Product Overview
Boogie Man is a comprehensive look at Lee Atwater, the blues-playing rogue whose rambunctious rise from the South to Chairman of the GOP made him a household name. He mentored Karl Rove and George W. Bush while leading the Republican Party to historic victories and transforming the way America elects its Presidents. In eye-opening interviews with Atwaterâs closest friends and enemies, Boogie Man sheds new light on his crucial role in Americaâs shift to the right. To Democrats offended by his cutthroat style), Atwater was a political assassin dubbed by one Congresswoman Óthe most evil man in America.Ý But to many Republicans he remains a hero for his deep understanding of the American heartland and his unapologetic vision of politics as war. Director Stefan Forbes offers a timely documentary for this election year as he examines the charming yet Machiavellian, beloved yet reviled, godfather of the modern political campaign. Combining archival news footage with interviews from people who knew Atwater and some who, interestingly, only knew him through the public ramifications of his work, Boogie Man paints a complex portrait of a complex figure: A race-baiting political operative (Atwater may or may not have been behind the infamous ÜWillie Hortonâ ad that cost Michael Dukakis the election in Ü88) who nonetheless loved to listen to, and play blues music; a man who sprang from the South who helped elect Eastern elites like George H.W. Bush; a man whose pupils in the modern political art of war, Karl Rove and George W. Bush (who worked with Atwater on his fatherâs campaign) turned their back on him as he lay dying.
