In May of 2023, a Washington Post/ABC poll revealed only 42% of likely voters favored Joe Biden’s re-election, while 49% favored former President Trump. “That poll knocked me right off my fucking horse,” declared legendary Democratic political operative James Carville.
Director Matt Tyrnauer's new documentary, CARVILLE: Winning is Everything, Stupid, features intimate interviews and verité footage with Democratic Party luminaries such as Bill Clinton, George Stephanopoulos, Donna Brazile and famed Republican operative Mary Matalin — James’s wife of over 30 years — who trace the story of his rise from the bayou to the Beltway, culminating in his masterminding of Bill Clinton’s stunning presidential upset in 1992. Carville’s biography is intercut with his present-day efforts to shape the Democratic Party and to get Joe Biden to step aside, a high-stakes gambit that puts him at odds with the very establishment he helped build.
On September 12, after the Special Projects Committee Documentary Series screening in Los Angeles, Tyrnauer discussed the making of the film during a Q&A moderated by Special Projects Documentary Series Subcommittee Chair Ondi Timoner (Last Flight Home).
During the conversation, Tyrnauer spoke about financing a film whose subject might not appeal to the current obsession with youth.
“I didn't think this was a studio film or a streamer film. Something told me this is an 80-year-old white guy which were two things that I didn't think were gonna sell in the room. I just said. ‘We're going to do private equity,’ and we made a lot of phone calls and raised it. I just thought it was worth doing and it was one of those journeys, but it wasn't like the desperate scraping thing — which I've done too and I think these are the best films usually to be honest. If you haven't maxed out low interest credit cards while you're making a film, you haven't lived.”
Tyrnauer’s other directorial credits include the feature documentaries Where’s My Roy Cohn?, Studio 54, Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood and Valentino: The Last Emperor; and episodes of the documentary mini-series Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons and The Reagans. Tyrnauer has been a DGA member since 2014.