Butter, a political satire featuring Jennifer Garner as an uptight conservative taking on an African-American foster child in Iowa’s annual butter-sculpting contest, has quickly drawn allusions to Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann.
In a statement read by one of the film’s stars, Olivia Wilde, Weinstein invited Bachmann to co-host the premiere of Butter in Iowa. “We could take some math classes in the morning to help balance the budget, brush up on the Constitution in the afternoon, play some ping-pong and then maybe some verbal ping-pong on gay rights and women’s rights — especially the right to choose,” he stated.
Metro spoke with Garner, who is also a producer on the film, the next day for her reaction.
“Harvey is a genius at a few things. He’s really good at a lot of things, but he’s a genius at a few things. Casting is one of them, and another one is without a doubt promotion and getting the word out about a movie, and that’s what he’s doing,” she says.
“[Director] Jim Field Smith and I don’t think of this movie as a political movie by any stretch. We think of it as a comedy, as a piece of entertainment, a colloquial story that has some dark undertones and pokes fun at politics in a small way. But that’s why we’re not in charge of promoting it and he is.”
As much as Weinstein’s move might make drawing comparisons between Garner’s character and Bachman seem all too obvious, she’s quick to point out that’s not what she was going for — at least not really.
“It just shows how much they pervade the political landscape, how much the Tea Party is of the moment,” Garner tells Metro. “We did this long enough ago that I wasn’t trying to be Michele Bachmann — I didn’t know who she was. I wasn’t after Sarah Palin. But that’s so much a part of what’s out there.”
