Clinton's Weird Guy

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

/ Flanked by Paul Tsongas on the highroad and Gennifer Flowers on the low, Bill Clinton is doing phone interviews in a hotel room, struggling to keep his presidential hopes alive in the New Hampshire primary. Finishing his chores with the press ("Betcha I said something you can take out of context," he observes wearily), Clinton wanders over to a table where staffers are discussing their image as reported in the press. He claps James Carville, his chief political strategist, on the shoulder and says, "You weird guys gotta stick together."

Thereafter, in The War Room, Clinton is pretty much a voice on the telephone, an image on a TV screen, a remote figure being hustled down corridors and into limousines. And this documentary by D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus becomes less a group portrait of a campaign team in action and more a character study of the candidate's designated weirdo. But that's all right; Carville is a terrific character. If this were fiction instead of cinema verite, Tommy Lee Jones would play the part.

The headquarters over which he presides has the disheveled camaraderie of a fraternity house in the throes of creating its homecoming float, and Carville has the air of the bright kid who doesn't quite fit in socially but whose talents cannot be denied. His language, dress and diet are an affront to mothers everywhere, and he often gropes when obliged to search out the right word for an ad or a statement to the press. He is also smart to the point of cynicism, and there are times when there is something almost vulpine in his manner: his eyes are preternaturally bright, his head constantly aswivel, ever alert for prey or peril. But mostly what you sense about him is the loyalty and the passionate convictions of an outsider who has been taken into a club that might never have admitted him.

His enthusiasms sometimes betray him. He wastes time, for instance, trying to discredit the Bush campaign in a gambit that does not pan out. On the other hand, his laughing ferocity in defense of the candidate when he is attacked on issues Carville regards as diversionary and his confident contempt for his opponents are inspirational. He may not be charismatic in the usual sense of the word, but you can see him hypnotizing the staff. And smooth, soft-voiced George Stephanopoulos, the campaign's director of communications, whose idea of cutting loose is to blow bubble gum while he's on the phone, functions almost as Carville's straight man. This guy may be a wild man, but he's | George's wild man and George bemusedly lets him run.

The War Room is not a complete or even an entirely coherent record of the Clinton campaign. There are things the cameras could not observe. But it is amusing (or appalling) to see a roomful of grownups arguing over whether hand- lettered or printed signs will have the best TV impact at the convention. Or to see ties being tested for their sincerity before a debate. But the film works most instructively, most memorably, as a kind of nature documentary stalking one brightly colored political animal as he patrols his territory.