Adrian Lester, the 27-year-old unknown British stage actor whom Nichols considered for the role of the gay housekeeper in The Birdcage, had never heard of George Stephanopoulos when he was cast as Henry Burton. He had to cram U.S. politics for Primary Colors. "Soon after I started reading the novel, I had to go back and start again because it was going straight over my head," admits Lester. He watched The War Room, the documentary about the Clinton campaign, "about 94 times," borrowed a textbook from Thompson called The American Political Process, and read magazine articles given to him by Joyce Deep -- a former fieldworker for Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, and Michael Dukakis -- who served as the film's political consultant. "I didn't want to have a Brad Pitt occurrence," Lester wryly notes about his Stephanopoulos-like character, "where you finish the film and they say, 'Did you know the character you played was a Nazi?'"

"You don't think Abraham Lincoln was a whore before he was president?….He did it all just so he'd get the opportunity, one day, to stand in front of the nation and appeal to 'the better angel of our nature.'"

"What the movie is saying is that everyone has idiosyncrasies -- let's say faults -- but do they matter if the bigger picture is handled?" Travolta says, bending down to sniff the iced shot of vodka that accompanies his caviar. For him, Clinton's follow-through on promises is the climax of his seduction. The president had vowed to help the actor in the controversial Scientology debate in Germany -- and he did. He went to the extraordinary length of assigning his national security adviser, Sandy Berger, to be the administration's Scientology point person.