‘Game Change’ Authors Writing Book About ‘Trump the Man’ and His Campaign

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/09/business/trump-campaign-mark-halperin-john-heilemann-book.html

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On election night last year, the political journalists and analysts Mark Halperin and John Heilemann appeared on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and offered stunned commentary to their ashen-faced host as Donald J. Trump’s victory became clear.

“Outside of the Civil War, World War II and including 9/11, this might be the most cataclysmic event the country’s ever seen,” Mr. Halperin said.

Given that assessment, it might seem surprising that Mr. Halperin has opted to re-examine Mr. Trump’s tumultuous campaign in all its detail. But he and Mr. Heilemann, the authors of the best-selling campaign books “Game Change” and “Double Down,” are betting that there is still a strong appetite for an insider, blow-by-blow account of the 2016 campaign.

On Thursday, Penguin Press announced that it had acquired their latest book, which will explore Mr. Trump’s striking and unexpected rise to the presidency. The book has also been purchased for a mini-series on HBO, which turned “Game Change” into an original movie, with Julianne Moore as Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska and Ed Harris as Senator John McCain. Like “Game Change,” the new mini-series by HBO Films will be directed and executive produced by Jay Roach, and executive produced by Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman of Playtone Productions.

Mr. Halperin and Mr. Heilemann, who are also producers and hosts of “The Circus,” a weekly documentary series on Showtime, will be entering crowded terrain in revisiting last year’s campaign.

In the months since the election, several prominent political reporters have sold memoirs and books promising an inside view of the race, including Katy Tur of NBC News, who is writing a book about covering the Trump campaign, and Amy Chozick of The New York Times, who is working on a memoir of her years covering Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Halperin, who has covered eight presidential campaigns, insisted there was plenty of fresh material.

“Trump in particular, as much as he’s covered and has been covered, in some ways he’s an undercovered figure, in terms of Trump the man, and that’s one of the things we’re going to do with the book,” he said.

Mr. Heilemann added, “We’ll be looking at all the big unanswered questions of the race, some of them are obvious, some of them are less obvious, but of course we’re interested in breaking news.”

The book is scheduled to be published in early 2018.

In a joint telephone interview, Mr. Halperin and Mr. Heilemann spoke about why people will still be reading their book 50 years from now, and why they won’t ask Alec Baldwin to audition for the role of Mr. Trump in the mini-series. The following conversation has been edited and condensed.

Campaign reporting has changed since you published “Game Change.” There are new online outlets and every twist and turn is reported in real time. Is there that much that we don’t know, or any fresh ground to cover in reliving the 2016 campaign?

MR. HALPERIN I dispute the premise a little bit. More stuff comes out now on one level because of Twitter and other social media, but the fundamental principle, what we tried to achieve with “Game Change” and “Double Down,” remains the same. There’re people reporting on a lot of stuff, but the parade moves on so quickly that there’s still plenty of room to double back and look for stories and answers to things that you can’t get in real time.

The political news cycle is so punishing and relentless these days — journalists and citizens can barely keep up with new revelations. What value do you think there is in re-examining the campaign?

MR. HEILEMANN If you think again about the 2016 race, there are huge questions. Even now, if you think about what is going on in the political arena today, people are asking: What was the role of WikiLeaks in the campaign? Was the Trump campaign collaborating with the Russians? Why did [F.B.I. Director James] Comey do what he did? All those questions, people are talking about them right now. Despite all the coverage, we don’t know the answers to those questions. We think there’s still an awful lot to write about here.

Who would you cast to play Trump in the HBO mini-series, if Alec Baldwin isn’t available?

MR. HALPERIN We’re not prepared to discuss that yet, that will be done in conjunction with Playtone and HBO. But as great as Alec Baldwin is, the idea behind this is less caricature, and more interesting dramatic portrayal that’s not a cartoonish caricature.

So much has happened since the election, and since Inauguration Day, that will color the way readers and viewers view the campaign in hindsight. Will you nod to recent events in your book?

MR. HALPERIN Stay tuned. That’s a moving target. When we do these books, we’re part journalists and part historians, and we’re very aware of the way people consume media. People don’t want to read a book that’s completely divorced from what happened since the campaign, but there’s certain judgments that have to be made along the way about how to connect things thematically or factually to what’s happened since the election. But we’ll primarily be writing about the campaign.

Do you think there might be fatigue among readers and viewers for a long-form deconstruction of the presidential campaign?

MR. HEILEMANN I think you’re right that, like with every election, people have a moment where they’re like, “I’m glad that’s over.” But I think the key is, Trump is a figure of enormous fascination for people the world over. And how he pulled off what is the most stunning and improbable political upsets of all time is a question that I think people will be interested in. They’re interested today, they’ll be interested a year from now, they’ll be interested 50 years from now. The one thing we’re not worried about right now is that people will be bored by Donald Trump.