Courting Condi
| Courting Condi | |
|---|---|
| File:Courting ver1.jpg | |
| Directed by | Sebastian Doggart |
| Written by | Sebastian Doggart |
| Produced by | Sebastian Doggart |
| Starring | Devin Ratray, Adrian Grenier, Jim Norton, Condoleezza Rice, Frank Luntz, Carol Connors, George W. Bush, Lawrence Wilkerson |
| Cinematography | Matthew Woolf |
| Edited by | Dan Madden, Tom Lindsay, Diana Decilio |
| Music by | Alexandra Gordon, Kerry Shaw, Carol Connors, Steve Earle, Devin Ratray, Sebastian Doggart, Jess King |
Release date | November 6 2008 |
Running time | 107 min |
| Language | English |
Courting Condi is a movie by British filmmaker Sebastian Doggart that paints an impactful portrait of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice by following the quest of one love-struck soul, Devin Ratray, to win her heart. Ratray is a musician and besotted admirer of Condi who travels across America, learning more about Rice from those who knew her. He speaks to her childhood friends in Birmingham, Alabama. In Denver, Colorado, he performs at Red Rocks [1], where he meets her teachers, and the one man to whom Rice has been engaged, Rick Upchurch. Upchurch tells Devin that Rice made an oath to God not to have sex before she got married, and deduces that her continued single status, and her enduring Christianity, confirm that she is still a virgin -- a revelation that is greatly heartening to the film's hero. Ratray follows Rice's rise to Provost of Stanford University in California, where he also discovers how she reversed affirmative action programs. In Los Angeles, he is given courtship advice by his friend Adrian Grenier,http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/common/images/button_link.png and cult comedian Jim Norton, and is presented with a power ballad to send to Condi from Oscar nominated songwriter Carol Connors. When he arrives in Washington DC, he is assisted by Republican strategist Frank Luntz, and counseled by Newsweek editor Eleanor Clift.
He also learns how, after failing to respond competently to warnings of an Al Qaeda attack on American soil, she made a Faustian pact to sacrifice her principles for power. Through noted contributors such as Colin Powell's Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson, Watergate and 9/11 Commission investigator Richard Ben-Veniste and Congressman David Price, Devin learns how Rice abandoned her position as a realist on international relations and turned into an idealist neo-Condi. He finds out how she misled the 9/11 Commission, failed to prosecute the killers in the 2007 Blackwater Baghdad shootings, even though they were in her employ; and finally selected and authorized torture techniques. [2]
The film is the first ever musical docu-tragi-comedy in the history of cinema, and innovatively combines interviews, archive footage, animated stills, dramatizations and original songs. [3]
A promo of the film screened at the IFC Center in New York City in April 2007, [4] and led to Discovery Communications commissioning the film for $600,000. After pressure from Karl Rove, who warned Discovery that the movie could damage their "good relations with government", Discovery pulled the plug, one week before principal photography was due to start. Discovery settled with the producers, American Princess LLC, for $150,000, forcing them to make the film on a shoestring. The Bush Administration continued to try and shut down the production, raiding the production's offices in DC and planting a bug in the producer's guesthouse. In February 2008, Channel 4 in the UK provided further financing for the film. [5] The film is scheduled for general international release in November 2008, coinciding with the 2008 presidential elections, and for transmission on Channel 4 in December 2008. [6]