From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to the Treatment.

I'm Elvis Mitchell.

You can also hear this show at KCRW.com.

The kind of what we think of as being the Dirty Tricks Republican philosophy that goes back to not

only the first John McCain campaign in 2000, but also to the Dirty Tricks played against

John Kerry in the Swift Boating predates all of that to at least 1988 and the infamous campaign

waged by the first George Bush,

masterminded by political strategist Lee Atwater, the subject of a fascinating new documentary,

Boogieman.

His director, Stefan Forbes, is with me, but he's in Denver.

Stefan, thanks for doing this.

Yeah, my pleasure, man.

Now, I've got to get you to tell me what got you so interested, and if getting this movie out in the year 2008 was like a big motivation for you.

Well, yeah. You know, as an indie filmmaker, you've got to be relevant. You've got to have anything you can on your side. The media, the zeitgeist, you know, the spirit in the air. I think you've got to be in

tune with that stuff. And I knew seeing this election line up a couple years ago, because I was

kind of on Lee Atwater's trail, how ugly it was going to be, because that's the only way this

could go. And, you know, I've been fascinated about this guy, how a guitar pick and rascal from South Carolina could elect Ronald Reagan, George Bush, be a mentor to Karl Rove and teach W how to campaign.

And yet we haven't really studied him and who he was as a culture.

He was the first political operative as a rock star.

Without him, you got no James Carville, definitely no Carl Rove.

He was all about the media basking in the spotlight and using our media as an echo chamber

...