Tufts alum Matt Bai explores origins of tabloid politics in 'The Front Runner'

The Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life and Tufts University Social Collective Film Series will host an advance screening of “The Front Runner” tonight at the Somerville Theatre, followed by a Q&A with screenwriter Matt Bai (LA '90).Attendees will have the opportunity to discuss the film and Bai’s process of developing the screenplay from his 2014 book, “All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid.”

Bai, who is currently the national political columnist for Yahoo! News, spoke with the Daily about the screening, the film and his career.

“It’s an unusual movie because it’s not a message movie — it doesn’t tell you what to think,” Bai said. "It provokes people to leave the theater debating each other about the decisions that are made on the screen.”

“The Front Runner” tells the story of former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart’s infamous 1988 presidential campaign.The film follows Hart (Hugh Jackman) through his extramarital affair with Donna Rice (Sara Paxton).While Jackman leads the cast, “The Front Runner” features a strong ensemble of familiar faces, from Vera Farmiga as Hart's wife, Lee, to J.K. Simmons as his campaign manager, Bill Dixon.

Bai, who wrote the screenplay with Jay Carlson and director Jason Reitman, explained that the film's cast developed an easy camaraderie resembling that of reporters and campaign staff on a true presidential campaign.

“We had such a sprawling cast, and I think [Jackman’s] leadership component was really important, particularly in this case because he’s such a magnetic figure in his own right.It sort of set the tone for all the actors on set, and I think that sort of bonding that everybody went through really comes across in the movie. We really wanted the campaign and the media in the movie to feel real.”

Bai has covered five presidential campaigns, while Carson has worked for three presidential campaigns and served as press secretary for Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. Their experiences with the intersection of media and politics lends “The Front Runner” an indelibly authentic feel.

“The mandate Jason gave us was to make it real and make it feel like our experiences,” Bai said. “So we just dropped the viewer into a world that may be kind of confusing at times, and we fill it with a lot of different perspectives and conversations.”

"The Front Runner" was filmed last fall in Atlanta, Ga. Bai described working with talented individuals in every aspect of the film's production as a privilege and a learning experience.

The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in September, and was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival the same month. It has generated a great deal of buzz for its refreshing approach to the story of Hart's campaign, specifically through Jackson's ability to flesh the Colorado Democrat into an intricate, three-dimensional character.

Bai's 2014 book, "All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid," focuses on the media’s handling of Hart’s extramarital affair. Bai noted that adapting the book into a screenplay was a fairly streamlined process.

“I’ve always felt like different venues require different kinds of storytelling," he said. "I’m a student of format and I find each one fascinating in its own way, so I never had any illusion that we were just going to take the book and put it on the screen.”

Bai's diverse interest in formats has been a major factor in his itinerant career as a journalist and columnist, motivating him to explore new opportunities in political journalism and beyond. Shortly after graduating from Tufts, Bai was a speechwriter for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). He later attended and graduated from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

Besides Yahoo! News, Bai has worked for the New York Times Magazine, among other publications and news outlets, including. He has also dabbled in acting, playing himself in the second season of Netflix’s “House of Cards” (2013–).

Bai defines his career in decades, with his twenties spent learning how to report and cover news, his thirties becoming a magazine writer and his forties becoming a book author and columnist.

“Another decade in, and I’m learning to be a screenwriter," he said. "I’ve always loved politics. Watergate fascinated me like I’m sure it fascinated a lot of nerdy political kids from that era. But I think I sort of felt like political journalism was seen as this lazy part of the craft. By the mid-'90s, all my thought was about covering urban affairs, housing and street crime. I was a general assignment reporter for the Boston Globe, and then I was a national correspondent for Newsweek, where I did a lot of urban and rural reporting. At some point, when I was working for Newsweek, I did follow my love for politics into that realm.”

Bai was a sophomore at Tufts during Hart's presidential campaign, and he later met Hart while writing a story about him for the New York Times Magazine. The scandal lingered in Bai's mind and took on a new perspective in “All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid.”

Bai is thrilled to present "The Front Runner" to the Somerville community and to Tufts students, in particular.

“It’s always great to go home again and show people what you’ve been up to and share your experience," he said. "Tufts is always going to be a kind of home for me.”

Tonight's film screening and Q&A with Bai begins at 7 p.m. at the Somerville Theatre. Tickets are available for free on Sony Pictures’ website.