The Connollys premiered the film at the Regent Theatre in Arlington on Sept. 13, and it will be shown in various Massachusetts and Boston-area independent theaters in upcoming weeks.
“What an eye-opener. I was like a deer in headlights,” Michael Connolly said of film making. “It was an incredible experience and I look back at that and what was so hard to believe was all of these colorful characters in Massachusetts politics. The cast of characters was just out of sight.”
He always had been interested in movies and helped create a short environmental special for Channel 2 in the past, but nothing to this scale. He first tried to do a movie called Beacon Hill in the late 1990s to 2000s, but could not find a distributor. So he put it on the back burner until a few years ago when he began making a new version with some of the old footage and new scenes.
The film tells the story of a young independent Representative who gets caught up in a political scandal and a set-up, orchestrated by the majority leader. A fictional speaker of the house plays a big role, too.
“It’s a story about Boston, and it’s a story about Massachusetts government,” said Connolly, who noted that one of the film’s major characters is looking for redemption. “And the thing that inspired me to write the movie was having spent almost 25 years in elected office.”
Despite Connolly’s intimate knowledge of the state’s political scene, don’t expect a tell-all. The movie is fictionalized, and the bigger-than-life figure of former Massachusetts Senate President William “Billy” Bulger, for example, is not mentioned. Bulger was a fixture in state politics from 1960 to 1996. During his time in politics, he spoke against the desegregation of Boston schools while also advocating for and writing the first Massachusetts child abuse reporting law. Bulger was also investigated for extortion in the ’80s but cleared of wrongdoing.
His brother, Whitey Bulger, was a famous mobster who was killed in jail in 2018. The messy relationship between Billy’s politics and Whitey’s criminal history mirrors the relationship between Connolly’s speaker of the house character and his brother.
Connolly acknowledged that his own experiences as a seasoned politician are sprinkled throughout the movie and inspire each scene.
“Every segment or every separate scene [of the film], I had actually lived that or observed it,” he said.
Take the brawl at the end of the movie, for example.
“We have a fight scene in the movie, and people will say to me ‘wait a minute, we’re talking about government, you know, you’re all grown ups, you don’t have fights. This is absurd this goes over the top, this is beyond the suspension of disbelief,’” he said.
But he witnessed something similar at a 1979 dinner fundraiser at Anthony’s Pier 4 between the chief of staff of the then governor and the majority leader.
“All of a sudden out comes the profanity and the next thing you know, bang, fists were flying,” Connolly said. “What had happened is the chief of staff had insulted the majority leader in the house’s wife.. the next thing, boom he hits him.”
The movie shows the overall cordial relationship, even with underlying political tensions, between all members of the House. They have casual conversations in hallways, at desks, and at a pub. Connolly hopes viewers come away realizing that the political scene does not have to be quite as volatile as it is today.
“If you go to Washington D.C., we have lost our way,” he said. “I have never in my lifetime witnessed a time like this where political revenge, payback, evening the score has become so dominant in all of our politics. [I’m] just dumbfounded by it.”
Barnett “Barney” Frank, a former Massachusetts and U.S. Representative, helped advise Connolly on the portrayal of political discussions in the 1980s.
“Michael showed [that] you had disagreements but you could work them out. The degree of total partisan polarization is very new and I hope it doesn’t last,” Frank said.
Despite his newness in filmmaking, Connolly recruited a few fairly prominent actors for main roles after conducting casting calls in Los Angeles, New York and Boston. The biggest star in the film is actor Francis X. McCarthy, who portrays the speaker, and has starred in such major pictures as Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. Michael Landes, who plays the young independent representative, appeared in other movies such as Final Destination 3 and Homecoming. Wendy Benson-Landes, who is Landes’ love interest in the film, was in a reoccurring role in television series, Unhappily Ever After. In a twist of life imitating art, she and Michael Landes fell in love on the set during the filming of the first part of the film and got married in 2000.
Scenes set in 1984 were shot inside the State House House Chambers, but the prologue and epilogue, both set in 2024, were filmed on Martha’s Vineyard.
The movie ends with a quote on the screen: “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.”
For Connolly, the quote is a statement about the state of politics in 1984 and also now.
“I have never seen such greed in this country as I see today…We have strong themes in terms of love and hate. All of this is all spiritual. Integrity, [it’s] gone. It’s gone. And that’s what this film addresses,” he said.