03. Howard Dean with Heath Eiden

 

Helen Grossman

Hi and welcome to the class of 03 podcast about the year 2003 and all the ways it still affects us today. I'm Helen Grossman, your host slash classmate. And this is episode three, Howard Dean with director Heath Den. So, do you remember what you wanted to be in 2003? Who you wanted to become, how you envisioned the future? I recently found my yearbook from that year and in it, I said I wanted to become a journalist so does making a podcast count as journalism.

I don't know, it's up for debate, right? It's likely that 2003, Helen would have said, what's Up Podcast? There were many different forecasts and fights for the future taking place in 2003 Wired magazine actually dedicated a 60 page special report on the wifi revolution in May of 2003. There was another forecast for the future that year based on a new trend that started on June 17th that day between 7 27 and 7 37.

The very first flash mob took place in a Macy's in Manhattan. In this legendary flash mob. About 100 people showed up in the home furnishing section and surrounded a $10,000 rug. The flash moers all told sales people that they lived together in a free love commune and were looking for a love rug. After 10 minutes of discussing the rug amongst themselves and with sales people, the flash Mobbs dispersed very quickly through text messages, emails and blogs.

The crowd had all concocted this plan to meet and executed it so successfully that flash mobs in other cities immediately followed. And they became a major major part of the summer of 03. On July 24/300 people flash mobbed a bookstore in Rome on August 3rd, a flash mob in Berlin began at 6:01 p.m. with participants screaming, yes, yes into their phones before breaking out into applause.

Later that month, 35 people did the twist in a major intersection in Vancouver. In an article in the New York Times from August 24th, 2003, Rob Walker wrote that flash mobs offer us a lesson about the evolving nature of networks. What flash mobs do he wrote is make networks tangible flash mobs offered this glimpse into the future of communication into a world in which wireless devices allowed people to immediately communicate with each other at any time and organize.

And there was this potential with this combination of communication, location awareness organization that could lead to a new kind of cooperation. There's a warning though in the New York Times piece, and it's articulated via the leading chronicler of flash mobs at the time, which is a blog called and we love this cheese bikini dot com.

Cheese bikini warned flash mob participants not to become chic to corporate interests. The crowd after all can be a valuable commodity. In the New York Times article, Walker writes flash mobs in their apparent pointlessness have steered so conspicuously away from being exploited. For now. Mobbs serve the cause of no cause flash mobs might be a peek into the future of crowds but also perhaps a last glimpse of their good old days.

If flash mobs were one demonstration of the evolving nature of networks there was another unlikely embodiment of that. In 2003 democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean Howard Dean, who had been governor of the small but very lovely state of Vermont announced his candidacy for president on June 23rd, 2003, but he already had a ground swell of grassroots support.

That really was the foundation of his campaign and this organization was primarily built through a network of hundreds of bloggers and a relatively new site called meet up dot com. Dean quickly became the front runner of the race by building a social network on the internet which at the time was a totally revolutionary concept. In early 2003, Howard Dean had gone to a meet up in New York City of his supporters and there were 300 people there at the time.

The leading group on the site was a club for witches which had 15,000 members. That's very impressive, Howard Dean's meet up group in early 2003 had 3000 members, but by March had overtaken the witches. It was an exponential and very rapid curve. A 2004 article in Wired notes that Dean's new supporters contributed money. His piles of money won respect from the media and the media attention pushed meet up numbers higher.

Every campaign depends on a feedback loop. Today, Howard Dean is remembered for one terrible unfortunate audio mishap now known as the Dean scream. But in 2003, he was a real contender and a promising candidate who was Howard Dean though. What was his vision for the future of the United States? He was running for president after all the most audacious thing you can do during the summer and fall when Howard Dean was the front runner for the nomination.

He was painted by other candidates as the most liberal, the most progressive. He was an early and vocal opponent of the war in Iraq. He advocated for universal health care. He said that all states should find a way to ensure gay couples have the same rights as straight ones. Voters also responded to him because of his straight talk. A New York Times article about the unlikely front runner claimed that several voters loved Dean's willingness to say.

I don't know when asked if photographs of Saddam Hussein's dead Children should be published by news outlets. The truth is more complicated than that. Of course, it always is. Howard Dean was seen in Vermont actually as more moderate centrist in his time as governor, he cut taxes. He favored a very incremental approach to health care reform.

He regularly embraced business interests and even won a top rating from the NR A. He was criticized in the LGBT Q community for signing civil unions into law but not gay marriage and he did so only by pressure from the State Supreme Court. It also worth mentioning that Howard Dean A Yale educated white man was governor of one of the least populous whitest states in the country.

So it was always a question of how his liberal bona fides from Vermont could translate on a national scale. Howard Dean took the plunge into the presidential race. And his very public mercilessly mocked downfall was a painful outcome of his candidacy. But you never know when you take the plunge how the risk will pay off or when our guest today took a risk in 2003 when he decided to make a documentary film about Howard Dean's presidential campaign, Heath Eiden made a movie called

Dean and Me Lessons from an American primary. The very first lines from the film are the ones that you heard at the top of the episode. Heath tells us the viewers, the story of him and his wife moving to Vermont from New York to settle somewhere that they could raise their family. And after leaving his New York life behind Heath tried to figure out what the next steps in his career would be.

And the opportunity maybe the risk presented itself when Howard Dean, his quote unquote neighbor down the road announced that he was running for president and Heath knew he could follow the campaign with a camera and capture something historic. The film may never have found its way into the mainstream history is written by the winners, right?

But I found it during my 2003 research. And so I reached out to Heath to speak about his experience making the film and he generously agreed to speak with me. So if you're interested in politics or the political process or Howard Dean or 2003, I I really do recommend checking out Heath's movie Dean and me, which is available on his website stow media group dot com and it'll also be linked in the show notes. And one last thing there was an issue with my audio in this interview, but just so

fitting, right? So all I ask is that you extend to me the compassion and the benefit of the doubt that we failed to offer Howard Dean after his audio gaffe thank you for being patient with me as I grow into this podcast. On that note, here's my interview with Heath Eiden, Director of Dean and Me Lessons from an American Primary. Stay tuned after the interview for our song of the week.

...

 

Heath Eiden

I actually started the process because I, I knew the artist who was doing, doing his portrait for the the State House and in Dean's fashion, he had they call it the LL Dean painting in the in the state House because it was his governor's portrait. And I called the little clip, the governor's portrait. and you know, it, it got a little, little press locally and all that because he's in a canoe with a paddle and he's got, you know, the bean stuff on and, it's just a very unique portrait

instead of the traditional ones that you see, you know, with the side view of, of the governor. He, he, he went out of his way to show the beauty of Vermont. I mean, to me it's signified, not having the history that I had with, politics in Minnesota and so forth. It was in my education. It was obvious to me that this guy was gonna be running for president and as the out outside liberal candidate and anti-war candidate and there was plenty of room for.

And I also was like, what am I gonna do in Vermont? And I always wanted to get back to the filmmaking that I had done in high school and other years. And so that was just an opportunity. It was just like, you know what he's gonna be in New Hampshire all the time. I'm an hour away from New Hampshire. And it just kind of snowballed.

 

Helen Grossman

Yeah. What was your background in politics in Minnesota?

 

Heath Eiden

My mother had a native American Indian art gallery in Minneapolis. And she always met a lot of interesting people and I used to hang out down there and at one point she had this guy named Ted Monde, come in with his friend, Ted Yates and Ted Monde's father, of course, was about to embark on his journey to win the Democratic nomination back when, Reagan was president.

And, and so I tagged along for that was able to get cigar smoke, filled the room, access to hang out and watch this process when I was, I think I was 15 when I ended up in San Francisco for the Democratic nomination and, and was able to, you know, see his acceptance speech and guys like Jesse Jackson and Ted Kennedy and, and, and all, all those guys, but also, Walter's son, Ted was just like a, like a big brother to me.

And so he would bring me, you know, he'd show me how it worked, like the telephone, canvas calling and things like that and, and he just showed me the ropes, but he just made sure I had good influences around me.

 

Helen Grossman

What, what was it about Howard Dean's run that like, felt like it was worth pursuing as a filmmaker, you know, you knew that he was in the area and that he would be sort of in New Hampshire a lot and that you could easily travel and follow along the campaign. But was there anything about him personally and his views that felt really magnetic to you or that felt really inspiring? Yeah. Yeah.

 

Heath Eiden

No, II, I did find him inspiring. Of course, you know, ironically, a lot of it was about logistics, but it wasn't, it wasn't just that, it just felt like, you know, things were falling in my lap that, that from my, you know, when I was younger, doing, doing films in high school and things like that. It just, it just was like, you know, this guy is gonna be a magnet for, he's a, a fire, a fire brander and, and he's gonna catalyze this anti-war movement.

On one hand, I think people miss the, the point of the film, which is, which is not so much about Howard Dean, but it's more about how, you know, the mass media is choosing our candidates for us and, and direct ways that, that don't give a chance for someone from the outside to be able to get a shot. And actually in back to that populist message in there to the point where we all kind of know we're just gonna be, you know, told who we're gonna get at this point.

And, you know, as soon as it looks like we're gonna get someone like Howard Dean who's willing to, you know, talk about issues like guns and, and, and the environment and health care and all, you know, all the kitchen table issues back when there were kitchen tables. He struck me as somebody who, who could possibly do this. And, and, you know, part of my cynicism today is of course, from my lesson of my own film, which is, you know, yeah, they figured out a way to, to pull those messages

right out and keep the status quo going with the manufacturing of the, the so-called stream and, and all that and, he might not have been, you know, the best candidate he couldn't get out of his own way when he could have pivoted in certain ways to, appeal to the masses. More Governor Dean tonight.

 

Howard Dean

I think we're beginning a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party as well as for the soul of America. I don't think we can win the White House if we spend all our time talking about the patient's bill of rights instead of insisting that we have health insurance for every American as we do for every child under 18 in Vermont. I don't think we can win the White House by voting for the no child left behind bill, which should be called the no school board left standing bill instead of

funding child care for for most Children as we do in the state of Vermont. I don't think we can vote for $350 billion tax cuts which prevent us from balancing the budget and prevent us from funding early education as we do in the state of Vermont. And I don't think that we can vote for a new doctrine of presidential preemptive war and still keep American values. I'm Howard Dean and I'm here once again to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.

 

Heath Eiden

Local media, you know, always chuckled about this because, you know, Howard Dean was known as more of a, you know, a centralized figure.

 

Helen Grossman, Heath Eiden

So to see him screaming about more liberal issues was a bit of an insult to some of the old time liberals here in Vermont, you, you set out in 2003, right?

 

Helen Grossman

Like in the, in the summer and then you ended up following the campaign through like March 2004. That timeline, correct?

 

Heath Eiden

Yeah, it, it, I mean, I basically, you know, as a kind of became a, there's a joke that talker and I had about this being a dead show. It kind of became like a, you know, OK, we're going to, we're going to this state, we're going to this state, we're going to this state and there weren't many things that I, that I missed on our way to Dean in Boston, Howard.

Dean speaking at Copley Square in Boston the 23rd September 2003. Storming like hell thinking I'm crazy to try to make this event. Yeah, gathering these friends along the road. It's kind of like you look forward to seeing people that you knew were gonna be out there like certain characters that, that were also following candidates. And and also I, I just felt like I was doing something important and, you know, it was, it was, it was like a story that needed to be told that wasn't,

that was gonna be defined by the media. And then, you know, of course, there were you get your usual CNN, you know, a definitive documentary on what happened to Howard and it had nothing to do with, you know, the important things about it, which are, of course about grassroots politics and the fact that, you know, people can make a difference if they, if they, you know, bond together and, and, you know, stick to, stick to an issue and, and create change, force change, which is the

only way things happen. There, there's no movements in America that don't happen without, you know, a pushback. And you know, the, the ascension of the internet as well and the ability for them to raise that much money was a major, major factor that they tapped into, that allowed them to not get pushed out as quickly as, as one would think, you know, a small time Vermont get would, would have on the main stage.

 

Helen Grossman, Heath Eiden

And so there were some, you know, pretty big historical movements in that and it just, the, the Iraq war was 20 years now since the March, 20 March 2003 was when it started.

 

Helen Grossman

Yeah.

 

Heath Eiden

Yeah. So, so there's, you know, it's just, it's obviously frustrating at the same time. Amazing for me because that was, you know, back then it was like, wow, you know, there's gonna be a lot of people killed during this and, and to some of us, it was very obvious that it was all based on lies.

 

Helen Grossman

Yeah. Yeah, there's a really interesting moment in your film when Saddam Hussein is captured, right?

 

Helen Grossman, 2003 News Clip

And the, and the story becomes, this is really bad for Howard Dean of all the major democratic presidential hopefuls, Howard Dean has been the most forceful in opposing the war in Iraq.

 

2003 News Clip

And there is speculation whether Saddam Hussein's capture will hurt his candidacy that remains to be seen. But the attacks on Mr Dean from other Democrats are now the clearest sign that they think he is very much in a commanding lead.

Howard Dean doesn't think we're safer with this guy in a prison. I'm afraid Howard Dean has climbed into his own spider hole of denial.

 

2003 News Clip, 2003 News Clip

We live in a very dangerous world.

 

2003 News Clip

This ad which looks and sounds like it could have been scripted by Republicans was actually produced by Democrats.

 

Heath Eiden, 2003 News Clip

Howard Dean has no military or foreign policy experience.

 

Heath Eiden

Yeah. So all of a sudden you get all these so called democrats like Dick Gebhart and Carrie and everybody bonding together. Do you think this is our moment where we can pass, you know Howard Dean off as, as the, you know, the leftist hippie who doesn't understand the the dangers of the world and all all those guys are leaders. all one by one fell by the wayside in terms of the support of this disastrous war. This, this is a time when we're all suddenly learning about how, if you put a fear

factor, graph that Bush was doing, you know, like, oh, the terror level is up here and the terror level is here and it was suddenly coinciding with, with other issues that, you know, they needed to take off of, off of regular people's minds. That was a moment where, people of power learned really how, how much fear factors into having the ability to get what you want.

 

Helen Grossman, Heath Eiden

And I want to go back to what you were saying about like the internet.

 

Helen Grossman

And that was the prominent and like the first sort of media narrative about Howard Dean was that he had captivated the attention, the grassroots attention, the populist movement through these small donations on the internet, which of course, now is this like trope that we hear all the time in every campaign is the stats about how many donations smaller than $10 these candidates get online. That really was sort of started and resonated through Howard Dean.

But in the documentary, you also there, it seems like there's two different websites that you were actively participating on. There was your website, you created a blog dean TV dot org. And then there was also a site called dean nation dot com, which I guess were individuals blogging about Howard Dean and about the issues. And you were also a blogger for Dean nation dot com.

 

Heath Eiden

Yeah. Yeah. those were the, yeah, I mean, I made my attempt to do mine but I, I could never, you know, get the numbers and, what I was trying to do and I was the first to do it actually, was, I was taking my video clips and I was putting them online. Like, I like, as if I was a, a network D TV dot org. That's a reality TV show on, the campaign of, governor Dean.

Go to dean TV dot org. No, no, no cameras. Dean TV. Oh, no, I don't want to talk to, I wanna talk to the real media. Where are you from? You bastard, you TV. You know, I got to the point where I was able to put some from the road and things like that, but this is very early in, in the ability to do these things. I'm still dealing with tapes and I'm, you know, I, I don't obviously have much of a budget.

I'm driving, you know, the old family car, I'm like, like doing funny things to get attention, like putting, you know, you know, making my own network. You know, most people wouldn't have a problem. But it was like, you know, if you played the, played their game, you were able to, you know, kind of get, get a better access without any doubt.

And that type of thing, which is, which is why I was able to probably get some beginning respect out of the the upper class media personalities which, which became kind of snowballed as I was doing this stuff and putting things up on the internet.

 

Helen Grossman, Heath Eiden

The more people wanted to talk to you, had you created a website before or was this really like your first experience with making a site?

 

Heath Eiden

No, I had, I had to raise money and I was terrible at that stuff. I, I mean, I did it because I, I had a degree in publishing from New York University. So one of the things that I did back, I mean, I was writing papers about how this is the, you know, watch out the internet's going to be the next business card. It, you know, you're gonna have to have this and back then it, you know, people were still doubting that the internet was gonna be anything.

It was just, you know, not there. So, so, no, I had to raise money from some local wealthy people and pass that on to a person who's good at creating the website subsequently. There was, you know, there was a guy in the, in the Dean campaign himself who was suddenly wanted to do what I was doing and he had, he, he had Joe Trippi on his side. So, you know, they were all of a sudden they were trying to create their own Dean TV.

And and, and then the access I had in the beginning started to go away as I wasn't needed and, and they wanted to, you know, wanted to, use the people's money to create their own little legacies on, on their own stuff. Yeah. That was something I, I guess I should look back and be proud on. It was, it was a lot of work and it certainly wasn't helping my marriage.

 

Helen Grossman

Let's, let's talk about the scream. I know it's horrible. We hate it, but you weren't at the actual event that the scream where the scream occurred, supposedly. But it's in your film and in the, in the moment that's in the film, it's actually really hard to tell that that's the scream. What did you make like, did you make anything of that speech that night? And when people started coming out and talking about the scream, what were, what did you think?

 

Heath Eiden

Like, what did you think about that whole, when that became the story, the narrative, it didn't occur to me immediately how it was gonna be played because I didn't quite know what was going on that they had given him that, that that microphone that shielded out anything that he was hearing around him because it was that, you know, the crazy raucous 5000 kids streaming and all that.

And so he couldn't, he, he went into that mode where he couldn't hear over himself and so, combined with that type of microphone that was shielding that stuff out, you know, he couldn't hear himself when he was, when he was yelling and playing to the crowd, which is what he loved to do.

 

Howard Dean

You know, something, if you had told us one year ago that we were going to come in third in Iowa, we would have given anything for that and you know, something, you know, something, not only are we going to New Hampshire, Tom Harkin, we're going to South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico.

We're going to California and Texas and New York and we go to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan. And then we're going to Washington DC to take back the White House.

 

Heath Eiden

But, you know, that was also a mistake of his and, and he, he wasn't media savvy to, to think about that stuff. I think even he was getting tired. What I did know though was that it's traditional that you can always come back in New Hampshire from Iowa. If you were top three in Iowa, you were probably gonna do, ok. At least in New Hampshire that moment when you know, was just turned into this joke and all of a sudden, you know, the, the atrocities of these people, setting people off to die

in a, in a, in a, a war that was based on a lie. didn't matter because, you know, as America is the, the, the joke was on Howard Howard Dean, that he dared to cheer on the youth of his campaign and say, don't worry about it. We're gonna, we're gonna keep going on. We're gonna, you know, but as soon as they had that footage, and it hit the comedy Circuit, he had the air around him that he already knew this was done because it just was, you, have you, you, you traditionally have a couple of weeks

to be able to pick things up again and get to New Hampshire. And New Hampshire normally would be like, oh, we don't wanna, we don't wanna do what those folks out in the midwestern doing. We got our own way of saying things here in New Hampshire, they're proud. And any time before when I asked about Dean, it was just nothing but love for him in, in the New Hampshire, you know, parties that I went to and things like that and, and then on the streets it was like, you know, well, that guy is

unhinged. He was basically like, wow, people just take this as quick line and sinker and just something like that can, can take, you know, all those issues and just throw them out the window because because Jay Leno is saying that the guy's a goofball and here let's play this over and over and over. I mean, at every station.

 

Heath Eiden, Speaker 8

It was like they all wanted him out because he challenged the status quo after my interview with Dean and his wife, I noticed that he's holding a hand held microphone, one designed to filter out background noise.

 

Speaker 8

So we collected some other tapes from the night of Dean's speech tapes that do carry the sound of the crowd. Not just the microphone Dean held on stage. What about the scream as we all heard it? Well, listen to how it was in the room. The so called scream couldn't really be heard at all.

 

Heath Eiden

It's just like as this became a dead show, the more people get, you know, all the journalists and everybody, you just see him getting worn out and they're all going for the same bar as the whole thing. Like I think back on the in Iowa already that it was gonna be John Kerry and it was like, I just, at that point was too much of a rookie myself to be like, I just don't see it.

I mean, there's no excitement for him out there or anything like that. And then I think then when I saw Biden, like when he was running for president, there's nobody at this things. I'm like, yeah, this is the same old thing.

 

Helen Grossman

Well, you've talked about the dead show aspect of it and there's like this funny recurring cast of characters and in the film of people that you, you know, you meet along the road. There's, of course, Young Tucker Carlson, there's Sean Hannity who we see a couple of times. There's this guy Darius who's like running for City Council in Lowell, Massachusetts, you know, obviously, I think Tucker Carlson, like, it was so jarring seeing him in this movie because he seems like he

seemed really genuinely kind to you. But then on another level I'm also like, is he just trolling you? Was this, you know, like was there actually like an underlying sort of cruelty there? I don't know. But but he also, he recognized you, he called you out at all these moments. He seems to have given you access and like genuine, like giving you time. But, you know, he kept saying he was a Dean fan like there, you know, there are all these sort of funny moments that happen.

 

Heath Eiden

You ready? OK. So since you're the head of Dean TV, what should I ask him? I was gonna ask him, you know, is he gonna can the leadership of the Democratic of the DNC? I can fire all those guys, you know, Terry and I, you know, I mean, the point is most of us die here, Dean people. We really have it out for the I know because we really did have a problem with the integrity in the White House, of course, and plus they marginalized

the honest left. No real liberal. I mean, they weren't real liberals, not to mention when you have a candidate, they were suck up to power. They never asked for me to come in.

 

Helen Grossman

How does it feel now? Like 20 years later, knowing who Tucker Carlson becomes Sean Hannity, like who these guys end up becoming like that?

 

Helen Grossman, Heath Eiden

These were people that you had relationships with the characters came out and, and I mean, Tucker and I are probably around the same age.

 

Heath Eiden

we identified early on that we were both, you know, went to a lot of dead shows and, that's why it kind of became a running joke. But, and, and it, it took a pivot from me being a little more, front line i about this thing to being like, you know what, the only way I'm gonna, you know, get any traction and ever get anything is if I do something a little different here and, and make these people my correspondence too, but with Tucker was more like, you know, he, he did a good job of closing it up

to me because he knew he could tell at, at a certain point he could tell, oh, this guy's not gonna go away and then he starts, you know, playing me in certain ways where like, like, like that one time in the film where he's talking about General Clark and he starts to say, oh, your spider senses get tingling. When you think of that guy, he's probably got his own dungeon and all that where it's just like it was a real education kind of being around him to learn that.

Wow. He can say whatever the hell he wants and, and people, I know that he's joking but other people won't. And I know so many people now I have had discussions with people now who just, they, they eat it up. It's like, and they get mad, they get, you know, unfriended on Facebook and things like that. If I say, you know, I, I actually know the guy and I know that he's just playing, you know, and, and they don't want to hear that that he's like, you know, their savior.

I try not to talk about this stuff, but I kind of because of the, because of the film locally and frankly, wherever I went for many years, I was like, became like that, high noon character, where everybody just wanted to debate me about everything because, you know, III, I put myself out there, like, in order to go on with life and all that, it's like I either was supposed to make AAA living out of doing that stuff.

But, you know, I was also not willing to pick up and move for Vermont. I'm a regular average homeowner and still Vermont just, trying to scrape by a dollar and, and wish I had that money that I spent on that film. But at the same time, it really did help just establish that. Ok, this guy knows how to make a good film and, I might not have done another feature once since and all that, but it, it's anything's possible.

 

Helen Grossman

Right. Yeah, I mean, I found myself really, genuinely moved by your film. I mean, obviously I knew what happened in 2004, but I was like, rooting for Howard Dean watching your movie. Like, I was like, come on, we, it doesn't have to be like this. It feels like it feels insane, like knowing everything we know to like after the decades of war and the lives lost and like the total destabilization of the entire region and possibly the world that he was this vocal critic and that we had this

opportunity, like we had a real candidate. He was like really talking about something that now feels so resonant. But I also the other, you know, your, your film is called Dean and me and I feel like the me part of it, like your story, I was so moved by you and like your perseverance and your persistence and how you showed up and how like you sort of took on the establishment and how you just kept going and, and this, this isn't a spoiler.

But like at the end of your movie, you go to DC in 2006 and you get a meeting with Howard Dean and you, and it's like the eve of the, yeah, the night of the returns of the midterm elections in 06, which was a huge night for Democrats. And Howard Dean is the head of the DNC. So he gets to take some credit for that massive win, which is really exciting and kind of a vindication for him, right?

But how was that for you? Like, how, what was that interview like for you? How did you get that interview? How did it feel after all of the years that you put in on the campaign trail to meet him in his DC office in this, in this new post that he had and also to have this sort of full circle ending for your movie.

 

Heath Eiden

Yeah, I mean, I've got to give Diana real credit for that because she was Diana Camille who was the documentary professor at the new school and other places before she passed a few years ago. And she just other characters that I had gone through as well that I had gotten to know on the road. And, also, you know, I was given, you know, I was given 60 seconds, you know, and, and it was like, it was like, get in there, shake some hands and hurry up and ask the question.

But they, they did recognize that I worked my, I, I worked hard and I spent a lot of money and, and it became, you know, a, a a, a work of love and obsession at the same time and, to be able to get in there at that moment, it was wracking on one hand, but on the other hand, it, it, it, it would, probably wouldn't have had, you know, it was just a great way to be able to end the film where it was like, ok, you start out, you're in because you're, you're, you know, you're helping with publicity and

all that and then, and then people start to get greedy and, and within the campaign and, and territorial, they're starting to measure their, you know, curtains up for the White House, that type of thing. And then all of a sudden things are falling apart, but there's still me there who couldn't just stop because it was like, the story still had to be told.

I didn't have a choice. I was in too deep and, and, and, and, and in love with the story and we needed a good ending and for, for, for us to be able to pull that, that off was great. But also, of course, it was frustrating because it was like, Rahm Emanuel and, and Nancy Pelosi and, and, and Chuck Schumer are, are of course, taking all the credit for this stuff when it was, you know, Howard Dean's new, 50 state strategy that was leading the DNC at the time to be able to, get candidates that

they normally wouldn't have gotten. so, yeah, so in the end, you know, I still appreciate the idea that I was able to, to get into that building. It was like a, it was like a, a force, you know, to be able to, to be able to get in there and, and get a little nod, get a handshake and, and just, you know, take a small part in, in feeling. Ok, there's, there's a bit of a, a moral victory here, I guess in political victory.

it, it, it wasn't Howard Dean becoming the, you know, the nominee. but at the same time he was able to get a little bit of a satisfaction that, what he was doing was, was correct and, and, and in the end he had that, yeah, I decided to come down to Washington DC. It's kind of a big night tonight. We're having the congressional elections at stake tonight, many seats in the Senate and many seats in the house tonight.

We're hoping to go down to the DNC and ask some questions of the chairman, Howard Dean and see if we can watch some returns with him to see what he thinks and what he thinks is going to happen tonight. We literally have, I can't tell you how much we appreciate it. Hey, Karen. Hi there. Hi. Yes. Yeah, good to see you. So, are we winning by the way?

 

Howard Dean

Oh, yeah.

 

Heath Eiden, Howard Dean

We are not winning in this particular race, like being DNC chairman or presidential candidate better.

 

Heath Eiden

Which one do you prefer?

 

Howard Dean

Well, it's a little easier. But, you know, Washington is an interesting place and I'm learning a lot

 

Helen Grossman

and, and he gets Obama too, right? Like you see the strategies, you see, my, I was, I went caucusing for Obama in 2008 and, and I was reading all the blogs and I, you know, and I remember the conversation felt so like revolutionary at the time.

 

Helen Grossman, Heath Eiden

But now I realize that the genesis of it was probably Howard Dean and the fact that he was like the national leadership at the time, they took all of his best guys and girls from in the internet from, from that effort.

 

Heath Eiden

I, I do know for fact from subsequent conversations and, and Dean reunion type stuff and that and in an interview that I did with Howard that never made it in the film where he was proud that, you know, all these, you know, look at what's happened with these people and even though we didn't win, you know, we did win by changing the way politics is done and how you can get a voice like

Obama's out there as a force. So, yeah, a lot of, a lot of those folks ended up in, in that campaign and others, but they were able to, you know, share the lesson of the Dean campaign.

 

Helen Grossman

I think that your film, like I said, it's really a time capsule and it also, it's, it's so educational about the whole process in general. But also there's so many things in it that it's like even the scream itself looking back on it and the ridiculous absurdity of it. And just the fact that like Tom Cruise jumping on a couch, four years later, five years later, after the scream ruined his career, like you see echoes of it in all of these places.

And I, I really hope, I mean, I, I really hope that we sort of approach the cyclical nature of everything and are able to look back on the lessons of Howard Dean, especially when the stakes feel really, really, really high now, you know, they were high then, but they feel especially high now, that we take our candidates seriously and we don't, you know, and we don't fall victim to the narrative that the media portrays them in which is

sort of what your, what your film was getting at too. We're gonna put a link to the film to your website in this in this episode so everyone can watch it. I really recommend it.

 

Heath Eiden

Could I just say quickly, I it wouldn't have been possible without Diana Camil at the new school who has since passed away, who was, you know, a dear friend of mine from those gallery days. And Iris Khan, who is still at, at Sony purchase who's the, the editor who's just, you know, obviously they had a lot of experience that helped, you know, you gotta remember at the time though, it was like there was still this, this hope that there would be some sort of pay out in the end because it was

like I had a contact in HBO who I thought was gonna be able to help me. But in the end, if you don't have the winning candidate, it's just very hard to, to gain traction that way. So, so, you know, I, I did my little film festival run with the film, I'm, you know, very proud of it and just, I just had to let it go at a certain point. I just, I just needed to be proud of what I did and I needed to get, I needed to have a life in Vermont.

And so, so the film was the first thing I did and it just kept snowballing and, and, and building as, as Dean went, you know, I went for a bit of a hike before I got out here because I'm like, I gotta think about this film again. I haven't thought about it a long time. Like I just kind of had to set it aside at one point because it, it, it became an obsession that, that was having more negative effects in my life has been

positive at a certain point. And it's like you just have to realize that this is not going to go further than, you know, much further than what I've done. I've done with it so far. So,

...

 

Heath Eiden

yeah, I knew there were things I was putting in that based on what Iris and I, and Dean thought would make the best film and, and I had to, like, I had to concede, well, I didn't have to concede. I, I said straight up, I think, I think that what's gonna put this together is to make sure we put the humorous moments in there and there's some unflattering moments, maybe being drunk and things like that in that film that I still wonder.

Well, if I didn't have that in there would, it would have resonated better and all that, but in the end, it wouldn't have mattered. And so it was very frustrating but, it, it, I can't tell you enough how, how much I appreciate the fact that you came out of the blue and have interest in it. You know, that's, that's amazing to me. So, so I, I very much appreciate it.

 

Helen Grossman

I think everything is about timing and we're about to hit 20 years. I mean, we are 20 years since 2003, but 20 years till the, since the 2004 primary. And you really like when I say that I felt moved. I've, and why I so appreciate this is because I, I, I'm also like an independent person who has just, I'm just trying to do this on my own.

And I saw that in you too. And I think that like there's something there and I think there's a real lesson to be learned from all of the material that you have and from your story and from what the message they were trying to send. Thank you so much again. He,

...

 

Helen Grossman

it's weird being in 2023 looking back 20 years on the year 2003, thinking about how we were thinking then about where we'd be today or in one case where we'd be in 977 years from today. Our song of the week, this week is called Year 3000 by the band Busted. If you were to write a song called The Year 3000, what would your vision of that time be? Because I can guarantee that you wouldn't be talking about how hot your great, great, great granddaughter is.

That is one of the takeaways Busted took from their time travel to the year 3000 in their song. It's a pretty well known song now because it was covered and sanitized by the Jonas brothers who I have to say said that your great, great, great granddaughter is doing fine rather than looking fine, which is how it went in the original song, the song came out on January 13th, 2003 reached number two in the UK.

And it was inspired by back to the future As Busted Sing, they tell us the story of their neighbor Peter returning from the year 3000 and reporting back that not much has changed, but they lived under water. Peter and the band then go to the year 3000. And even though they're living underwater, it's filled with boy bands and triple breasted women who swim around totally naked. I know this all sounds so absurd, but the song is so silly.

And now when we talk about the year 3000 and living underwater, it definitely has a different meaning. A much more ominous and doomsday I vibe than what Busted meant when they sang those lyrics. So maybe we can take a minute together and sit in that more lighthearted vision for the future right now with our song of the week Year 3000 by Busted

...

 

Heath Eiden

You. Good.

 

Helen Grossman

Thank you again to Heath Eiden for having this conversation with me about Howard Dean and just a reminder, you can look at the show notes so that you can watch his film. I also want to thank him for letting us use clips from his movie. We really appreciate that. Our show is written, produced and edited by me, Helen Grossman, Luke Schwartz and Evan Joseph of Sawtooth composed our theme song and the original music you heard in this episode.

Our show art is by Maddie Herbert of Dame Studio. If you like this show, please rate and review it and subscribe. It helps us tremendously. And if you have a song of the week or a 2003 memory, you want to share, you can call in at 724 class 03 DM us on Instagram at class of 03 pod or send us an email class of 03 pod at gmail dot com. Thanks so much for listening class. Dismissed.