Nancy Pelosi is notoriously private, but her daughter filmed her for years
Every day, Alexandra Pelosi receives a call from her mother. She had already spoken to the first female speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives twice by 11 a.m. on one particular day, the week before she was scheduled to debut a documentary on her mother, Nancy Pelosi. Nancy Pelosi contacted Alexandra’s teenage son “before the crack of dawn” to wish him a happy birthday. Later, as Alexandra was preparing her New York City apartment for a party and her Christmas tree fell down, she called her mother to vent.
Despite their closeness, though, and despite what Alexandra calls their “wonderful, amazing bond as mother and daughter,” the director neglected to inform Alexandra’s mother of one important fact: that she was, uh, creating this movie about her. HBO will debut “Pelosi in the House” on Tuesday.
Not only the Speaker of the House was unaware of the movie beforehand. Pelosi ran into Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer when accompanying her mother to the state banquet at the White House two weeks ago (D-N.Y.). Schumer is seen working the phones with Nancy Pelosi as they attempt to control the mayhem from a secure location in footage of Alexandra’s that was made public earlier this fall by the House committee looking into the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. “Oh, sorry about the whole January 6th stuff, I was like. And he says, “Yeah, I didn’t know you were filming,” Alexandra said in an interview with The Washington Post.
He had much more pressing issues than what I was doing, she continued, “and I was sitting in the corner.” He has a flip phone and is a man, therefore he doesn’t understand. In addition to the clip from January 6, Alexandra Pelosi also included a picture of her mother in bed, dressed in a bathrobe and with a bandage covering her nose. She may be seen adding up the members’ likely votes for the Affordable Care Act bill. The image depicts her dancing while holding her grandchild on her hip. Occasionally, Nancy Pelosi can be seen standing in her office and doing her makeup in front of a gilt mirror. She cleans her hands before turning to a staff member and making a request. She continues, “There’s one thing I want to ask you to do.” “I have a birthday card for my granddaughter Madeline, who is 21 years old, somewhere in here.” She then makes her way through the Capitol’s corridors, takes a seat at a podium, and starts the discussion about impeaching the president of the United States.
52-year-old Alexandra Pelosi does not represent her movie as an objective documentary. How is it possible? Her mother, whom she adores and admires, is the subject. She can’t just call it in because she has nine grandchildren and five very needy youngsters. She cannot contract that out, Alexandra remarked. The fact that she has five children who genuinely adore her is the one thing that, no matter what anyone says about her, they can never take away.
The speaker is shown in Alexandra Pelosi’s documentary as a disciplined political strategist as well as a mother and grandmother who is raising her family while serving as speaker of the House of Representatives. The movie makes the case that Nancy’s political career wasn’t so much the consequence of a decision as it was a destiny, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, who called it a “one-of-a-kind record of one of the most important women in American history.” In the film, Nancy Pelosi tells her daughter, “I didn’t really chose this life.” “It picked me,”That similar statement might be made about the director and her subject. Concerned that anything she produced would be “weaponized against my mum,” Alexandra Pelosi told The Post that she had never wanted to film a movie about her mother. But she claims that “filming is a reflex” for her and that she has gathered thousands of hours of footage of a very secretive historical figure thanks to the access privileges that came with being family. The younger Pelosi decided it was time to start working on a movie seriously in 2018, when Donald Trump was president and Democrats were ready to regain the House of Representatives, putting Nancy Pelosi up for another term as speaker.
“Journeys with George,” a documentary by Alexandra Pelosi that was based on footage she filmed with a handheld video camera while covering George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign for NBC, marked her debut in the documentary genre. She didn’t have the campaign’s or NBC’s OK to make a movie. Karl Rove, of course, predicted her tactic. He approaches me and says, “I get it. Asking for forgiveness rather than permission is preferable. That was it after that. “That’s my motto,” I said.
Alexandra confirmed that she never had authorization to film in the Capitol. Her mother never acknowledged a waiver. She claims that she never specifically informed her mother that she was making a movie. Why would I inform her that I am producing a movie? She wouldn’t permit me to film again after that. (The office of Nancy Pelosi declined to provide comment for this piece.) Simply put, Alexandra was everywhere, frequently accompanied by her sons and with her iPhone ready to record. She even managed to convince some of her mother’s caregivers to speak on camera, despite her suspicions that some of them may possess “a Voodoo doll with my face on it.” (Of course, they didn’t stray from the topic; one Nancy Pelosi employee describes his boss as “a heat-seeking rocket on votes.”)
She adamantly declares that she “is not playing the Nancy Pelosi misinformation game.” The youngest of Pelosi’s five children, Alexandra, anticipates a challenging reception from her relatives. On Monday night, a screening was scheduled at the National Archives. Although the Pelosi siblings were expected to attend, the director purposely timed the event to interfere with her mother’s congressional duties. “My sisters would definitely question why you included that, ” I said. Why did you put that in? my mum will undoubtedly ask. Although she expects her mother will ultimately view the film, she is half hoping she never does. “I don’t look forward to her critique of it,” she told The Post. She anticipates that Nancy will take situations involving other Democratic members of Congress extremely seriously. (The Post learned after the article was published that Nancy Pelosi did, in fact, make it to the National Archives screening and delivered a toast during the reception. Although Alexandra claims her mother didn’t speak to her directly about the movie, she did make several attempts to correct her daughter’s hair throughout the evening.
To be clear, the filmmaker says, “I’m not speaking for the Pelosi family. Nobody would want me to represent the Pelosi family in public. (When asked for a comment on that assertion, older sister Christine Pelosi was diplomatic: “Alexandra has always been her own unique self, from her ex-boyfriends to her haircuts to her movies.
One thing the movie omits is Nancy Pelosi going into great detail about her journey, her thinking, or the significance of her historic life. Alexandra claimed that she had tried to persuade her mum to share her life story. It didn’t go well, that.
“I’m sure all of your coworkers have tried to interview Nancy Pelosi and get her to overreact or emotional. After setting the Christmas tree back up, Alexandra Pelosi spoke with The Washington Post through Zoom from her apartment. “It’s not who she is,” she said. “Because Nancy Pelosi is her work, a verité film was the only way to make an honest movie about her. So you observe her at work. She avoids exposition.
The movie traces the speaker’s ancestry back to Baltimore and the guidance of a father who held dual office as mayor and congressman. Nancy Pelosi adds, “I learnt from my father that it was crucial to know how to count.” Some people count sheep at night, she continues. I tally votes. Her daughter’s 2009 video shows off those vote-herding prowess as she spearheaded an initiative to approve the Affordable Care Act. Pelosi employs the most Catholic of all political manoeuvres when a Democratic congressman from Indiana hesitates to support the measure: she contacts the priest acting as president emeritus of the University of Notre Dame and persuades him to exert pressure on the congressman. She ends the call with, “Thank you, Father. “I’d love to come get your blessing,” she said.
The film has a more intimate vibe than before. Alexandra, at 16 years old, was Nancy Pelosi’s sole child who was still living at home when she was invited to run for Congress. Nancy sought Alexandra’s approval before deciding to run. Mom, get a life, I told her, Pelosi recounted. What adolescent girl doesn’t want her mother to leave the house three nights per week, right?. In the course of her political career, Nancy Pelosi, who is now 82, developed a reputation for being particularly despised by the right. Earlier this year, while looking for her, a guy broke into the Pelosi family’s San Francisco home, assaulted Nancy’s husband Paul with a hammer, and fractured his skull. At least at that instant, Alexandra wished she could take back her approval of Nancy’s decision to enter public life years earlier when the family sat beside his hospital bed in the intensive care unit.
“I’m so angry, and my father looks like Frankenstein,” Alexandra recalled. The director told The Post, “I say to my mother, ‘If I knew then what I know now, I never would have given you my approval.
She claimed Paul was the one who objected. She recalled her hurt father stating, “You can’t question her achievements. That’s unfair to her, I say. You must assert that “I would never give you my blessing if you came to me in this social media environment.”
Since her father’s attack, Alexandra claimed that she hasn’t gotten much sleep and that her family has been increasingly threatened. She fears that as soon as this movie is released, the threats will become more serious. She didn’t want to stop filming the movie, though, since she thinks it will show how the legislative process works and how her mother can go through it “backward, in high heels,” despite how it often seems like it works like a sausage factory.
Not many individuals, in Alexandra Pelosi’s opinion, will be drawn into politics by her film. However, it might show what’s necessary to survive it. You have to be a sincere believer for this job, she concluded.
Read full article on washingtonpost