Laura Laytham

May, 2002

Film/Novel Advanced Seminar

Professor Robert Stam.

The process of adapting any novel to film is always complicated and full of choices. Decisions must be made about what to include and what not to include, what to alter, what to add and how to deal with the complex issues of fidelity in general. For Primary Colors the process of adaptation is layered with even more levels of complexity. The novel itself serves as an adaptation of reality by basing the presidential campaign of fictional governor Jack Stanton on the real-life campaign of President Bill Clinton. The film then goes a step further by consciously mirroring Jack Stanton and his associates on the recognizable personalities of Bill Clinton and his campaign staff. In this way the narrative of Primary Colors travels a path of reality to fiction, fiction to film, and then film to reality.

The trajectory of this journey includes four specific points of reference. One is obviously the book "Primary Colors," released in 1996 by Anonymous, later revealed to be Newsweek columnist Joe Klein. The second is the film adaptation of the novel, released in March of 1998 by director and producer Mike Nichols. The third is the successful real-life presidential campaign, beginning in 1992, of Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton. Finally, the fourth piece is the documentary film "The War Room" by Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker, released in the spring of 1994, which takes as its subject the same real-life primary campaign of Bill Clinton. With the first two pieces focusing on the fictionalized Jack Stanton campaign, the latter two directly involve Bill Clinton, his election campaign and what is now history, as we know it. All four pieces, however, contribute to the character of Jack Stanton.

Stanton is, like Clinton, an enigma who fascinates the people who work for him as much as he enamors the people who makeup his fan-club of supporters. While singularly adored by both crowds, the character of Stanton is innately duplicitous. He is both the candidate that is adored, marketed and defended like a modern political commodity as well as the flawed human being whose inevitable weaknesses, primarily for women, perpetually provide ammunition against the same "great man" candidate. How both sides of this one man are understood is what is portrayed through the eyes of Henry Burton, the narrator of Primary Colors. Henry’s portrayal becomes the understanding of the reader and the film spectator as well as the main sites of difference in the adaptation of the novel to film.

As the novel opens with Henry Burton explaining the magic of Jack Stanton’s handshake, the film version begins likewise but with another character, Howard, divulging the same observations to Henry. Within quite similar scenarios the primal difference between the novel and the adaptation is established. In the novel we are led on an internal journal with Henry, meeting Stanton with him, getting to know the Stanton character through him and eventually learning the harsh realities of Stanton and the modern political machine through Henry’s insight. In the film, however, we are being presented the figure of Jack Stanton through numerous viewpoints. While accompanying Henry’s narration of events in the film as we do in the book, we are always being "sold" on Stanton in the film, whether by Henry, by the other staffers or by the representations of Stanton himself.

Following our introduction to the candidate in the initial handshake scene, we then accompany Henry alongside Stanton on a visit to an adult literacy program in a run down library in Harlem. During this scene, weeping adults recall their troubled illiterate pasts and Stanton listens in tears and then joins in with a delectably improvised but inspiring tale of his Uncle Charlie’s battle with illiteracy. During this scene the essence of the story as told by Henry in the book is captured, but additional revelations are brought about in the film version through distinct lighting techniques that would never be possible in the novel. As Stanton stands preaching his lesson to the students, a bright clear white light shines down on him, as if the sun has somehow broken through the ceiling and illuminated him quite intentionally. As the camera cuts over to his staff of campaign supporters, the light is reflected on them, including Henry, as if it was projecting off of Stanton. While everyone in the room is mixed in shadows in this drab library, the only clear light, as the film would have it, radiates forth from Stanton.

Camera movements also play a part in winning the audience over onto the Stanton side. After almost unintentionally joining the campaign staff, Henry goes with the Stantons and the rest of the group to Big Willie’s Bar-B-Que for a traditional down-home dinner. After eating, Stanton, Richard Jemmons and Willie sit around discussing the virtues of their "Mommas" while Susan Stanton, Howard and Henry continue to discuss campaign strategy. Quickly the "Mommathon" erupts and becomes all encompassing, with Stanton, Richard, Willie, Susan and even Howard all hugging together, crying and singing "You Are My Sunshine." Henry watches this bizarre, unexpected breakdown, all the while not being particularly moved to join in. The camera, and thereby the audience, are at first completely identifying with Henry and observe with skepticism and cynicism the overtly corny feel-good moment. Then, all of the sudden, the camera switches directions, abdicating the view over Henry’s shoulder and is placed, and thereby places us as the audience, within the Stanton group-hug, looking deftly down at Henry. From this angle, looking over Stanton’s shoulder, we can see how alone and left-out Henry is. We are now part of the Stanton club. Eventually, of course, even Henry follows suit and joins the Stanton team, as witnessed in a scene shortly thereafter when even Henry joins into singing the chorus of the same song at the Stantons’ Thanksgiving dinner.

Using subtle lighting techniques and deliberate camera perspectives, the process of buying into the Stanton club is sold to the film audience much moreso than it is in the novel. For quite a while in the book, even up to the Mommathon scene, Henry is internally debating taking a role in Stanton’s campaign. While admiring and noting Stanton’s pristine politics, Henry also repeatedly reflects on his character flaws and the peculiarities of Stanton the candidate. In the film version, however, we know straight off that Henry is being sold on Stanton and each step and scene along the way reinforces Stanton’s viability and Henry’s devotion to him as a candidate. The film employs both methods inherent in its multi-track medium along with the liberties of adaptation to shift the focus away from solely the character of Henry and more onto the enigmatic Clintonesque figure of Jack Stanton.

In this way the focus of the film adaptation is as much, if not more, about Stanton than it is about Henry. In the novel the narrative is completely focalized around Henry, his experiences during the Stanton campaign and his growing relationship with Daisy, another campaign staffer. In the film however, Henry is a means to an end and that end is the portrayal of Jack Stanton and the characterization of Bill Clinton. In this way Primary Colors, the film, is very much about Clinton. It is in fact pro-Clinton and works to sell him as much as it works to sell the candidate, Jack Stanton. Despite flaws, the candidate is shown to be a fabulous politician, still attached to his youthful ideals and essentially a great man.

This constructed noble image is developed and substantiated through the narrative omissions and changes made in the adaptation of the novel to film. For example, many of the more scandalous scenes in the novel are reworked in the film to serve these purposes. First of all, in the novel version there is a racy scene involving Henry, our faithful narrator, and Jack Stanton’s wife, Susan. During breaking down after learning that her husband may have fathered an illegitimate child with a young black teenager, Susan bursts into Henry’s condo, slaps him around with rage and then falls into his arms. In the book this is followed by her firmly kissing Henry and then a brief tryst between the two characters. In the film version, however, Susan simply falls into Henry’s arms. As she embraces him, she rests her head on his shoulder, distinctly and seemingly intentionally looking away from his face. With the scene ending there a clear line is drawn that circumvents any suspicion that anything more could have or would happen between the two. This step away from fidelity to the novel eliminates a scandalous character flaw in Susan, Jack Stanton’s wife, as well as in our trusted and presupposed moralistic narrator Henry.

However the elimination of this type of sordid detail is not alone in the adaptation. In the novel Henry travels to Miami with Libby to investigate former Florida Governor Freddy Picker’s past. While staying at a flamboyant South Beach hotel, he meets a woman whose name he never quite knows ("either Claudia or Gloria," he says) in a bar and proceeds to take her back to his room for a one-night stand. This scene, as well as his entire stay at this particular hotel, is almost completely eliminated in the film. The possible reasoning behind this omission, as well as the other involving Susan, are never explicitly identified. One possible explanation could be that the filmmakers do not believe that their modern film audience is ready to subjectively identify with a narrator who has demonstrates so many innate flaws, particularly when he has been clearly situated in the film as the voice of reason and morality against the frequently questionable character of Governor Stanton. It is through Henry that we witness the events of the primary campaign and therefore it is necessary that his perspective is implicitly trusted. While in the book his flaws serve to demonstrate that even the best people do some questionable things, in the film Henry’s role is to help "sell" Stanton and if he is conveyed at all as an unreliable or untrustworthy narrator then his perspective on the events of the campaign are made unstable.

Beyond omitting these scandalous scenes, other maneuvers within the adaptation are employed in order to maintain Henry as an easily identifiable voice in film. Despite being a black character, his behavior and presentation are made very mainstream. His potential difference is undercut and his credibility is established through frequent references to his grandfather’s important role in the battle for civil rights. His familiar ties to a historical, albeit theoretical, leader of the past qualifies him in a unique way to relay this story of the theoretical historical future. However, in the book there is a greater emphasis placed on Henry’s role as a minority than there is in the film. While the adaptation whitewashes his racial difference, the book uses it as an additional field of uncertainties within Henry’s campaign experience.

While the film creates a girlfriend for Henry who works for the Black Advocate and who initially chases him around, preaching his need to fight for his own race rather than work to elect a southern white governor, this character is given credibility only for a short period of time. Following her attempt to raise the first of many scandalous allegations against the governor (that are subsequently dodged with Henry’s help) she is quickly dismissed from the film (and, ironically, Henry begins his relationship with Daisy). After she disappears it seems also that any of Henry’s concerns about his role as a black man serving a white man have been similarly eliminated. In the novel this Black Advocate girlfriend never exists, but instead there is a constant barrage of black leaders meeting with, chasing down and pressing Henry about his involvement in Stanton’s campaign.

One such figure is the Jesse Jackson caricatured Luther Charles who plays an important role in the last sections of the book in relation to Henry’s growing desire to want to leave the Stanton campaign. Charles appears a number of times in the novel to tell Henry more about his grandfather and what he believes he would have thought about Stanton and other modern issues if he were alive during this campaign. Charles also introduces Henry to a black woman who claims to have been Stanton’s girlfriend before he married Susan. This woman then testifies to Henry that she and Jack were very much in love but that Jack’s eventual decision to marry Susan came about because Susan would serve him better as a wife for his political career. These revelations are completely omitted in the film adaptation.

Despite remaining true to Henry as a black character, his "blackness" and the issues in the book that focus on that side of him are skimmed over, keeping him, as narrator and primary point of identification for the film audience, more much mainstream. Furthermore by not focusing on Henry’s racial difference, the lessons Henry learns while defending Stanton and his eventual disappointment in Stanton’s campaign character derives instead entirely from his relationship with Libby and their test of the Stantons’ morality. By eliminating Luther Charles, this early Stanton girlfriend and others like them (the David Dinkins inspired mayor of New York, for example) the Henry character is simplified in the film version and thereby enables more focus on the Jack Stanton character.

This alteration could also be read as a nod to George Stephanopolous, on whom the Henry Burton character is loosely based. Stephanopolous was also one of the key campaign managers on Clinton’s primary and presidential campaigns and moved on to play a vital role in his early White House staff. Stephanopolous is also one of the two people the documentary "The War Room" focused on. Beyond removing the racial difference emphasis that is in the book in relation to Henry, by focusing less on this aspect, Henry folds better into the George Stephanopolous mold. He is clean-cut, graduated from an Ivy League university and obviously comes from an upper class background. One of Henry’s first moves in both the book and the film is to dress himself for his second meeting with Stanton and verbally explain his choice by saying "No suit, no tie. Just leather jacket cool." This contemplation is not something Richard Jemmons, the character based on James Carville, would think for even a minute. Being as conscious of his own image as he is of Stanton’s is a trademark of both Henry and his source, Stephanopolous. Furthermore, Henry’s charm with the ladies in the film, no matter how far demonstrated, also mirrors Stephanopolous’s real-life notoriety for being a bit of a playboy. When Daisy first meets Henry in the film, she gives him the same sort of starry-eyed look that Mandy Grunwald is often caught giving to Stephanopolous in "The War Room."

Of course, the choice of Stephanopolous as the basis for Henry in Primary Colors is necessary since Henry, as the narrator, is the vehicle through which access to Jack Stanton is provided. The other characters all possess so many idiosyncrasies that telling the story through their perspective would either convey an intentionally contrived viewpoint of Stanton or would prevent identification by either the reader or the film viewer. Susan Stanton is too emotionally involved and, at times, naïve, to convey any sort of viably objective view of her husband. Viewing the candidate through his own eyes also would not serve any objective purpose. Even the Richard Jemmons or Libby Holden characters, beyond being more fun to watch than to watch through, are generally too wild and eccentric to really allow any sort of seemingly objective perspective on the events as they unfold. The objective perspective, which the clean-cut, calm and straight-and-narrow Henry conveys, is at the core of this fictional narrative which crosses between documentary and expose.

We see Stanton in the film only when Henry sees Stanton, just as we understand and see Stanton in the book only as Henry describes him. At every point in the book when Henry enters a room, if Stanton is there Henry pauses to describe what he is wearing, where he is sitting and how those stationed around Stanton are positioned in relation to him. He reflects upon whether the candidate is dressed in a jogging suit or a business suit, whether he sits near Susan or Richard or Howard, whether he looks fresh or tired. Each event seems intrinsically tied to how Stanton is composed in relation to the events, people and environment around him. Even beyond the Stanton-centric descriptions, the dialogue, in both the book and the film, tend to always have Stanton initiate any conversation that takes place when he is involved. It is setup almost as if to reflect the old royal tradition of only speaking when spoken to by the king or queen. Oftentimes even Susan is given this privilege, depending on how forceful or united she is in relation to her husband.

At one point in the film Henry’s role as our guide to Jack Stanton is conveyed quite explicitly. The scene begins with Henry up in the Mammoth Falls hotel room with Susan Stanton and the whole campaign staff as they debate how to handle the newest Stanton scandal. Amidst the arguing, Henry steps over to the window to peer out, apparently in an attempt to figure out where Jack Stanton is during all of this. Sure enough, Henry spots Stanton sitting in the donut shop across the parking lot talking with the shop boy, Danny Scanlon. As Henry stares at Jack, the camera zooms in closer and closer onto Stanton and his conversation. When the zoom can’t go any further, Henry suddenly appears at the door and opens it. As the zoom progresses, the mumbling voice of Stanton, which was only faintly heard, is now made clear as Henry opens the door to let himself, and also us as well. With this new explicit access Stanton’s is heard to actually be discussing policy and life matters with minimum wage earning Danny Scanlon. In this point in the film we come to witness what supposedly nobody else does; that while the rest of the political machine is focused on the scandals and Stanton’s image, Stanton himself is spending his time idyllically speaking to real people and focusing on "issues that matter." A better campaign advertisement couldn’t have been imagined.

Of course, coming to the conclusion that Stanton is essentially, and at his core, a great man is only reached through the story and its narrator’s observation by coming to terms with the flaws in Stanton’s character. An irrepressible womanizer and lifelong politician (in the cynical sense of the word), Stanton, like Clinton, faces accusations of dodging the draft during Vietnam, of getting arrested in Chicago during a demonstration and then later of having his record cleared by calling for personal favors from Chicago’s unscrupulous mayor. Throughout Stanton’s campaign, just as throughout Clinton’s presidency and his own campaign, multiple women step forward with allegations of infidelity and sexual misconduct on Stanton’s behalf. While the book details many of these infidelities as they crop up across the campaign trail, the film adaptation chooses only to highlight the main two (Cashmere McLoed and Loretta McCollister) and even then proceeds to explain them away with carefully crafted rearrangements, omissions and explanations.

One of the biggest differences between the book and the film, and between real-life and this fiction in particular, involves the handling of the Gennifer Flowers, a.k.a. Cashmere McLeod, scandal which erupts early in the primary campaign. In both cases the governor denies the allegations despite the other woman’s testimony at her press-conference. In "The War Room" there is a key scene where the Gennifer Flowers confession and secret tape recordings of Flowers and Clinton on the phone are played. This press conference and the confession and tape playbacks are mirrored in Primary Colors. In the book Cashmere plays two tapes but in the film only one is played. It just so happens that the one played in the film is the one that Henry uncovers to be a fabrication devised of a conversation held between Governor Stanton and himself earlier in the year. In the film this leads to the assumption that Cashmere’s credibility is as nonexistent as any real tape recordings. This is actually not the case in the book or in real-life. In both of these other cases there were additional tapes that could not be explained away so easily. The film version however deliberately skims over this detail and thereby clears the Stanton, a.k.a. Clinton, name.

Of course with some members of the audience having real-life memories of the actual Gennifer Flowers press conference as well as of the viability of the original tape recordings, the events in the film version are constructed so as to help audiences overlook their own previous knowledge. The conversation between Stanton and Henry that is doctored and used in the fake McLeod tape is a very recognizable and memorable bit of dialogue that was the focus of a distinct scene earlier in the film. The statements Stanton makes during this conversation are so unexpected that it is almost impossible for an audience not to remember these same words when they are heard again later in the McLeod recordings. After the tape is played during the press-conference, it is replayed two or three more times while Henry’s memory comes back to him. As he pieces the puzzle together, he is only starting to recognize what we, as the audience, have already begin to realize ourselves: that the tapes are phony. Because of this immediate mental recognition, the revelation that the tapes are a fraud is internalized within each audience member and the discovery is not one so much pointed out to us by Henry as uncovered by our own intuition. As Henry grows enraged and declares "we can’t let them get away with this" we, as the audience, begin to feel likewise. This increases our investment in the discovery and thereby assists in helping to discount the accusations of infidelity altogether, which is, one can assume, exactly the intention of the altered adaptation. By using these subjective tendencies of the seemingly objective cinematic medium, Stanton continues to be sold to us. What seemed to be a blemish on the candidate, our great political commodity, has been wiped away and he appears once again redeemed.

Beyond identifying the strategies, techniques, choices and intentions of the adaptation of Primary Colors to film, and likewise of Bill Clinton to Jack Stanton, it is also important to recognize where this conglomeration places the novel and the film in relation to the Clinton legacy. While other books have come out detailing the events of a particular presidency, they are usually under the auspices of biography or expose. Primary Colors emerges as a work of fiction with an obvious undercurrent of reality that, while disowned by its author, propelled the book into best seller lists, political gossip columns as well as into its own place in the history books.

The novel begins with an "author’s note" that reads: "Several well-known people — journalists, mostly — make cameo appearances in these pages, but this is a work of fiction and the usual rules apply. None of the other characters are real. None of these events ever happened." Similarly located with in the book’s first pages are reviewer comments that attest to how recognizable these fictional characters truly are. The New York Daily News says that Primary Colors "scores direct hit after direct hit, with uncannily accurate portrayals." Richard Cohen of the Washington Post then adds that "nowadays, only fiction can do justice to the truth." The dichotomy of fact and fiction allows the portrayals their poignancy without the bite of a salacious tell-all.

Of course this adaptation of truth in Primary Colors was quite obviously inspired by an earlier film about Clinton’s presidential campaign. The War Room by D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus laid the groundwork for the Clinton familiarity that would make Primary Colors possible. Likewise stylistic devices from the documentary film were carried over into the fictional adaptation. As key campaign events transpire, the accompanying music helps develop the sentimentality or excitement the filmmakers wish to convey as well as continue to bind spectatorial investment with the characters on the screen. For example, in Primary Colors after Daisy victoriously appears on Larry King Live, the film plays ‘Still the One’ by King Missle and shows the pollsters celebrating yet another comeback. This mirrors the playing of ‘Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow’ by Fleetwood Mac in ‘The War Room.’ Likewise music like "On the Road Again" reappears in Primary Colors, particularly when they come in second in the New Hampshire primary.

There are some things, however, that Primary Colors does not retain from ‘The War Room.’ The most obvious piece is the focus on President Bush who plays a somewhat key competitive figure in ‘The War Room’ but who is completely absent in ‘Primary Colors.’ In both the book and the film the campaign is not against an incumbent President but rather a fresh battle between the two parties. This revision alters the circumstances enough to present new characters and at the same time takes note of what actually did happen with Clinton’s election in 1992. By the time the novel and then the film were released the idea of a strong incumbent candidate was basically no longer viable in this obvious recreation of the Clinton campaign. In order to remain compelling, Primary Colors therefore strips the incumbent rivalry and refreshes the primary battlefield with truly potentially threatening opponents.

It is this kind of rewriting that plays a key role in the adaptation strategy of ‘Primary Colors.’ The film then takes these liberties a step further in its presentation of the lead characters. For one, the visual alignment of Susan and Jack works to reinforce the narrative action in the film. For example, at their Thanksgiving dinner Jack is shown wearing a red sweater and Susan stands beside him in a pink one. Later when they watch Daisy on Larry King Live he wears a dark blue sweater and she is then presented in a light blue one. At these times her supporting role is visually demonstrated by her similar but lighter color choices.

Similarly the film is able to attract our attention to events that the lead characters may not be privy to. At one point in the film, Picker is shown on the television giving a speech about why he has decided to run for President. Throughout this scene the camera is placed both with the Stantons in their hotel room so that we are watching the press conference with them, while it also cuts back and forth to the actual press conference location where we are then part of the Picker audience. This serves to temporarily confuse our alignment with Stanton and consider, by virtue of location and presentation, the objective view of Picker — the most sympathetic competitor Stanton faces.

So in many ways the film takes advantage of its explicit medium virtues, adding layers and levels of complexity, understanding and investment to the events of the novel ‘Primary Colors.’ It also takes key steps to revise the Stanton character, the Henry character and even the Susan character into much less controversial figures than their counterparts in the book. In the end it even tacks on a "happy ending" that the book lacks. While the novel ends with Jack begging Henry to stand by him through the campaign, the film ends with Henry dressed in a tuxedo and shaking the hand of the newly elected President Stanton at his Inaugural Ball.