Our Brand is Crisis About More a Than Politics

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Our Brand is Crisis about more than politics, say Bullock and Clooney

Film’s star, Sandra Bullock, co-producer George Clooney discuss subtler messages of movie that premiered at TIFF Friday.

Our Brand is Crisis tells the story of rival U.S. political strategists working on electoral campaigns in Bolivia.
But the team behind the topical, political drama says the film is about more than just politics.
“It is about big business and how we as a people are easily manipulated or advertised to in order to sway opinion,” Sandra Bullock, who stars alongside Billy Bob Thornton in the flick, told media at the Toronto International Film Festival Saturday morning.
“It’s up to us now as a people to take ownership and control of what’s being presented to us,” she said.
Co-producer George Clooney admitted that the timing of the film’s release — in the midst of U.S. Presidential and Canadian parliamentary election campaigns — was lucky.
“Who’d have thought that Donald Trump would be at 30 per cent?” he joked. “We’re not that good.”
“We were not looking into it as being a political statement,” Clooney said. “(It’s) about the human condition and how we are packaging and selling everything in a very specific way.”
The film, which premiered at TIFF Friday night, stars Bullock opposite Thornton as political strategists that bring U.S.-style campaigns to Bolivia. It is an adaptation of a 2005 documentary film of the same name that looked into the 2002 election in the South American country.

Bullock, who spends a lot of time on a campaign bus in the film, joked that the experience was a throwback back to her days filming Speed. This was “a completely different experience than Speed, but it felt like home,” the actress laughed.
“I felt like I was back to where I began. I do bus like nobody else.”
Bullock’s role in the film was initially meant to for Clooney. The long-time friends — who co-starred in the 2013 sci-fi hit Gravity, which also premiered at TIFF — said it didn’t take long for the role to be changed to a female.
“There was not a lot of hesitation,” Bullock said about the switch. “That hopefully shows a shift in the climate for women in film. We still have some climbing to do.”
The pair, along with co-producer Grant Heslov, has been friends since a few years out of college, Bullock said.
“We’ve all known each other since long before we had jobs in this business,” she said. “The nice thing is we still like each other, we still admire each other … it’s nice and the challenges, there aren’t any, because we disagree well. We fight fair. So that’s a nice thing after all these years to be able to still say.”
“It’s just like being tethered to her,” Clooney joked, referring to Gravity, about working with Bullock, whom he affectionately called Sandy throughout the news conference. “We had fun. We always have fun.”
But the more important question: What Bullock role does Clooney think he could have played better than his friend and colleague?
“I think we all know it’s Miss Congeniality. I didn’t even have to answer it because you were thinking it,” Clooney joked.
“I rock a swim suit better than almost anybody.”
Our Brand is Crisis plays again next Saturday, Sept. 19, at noon at Princess of Wales theatre.