"Oliver North for Senate? You don't know the half of it..." read the tagline for directors R.J. Cutler and David Van Taylor's 1996 documentary A Perfect Candidate , chronicling the 1994 Virginia senate campaign that pitted Democratic incumbent and former governor, Chuck Robb, against Republican Iran-Contra figure, Oliver North.

Although the film concerns itself with North's failed campaign, the "stars" are Washington Post political reporter Don Baker, who doubts North's sincerity and is unable to understand why he is so popular, and North's campaign strategist Mark Goodin, whose job is to convince the public that North is the "perfect candidate," but later expresses his own doubts about what he's supposed to stand for. "We are obsessed with getting people elected, and we are obsessed with the show. So we provide daily entertainment. What we are not providing is serious solutions to what's going on in the country. Not us, not Chuck, not Clinton, not Bush - not anybody."

To the filmmakers' credit, neither man is given a clear advantage - because neither is a perfect, squeaky clean candidate; North lied to Congress during the Iran-Contra hearings investigating secret arms deals by the Reagan Administration, and is shown lying to school kids about having lied, while Robb had lied about his cocaine use and affair with a teenage girl, leading one voter to complain that choosing between the two candidates was like deciding whether to have "the flu or the mumps. The real question is when we'll find a cure for what's wrong with American politics." The film features appearances by characters as diverse as Watergate plotter G. Gordon Liddy, future president Bill Clinton and then Virginia governor Douglas Wilder.

Cutler and Taylor, who had also made the Academy Award-nominated The War Room (1994), shot A Perfect Candidate in locations around Washington D.C. and Virginia. The North campaign had given the filmmakers surprisingly close access to their strategy sessions, knowing that the film would not be released until well after the election.

A Perfect Candidate was praised by critics like Ron Weiskind, who wrote that the film anticipated "Baker's quest and Goodin's doubt, mixed with the personal capital he invests in the ultimately unsuccessful North campaign, provide an unexpected emotional and philosophical poignancy that raises A Perfect Candidate to a higher level." Chris Hicks pointed out the difficulties any filmmaker would have creating a film about an event whose outcome was already known. "So the journey is the thing. And in A Perfect Candidate, it's quite a revealing, amusing and ultimately dispiriting trip.

SOURCES:

Chapman, Roger and Ciment, James Culture Wars: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints and Voices

Fuchs, Cynthia "Terrific Documentary 'A Perfect Candidate' at Stranger Than Fiction 12 June" Popmatters June 12

Hicks, Chris "A Disturbing Look at US Politics" The Deseret News 6 Sep 96. McEnteer, James Shooting the Truth: The Rise of American Political Documentaries Weiskind, Ron "Oliver's Army: 'Perfect Candidate' charts Senate race" Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 18 Oct 96

By Lorraine LoBianco