LITTLE ROCK — Recently at a red-carpet event in New York, Entertainment Tonight pressed Bill Clinton for an answer to a burning question. At least, it burned the curiosity of ET producers: Was Brad Pitt, as rumored, being considered to play Clinton in a movie?
It seemed like the kind of rumor that shows like ET make up just to have the chance to debunk. But the beam that spread across Clinton's face as he dismissed the idea, calling Pitt far too good-looking, made the answer seem at best a - what did they call it in the Clinton era? - a nondenial denial.
Maybe it's not so far-fetched after all; in movie-making time, the wing of the hall of presidents from the Bush-Clinton-Bush years is now cycling into its time as movie fodder. Whether as main characters or sideline figures in somebody else's sociopolitical drama, the American presidents of the endof the 20th century are going to show up in more than a few movies, and somebody has to play them. Oddly, John Travolta, who portrayed a Clintonesque character in Primary Colors, now seems too old. But makeup can do wonders: The makers of The Queen, for which Helen Mirren won an Academy Award by dowdying herself up to play Queen Elizabeth II, are plotting a sequel incorporating Tony Blair. A "Bill Clinton" will inevitably have to be cast, too.
But these days, Clinton's movie-star associations are keyed to bigger ideas than his own cinematic portrayals. When Entertainment Tonight found him, Clinton was actually on the red carpet with Pitt; the actor and his goodwill ambassador/professional adoptrix mate Angelina Jolie were, if the event had featured a marquee, what you might call the headliners at the Clinton Global Initiative Summit, a kind of threeday mixer that played like a mixer dance bringing together the student bodies of two prep schools, Hollywood and the U.N. Pitt gave $5 million for rebuilding New Orleans; Jolie announced a sweeping educational plan.
That all this happened in front of the swirling logo of the event, with its prominentincorporation of the Clinton brand name, made the event a simulacrum of the primary Clinton effort. Simply put, Clinton seems to be on a mission tomake good cool.
Never has such a broad concept been the subject of such a well-oiled public relations machine, unless you count beef,marketed under the slogan, "It's What's for Dinner." The implication was: We don't care what you do with it, just use it.
That seems to be the idea that the image-makers of good proselytize. For a kind of howto, turn to Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World, Clinton's latest, best-selling foray into authorship. For shorter attention spans, there's a goodworks-celebrating magazine called Good, and the campaign could also be demonstrated to extend to the Clinton School of Public Service, here at the Clinton Presidential Center, as well as to the celebrity-attracting efforts of its neighbor, Heifer International. The Teach for America program is marketed to twentysomething hipsters the way Peace Corps once was.
And, as celebrity spokesmen go, Bill Clinton is a perfect choice, even if a selfselected one. He was cool enough to entertain questions about his underwear on MTV - the senior vice president of MTV News, the segment of the network that produced that seminal town-hall meeting for teenagers, spoke here last week at the Clinton School - and, in a 2007 update, to gamely play casting director for his own biopics and go on Rachael Ray.
Will it work, Clinton's campaign to make good cool? PR wizards talk about "moving the needle" of public perception, as if increased awareness of a product animates a cosmic Geiger counter of the collective consciousness. If Clinton moves the needle on good, how will we know?
And, in the unavoidable question, what will it do for Hillary? Soon, she'll hit MTV herself, in her turn at the townhall meetings the network is presenting for presidential candidates in conjunction with MySpace. The sexual revolution hasn't made underwear questions fair game for women candidates; maybe someone will ask if Angelina Jolie might ever play her in a movie, and Clinton will smile munificently - if not laugh her much-parsed new laugh, a PR campaign unto itself - to show that entertaining such a silly question is the good thing to do.
They said it
"You'll see it - one of the things that gets me in trouble is my love of metaphors. I use hyperbole in the course of trying to paint a word picture. I pay a dear price for it."
- Mike Huckabee, quoted from a Christian Science Monitor-sponsored breakfast inWashington in a new profile in The New Republic.
It "will go down like the Titanic." - Pine Bluff Alderman Irene Holcomb, on fellow Alderman Derwood Smith's proposal to ban sagging pants in the city. In the face of opposition, Smith removed his measure from the table.
"Even the shrillest pro-Stone preservationist might recant." - Men's Vogue's Mark Rozzo, praising architect Brad Cloepfil's extensive face lift of Arkansas architect Edward Durell Stone's love-it-or-hate-it design of the 2 Columbus Circle building in New York. Stone fans have lashed out against the redo.
"Your odds are about as good as my golf game. Which isn't saying much." - One-time Arkansas resident George Hamilton, responding to the question "How do you stay so tan?" on the "Ask George's Magic Golf Ball" feature on Nabisco's "George's Guide to Living the Toasted Life" Web site. In a Magic Eight Ball-style feature, Hamilton, the spokesman for Nabisco Toasted Chips, promises to answer questions "about life, love or style."
High Profile, Pages 45, 49 on 10/07/2007