‘Carville: Winning Is All, Stupid’ Review: James Carville Doc

There’s a problem with James Carville’s new animated documentary, Carville: Winning is everything, idiot.Premiering in Telluride: For much of the film, Carville worries about the dangers of having Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee.

Obviously, the film (which was purchased by CNN Films) was conceived and shot before Biden withdrew from the race. For the past year, well before the June debate with Trump, Carville was deeply concerned that Biden’s presence on the ballot could cost Democrats the election. That all changed on July 21, when Biden withdrew. But by then, the film was nearly finished. A brief end credits announce the news of Harris’s ascension, but the film still feels lopsided.

Still, this film gives us a good look at Carville and convinces us that he is one of the most colorful figures on the scene today—and still making headlines. His childhood in a small Louisiana town with a large black population clearly helped shape him, and filmmaker Matt Tyrnauer visits the town with him. He remembers what his neighbors had to endure. Tyrnauer, who has previously made documentaries about Roy Cohn, designer Valentino, and sociologist Jane Jacobs, has a keen eye for detail.

The event that brought Carville to prominence was the 1992 presidential campaign, when Carville helped secure Bill Clinton’s victory. As one pundit notes, Clinton and Carville both had “a little bit of a thug in them.” Carville successfully neutralized much of the negative publicity surrounding Clinton’s extramarital shenanigans, and he helped shine a spotlight on Clinton’s intelligence and his fairly widespread positions on many of the issues that were on Americans’ minds at the time, particularly the economy. (Carville’s famous line, “It’s the economy, stupid!” played a scathing role.)

Clinton himself provides the director with valuable and original information on the interviews, as does Carville’s young assistant at the time, George Stephanopoulos. Other political figures also give their opinions on Carville’s insight.

Unsurprisingly, another crucial element of the documentary concerns Carville’s 30-year marriage to Mary Matalin, who was working on the 1992 Bush campaign when she crossed paths with Carville. Their opposite-worldly love story has been highlighted before, even helping to inspire a fictional film, The Last of Us Part II, released in 1994. Speechless (with Michael Keaton and Geena Davis). Both Matalin and Carville give candid interviews to the director. They probably had their biggest conflict when Matalin went to work in the Bush-Cheney White House, while Carville vehemently opposed it…