Primarily Discreet

In a city that cleaves to Bill Clinton’s every act, “Primary Colors” is almost a Rorschach test about how people feel about the president. So it was revealing that when several of Washington’s elite gathered at a private screening before the movie opened here last weekend, they showed almost no reaction.

Unlike capital crowds that have been exploding in laughter and applause at John Travolta’s buffoonish portrayal of presidential candidate Jack Stanton, who is a dead-on imitation of Clinton, most of these guests were too polite to even giggle.

“There were too many people with opposing views of Clinton in the room, so everyone kept quiet because they didn’t want to offend anybody,” said one person who, like all those interviewed about the exclusive screening, asked to remain--fittingly--anonymous. (The movie was adapted from a book by “Anonymous,” a.k.a. Joe Klein.)

At the behest of the film’s director, Mike Nichols, Katharine Graham, the elegant matriarch of the Washington Post, had invited a few dozen friends for dinner (beef tenderloin, lemon tarts) and a screening of the movie in a tiny red-upholstered theater at the offices of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, a few blocks from the White House.

Among the guests were both friends and nemeses of Clinton: Nichols and his wife, ABC broadcaster Diane Sawyer; former Clinton advisor Lloyd Cutler; former Jimmy Carter aide Gerald Rafshoon; American Film Institute head George Stevens; and many of the big shots from the Washington Post, which has been chasing the Monica Lewinsky saga.

“Mike was completely devastated that they were so subdued,” said one friend of Nichols.

Another friend put on a different spin: “Mike was delighted by the many thoughtful remarks he heard after the movie. It was an older, quieter crowd, that’s all.”

As the movie opened Friday at theaters around Washington, congressional aides, reporters, civil servants and just plain folks--who can’t turn on their television sets without being confronted by the president’s sex life--said they felt as if they had not escaped into a darkened safe house of a movie theater when they saw “Primary Colors.”

“It was like going to work,” said one journalist who had spent the previous week digging up details about Katherine Willey, Clinton’s latest accuser.

“It was like watching a documentary,” said an editor who attended another screening after a dinner (lamb chops, pasta) at the MPAA along with Pat Buchanan, William Safire, John McLaughlin and bureau chiefs of several news organizations in Washington. There were no inhibitions in this more cynical crowd, which sometimes acts as if it is covering the movie’s sequel. People squealed and cranked up the knowing noises when candidate Stanton ran amok of his smart, tough, Hillaryesque wife.

But whether viewers in the Capitol saw the movie at private screenings or in glitter-free theaters in the suburbs, they expressed the common view that the movie seemed almost like a sanitized version of real-life events in Washington. Some joked that if the movie were to be written about current events--with talk of a president allegedly engaged in oral sex and genital groping in the Oval Office--”Anonymous” might more appropriately be Larry Flynt or Bob Guccione.

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At ground zero--in the White House and the offices of independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr--nobody was talking on, off or otherwise near the record about the movie’s opening. Larry Haas, Vice President Al Gore’s communications director, was quoted as saying, “I don’t want to be the first administration official to see it.”

Several former Clinton administration figures, however, couldn’t wait. CBS spotted George Stephanopoulos, wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead, in line with the cappuccino-and-popcorn crowd at the Uptown Theater in tony Cleveland Park.

Mandy Grunwald, who is said to be a model for the character Daisy in the movie, went to two screenings: the beef tenderloin one here and another at the Ziegfeld in New York.

“I think people have so many opinions about Bill Clinton after six years, there is no movie that could change their opinions,” Grunwald said. “If Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky have not affected his poll ratings, there is no way that John Travolta will.”

Even Clinton, a movie buff who is not saying whether he’ll see the movie, was willing to find humor in the similarities between his situation and fiction. In his light-hearted remarks Saturday at the annual dinner of the Gridiron Club, a journalists’ organization, he said: “This is not the first time John Travolta has modeled a character on me.” In a reference to Travolta’s 1977 film, “Saturday Night Fever,” Clinton said, “That’s my theme song--’Stayin’ Alive.’ ”

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Also contributing to this story were Marc Lacey, Jodi Wilgoren, Jim Mann, James Risen and Robert Jackson from The Times Washington bureau.