IT'S LIKE "K STREET," EXCEPT WITHOUT ALL THE SUCKING: I spent the last few weeks following "Tanner '88" on Sundance. And you know what? It's really really good. The series follows (fictional) 1988 Presidential candidate Jack Tanner in his run for the White House, but weaves the fiction into reality--Tanner will run into Jesse Jackson or Al Gore, and they'll play along with the joke. (Notably absent is eventual nominee Michael Dukakis.) The series, 4 years before "The War Room," and 11 years before "The West Wing" was one of the first to give the viewers an "inside baseball" look at presidential politics. And, oh yeah, it's funny and inspiring to boot, as you might expect from director Robert Altman and writer Garry Trudeau.
But don't just take my word for it. As best I can tell, it's the first TV series to get the Criterion Collection treatment. Criterion knows how to do DVDs. For instance, while there's a readily available Disney DVD of "Rushmore," that DVD has a trailer and the movie. That it's. The Criterion Edition includes the movie, a commentary track, screen test footage for both Jason Schwartzman and Sara Tanaka, and, best of all, the MTV "Max Fischer Players" present shorts, used to promote the 1999 MTV Movie awards, in which the "Max Fischer Players" reenact key scenes from "Armageddon," "The Truman Show," and "Out of Sight."
I'm perhaps a little young to fully appreciate "Tanner '88," as I don't have tons of memories of that campaign, but sure as heck can appreciate the current sequel, "Tanner on Tanner." In the sequel, Tanner's daughter (Cynthia Nixon) has become a famous documentarian, and goes on a quest to understand why her father lost. Of course, all hell breaks loose when the rough cut of her film is panned. Worth checking out on Sundance.
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