By HADAS GOLD 02/18/16 12:40 PM EST
A group of former politicians and their aides are bracing themselves for a new HBO movie that dramatizes the 1991 confirmation hearing of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and claims of sexual harassment made by Anita Hill, with some suggesting the possibility of legal action.
The film, titled “Confirmation”, is set to debut in April, but former Sens. Al Simpson and Jack Danforth, as well as at least one former lawyer on Thomas’ team, now are going public with their dismay at early versions of the film script they were given for their input, saying it is a biased portrayal.
Story Continued Below
“Obviously, they were going to go forward with [the film], and obviously there are going to be some repercussions because they’ve opened a hornet’s nest,” said Simpson, who called the script he saw a “seriously distorted” version of the actual confirmation hearings.
Simpson and Danforth both brought up the possibility of legal action if the script they saw is the same one used in the movie when it airs in April, though Simpson acknowledged that as a public figure, it would be a hard case to win. And Mark Paoletta, the former White House lawyer who worked on Thomas’ confirmation, wrote a letter to HBO threatening legal action if certain parts of the script he had seen remained in the film.
“I don’t know what I’ll do but it won’t be fun and games,” Simpson said. “I won’t just sit still. I’ll have a response, I always have. An attack unanswered is an attack believed.”
Sandra Day OConnor_AP.jpg
Simpson, who is played by actor Peter McRobbie in the film, said screenwriter Susannah Grant (a prolific Hollywood screenwriter who wrote the movie “Erin Brockovich” traveled to his home in Cody, Wyoming to conduct research for the film. Simpson said he enjoyed his time with Grant and in his first read of the script, he found minor lines he disagreed with, which Grant told him she would change.
But after he was contacted by Danforth and Paoletta, Simpson said he took another look at the script and realized he objected to its portrayal of others involved. He sent a scathing follow-up letter to the screenwriter, saying it “savaged” Danforth’s reputation and hurt others by putting false words into their mouths with comments about Hill and the confirmation process.
Simpson said some scenes, such as a staffer trying to chase a man through the woods to hand him a subpoena, never happened. Other scenes with Simpson had his character saying that the late Sen. Arlen Specter is “such a belligerent little son of a bitch, you know once he starts on [Hill] he won’t be able to stop himself.”
“I do know she chopped up pretty much everyone. I don’t know anyone who came out very good,” Simpson, who described the hearings as one of the toughest “sons of a bitch” he’s ever been through.
In an interview, Len Amato, president of HBO Films, said the filmmakers had gone through extensive research and that the people protesting are passing judgment on a film they have not yet seen.
“There’s no agenda. There’s no slanting of it. Basically, people are talking about something they haven’t seen and when you see the film, you’ll see it’s quite evenhanded. And that’s because we don’t want to push an agenda. We want to find good stories, tell good stories and let the audience decide for themselves what they feel. If we were to make something that had an agenda we’d be alienating half our audience, so that’s not our purpose here,” Amato said. “Our purpose is to bring a story we think is relevant, bring it to a new generation … who have never heard of it. As we’ve seen in recent events, it’s something that’s part of our historical tradition, the stakes are high and in this particular case, it was really a pivotal cultural moment.”
In his January letter to HBO, Paoletta asserted that in a version of the script he read the scenes that include a character with his name are “false and defamatory” and that he would pursue legal action if they remained in the movie. According to his letter, the scenes included the character named after Paoletta making comments about Hill looking “cheap” and another scene where Paoletta is reviewing Thomas’ affidavit and advising Thomas that he offer a “single, categorical denial.”
“Based on the script I reviewed, it’s a dishonest film,” Paoletta said in a statement provided to POLITICO. “It takes some real facts, even some real testimony, and mixes it with lots of made-up dialogue and imaginary people — all with the intent of presenting the hearings in a very one-sided way. It is clearly not a fact-based film. It’s a propaganda piece for Anita Hill and for Hillary Clinton’s run for the White House. It’s unfair to Clarence Thomas, Jack Danforth and, most surprisingly, to Joe Biden.”
HBO responded to Paoletta’s letter last month, disputing that the two scenes defame or portray him in a false light and advising him that the script he read is “quite outdated” and that he is not depicted in the film at all. According to IMDB, the actor originally assigned to portray Paoletta, Daniel Sauli, is now playing a character called Chris Levinthal. A similar character name change occurred for Harriet Grant, who was chief counsel for Biden during the hearing. The actress originally assigned to her role, Zoe Lister-Jones, is now playing a character named Carolyn Hart.
Amato said the allegation that the film had an agenda to support a candidate was “absurd” and noted that just as in other movies, the film has been changed multiple times from script to editing and beyond, while declining to comment on specific characters or scenes.
“People aren’t really familiar with [the] process that goes into making a movie. It’s not a documentary, so yes, some of the words aren’t going to be exact words said. Some characters might be composite characters, some time periods might be compressed,” Amato said. “This is all within the realm of making any movie, but we don’t do it with some kind of agenda, and we always do it with a higher purpose. We just want to get it right. That’s been our mantra from the beginning.”
“Confirmation” is far from the first movie HBO has made dramatizing contentious moments in political history — and complaints from some of the players in the real drama have also complained. Sarah Palin and John McCain both blasted HBO in 2012 over the film about the 2008 election, “Game Change”, based on the book by Bloomberg Politics’ John Heilemann and Mark Halperin (though other high profile McCain/Palin advisers and aides called the movie accurate). The 2008 film “Recount,” about the 2000 election, received similar scrutiny.
Amato said they went through a similar vetting process with “Confirmation” as they did with “Game Change” and “Recount,” going through primary documents, transcripts, books written by the people portrayed in the film, consulting with journalists who covered the events, and speaking with as many of the people portrayed in the film as possible. (Not all of them chose to participate).
“Even though there are sometimes varying points of view, the events are pretty well-documented. When we did come into the situation where people had different points of view in terms of their interpretations, we kind of cross referenced that with all the source research that we did in terms of speaking with various people and cross referenced with our journalistic consultants and came up with what we thought was the most reasonable point of view for a particular scene or sequence. That’s what we did with “Confirmation” and that’s what we did with all the others,” Amato said.
Biden is being played by Greg Kinnear in the film. According to sources familiar with the negotiations, there has been some concern from the Biden team about his portrayal, though both the vice president’s office and HBO declined to comment on what interactions the vice president and HBO may have had.
But both Simpson and Paoletta said Biden is not given a fair treatment in the film.
“It’s unfair to everyone but Anita Hill, including Joe Biden who did a hell of a good job (during the hearings), the best he could,” Simpson said.
In a statement, Danforth, who is portrayed by actor Bill Irwin in the film, said he was sent a draft of the script in August, seeking his feedback. Danforth said he found the script “was full of errors and distortions where I was concerned.”
“What concerned me the most, however, was an error of omission. The script gave the impression that politics motivated my defense of Justice Thomas during the ordeal of the hearings. That was not the case. In fact, what led me to stand by him was our close friendship, which at that time had already stretched over more than 15 years,” Danforth said.
“Specifically, and as I described at length in my book on this subject, “Resurrection,” I visited Justice Thomas in his home shortly after the accusations against him were made public. I found him grief-stricken. He felt he had been humiliated before the world and that his reputation had been permanently destroyed. It was obvious to me as it would have been to anyone: What made his life worth living hung in the balance. So I stood by my friend. None of this was in the script that I saw.”
Danforth acknowledged he hasn’t seen the full film and, therefore, he’s not fully aware of how he and the “terrible events of 25 years ago” will be portrayed.
“All I can say for certain is that what I read last summer severely distorted the situation as I experienced it,” he said.
Amato said the movie will speak for itself and that they had no need to make anything up.
“What we found is no, we don’t have to make it up. All we have to do is just put it out there,” he said. “That’s what’s kind of crazy about these movies. They are all different in their own ways, they all have the kind of built-in eccentricities and absurdism about the process that you don’t really think about unless you see it in a story.”