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How Al Gore tamed Hollywood | 15222__goresnl_l
ACTING PRESIDENT An SNL skit let Gore sample the view from the desk he barely missed occupying for real in 2000
Saturday Night Live: Dana Edelson

It's a week after the L.A. screening and the 58-year-old pop idol — sound better? — is in New York City to do The Daily Show and make an appearance at a theater on the Upper West Side (possibly the bluest neighborhood in the most indigo city on the navy-est coast of the nation). Sneak a peek at his itinerary — that phone-book-thick slab sitting on a side table in his hotel suite — and you get a sense of how tirelessly he's been promoting the film. He's glad-handed hundreds of moviegoers at dozens of multiplexes in cities across the country, sat for countless radio and TV interviews, even opened an episode of SNL with the presidential address he might have delivered if only a few more of those chads in Florida had hung his way (''The anti-hurricane and -tornado machine I was instrumental in helping to develop...''). He's not kissing babies or promising lower taxes, but otherwise he's running what looks a lot like an old-fashioned whistle-stop political campaign.

''On the surface, there are similarities,'' Gore says, popping open a bottle of diet soda as he settles onto his hotel-room sofa. ''There's the hand shaking and the interviewing and all the events — that's similar. But compared to a presidential campaign, promoting a movie is nothing. This is like a vacation.''

''He's the hardest-working man in show business,'' says John Lesher, head of Paramount Vantage/Paramount Classics, the specialty division at Viacom that picked up the distribution rights to Gore's movie at Sundance in February. ''And he does what he promises to do, which is rare in Hollywood.''

Of course, Gore has one advantage over other stars peddling products to the public — he passionately believes in what he's selling. He started assembling his slide show in the late 1980s, after having launched his first bid for the presidency at the ripe old age of 38 (''Some chutzpah, eh?'') and nearly losing his 6-year-old son Albert in a car crash. ''I don't like the phrase 'midlife crisis,''' he says, ''but, yes, I was reevaluating my priorities.''


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