Priamry Colors 

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Fact sheet:

With a screenplay by Elaine May (Heaven Can Wait) and one of the most phenomenal casts of box-office-dominating stars ever assembled, Primary Colors follows the Clintonian candidacy of Jack Stanton (John Travolta), a governor from a small Southern state who, while sincere in his devotion to the American people, is nevertheless plagued by scandal at every twist on the campaign trail.

On his political journey, Stanton is surrounded by a colorful cast of supporters on his political journey, including the strident and singularly ambition would-be First Lady, Susan Stanton (Emma Thompson); the gritty, outspoken spin doctor, Richard Jemmons (Billy Bob Thornton); the youthfully naive and optimistic campaigner Henry Burton (Adrian Lester); and the campaign’s ace dirt-digger, the boisterous and slightly out-of-whack Libby Holden (Kathy Bates).

The candidates heart is in the right place, but other parts of his body frequently are not, leading to potential disastrous allegations of sexual misconduct and paternity suits. Further, in Stanton’s youth he was arrested during a Vietnam War protest in Chicago. Each of these fires is put out by Stanton’s seasoned squad of campaigners, and other contenders’ skeletons are similarly exposed during the mid-slinging campaign.

As collaborators in the high-satire improvisational Broadway show An Evening With Mike Nichols and Elaine May in 1960, the couple earned the nickname “the world’s fastest humans.”  With their incisive and frequently biting humor in Primary Colors, Nichols and May show that they haven’t lost a step as they expose the foibles and pratfalls, to varying degrees of disaster, that people in pursuit of power most face, and the backsliding into corruption that hounds anyone scaling the slippery steps to supremacy.

John Travolta plays the role of Gov. Jack Stanton, the Clintonian campaigner for the Democratic nomination for president. Travolta has been one of Hollywood’s most sought-after and bankable stars for some 20 years, ever since his runaway success in 1977’s Saturday Night Fever, which he followed with another pair of successes, the film adaptation of the hit musical Grease and the trend-setting 1980 hit Urban Cowboy. After an appearance in the surprise 1989 box-office hit Look Who’s Talking, Travolta’s fine sowed even further with his spectacular role in 1994’s modern-day classic Pulp Fiction.  He has appeared in a number of hits since then, including Get Shorty, with Danny DeVito and Rene Russo; Broken Arrow, by director John Woo; Face/Off, opposite Nicolas Cage; She’s So Lovely, with Sean Penn and Robin Wright; and in the Costa-Gravas film Mad City, with Dustin Hoffman.

Emma Thompson, who plays the single-minded and determined would-be First Lady, Susan Stanton in Primary Colors, is world-renowned for her work both m actress and writer. In 1992 she won a Best Actress Academy Award® for her performance as Margaret Schlegel, opposite Anthony Hopkins, in Howards End. The following year she earned two Academy Award® nominations for her work in The Remains of the Day and In the Name of the Father, and in 1995 she won two Oscars, as actress and screenwriter in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.

Billy Bob Thornton plays the media-savvy, boisterous campaigner Richard Jemmons in Primary Colors. After excellent performances in several feature films (One False Move, Bound By Honor, On Deadly Ground, Dead Man), Thornton hit the big time with his triple-duty work as writer, director and lead actor in the riveting 1996 feature Sling Blade. He has recently completed roles in a number of features including John Singleton’s historical drama Rosewood, Robert Duvall’s religious-theme The Apostle, Steve Gyllenhall’s comedy Home Grown, Arthur Hiller’s An Alan Smithee Film and Oliver Stone’s U-Turn.

Academy Award®-winner Kathy Bates, who plays the crazed, trash-talking investigator Libby Holden, reached Hollywood’s elite, with her astonishing and disquieting portrayal as the obsessed fan Annie Wilkes in Rob Reiner’s 1990 adaptation of Stephen King’s Misery, a role which earned Bates an Oscar for Best Actress. More recently, Bates received critical acclaim for her work in the title role of King’s Dolores Claiborne, with Jennifer Jason Leigh and Christopher Plummer. Her other feature film credits include Fried Green Tomatoes, Shadows and Fog, Prelude to a Kiss, Men Don’t Leave, White Palace, Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean and Dick Tracy.

Elaine May, who wrote the screenplay adaptation for Primary Colors, has a relationship with the film’s director-producer Mike Nichols that goes back to the late ’50s, when they made up one of the most successful comedy learns in history. As a screenwriter, May shared an Academy Award® nomination with Warren Beatty for 1978’s Heaven Can Wait, and in 1996 she returned to work with Nichols, with her screenplay for the Nichols-directed The Birdcage.