The Trenton Times

"Anytown' Puts Trenton on Map"

TRENTON - New Jersey GOP gubernatorial candidate Steven Lonegan attended a movie at the Trenton Film Festival yesterday and emerged the reluctant star of what could become a political football, thanks to his warts-and-all portrait in the documentary about his 2003 race for re-election as mayor of Bogota, N.J.

The documentary "Anytown, U.S.A." was intended to depict a microcosm of American voting habits. But Lonegan's bid for governor will probably not be helped by what director Kristian Fraga culled from 300 hours of tape on Lonegan and his two opponents.

"We didn't go out of our way to make him look bad," Fraga said yesterday, following the film's afternoon showing at the state museum - which drew the largest crowd of the three-day festival. "But if I aimed a camera at you for months, you'd forget it was in the room too."

In the film, an unguarded Lonegan appears dismissive of Bogota residents and their complaints about cuts in city services and schools, uses a small tabloid he owns called The Bogotian to publish false charges against his rivals and shrugs off the tumor-induced sight impairment of one of his opponents, underdog independent write-in candidate Dave Musikant.

"I thought it was great," a smiling, seemingly unflappable Lonegan stated as he exited the state museum theater with his wife. "I got a lot of laughs."

"I'm just sorry about the way it ended," said his wife, Lorraine, referring to the epilogue of candidate Musikant's death following the election.

Charges that Lonegan supporters wanted to buy out yesterday's New Jersey premiere came both from film festival personnel and the film's producer, Juan Dominguez, a Bogota native who showed the film at his home to Lonegan Wednesday.

"We heard about that (rumor) and we made sure there would be a balanced audience," Dominguez said of the film, which received a standing ovation from the nearly 300 audience members. Festival organizers moved the documentary to the state museum when it sold out at the much smaller Contemporary venue earlier in the week.

Following the showing yesterday - in a scene that looked like something out of a movie - Lonegan, fellow politicians, a famed campaign manager, and a crowd of potential New Jersey voters spilled onto the lawn of the state museum, fired up by the 85-minute film that was the best-attended in the festival's brief two-year history.

On tape, Lonegan and his opponents - Democrat Fred Pesce and independent write-in candidate Musikant - don't seem to hold back from the cameras.

While Pesce emerges as an easygoing but tired and lackluster candidate, Lonegan is portrayed as a status-quo politician with little regard for his constituents. He dismisses the likable underdog Musikant who, like Lonegan, is partially blind, as someone who "lives in the basement of his sister's house" and ignores Musikant's candidacy until the final days of the campaign.

All three candidates - not to mention the voters of Bogota - appear to be inadvertently comical in the film that has yet to find a distributor.

When an Associated Press reporter asks Pesce to list his major campaign issues, Pesce says he has four and then can't name one. Lonegan makes the rounds of Bogota neighborhoods only to walk away from homes he thinks belong to Democrats. The affable Musikant, who died shortly after the election, sings the theme song to "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" as he tries to drum up votes.

Yesterday, the campaign manager of former wrestler Jesse Ventura's successful Minnesota gubernatorial campaign, Doug Friedline, mingled with the crowd that stood outside the museum for a short question-and-answer session.

Now working with former "Saturday Night Live" comedian Joe Piscopo on a possible gubernatorial bid, Friedline is in the film as Musikant's campaign manager.

George Shalhoub, a Bogota city councilman who ran on Lonegan's ticket in 2003, took it all in stride, even though he gets some of the biggest laughs in the movie with such comments as his reference to the legally blind Musikant as a candidate in "need of a vision."

"Hey, it's just politics," he explained, greeting Friedline outside the museum. "I probably sat down for 10 hours out of hundreds of hours of film. Steve (Lonegan) will not stop. He's a brilliant guy."

The success of "Anytown, U.S.A." is a reflection of the growing audience the fledgling Trenton Film Festival is attracting. According to Dan Noonan, festival ticket manager, attendance rose to 1,600 for the event that ended last night. That's an increase of 400 over last year's fest.

"We've only been in Trenton two-and-a-half hours and so far Trenton is great," director Eli Despres shouted from the state museum stage following Friday night's screening of his film "Wilderness Camp for Girls." He and co-director wife, Kim Roberts, walked around town while their film unreeled.

"I'm a film buff," explained Trenton resident Reginald Ellis, who attended Matt Zoller Seitz's "Home" Saturday afternoon. "I'm going to see a few films."

Hopewell resident Joan Arkuzewski volunteered to help at the festival because she wants "to get more involved in Trenton." And Joshua Kane of Glassboro hung around after showing his movie, "Arise," about a cafe.

Longtime Trenton residents noted yesterday that the nearly filled auditorium for "Anytown, U.S.A.," represented the first time in nearly 30 years that patrons were able to see a movie in the city.

"We're growing," festival director Kevin Williams said in the midst of the weekend activities that fell under the motto "three days, four venues, 90 films."

Among the activities connected to the screenings at the state museum, the Trenton Marriott at Lafayette Yard, The Contemporary and Gallery 125 were a buffet under tents Friday night, a meet-and-greet with filmmakers at Mill Hill Saloon Saturday night, and an awards ceremony last night that included Ernie I-Beam awards for "Home" (Best Narrative Feature), "Big Question" (Best Documentary Feature), and "Moonless Night" (Best Foreign Film).

Sponsored by various area businesses and run by the non-profit Trenton Film Society, the festival is designed to cultivate a film community in a city that hasn't had a commercial theater operating since 1976.