More
- Classifieds
- Cars
- Deals
- Real Estate
- Rentals
- Photos
- Blogs

Style

Jon Lovett’s written for the president, but will that get him to Hollywood?

By Jason Horowitz,September 02, 2011

(Page 2 of 2)

After graduating from Williams College with a degree in math (and a published thesis titled “Rotating Linkages in a Normed Plane”), Lovett hit the amateur comedy clubs in New York. A chance call from a college connection got him on the 2004 Kerry campaign, which led to a stint in then-New Jersey Sen. Jon S. Corzine’s D.C. office. In 2005, he received an e-mail from Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Senate communications director asking, “Are you funny?” Clinton needed a speechwriter for a roast of Barbara Walters, and Lovett’s bits won him a spot. He took on a discreet role with the Clinton campaign, helping out chief speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz, whom he joined in the Obama White House.

He wrote many of Obama’s speeches about financial reform and his “don’t ask, don’t tell” remarks. Colleagues, who insist that Lovett is truly hilarious and not just funny by D.C. standards, said he seeded laugh lines into Rahm Emanuel’s commencement speeches and wrote jokes for Obama’s White House Correspondents’ dinner remarks, for which “Lovett went into comedy overdrive,” according to his former boss David Axelrod.

On a recent evening, Lovett rode his bike to an interview dressed appropriately for his future profession, in Saucony sneakers, jeans and an ironic T-shirt that featured the stages of the moon. (He wears only science-themed T-shirts, including ones with robots and a tippling astronaut over the words “Space Bar.”) He’s spry and self-confident, and his mumbling offstage delivery contrasts with his onstage sarcasm. In December, his comedy routine consisting of Arianna Huffington impressions and airport-security-measure zingers (“Virgin Airlines had to change their name to ‘Technically Still a Virgin’ Airlines”) edged out the midget jokes of budding comedian Grover Norquist to win Washington’s Funniest Celebrity Contest.

* * *

Next fall, two movies will compete with the candidates and cable news for the nation’s political attention span. In the first, George Clooney and Ryan Gosling will star in “The Ides of March.”

“Politics can make for a great story; the stakes are almost always unbelievably high,” said Jay Carson, a former aide to the Clintons and now a Los Angeles-based senior adviser to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s philanthropic ventures. “It can also be horrifically boring,” said Carson, upon whom “The Ides of March” is loosely based. “Waiting on a 12-hour quorum call while you wait for a vote for cloture to proceed to S. Res. 2793 does not make for good television, movies or plays.”

The key, Carson said, is to make viewers feel like insiders while not boring them with the sorts of things insiders in Washington tend to obsess about.

The Clooney project will be followed by “Knife Fight,” starring Rob Lowe, a politically active “West Wing” alumnus, and written by Chris Lehane, a political consultant and former Bill Clinton staffer who made his name in the dark arts of Washington. Lehane was less bleak than Attie, his former office mate, in assessing the chances of Washington operatives in Hollywood.

“In both places, you are trying to tell stories,” Lehane said. But movies allow for multiple drafts and takes, he said, and “in politics, you don’t get the do-over.”

Lovett, who plans to stay involved with the Obama campaign in some capacity, hopes he won’t need a do-over.

The nightmare scenario, he said, is returning to Washington after his westward sojourn and asking, “Have you heard of any speechwriting positions on the Hill?”

“That,” he deadpanned, “would not be ideal.”

Continued1

2