While The Square is getting a lot of publicity this week for its Oscar nomination, another Netflix original documentary will debut next week on the 24th.
Mitt follows the six years that filmmaker Greg Whitely had exclusive access to former presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Here’s the trailer Netflix put out last month:
Reuters has put out an interview with Whitely who talked a bit about the film. He told the news agency that he was surprised that somebody as rich as Romney “would be that cheap,” recalling when the candidate expressed his shock at the price of a glass of milk at a hotel. “He was constantly agonizing over how much for a (campaign advertising) spot,” Whitely’s quoted as saying. “He would look at the hotel bill and just go crazy, and say, ‘I’ll just go buy my own milk at the grocery store at a third of the cost.’”
He went on to say of the Romney family, “They’re clean-cut people who are polite and gracious, but I think it’s impossible to go through that without developing a degree of cynicism. I think it’s a tribute to them that they remained pretty bright-eyed.”
The film will premiere at Sundance, and Whitely hopes the Netflix release will be able to “piggy-back on all the great PR and buzz and momentum” from that, though Netflix tends to generate PR and buzz pretty well on its own.
The filmmaker maintains that the movie does not employ a political agenda, but rather is simply about a family and the father of the family running for president. Viewers will certainly make up their own minds about that. Either way, Netflix will likely generate plenty of interest in this one.
Image via YouTube