Danny Strong’s “Recount”

Danny Strong (Doyle on Gilmore Girls), was was recently named one of 10 Screenwriters to Watch by Variety. And with good cause. Danny is in post-production on a script he wrote for a TV movie for HBO called Recount which stars Kevin Spacey, John Hurt, Tom Wikinson, Denis Leary and many others. The film is directed by Jay Roach of "Meet the Parents." That is a huge start-studded line-up for Danny Strong’s first screenplay!

Recount is a chronicle of the events of the five weeks starting November 7, 2000 during the presedential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, as well as the December Supreme Court ruling that upheld the vote count and elected Bush to office. The film looks at the legal and political maneuvers from the point of view of both the Bush and the Gore sides.

Strong went to great lengths to ensure accuracy, combing over several books, including Jeffrey Toobin’s “Too Close to Call” and the Washington Post political staff’s “Deadlock: The Inside Story of America’s Closest Election,” among others.

To get more nuance and character insight about the actual people who participated in the 36-day high-stakes drama, he also re-interviewed many of the participants, including Klain, Baker, Ginsberg and others.

Early reports had Recount coming out "during the heat" of the current presedential elections, but I am unable to find a release date on HBO. The imdb boards are reporting the release to be this May.

Danny Strong walked into the HBO office nervous and inexperienced, but gave a 30-minute pitch with visual aids, and walked out with a signed deal. The Black List names "Recount" as one of the best scripts in Hollywood – how amazing is that for Danny?!

"When I started researching it, I saw what a fascinating chapter of American history this was, and how little I knew about it and how little anybody knew about it," Strong says. "I felt like I had discovered gold."

Sydney Pollack, who worked with Danny on the script, says Danny was able to create a "muscular, exciting" script of the issue. That Danny has "a terrific sense of structure. He had the ability to do all that research and digest it and distill it into something that comes out as real suspenseful drama, even though we already know how it comes out."

As an actor, Danny Strong also starred in two 2008 movies, "Robbin’ in da Hood" and "Bad Guys."

Via family, variety, imdb, politico Tags: danny strong, recount, hbo, hbo films, politics, election