I was just watching The Daily Show, and Drew Barrymore was the guest. Apprently she’s just finished producing and directing a political documentary – The Best Place to Start – about political activity (or lack thereof) among young people. It airs 9/26/04, 10:30 p.m., on MTV! (Wish I got it.) Is this the first film she’s produced or directed?
The IMDB speaks only of an “Untitled Drew Barrymore Documentary” to be released in 2005 – I guess she rushed production to get it out there before the election. Good going, Drew!
I saw DB on the Daily Show last night. The way she described her own ignorance of our system of government and her constant bubbling about “making politics fun” led me to conclude that this documentary could not have much substance or value. I guess we’ll see.
The whole point is that she realized how ignorant she was, and she took it upon herself to correct that. I’m sure there are millions of young people, hell, millions of older people, who don’t know what “partisan” means, or why voting is a privilege and a precious right. It sounded to me as if she wanted to go out and talk to other young people and find out how knowedgable they were. Or weren’t.
Holding her ignorance against her when it was obvious she realized it herself and wanted to do something about it would be unfair, I think.
I’m interested in seeing it, and I’ve got the doc in my Tivo.
I do hope there’s something about the time limit on registering to vote. In Illinois you have to be registered 27 days prior to the election or you can’t vote.
I couldn’t agree more. The current state of political dialog in this country isn’t already dumbed down enough? Now we have to make it even more simplistic, so the kids with think it’s fun?
I will concede this point; I therefore retract the statement I made about her ignorance (after all, fighting ignorance is what we’re here for). Actually, a journey of self-discovery might make for an interesting documentary; it was all of her constant talk of “fun” that give me lowered expectations (and the brief clips shown on TDS didn’t help). But like I said, I guess we’ll see; I’d much rather be wrong than right about this.
Actually, it’s already aired at least once. I caught it one day this past week, and I wasn’t terribly impressed. She came to no meaningful conclusions, she offered no practicable advice to young people in the same boat, it was all very meandering and featured far too many scenes of Drew sticking her tongue out and making goofy faces.
Of course, in the end, the only real advice to give is “read, understand, then vote” but I don’t think Drew ever even got that far. There were far too many ruminations on the cycle of young people don’t vote -> politicians pay them no attention because they aren’t a meaningful voting demographic -> young people feel alienated and don’t vote -> politicans ignore them, ad infinitum. Yeah, yeah, we get that. Change it. Quit whining.
