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What HBO’s campy Sarah Palin movie ‘Game Change’ might be able to teach us about JD Vance & the 2024 election

By Cameron Scheetz July 30, 2024 at 12:00pm
Image Credit: ‘Game Change,’ HBO

As we anxiously ramp up to the 2024 presidential election, this past month alone has been one for the history books, to put it mildly, especially now that much of the focus has shifted down ticket to our candidates for Vice President.

On one side, there’s venture capitalist-turned-Ohio senator JD Vance, who was hand-selected to be Trump’s running mate, though the would-be MAGA golden boy can’t seem to stop putting his foot in his couch mouth since the RNC. Some folks are already writing the “elegy” for his short stint on the campaign trail.

And then there’s the Democrats, who have a new spring in their step ever since President Biden ended his bid for re-election, throwing his full support behind VP Kamala Harris. As she vets a number of swing-state politicians—who are largely older, white men—to find her Veep, it’s a little like watching a high-stakes version of The Golden Bachelorette play out in the public forum.

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Yes, these are unprecedented times… except they kind of aren’t! If you can remember back long, long ago to 2008, our country was similarly going through an election cycle with an outsized focus on potential VPs—namely former Alaska governor Sarah Palin—and our heads are still spinning to this day.

In fact, the story of Palin’s rollercoaster ride along the campaign trail was such a doozy that it was turned into a movie just a few short years later.

Director Jay Roach’s Game Change premiered on HBO on March 10, 2012, and it saw the great Julianne Moore don the half-hearted beehive and rimless glasses of the one-time vice-presidential hopeful. The film was a ratings success for the network and was favorably reviewed—it even won a number of Emmys!—but for a while there it seemed like no one really cared to re-watch this tour through recent history.

Well, given *motions around wildly* the current state of things, we found ourselves morbidly curious about revisiting Game Change in 2024: Was it as campy as we remember? Is Vance just Palin 2.0? Is there anything it can teach us about the current election? Did Moore deserve that Emmy? Did the game really change?

All will be revealed as Queerty takes a machine back to 2008—by way of 2012—to highlight some of the funniest, strangest, and most eerily prescient moments from Game Change:

Hindsight Is 20/20 2024

Image Credit: ‘Game Change,’ HBO

The film opens on a recreation of a 2010 60 Minutes interview between Republican strategist Steve Schmidt (Woody Harrelson) and Anderson Cooper (playing himself by way of archival footage—a disorienting trick the film employs frequently). Like Game Change itself, their conversation tries to provide some context for the state of the Republican Party in 2008, as well as Senator John McCain’s (Ed Harris) campaign at the time, stating plainly that Palin’s VP pick was a “bold” Hail Mary to win the race. It may have also changed American politics for the worse…

The interview is merely a bookend for the story, however, and we soon jump back in time to August 2007. Interestingly, Schmidt’s puppet-mastery of the election makes him the movie’s secret protagonist—we won’t even see Moore’s Palin for another 10 minutes or so!

Is Somebody Gonna Match My Maverick?

Image Credit: ‘Game Change,’ HBO

Scrambling to boost McCain’s odds in the wake of “community organizer” Barack Obama inspiring the masses and becoming one of the biggest celebrities in the world, Schmidt and his cohorts are desperate to find a running mate to make the Republican ticket undeniable—another “Maverick,” if you will.

And this is where things start to feel extra relevant to our current news cycle: As team McCain debates which candidates tick all the right boxes, you really begin to see this whole thing as a game of (calculated) Risk. One imagines present-day Democratic operatives having similar conversations this very moment, dismissing potential names simply because they have one opinion out of line—or because they’re not exciting enough on camera!

And as Schmidt’s guys zero in on Palin, “a woman with a gun,” you can also see how Trump’s folks in 2024 might’ve been blinded by someone like Vance’s supposed “star power” and name recognition, ignoring any number of glaring red flags just because he fit their narrative. They say history repeats itself. Hmm… wonder how this is going to go?

Gimme Moore

Once the all-too-brief “vetting” of Palin begins, we get our first proper taste of Julianne Moore’s performance here. And it’s delicious.

The Oscar-winning actress is known for going big when it comes to voice work, ranging from the brilliantly unnerving (the lisp of Gracie in May December) to the cartoonishly broad (Nancy Donovan’s Boston-baked accent on 30 Rock) and her Palin is no different. (By the way, all of these performances are incredible, in this writer’s opinion.)

Not only does she nail that hockey mom Alaskan affect, but she practically disappears behind that brunette bayang. Like, you honestly forget you’re watching Julianne Moore sometimes! By the time she fires off a no-nonsense “here’s the deal,” but makes it sound like “here’s the dill,” we imagine the Television Academy was already etching Moore’s name into an Emmy statue.

Mother Has Arrived

Image Credit: ‘Game Change,’ HBO

As if Moore wasn’t enough, Game Change brings in another heavy-hitter: The iconic Sarah Paulson, playing MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace, former White House Communications Director under George W. Bush, effectively employed by the McCain campaign to groom Palin into the VP of their dreams.

In many ways, the film portrays Wallace as the conscience of this political machine, trying to show compassion for Palin even as she threatens to hijack the entire election for herself. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the real Wallace has praised Game Change, saying it “captured the spirit and emotion of the campaign.” 

Paulson was just getting some traction in the Ryan Murphy-verse when Game Change premiered, which would bring her to a whole new level of stardom, but she’s great as ever here. We also had to give her an extended shoutout because, even though she’s not playing a queer woman, she’s really the only gay thing about this movie.

The Funniest Montage Ever

Image Credit: ‘Game Change,’ HBO

Game Change isn’t necessarily a comedy, though its pointed “this is where it all went wrong” perspective will surely elicit more than a few knowing grins.

That being said, there is at least one intentional (we think?) laugh-out-loud moment that had us gasping for air: Pumped to hit the campaign trail, Palin gets her own “trying on outfits” montage set to Jo Dee Messina’s “Delicious Surprise (I Believe It)” and it’s a riot. As she puts on shoulder-padded power-suit after shoulder-padded power-suit, we’re sitting there thinking this might be the most hilarious movie montage we’ve ever seen.

And when Palin walks out with her (in)famous half-up, half-down hairdo—met with applause from her whole family—we found ourselves standing up and applauding, too. *chef’s kiss*

Ad-Vance-d Notice

Image Credit: ‘Game Change,’ HBO

One area we’ll dock points from Game Change is that it is way too over-reliant on this formula: Someone says something incredulous about something that will never happen. Then—bam—smash-cut to the next scene and suddenly the thing they said would never happen? It’s happening!

A notable example of this is when Palin reassures her team that there’s nothing from her past to worry about, that she can’t think of anything she hasn’t already disclosed. Well, guess what, Mimi? We’re then treated to a series of real new reports drudging up old controversies, from the infamous “Troopergate” scandal to her husband’s former membership of an Alaskan secessionist movement.

You can’t watch this sequence today and not think of what’s happened to Vance in the immediate aftermath of his VP selection: His past feelings about Trump, that clip of his disparaging comments about “childless cat ladies,” even the countless couch memes. (For the record: We think this anti-LGBTQ+ bully deserves all of the criticism coming his way.) Again, this movie might be more interesting right now than it was a decade ago.

That Tina Fey Cameo

Image Credit: ‘Game Change,’ HBO (left) | ‘Saturday Night Live,’ NBC (right)

No, Tina Fey isn’t actually in Game Change—but clips of her famous Sarah Palin impression from Saturday Night Live are. We see more than a few lines from the sketch where she and Amy Poehler’s Hillary Clinton jointly address the nation (you know the one: “I can see Russia from my house!”), and the one sending up Palin’s disastrous interview with Katie Couric (again, Amy Poehler). Both sketches are still incredibly funny, by the way.

On one hand, it’s incredibly amusing to see Moore-as-Palin watch Fey-as-Palin—these moments underline how the actress’s take on the politician goes much deeper than caricature (which we mean as no shade to Fey). However, these scenes also illustrate pivotal points in Palin’s downward spiral: Not only is she unable to brush off the gentle mockery from SNL, but she’s haunted by the fact that there are wide swaths of the American public who don’t love her like her small-town Alaskan constituents did. And it’s starting to get to her.

Palin Goes Off The Rails

In the wake of that Couric interview, Palin’s psyche really takes a nosedive. She and Nicolle Wallace routinely butt heads, and it’s a thrill to watch Moore and Paulson dial up the cattiness while still wearing their pageant smiles. Eventually, Wallace tells Schmidt she never wants to deal with Palin ever again. And we get it, girl!

The rest of the team remarks on Palin’s mood swings, seeming obsession with her diet, and frequent dips into “catatonic stupors.” McCain brings his VP pick and her family for his home state of Arizona for a little R&R out of the spotlight—for Palin’s sake and his. At this point it’s even suggested she could be mentally unstable, which may be one of Game Change‘s boldest swings.

Though the film’s based on journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s 2010 nonfiction book of the same name, many from McCain and Palin’s camps IRL have claimed it spins a false narrative, and that they did not intend to watch. It is pretty notable, however, that Schmidt himself has praised the film and called it a truthful account of events.

Debate In The Uncanny Valley

Just in time for the Vice Presidential debate—which took place October 2, 2008 in St. Louis, MO—Schmidt realizes Palin’s never going to be able to answer hard-hitting policy questions on her own, so he commits to having her memorize answers for anything and everything. Surprisingly, Palin’s up to the task, though she can’t stop calling her opponent “O’Biden” on accident. Ahh, simpler times.

The debate scene itself is a wild one, with the late Gwen Ifill appearing as herself—through archival footage—while Biden is “performed” by a mix of old clips (looking much younger and sharper in ’08, we’ll add) and a stand-in actor—who you only ever see from afar or behind, yet it looks nothing like him. Seeing Moore’s Palin face off with the real Biden makes Game Change‘s big debate scene an especially surreal trip down memory lane.

As you probably remember, things go surprisingly well for Palin that night, and Schmidt calls it “the greatest debate ever.” Unfortunately, it all goes right to the Governor’s head, who no longer seems happy to toe the party line: “If I’m the star carrying this campaign, I’m going to do what I want.”

Rogue Nation

Image Credit: ‘Game Change,’ HBO

With Obama leading the polls and Palin fully in her “Going Rogue” era, things get bleak behind closed doors on Team McCain: “There’s a dark side to American populism,” the Senator ominously tells his campaign staff. “Some people win elections by tapping into it… I’m not one of those people.” (Clearly Trump’s never had that same issue.)

And, yet, he allows Palin to be the mouthpiece for a dirty bit of gossip they’d been sitting on, a last-ditch effort to win the whole thing: Obama’s alleged connection to far-left “domestic terrorist” Bill Ayers. Game Change paints this as a real turning point—not necessarily for the election, but for the heart and soul of America. A montage of the conservative crowd being emboldened by nasty, racist, bigoted rhetoric might as well be the prequel to the MAGA movement.

The Beginning Of The End

Finally, we arrive at our climactic election night: November 4, 2008, and things aren’t looking good at Republican HQ. McCain is downing whiskey, while Schmidt seems sick to his stomach, haunted by the fact that the didn’t grill Palin harder on foreign policy during the vetting process. Wallace tearily confesses she couldn’t bring herself to vote.

“It wasn’t a campaign, it was a bad reality show.”

When the race is called for Obama, Palin is adamant she should make a concession speech, which Schmidt angrily shuts down—no losing vice presidential candidate has ever made a speech on election night. Then she makes an appeal to McCain, who looks depressed while facing the monster he’s inadvertently created. He offers the prescient advice: “You’re one of the leaders of the party now, Sarah. Don’t get co-opted by Limbaugh and the other extremists. They’ll destroy the party if you let them.”

In the years since, Palin has been out of the political limelight to a degree (though not for lack of trying—she ran for an Alaskan congressional seat in 2022, which she lost to Democrat Mary Peltola) and has more or less become a fledgling reality star. But McCain’s words unfortunately bore out, especially as others stepped up to the plate to become the beacons of the very extremism he warned about.

When Game Change premiered in March of 2012, Trump was busy yelling at Clay Aiken on The Apprentice, and Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy was four years away from being published. Again, it had only been four years since the Obama-McCain election, so it’s understandable if you didn’t want to watch at the time—did we really need a rehash of something we had just lived through?

Twelve years later, it’s painfully apparent that the game really did change when Palin joined the ticket, ushering in an era of extremist dog whistles, fear-mongering, and so-called politicians who are more about the spectacle than actual policy. It feels like our channel’s been stuck on this “bad reality show” ever since—and that makes Game Change a more enlightening yet nauseating watch than ever before.

Game Change is currently streaming on Max, and is available for digital rental/purchase via Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV.

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7 Comments*

  • War On Free Speech

    This will bomb. It is old news in an election year and nobody cares.

  • zehfyrsez

    Huh?

  • abfab

    The pin up w h or e.

  • abfab

    Speechfree is old news.

  • Cam

    @War On Free Speech Same boring old right wing troll account, (Yawn)

  • still_onthemark

    I watched it twice back in 2012, very entertaining movie, I’ll see it again! Btw, Steve Schmidt eventually gave up on the R party and became a hardcore Never Trumper.

  • abfab

    What papers do you read, Sarah?

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