BUILDING A BLOCKBUSTER TO THE 21ST CENTURY

By Jeffrey Ressner

If Bill Clinton felt like vetoing his on-screen portrayal in this summer's Contact, wait until he gets a peek at next year's Primary Colors. The $65 millionish feature is based on the best-selling roman a clef that portrays an ambitious Governor named Jack Stanton whose presidential campaign is rocked by bimbo eruptions and accusations of draft dodging. The movie, which director Mike Nichols finished shooting last week, stars John Travolta as Stanton, Emma Thompson as his strong-willed wife Susan and Billy Bob Thornton as a James Carville-type campaign manager.

So far, everybody--well, nearly everybody--seems to feel the President's pain and has been making a concerted effort to distance the roles from any real-life counterparts. "I absolutely didn't want to do an impersonation," insists Thompson. "My character isn't Hillary; it's a composite of various people." "I'm not imitating anyone," contends Thornton, who went easy on the Cajun histrionics and even grew a close-cropped beard to differentiate himself from the jumpy, clean-shaven Carville. Adrian Lester, the young British actor whose pivotal role as narrator Henry Burton contains elements of Ron Brown and adviser George Stephanopoulos, says he's "just done a little bit of reading on Ron Brown."

But like a Chief Executive who throws caution to the winds and surprises his staff members by being more candid than they are, Travolta isn't the least bit cagey about his role's model. The actor has copied the President's hair color, body language and a remarkably accurate honey-dipped Arkansas accent. "I'm really playing him," admits the actor, who studied hours of videotapes to prep for his latest face/off. "It's false p.r. for me to do it any other way...unless there are some legal issues I don't know about."

Washington has doubtless been wondering whether Hollywood would tone down the more controversial aspects of the novel. "We haven't changed any central events of the story in any way," says Nichols. "But there are mysterious things being written about how we've handled things. I've read reports that we've taken the lesbian past of Mrs. Stanton out of the story. Well, I've read the book five times, and we didn't take it out--it's simply not there." Hmmm. Has Kenneth Starr looked into this?

--By Jeffrey Ressner