A celebrated “advance man” — responsible for logistics and camera-ready moments in campaigns — he forged a lasting bond with Bill Clinton.
Mort Engelberg, a movie producer behind such hits as “Smokey and the Bandit” and “The Big Easy,” who drew on his Hollywood expertise to stage-manage appearances for politicians, notably a bus tour for Bill Clinton and Al Gore following the 1992 Democratic convention, died on Saturday at a hospital in Los Angeles. He was 86.
His brother, Steven Engelberg, said the cause was lung cancer.
Mr. Engelberg toggled between film and political advance work, setting up campaign trips meant to produce photo-ready moments and drawing on the tropes of road movies to help invent the modern presidential bus tour. It featured the gregarious Mr. Clinton and his sidekick Mr. Gore on a journey through Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky and other heartland states.
“Mort came in with basically the same formulation as the Hollywood buddy movie he so perfected in his ‘Smokey and the Bandit’ series,” said Josh King, a colleague of Mr. Engelberg’s on campaigns and during Mr. Clinton’s presidency.
Presidential candidates had long made whistle-stop tours, originally by train. By the 1980s, though, the trips were made in chartered jets with brief airport stops — “basically, nothing but some white men on tarmac,” as Mr. Engelberg said in a 2011 podcast.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
