Regie:
Mike Nichols

Drehbuch:
Elaine May

Darsteller/innen:
John Travolta, Emma Thompson, Billy Bob Thornton, Adrian Lester,
Kathy Bates, Maura Tierney

Komödie/Drama, USA/UK/Deutschland/Frankreich/Japan
1998, 144 Minuten, Farbe, OV: Englisch

Chosen as the opening film of the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, PRIMARY COLORS is the barely fictional, uproariously funny and bitingly satirical account of the cross-country campaign by then presidential candidate
Bill Clinton in 1992 via the character of Jack Stanton (Academy Award®
nominee John Travolta, superb), the progressive governor of a small southern state. Stanton is young, determined, driven, intelligent and has a shocking lack of personal morals! Never letting the truth get in the way of a good anecdote, Stanton is a political genius who’s yet to meet a woman for whom he can keep his zipper closed! From a 17-year-old babysitter to a librarian via a longterm affair with another woman, the list goes on and on! His wife, Susan (Academy Award® winner Emma Thompson, equally superb) is in the meantime nowhere to be seen. Stanton’s aides, Richard Jemmons (Academy Award® winner Billy Bob Thornton, excellent) and Libby Holden (Academy Award® winner Kathy Bates, outstanding) have their hands full fending off attacks on their candidate from all angles, digging up the dirt on the others, trying, and failing, to save Stanton from himself.

Elaine May’s screenplay is based on the book by Newsweek reporter Joe Klein, who followed Clinton on the road during his campaign. In the hands of Academy Award®-winning director Mike Nichols (“The Graduate”), the first-rate cast, each of whom has top lined films in their own right, has a ball, playing off each other in the ensemble scenes and shining in their solo scenes.

PRIMARY COLORS, set to the music of the incomparable Ry Cooder, is first class entertainment for a discerning audience. That it’s all (almost) true, just adds to the pleasure. And just for the record, candidate Bill Clinton went on to become the 42nd President of the United States: we all know what happened next.