort to discredit and defeat him? Was it his reckless behavior or his popularity that made him a target?
It might have ended up his behavior, but in the beginning, it was his popularity. You have to understand that the Republicans and the conservatives had had the White House for so long that they didn’t want to give it up. They had gotten used to the fact that, while the Democrats might have the House and Senate, they had the White House. So they were stunned when they had to give it up. In the 1970s, with President Nixon, they [Republicans] had begun to build out all these political organizations and this was the first time that they could now band together and focus on one person.
Were you concerned about how this documentary might be perceived because of your personal friendship with the Clintons?
We knew that my relationship with Clinton would be a problem but we thought, if we don’t do it [the film], nobody is going to do it. So we thought we would just try not to have one single opinion of ours in the film and just let people talk. Morgan Freeman, too, has almost no opinion and is just a straight narrator. Then people can only come at us because there is something that is not factually true. And almost everything in the film was in the book and they [the authors] have not had a single court action brought against them, so we felt pretty safe.
Why did you think nobody else would do the film if you didn’t?
It was at a time right after the election; I just think that no one was in the mood for it. They had heard enough about Clinton already and nobody wanted to tackle the project. We actually wanted to have this out six months or a year ago.
What happened?
We were slow.
But your timing is pretty good, with the election coming up in November.
The timing is not bad, but that’s not why we did it.
What kind of reaction to the film have you had from Republicans?
We only read things that people have said–mostly, that this guy [Thomason] is a friend of Clinton. We went in aware of all that, though. I get a lot of calls too asking why all these films are coming out bashing George Bush before the election. But we don’t think we’re Bush bashing. We actually wanted to lower the rhetoric in this country.
What reaction have you gotten from Clinton?
I have been a friend of the former president for a long time, and I really worried about what he would think about this. But I’d made up my mind pretty early on, and I said to him: “I am going to make this film and we are not going to talk about it.” I assume he’s seen the film now, and he is still speaking to me, so I guess it turned out okay.
Clinton hasn’t said anything at all to you about the film–not even that he’s watched it?
We made a pact a couple years ago that we would not talk about it and we haven’t. We don’t think it [the film] is even necessarily about the Clintons.
Would you say it’s more of a commentary on the media?
I think it’s a cautionary tale to the press. The press affects a lot of things in this country and they need to learn to be more careful about what they say [or publish].
You’ve described the process of putting the documentary together as a “nightmare” and indicated it may be your last foray into the political genre. Why?
Well, I don’t know that I said it’d be my last foray, but the material would have to be awfully good. These things [documentaries] are so much more difficult to make than a regular film, and they take such a longer amount of time to do. And you are under so much more scrutiny.
So what subject are you tackling next?
I’m producing “Southern Comfort” with Sissy Spacek. It’s about transgendered people.
You’re kidding.
Nope. [Laughs.] We are always out there on the edge.
