Scene-for-scene comparison of Sarah Palin and Julianne Moore

[Video Link] Via Biotv: "An interesting scene-for-scene comparison of actual media appearances of Sarah Palin and Julianne Moore reenacting them in HBO's Game Change." Pretty amazing acting by Julianne Moore.

Sarah Palin / Julianne Moore

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

flickerKuu

I can’t wait to see this awesome horror movie.
- Cowicide
  
  I just finished watching it. Funnily enough, I hadn’t seen your comment as the credits rolled and my exact first thought was I had just watched a horror movie. It was startling to see your comment at the top here just now.
  
  We have far enough unstable, ignorant idiots in Washington already. Putting Palin in the White House would have been the tipping point.
  
  As I’ve said before, McCain/Palin would have plunged us into the next Great Depression. Obama has been devastatingly bad in many ways, but… the alternative would have been unthinkable. A true horror.
IamInnocent

The Horror, The Horrible Echo !
http://www.fogbound.net libelle

I was hoping for a realtime side-by-side comparison techno remix dealie.
- http://crisnoble.com/ Cris Noble
  
  Side by side pictures (no techno). Pretty damn close if you ask me.
  http://th.isandth.at/#leftTarget=http%3A//finalfashion.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/sarah-palin.jpg&rightTarget=http%3A//www.nypost.com/rw/nypost/2011/04/27/entertainment/photos_stories/moore–300×300.jpg
therling

Sarah Palin comes across as stupider than Julianne Moore portrays her.
- http://twitter.com/fossilfuels Funk Daddy
  
  Hey, you got your comment in my opinion!
- http://twitter.com/megrar meg gandy
  
  i caught that immediately. i think that was the writers for the movie cleaning up her dialogue a bit so her points aren’t so obscured (or entirely buried) by her “folksy” manner of speech. movie makers have higher standards for clarity than politicians do.
Mitchell Glaser

at 2:14 there is a woman completely bug-eyed entranced by the real Palin. makes me so nauseous, she and her relatives in Mississippi and Alabama.
- http://twitter.com/wwalkr walker
  
  …sigh, I’ll bite. I’m from Mississippi. Yes she’s bug-eyed and looks idiotic. Could be from anywhere in the U.S. however.
  - hypnosifl
    
    The “Mississippi and Alabama” comment was probably not just a random choice of two southern states to insult, but rather a reference to the Republican primary voters in those states who gave wins to fellow theocrat Rick Santorum on Tuesday.
My Name Is

I hate to say this, but the real Sara Palin pulls off her folksy non-intelligent patriotic well-spokenness better than Julianne Moore. Moore’s portrait of Palin seems like she’s just dumb, even though she uses the same words as Palin. I think it might be that Palin actually believes she is right. Where as Moore comes off as dumb and slightly crazy.

Still, it looks to be an excellent movie that I will go see.
- marilove
  
  “Where as Moore comes off as dumb and slightly crazy.”
  
  Um. Change “slightly” to “very” and that’s basically Palin, in a nut shell.
- http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
  
  I think that the real Sarah Palin is more slappable. There’s a snark to everything she says, almost like she knows she’s being a dick, but there’s nothing we can do about it.
  
  Maybe I’m just paranoid.
- blueelm
  
  Palin seems sincerely mentally unstable. She actually scares me. Moore lacks this meth-like quality of detachment from reality as other people might know it and completely disproportionate sense of self-importance, which allows the stupidity to seem more resonant.
Ihavenofuckingname

Julianne Moore understands the words she’s reading. Sarah Palin doesn’t. You can’t fake that level of ignorance.
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=14809774 Eric Conrad
  
  Commenting perfection.
Gunn

I certainly didn’t think, at the time, that Palin came off as sincere or intelligent or classy, but she definitely can fake sincerity much better than the current bunch of contenders.
- Richard Dagenais
  
  OMG what a terrifying fact.
http://twitter.com/bigbadchang Chang Terhune

Julianne Moore is one of my favorite actresses, even since “Cast A Deadly Spell.” She’s also wicked hot. This just makes me break out in fucking hives, though. Yikes.
- http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios
  
  I feel ya…I LOVE JM but cannot stand for a nano-second that “woman” from Alaska. Cannot watch. CANNOT!!
Jay Converse

Can we put Tina Fey in there, too? Hat trick!
- Navin_Johnson
  
  And the porn star from “Who’s Nailin’ Paylin?” for good measure…
lavardera

Just like Sarah Palin, except somehow sounds smarter.

I think this would make good material for a mashup of a zombie movie, except not the walking dead, but instead everybody gets turned into a walking Palin. No doubt a fate worse than death.
- SofaKing
  
  The Walking Brain Dead?
- SofaKing
  
  Dawn of the Derp?
- lavardera
  
  World War P
Rhett Holechek

For once, America got it right and didn’t elect that train wreck into any office [of substance]. Just sit for a minute and imagine a world where McCain wins, then dies, and she is the first woman president. I think Canada’s population would have gone from 34 million to 300 million in a month. I would easily have voted for Moore with absolutely no background in politics before Palin.
- http://www.tumbleweed.net/ tyger11
  
  In that scenario, the world would finally have felt sorry for Americans!
waetherman

I just watched this last night and I thought Moore did an excellent job (though her accent sometimes slips in to more that of a Minnesotan). It really does a good job of looking at the behind-the-scenes of the decision to choose her as a running mate and the disaster that resulted from that decision. It is pretty favorable to McCain though, painting him in a light of being more level headed and reasonable than I actually think he probably is in real life. I wish there were a little more meat on the bone though; I’m sure there was a lot more drama that just couldn’t make it in to the relatively short movie. Maybe I’ll have to read the book.
- http://twitter.com/avec_une_clef Romana Clef
  
  I agree – as with Romney, I heard a lot of people during McCain’s run excusing his behavior as “Not what he really believes” and “He’s just saying that to get elected.” So there’s this image of guy who’s all right really, just faking like a madman to get into the White House. As if that’s any fucking better than him just being a lunatic.
semiotix

Moore is great, but the really heroic performance comes from whoever it is playing McCain. I don’t know how he does with the dialogue, but he’s got that weird rictus grin/grimace down pat.
- sagodjur
  
  You didn’t recognize Ed Harris? He did a decent McCain but Harris has a distinctive voice that’s hard to miss. And that’s the power of the Home Depot.
  - Diogenes
    
    Love Ed Harris. Never seen him deliver less than great performances. One unsung cameo is his general in The Stand. Just perfect, out of the blue. Great actor.
    - http://glitch.tl/ Michael Smith
      
      In my mind I can’t separate Ed Harris from John Glenn.
      - Diogenes
        
        Another great performance. The guy knows his craft.
Brainspore

I don’t want to watch this movie because I have too much faith in Julianne Moore’s acting ability and it’s just one of those moments in history I’d rather not relive.
http://twitter.com/axoplasm Paul Souders

We have 28,000 cubic feet of Wintrex, which onscreen looks more like snow than snow!
http://twitter.com/zeroanaphora แอ็ะปปี้

I don’t think she quite nailed the accent- one example, Palin says “mayor” with fairly standard pronunciation, but Moore pronounced it “Meer” in one clip (and more accurately in another). Overall it seems slightly overdone, and as someone said, too Minesotta-y. But, well, I’m nitpicking.
tonka

Nah. Sarah Palin has a definite toughness and mean streak. She wants you to know she’s a killer. Julianne Moore looks like a lightweight airhead next to Palin.
- Diogenes
  
  That’s funny, I got the opposite impression. Palin always reminds me of the unprepared student trying to fake her way thru a presentation by exuding false confidence. Moore sounded too confident and invested in the concepts she was presenting. To me, Palin always sounded like she was just going thru the motions.
  - http://www.facebook.com/diane.meriwether Diane Meriwether
    
    I’m with you – Moore misses the true stupid, maybe she was afraid of making a parody of Palin’s sing song cadence.
Jordan Yaruss

Jeez. I was kinda half paying attention when the “…Putin rears his head” line came up and thought — oof that’s bad acting. Looked up and guess who it was!
crummett

Why can’t this woman go away!?
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  She’s my nemesis. Four years ago, every comment in every thread managed to mention her.
  - lknope
    
    As Palin rears her head and comes into the airspace of BoingBoing, where does she go? It’s Antinous!
Howlsthunder

I kinda thought Moore slipped up now and then on Palin’s accent, too, but Palin kind of has this bizarre amalgam of dialects going on that don’t really belong to any one place. (Minnesota meets western standard with some Alaska bush and “downhome” over emphasizing).

In other words, please oh gawd don’t assume many other Alaskans sound like this – we don’t. I’ve never met anyone here who sounds like her. >_<
- Diogenes
  
  Moore’s errors were when she spoke more clearly than Palin. I guess it’s hard to temporarily turn off living brain cells.
- MrWoods
  
  I keep forgetting she is from AK and assume her and Michelle B are roommates in St. Cloud. Where is that accent from? Did she pick it up in Idaho? I am so confused.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1221357113 Leah Pezzarossi

I think the fundamental element missing from Moore’s performance is the abject narcissism of Palin. That bit of self-satisfaction evident in nearly all of her statements.
- http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
  
  Yes! Exactly what I was thinking, but with more clarity. I described it as ‘slapability’ – but you’re spot on with ‘ narcissistic self-satisfaction’. It’s kind of subtle, hard to pinpoint, but it’s missing.
  
  It’s that quality that made me hate her – all politicians say things I hate – but it was the way she said things. In reality it was probably the result of someone with half a brain trying to read a teleprompter.
Diogenes

Moore’s only shortfall was that she didn’t quite capture the smug self-satisfied smile that can only be worn by those who are seldom right, but never in doubt.

(oh, and I loved: “Name one f**king paper!”)
http://twitter.com/Skyhawk1 skyhawk1

Julianne Moore is hot. That is all.
redjon

Moore looks much more professional than Palin. She just doesn’t quote carry off that “Barbie” thing. She’s good; don’t get me wrong. But Moore is obviously a “pro.”
yupgiboy

There’s a big difference between acting and mimicking.
mat catastrophe

The book is far better and covers a much wider range of the 2008 primary. This film was basically just a hatchet job on Palin (probably well deserved) and isn’t really worth watching. Well, aside from the awesome mullet joke.
- Pedantic Douchebag
  
  Andrew? I thought you were dead!
- factbased
  
  What makes it a hatchet job? To me, that implies some lying or exaggeration. And as for not worth watching, that depends on whether you think there are any lessons to be learned from her almost becoming VP. We dodged a bullet and it’s important to realize that and get insight into how it happened from people that were intimately involved.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  This film was basically just a hatchet job on Palin…
  
  “When you meet anything that’s going to be human and isn’t yet, or used to be human once and isn’t now, or ought to be human and isn’t, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet.” -C. S. Lewis
http://rabbitmill.blogspot.com/ Lukas Novak

This movie inflicted me with several new fetishes. I am ashamed.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_PV4JXFNDQXSOHJBOWVZC6LSFYM ColinN

The true measure of a great acting job: Moore actually made me feel sorry for Palin, for portraying a character so clearly out of her depth; deer-in-headlights panicked; pushed back into Beauty Queen focus way past the point of having the tools to deal with it; the dieting, etc etc… I’m not defending Palin in 2008, I’m saying that Moore actually gave pathos to a dispicable character.
Nicholas Lento

Moore sounds more intelligent and less shrill…but she’s close.
http://profiles.google.com/macrumpton Michael Crumpton

Does anyone else think that Palin sounds like she has a Canadian accent? Apologies to Canada.