See How They Run (2003)
Film:
DVD:

Produced by Kelly Duane & Emily Morse
Directed by: Emily Morse
Featuring Willie Brown & Tom Ammiano

Features:

• Additional interviews
  
• Deleted scenes
  
• Extended theatrical trailer
  
• Cast and crew biographies
  
• Trailers
  

Released by Docurama
Rating: NR
Region: 1
Anamorphic: No.

My Advice: Rent it if you're into politics, otherwise no need to seek it out.

In 1999, Willie Brown, incumbent mayor of San Francisco, was running for re-election. There basically twelve players in the running, with only two that had a snowball's chance in ousting him. However, one had an incident of domestic abuse in his past and the other lost the previous mayoral race...probably not because a picture of him naked in the shower with two shock jock DJs...but it no doubt didn't help matters. Especially when you consider four years later, that's what everyone remembers. So Brown might have to work a little, but for the most part, it was in the bag. Enter Tom Ammiano. City supervisor. Stand-up comic. Openly homosexual. And the race began to get a little crazy.

This is a short documentary--clocking in at fifty-six minutes--and as far as documenting the events of the campaign and actually giving us some good behind the scenes looks at what goes on, it does the job. We get Brown post-debate, jumping out of his skin with the thrill of the race. We get aides talking smack about other people's candidates. We get great commentary from several reporters who know the city well--especially from Phil Matier from the Chronicle. So all the pieces are there.

The only trouble is that this entire thing doesn't make for as "scandalous" a treatment as the box copy promises. For anyone who's been keeping up with politics in today's America, I'm not sure that anything in See How They Run will be much of a shocker. I never got the feeling that I was seeing anything out of the ordinary, nor did I get the feeling that the microcosm of San Fran was supposed to tell me something about the rest of the country. Perhaps if Ammiano had actually won (not a spoiler if it's history, folks), you could have had a document regarding a major political upset and a write-in campaign that actually went somewhere. But instead, it's just a document regarding a race in San Fran--which might be of interest to people in California, but it just doesn't hold much for me. Granted, seeing the guy in the record store who knows more about Starsky & Hutch than local elections fills me with a sick horror, but I can get that--and in a better form--from just watching Bob Roberts again.

Extras are pretty choice for a documentary, a type of film that sadly never feels like it has to offer much when it comes to DVDs. Here you get a number of additional interviews with the players involved, as well as scenes that didn't make the final cut--granted, I haven't seen every docu on DVD out there, but this is the first one I'm aware of that offers this. So kudos. The rest are trailers and biographies, the standard fare you would expect.

People with an abundant draw towards politics might find this of interest, and probably teachers wanting to wake up their poli sci classes might give this a go, but the majority of people could probably pass it up and not be the worse for wear.