Reply #4: Some of the journey Heath will include: [View All]

[madfloridian]

http://www.thegrassrootsmovie.com/treatment.htm

GRASSROOTS TREATMENT

American presidential politics used to be a serious subject that
mainstream politicians and mainstream media presented to us, the
citizenry. Now that's all changed.

ACT 1
It all began when I left New York City for the farm life of Vermont, which consisted of sitting on my back deck overlooking the Green Mountains and watching other farmers farm.

Then came 9/11. Then I heard the governor of Vermont was having his official portrait painted. I didn’t see the connection right away. But I picked up my DV camera to follow the creation of the painting and, just after the portrait was officially presented, the governor declared his bid for the presidency. It was time to leave the farm.

I set out to follow with camera the man in the painting as far as he
went. However, only official media were welcome—a strange attitude for a grassroots campaign. But the absurdities of presidential politics
had just begun. So I created my own official media credentials by
creating my own official media (Internet), DeanTV.org., and I hit the
campaign trail in my ‘74 green Landcruiser as the network’s lone
correspondent.

Skipping the acts in between, and moving on to Act 4 wherein the movement is just beginning.

ACT IV
Only an outsider, it turned out, would attend one of Howard Dean’s final public events: the Burlington, Vermont hockey game in which his son, wearing sweater Number 12, was playing his last regular season game as a senior defenseman.

As I photographed Dean in the bleachers, munching a macrobiotic cookie
with his arm around his wife, Judy, I marveled that, for once, I didn’t
have to fight for a camera position. In a matter of hours, the
candidate had metamorphosed from media icon to media cartoon.
Correspondingly, the media horde, once a multitude, had dispersed. The
speed of transformation was breathtaking.

The media had gone. But the movement had just begun.

Heath Eiden, director
Deanna Kamiel, co-producer