Tod O'Connor wants to make a movie and a documentary on O'Neill, a Massachusetts native who served as U.S. House speaker in the 1980s and played pivotal roles on issues ranging from the Vietnam War to Watergate.
BOSTON — Tod O’Connor only worked for former U.S. House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O’Neill for a year, but that experience helped lead O’Connor to his goal of nearly a decade: making a documentary film about the Massachusetts congressman’s life.
O'Connor hopes the film will influence today's political climate.
“After he retired, (O’Neill) had an 86 percent approval rating by the American people, which was higher than that of (President Ronald) Reagan when he retired,” O’Connor said recently. “The question is, given today’s political environment, the dislike the American people have for elected officials…What was Tip as a person that people liked him even though they didn’t agree with his political philosophy?”
Democrat O’Neill was among the most distinguished of Massachusetts’s political icons.
A Cambridge native, he graduated from Boston College and was elected to the state House of Representatives at age 24, in 1936. He worked his way up and had become speaker at the Statehouse by the time he left in 1952, with his election to Congress. He would serve in Congress for 34 years, eventually becoming majority leader, then speaker of the U.S. House.
O’Neill was a Democratic loyalist who was unafraid to break with his party. After first supporting the Vietnam War, during the presidency of Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson, O’Neill later broke with his party’s president to oppose the war, after hearing from his constituents as public opposition to the war grew.
O'Neill helped bring about the impeachment of Republican President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. He earned respect for his ability to work across the aisle during Republican President Ronald Reagan’s administration.
Tod O'ConnorCourtesy Tod O'Connor
O’Connor, a Democrat, says he read “Tip O’Neill and the Democratic Century,” a biography by former Boston Globe Washington editor John Farrell, which was published in 2001 as the Democrats were struggling to find a voice during the run-up to the Iraq War.
“I thought there were lessons in the book based on Tip’s life and the acts he actually did at the risk of political career,” O’Connor said, pointing to O’Neill’s opposition to the Vietnam War and his vote against a loyalty oath as a state legislator during the 1930s Red Scare.
O’Connor bought the movie rights to Farrell’s book in 2004 and engaged filmmaker Dimitri Logothetis, a writer, director and producer whose previous documentaries include Champions Forever, about heavyweight boxing champions, and “Momo,” about 1950s Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana.
Logothetis said he will only make a documentary about a person whose character he finds fascinating – which is why he agreed to the O’Neill film. “I get inspired, and I get myself worked up in a very positive way when I find something in someone’s character,” Logothetis said. “Tip O’Neill had a very admirable character for a politician. He did a number of things in his lifetime that would not have helped his career.”
Dimitri LogothetisCourtesy Dimitri Logothetis
Logothetis pointed to O’Neill’s public break with Lyndon Johnson over the Vietnam War and his struggle to deal with the Watergate scandal without sullying the office of the presidency. Logothetis said O’Neill earned little money while in Congress. “All those things to me stood out,” Logothetis said. “It was more about the man than anything else.”
Logothetis said he and O’Connor plan to make both a movie and a documentary, and he has started drafting scripts for both.
O’Connor, 61, has no film experience, but is motivated by personal ties to his subject.
O’Connor grew up on the South Shore, and his parents and wife were all Boston area natives. He traces his ties to O’Neill to his grandfathers.
O’Connor’s maternal grandfather, Charles Hurley, was governor of Massachusetts from 1937 to 1939, when O’Neill was first elected as a state representative. His paternal grandfather, Austin O’Connor, helped run his father’s construction company, where O’Neill drove a truck in the early 1930s.
“My grandfather Austin was the older uncle he never had. They were close friends,” O’Connor said.
O’Connor was hired as a legislative aide to O’Neill in 1980 and 1981, doing work for the steering and policy committee. During his job interview, O’Neill told O’Connor about O’Connor’s family history.
O’Connor would spend nine years on Capitol Hill working for different politicians. He later moved to Los Angeles, where he now works as an energy consultant. He never lost interest in O’Neill.
O’Connor and Logothetis are fundraising through the crowdsourcing fundraising website Kickstarter, although they have raised less than $2,000 of their $44,000 goal that way. O’Connor said they are raising funds in that manner out of respect to O’Neill’s mantra “all politics are local,” although they are also seeking help from unions, corporations and major donors.
If they raise the funds, the film will be shot in Boston, Washington, D.C., and Ireland. O’Connor said O’Neill’s Boston roots played a large role in his life. O’Neill’s father was head of the Cambridge Department of Public Works during the depression.
“There were people coming to the door dressed in scarves and coats with holes, worn out boots, to try to get a day job to survive for a couple of days,” O’Connor said. O’Connor said that experience led O’Neill to become a “bread and butter liberal” who believed in providing access to health care, education and collective bargaining to give everyone a chance to get ahead.
He said O’Neill learned to work with Republican governors during his time in the Massachusetts Statehouse. He helped develop the system, which later became common, of raising money around the state to dole out to Democrats in contested elections.
While in Congress, O’Neill roomed in Washington, D.C., with U.S. Rep. Edward Boland, the Democratic congressman from Springfield. They were part of the “Tuesday to Thursday club,” O’Connor said, a group of congressmen who, as freshmen, would spend weekends in their home districts.
“They were very close friends, who had known each other in the state legislature early on,” O’Connor said.
Asked about the O’Neill’s relevance today, O’Connor points to a film clip, displayed on his fundraising website, in which Reagan says to O’Neill, “I’m grateful you have permitted me in the past, and I hope in the future, that singular honor, the honor of calling you my friend.”
“Think about that today,” O’Connor said. “Do you think (Republican House Speaker) John Boehner would say that about (Democratic President) Barack Obama?”