Among the many costumed monsters I saw thronging the streets of Washington, D.C., on Halloween night, I didn’t notice anyone in a DUH-Be-Ya facemask, but maybe I was looking in the wrong direction.
Just hours earlier, a runaway Cadillac gypsy cab driven by an African emigre in a Versace suit briefly kidnapped me and two other hapless travelers, pulling us from an interminable taxi line at Union Station, locking our luggage in his trunk before we could squawk … or flee.
As the late model vehicle sped past K Street, where I was eventually deposited outside my hotel near Embassy Row (is there really such a place?), I had no idea how far the boundaries between politics and news and entertainment and, well, invention had further blurred.
But first an aside about the Bush White House: The cabdriver said he never drops anyone off there any more. Not like the Clinton Era, when visiting Hollywood stars were plentiful.
Or so he claims.
Yes, friends, the strangest thing I saw on television there later that same evening, besides “pumpkin facials” on MSNBC was episode 7 of HBO’s new “groundbreaking” original series “K Street,” described by its creators as “politics from the inside out.”
Meanwhile, I had no idea there was this innovative HBO series called “K Street,” with George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh as executive producers, and starring – get this – Republican advisatrix Mary Matalin and her Democratic strategist husband James Carville.
“K Street,” says HBO’s website, is “… an experimental fusion of reality and fiction – an entertaining, fly-on-the-wall look at government, filmed in and around the corridors of power in Washington. Starring Beltway insiders Carville, Matalin, Deaver – and a host of political celebrities.”
That word “starring” disturbs me.
What we have here, in other words: the whole unscripted, hand-held camera deal, against a backdrop of “real” and exigent situations, multiplied by the bizarre actuality she’s the prez’s assistant and Cheney’s counselor, while he’s a top political guru.
Sooo recursive.
The series’ gutsy pair of executive producers makes for a team rife with heavy conspiracy credentials. Clooney directed “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” a braggy if speculative biopic suggesting der Gongmeister Chuck Barris actually was a trained CIA assassin. And Soderbergh’s credits include “Sex, Lies, and Videotape” and the cynical drug-war nightmare, “Traffic.”
Carville, of course, is no stranger to being media-ized, perhaps beginning with D.A. Pennebaker’s and Chris Hegedus’ mesmerizing 1994 presidential campaign documentary “The War Room.” He’s also shown up on the NBC sitcom “Mad About You” and in Milos Forman’s 1996 film “The People vs. Larry Flynt.”
On “K Street,” Carville has apparently bulked up since I interviewed him in person back in the ’90s, when he was literally laid up with a bad back. During one tense moment on the current show, his wife chastises him something to the effect of, “Oh, James, why don’t you go to the gym and work out.”
If the episode I saw is any indication, the plot seems to focus upon this firm of lobbyists /strategists /political operatives headed by James and Mary, a firm suddenly awash in subpoenas and inexplicably under investigation by the FBI.
Since James’ and Mary’s “characters” are called by their “real” names, initially it seems a slice of Washington verity, and you begin to wonder how transparent this story really is.
Several scenes in episode 7 refer to the current clumsily executed FBI investigation surrounding prickly incumbent Philadelphia Mayor John Street. And Carville’s shown actually making a campaign stop at a street re-election rally which appears to be a legitimate, rather than staged, event, but who knows?
Ultimately, “K Street” seems to suggest, Who’s to say what’s politics and what’s fiction? And maybe that’s precisely the point.
