The story is told from a number of different points of view, including Tanner, his campaign staff, the small army of news reporters that constantly follow the candidate, and volunteers. Many political figures of the time appear (some in cameos, some extended), including Bruce Babbitt, Bob Dole, Kitty Dukakis, Gary Hart, Jesse Jackson, and Pat Robertson. Trudeau and Altman revisited the story 16 years later in Tanner on Tanner.
Plot summary
Former U.S. Representative Jack Tanner of Michigan (Michael Murphy) is an obscure liberal Democratic politician who struggles to find a voice in the early 1988 Democratic primaries. His campaign manager, T.J. Cavanaugh (Pamela Reed), uses an unscripted, impassioned hotel-room speech caught on camera as part of an advertising campaign focusing on Tanner's authenticity and integrity. Using the slogan "For Real", Tanner emerges from a wide field of contenders to battle for the nomination against two high-profile and better-funded candidates: Jesse Jackson and eventual nominee Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis.
With Tanner are his college-aged daughter Alexandra (Cynthia Nixon), whose illness was why he earlier left politics and who has left college for the duration of the campaign, and his girlfriend Joanna Buckley (Wendy Crewson), Dukakis' deputy campaign manager. Others who appear on camera are Emile Berkoff (Jim Fyfe), a compulsive statistician with a crush on Alexandra; Deke Conners (Matt Malloy), an East Village filmmaker hired to produce Tanner campaign ads; and Andrea Spinelli (Ilana Levine), T.J.'s innocent and ditzy but well-meaning assistant. The candidate's father, General John Tanner (E.G. Marshall), who has a contentious relationship with his son, also occasionally appears.
Although Tanner does not win the nomination, he does run a serious and credible race. The series ends on a cliffhanger after Dukakis officially becomes the Democratic candidate and Tanner considers a third party/independent run in '88.
Several members of Tanner's prospective cabinet are mentioned, with several making statements to the press accepting the appointment should he become president. Those mentioned include:[1]
On the weekend before the New Hampshire primary, Congressman Jack Tanner and his daughter visit with potential voters, and meet potential rivals, while his first campaign commercial is evaluated by a focus group.
2
"For Real"
March 14, 1988 (1988-03-14)
2A
Tanner's passionate "For Real" commercial generates new interest in his campaign as he heads for Nashville, and Spinelli is given an enhanced role in the campaign. In Nashville, an apparent attempt on Tanner's life produces publicity and qualifies him for Secret Service protection.
3
"The Night of the Twinkies"
April 12, 1988 (1988-04-12)
2B
Tanner receives some advice on political strategy from Waylon Jennings, and then renews the acquaintance of Baptist minister Billy Cryer, an old friend and colleague from civil rights protests, whom he had not seen for twenty years. Cryer seems however more likely to endorse the campaign of Jesse Jackson. Meanwhile T.J. enjoys a fling with a musician.
4
"Moonwalker and Bookbag"
May 2, 1988 (1988-05-02)
3A
After media manager Stringer places Tanner in the position of offending his friend Cryer, by appearing to force him into an endorsement of Tanner with an attempt at an impromptu press conference on the steps of a church at Fisk University, the campaign begins to freeze out Stringer. At the same time, Tanner and his daughter must learn to cope with the constant protective presence of Secret Service agents and journalist Hays Taggerty interviews Tanner's father, General Tanner, exposing an unusual family dynamic. Meanwhile Tanner, encouraged by Alexandra to participate in a protest against apartheid in South Africa, is surprised by the turn the protest takes as he is briefly arrested.
5
"Bagels with Bruce"
May 16, 1988 (1988-05-16)
3B
Tanner meets with fellow candidate Bruce Babbitt, who recently ended his campaign. Tired of being on the outs with the campaign, Stringer considers joining the Dukakis campaign where he discovers Tanner's girlfriend Joanna is a staff member.
6
"Child's Play"
June 6, 1988 (1988-06-06)
4A
Tanner attends campaign events ranging from appearances at day care centers--where he talks to young children about tax abatements and Ronald Reagan's anticommunism--and a Hollywood pool party, where he commits a faux pas, failing to recognise Rebecca De Mornay, to Spinelli's frustration. Afterward, a recently dismissed member of the Dukakis campaign approaches Tanner for a job, exposing Tanner's television and speech weaknesses. Meanwhile Taggerty probes T.J. for more details on Tanner's family.
7
"The Great Escape"
June 20, 1988 (1988-06-20)
4B
Tanner attends a debate with Dukakis and Jesse Jackson where he attacks Jackson and his comments about drugs become news. Mechanical troubles on the campaign plane lead to a stressful flight for everyone, during which Berkoff embarrassingly confesses his feelings to a fraught Alexandra. Later, a reporter breaks the story on Tanner and Joanna's relationship, angering T.J., who did not know about it.
8
"The Girlfriend Factor"
July 11, 1988 (1988-07-11)
5A
The campaign runs into problem after problem when they head to Detroit, including Tanner looking bad when "confronted" by a robot and looking bad kissing babies on camera. T.J. blames Spinelli for the robot incident. Meanwhile, David Seidelman, the reporter who broke the Tanner/Joanna story, finds himself in the campaign's doghouse. Later, Tanner spends an afternoon at a Detroit community meeting speaking to people about drugs and America's future.
9
"Something Borrowed, Something New"
July 17, 1988 (1988-07-17)
5B
Alex plans Jack and Joanna's (eventually postponed) wedding, stressing over the minutest of details, only to have them call it off after General Tanner makes an inappropriate speech and Deke Conners swoops over the proceedings in a helicopter. Afterward, despite his being nearly out of the race, the campaign reads an article speculating on Tanner's would-be cabinet appointments.
10
"The Boiler Room"
August 11, 1988 (1988-08-11)
6A
Having both lost at the Democratic National Convention, the Jackson and Tanner campaigns try some last minute trickery, with T.J. calling in coordinator Billy Ridenour (Harry Anderson) to work some "backroom magic". Unfortunately, the Jackson campaign's need for plausible deniability prevents Ridenour from speaking directly to Jackson and winds up costing Tanner.
11
"The Reality Check"
August 22, 1988 (1988-08-22)
6B
Despite not winning the Democratic nomination and his former campaign's finances now being audited, rumblings of Tanner running as third party circulate through what is left of the campaign, gaining surprising support from General Tanner. T.J. investigates the possibilities, while Joanna meets with Kitty Dukakis, and the series ends with Jack not answering Joanna's query that it would be obvious for him to endorse Michael Dukakis and instead ruminates on his possibilities.
Essays by film critic Michael Wilmington and culture critic Gary Kornblau
A "video conversation" between Robert Altman and Garry Trudeau.[2]
The miniseries was produced and first broadcast on HBO, scheduled irregularly over the real-life seven-month campaigning period from February through August 1988.
In 2004, the Sundance Channel rebroadcast the series, adding new one- to two-minute preludes created by Trudeau and Altman to each episode "in which the actors reflect, in character, on the '88 campaign from the perspective of the present day".[3] That October, Sundance produced a four episode sequel, Tanner on Tanner. In 2020, Tanner '88 was added to HBO Max.[4]
Production
The hybrid of fiction and reality that came to be the miniseries' trademark was initially accidental.[5] Trudeau described the concept behind the miniseries as wanting to "let the audience feel they're eavesdropping, to create a sense of authenticity by observing the process, to follow campaign culture in all its tribal rites—not to make a topical movie about 1988."[5]Tanner evolved during production, becoming, as Altman put it, "two-thirds scripted and one-third found art".[5] Trudeau and Altman intended to make more episodes, but HBO did not extend the run of the series.[6]
Reception and influence
Reviews for the miniseries seem to improve over time. In one of the earliest reviews of the pilot episode, The New York Times called the show an "interesting misfire" that "insists too much on its own sophistication about politics".[7] The same paper held the second episode in higher esteem, calling it "humorous cinéma vérité" that's "slick and occasionally witty".[8] In its "Best of 1988" look at television, Time magazine called it: "the year's definitive satire of media politics".[9]
In a 2003 review of K Street, the New York Daily News said "Tanner skewer[s] brilliantly the insanity and inanity of presidential politics".[10] By 2004, Slate was saying:[3]
More than a decade before the ascendancy of reality television, the series slyly blended fiction and documentary, with real-life political and media figures—Bob Dole, Bruce Babbitt, and Linda Ellerbee among them—crossing paths with, and commenting upon, Tanner's grass-roots campaign. But Tanner's formal complexity—a loose, layered blend of group improvisation, scripted set pieces, and the intervention of pure chance—manages to point up not only the laziness of reality shows like Survivor and The Bachelor but their moral and political vacuity.
While the two shows are stylistically very different, Aaron Sorkin has acknowledged that Tanner had an influence on The West Wing, which he created over a decade later, in its underlying idealism and in its view of political staffers as people who at least struggle to do the right thing.
In 2004, Altman said "I think it's the most creative work I've ever done."[11]
