Dispatches

By MARGARET CARLSON, in Washington

I laughed. I cried. Better than Cats! Well, no one actually said that at the Washington premiere last Wednesday night of The War Room, the new documentary about last year's Clinton campaign, but that's probably because many of those watching were too choked up by the memories, and their own performances. About half the audience at the Key theater in Georgetown were veterans of the campaign, and half of those were on-screen. Paul Begala, James Carville's partner, wiped away a tear as he watched the scene in which he is a voice speaking from the campaign plane to his spiritual twin on the ground in Little Rock, Arkansas, George Stephanopoulos, the day before the vote. "Paulie," Stephanopoulos says in his power whisper, "I got up this morning and driving in I started to cry ... If we lose this, we'll have to jump off a bridge ... or drink some Kool-Aid." It's now no surprise when Carville puddles up, but it's really something when the emotional flatliner Stephanopoulos gets misty-eyed.

While Stephanopoulos is by far the most swooned over Clintonista, this insider audience cheered loudest for the Little People of the campaign. Carville's assistants and all-around War Room anchors Melissa Green, sitting on the floor in her backward baseball cap, and Collier Andress sent the applause meter jumping, as did Stephanopoulos' aide Heather Beckel. And Robert Boorstin, now a special assistant to the President, won a mixture of laughter and sighs for his Best Supporting Nerd walk-ons, in particular a scene recorded at the morning staff meeting during the convention at which Boorstin wouldn't give up on his quest to have hand-made signs on the convention floor, and when he appeared to win, wanted to have a second discussion over whether they should be red or blue.

The biggest hiss went to Pat Buchanan, the second biggest to Ross Perot; a dog wearing a "Barkin for Harkin" sandwich board got an arf (former Harkin aides were present). The eeriest reverse deja-vu moment came when the camera caught Begala outside a hotel doing his drop-dead Perot imitation to abc's Mark Halperin's decent Al Gore, a preview of the matchup the night before on Larry King Live. The deepest groan sounded when, on-screen, campaign chairman (now U.S. Trade Representative) Mickey Kantor, in his power tie and suspenders, enters a room full of jeans and T shirts with election-day returns and apologizes to the camera for saying s -- -- -- .

After the movie, the stars moved on to the Dixie Grill, a faux southern bar with big fish and stock-car racing signs, where the ensemble acting troupe spun its own live performances. Mandy Grunwald, sitting in the opening-night audience, got to see Carville, Stephanopoulos and Boorstin in Little Rock indulge in an eye-rolling exasperated riff at her expense as she tries to sell them on a campaign ad by speakerphone from Washington. "Were you guys embarrassed for Mandy to see you acting that way?" Stephanopoulos spun that one: "Not at all. It was James who was the jerk." And Carville had his sound bite ready. "I'm glad I don't have to watch me everyday. I made my own self nervous."