The first night of the DNC in Chicago had an Academy Awards feel — right down to the overruns and snubs.
On a night when Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, AOC and others brought the United Center crowd to its feet with rousing podium speeches — and Kamala Harris made a raucously received surprise appearance — a number of other scheduled moments failed to come off.
Dawn Porter, the documentarian who had produced a short about President Biden for the convention, saw a planned broadcast ahead of the president’s speech shelved.
It was unclear when the decision was made to cut the film from the program, but the expectation from the filmmaker’s camp coming into the night was that the piece would run just ahead of the president’s address. Biden’s speech was pushed out of primetime by scheduling overruns that had his address not start until about 10:30 p.m. ET, 15 minutes after the entire proceedings were supposed to wrap.
The film was visible on Biden’s social accounts Tuesday morning accompanied by the message, “I love you, America.” Featuring interviews with Bill Clinton, Harris and other Biden confidantes, the 10-minute piece follows the public servant from his election as a 29-year-old senator in then-Republican Delaware through his long Congressional tenure, vice presidential terms and current occupancy of the White House. It alternates personal details with his own global-centric ideology. “If we don’t lead the world, who does?” he says at one point.
Porter has a long résumé that includes films about political figures, having made the 2020 acclaimed Civil Rights doc John Lewis: Good Trouble and this year’s Raphael Warnock- and WNBA-themed Power of the Dream.
Meanwhile, James Taylor did not perform on a night that both kicked off Harris’ ceiling-shattering candidacy and paid homage to Biden’s exit from the political stage. The crooner was scheduled for a slot between Dr. Jill Biden and Ashley Biden, but found himself without a friend in the director’s booth amid the sunny speeches some thought would never end.
Taylor is a proven element to DNC organizers; he performed at the 2012 convention that kicked off Barack Obama’s successful reelection bid.
New York Democratic Congresswoman Grace Meng also appeared to have her speech scrapped amid the addresses from a slew of lawmakers and stakeholders.
Convention organizers offered an unusual reason for the shelvings: enthusiasm.
“Because of the raucous applause interrupting speaker after speaker, we ultimately skipped elements of our program to ensure we could get to President Biden as quickly as possible so that he could speak directly to the American people,” a convention official told THR in a statement distributed Monday night. “We are proud of the electric atmosphere in our convention hall and proud that our convention is showcasing the broad and diverse coalition behind the Harris-Walz ticket throughout the week on and off the stage.”
Among entertainers, country star Mickey Guyton and alt-country fixture Jason Isbell did regale the crowd, while veteran Golden State Warriors and U.S. Olympic men’s basketball coach Steve Kerr and actor-filmmaker Tony Goldwyn spoke, too.
While the pre-primetime programming started pretty much on schedule, a number of more slack presentations soon impacted the broadcast. Guyton’s performance was scheduled for 7:45 p.m. ET, but wound up not starting until 8:20 p.m. ET. From there, delays continued to snowball, leading to Biden taking the stage outside the traditional primetime window.
THR contributor Eric Kohn added to this report.
