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Finally, a movie-star president I can live with. Last week Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter arrived at the Toronto film festival for the world premiere of Jonathan Demme’s Man From Plains, which documents the ex-president’s U.S. book tour to promote his hackle-raising Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (2006). Just before the screening, the Carters appeared at Ryerson Theater for an onstage interview with TVO talk show host Allan Gregg. After a few days of watching entertainment journalists jockey for position to interview George Clooney and Cate Blanchett, I was gratified to see the Carters get a long and heartfelt standing ovation.
Asked about the experience of being filmed for the movie, Rosalyn declared with characteristic bluntness, “I didn’t like it at all.” Demme was granted unlimited access to Carter during the filming and had final cut of the movie, and Rosalyn expressed some disappointment that the finished product didn’t spend more time on the Carter Center, now celebrating its 25th anniversary. Demme spends most of his time on the controversy over the book, with flashbacks to the 1978 peace accords Carter brokered between Israel and Egypt. Yet the movie covers a lot of ground, including not only the ex-president’s upbringing in Plains but his 1980 electoral defeat to Ronald Reagan, his ultimate vindication with the Nobel peace prize, and the Carters’ recent work with Habitat for Humanity building homes in New Orleans. At Ryerson, Carter recalled that their last building project was supposed to take five days, but after Brad Pitt showed up to help, they had so many volunteers that they were finished in four.
