Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story

According to Joe Conason, "Atwater had a genius for the sticky issue, simple enough and scary enough that the media could latch onto it. Here the documentary offers another sort of judgment on Atwater, reading through his painful last months of illness-and the steroids treatment that swelled his head to a frightening size-as a kind of cosmic payback. ... Full Review

Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story " is 90 minutes of astounding clips of the man who engineered Reagan's response to the Iran-Contra scandal, turned Bush Sr.'s 17-point deficit against Michael Dukakis into a win by leaking "information" that Dukakis had been mentally ill (President Reagan at the time declined comment, saying, "I'm not going to pick on an invalid") and moving a false story about Kitty Dukakis burning the American flag. ... Full Review

he was good for quotes and leaks (or "leaks") and denials that were outrageous....He created the infamous Willie Horton ads when Bush ran against Michael Dukakis....Lee Atwater was the greatest single influence on American politics in the last 40 years.....The film has heartbreaking footage of this boyishly handsome man turned by chemo and radiation into a feeble, bloated caricature of himself..... ... Full Review

That partly accounts for the title of Stefan Forbes's slick and somewhat hyperventilating documentary, "Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story. A master of wedge politics and negative campaigning, Atwater was a brilliant, ruthless, wholly amoral tactician. ... Full Review

For a film that depends so heavily on talking heads, "Boogie Man" has both a dramatic arc and a sense of character development.....But there is a decidedly doomed cast about his boyish impudence and voracious ambition:.... ... Full Review

Influential Republican operative and all-around evil genius Lee Atwater was a man of contradictions: In 1990, he released an album of classic R&B; covers called Red Hot & Blue with help from Isaac Hayes, B.B, King, and Billy Preston, yet... ... Full Article

With little more than strategy and determination, Lee Atwater rose through the ranks of the Republican Party, mentoring Karl Rove, serving as a cutthroat tactician in campaigns for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. ... Full Article

Writer-director Stefan Forbes' slickly made documentary profile of the late, hate-inducing, intensely Machiavellian Republican strategist-impish, below-the-belt campaign wedge driver, equal-opportunity destroyer of Mike Dukakis and Bob Dole, proclaimer of pro wrestling as the only honest sport, frustratingly not-half-bad blues-guitar player-positively... ... Full Article

Stefan Forbes is a courageous documentarian that says what he believes and believes what he says. In his latest effort, Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story he sheds a microscopic light over the life of the Republican Party's last rock... ... Full Article

Barack Obama is darn lucky that Lee Atwater, who died in 1991, isn't around to lead the Republican dirty-tricks department. As seen in Stefan Forbes's excellent and frightening documentary, Atwater would have figured how to play the race card in... ... Full Article

Stefan Forbes interviews Michael Dukakis for Boogie Man . Four years ago it was "Dean Screams," horse faces and expensive haircuts; a ceaseless white noise that centered on everything but real issues. ... Full Article