{news} "Nader- A Heroic Pain in the Neck" (SEE NADER FRIDAY NIGHT AT REAL ART WAYS!)

[Green Party-CT]

Nader A Heroic Pain In The Neck 



Susan Campbell
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March 28 2007

How do you tell the story of the Spoiler?

Despite an unmatched career as a consumer advocate, Ralph Nader is probably best known for wading into a presidential candidacy in 2000. If Nader hadn't run, the conventional wisdom goes, George W. Bush would not be president. If Bush were not president, well, fill in the blank.

Never mind that, for some of us, the two-party system is as unwieldy as a bloated tick, and never mind that Nader had and has every right to run for office. Or that Democrats ran an at-best- tepid campaign that year and the Republicans an aggressive one, or that the Supreme Court - not Nader or any of the other third-party candidates or the people who voted for them - made the final decision.

And for that one paragraph, I shall pay. Oh yes, I shall pay. Here, add this to the bonfire: I voted for the guy. Twice. God bless America. Let the bloodletting begin.

It's been seven years since - and just three since his ill-fated 2004 run - and passion still swirls around the iconoclastic Nader, who comes to Hartford's Real Art Ways Friday for a 7:40 p.m. screening of a new documentary, "An Unreasonable Man." The title is from a George Bernard Shaw quote. The documentary explores Nader's boyhood in Winsted and his years in Washington as a public-interest lawyer and, finally, his career as an unsuccessful presidential candidate. (Nader will also sign his autobiography, "The Seventeen Traditions.")

"Unreasonable" was written and directed by two stand-up comedians-slash-comedy writers who began the project as a pilot for a proposed sitcom about a public-interest group similar to Nader's. But the more they interviewed Nader's colleagues, the more the focus became the man himself.

The pilot went by the wayside. Entree was easy for co-director Henriette Mantel, who worked for Nader in the late '70s, when she was just out of college. Since her time as a Nader's Raider, she has written and produced such shows as "The Osbournes" and "Win Ben Stein's Money" and worked on Michael Moore's "The Awful Truth." Co-director Steve Skrovan has written for several shows, including "Everybody Loves Raymond," on which he was executive producer. The sitcom pilot was supposed to be his.

In the film, everyone from former President Jimmy Carter to liberal pot-stirrer Moore pleads with Nader (Moore on his knees, with Bill Maher, in 2004) not to run for president.

But the first half of the film is devoted to Nader's incredible career as a public- interest lawyer, which people tend to forget. Thank him for seat belts, airbags, product labeling, that free airline ticket you get if you're bumped from a too- full flight, and for his part in the Clean Air Act, the Whistleblower Protection Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and that isn't even a fraction.

Earlier this year, the documentary was short- listed for an Oscar, according to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. That list included work by another presidential hopeful - and eventual Oscar winner - Al Gore, the man behind "An Inconvenient Truth."

"There's been a whole wall of anger, even where the liberal pockets are," said Mantel.

Skrovan and Eric Alterman, blogger and The Nation columnist, have sniped back and forth through Arianna Huffington's blog. In the film, Alterman is especially pointed in his anger about Nader's candidacy (and now says he feels editing robbed his arguments of their weight). But then shouldn't a documentary on a controversial man be, in itself, controversial as well?

The surprise for some - even people who think they know Nader - is the depth of his activism early on, said Skrovan. Even people who still disagree with Nader's candidacies often find themselves agreeing with his values, Skrovan said.

"But that doesn't stop them from being irritated," said Mantel.   Copyright 2007, Hartford Courant 
  
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