Thursday, October 30, 2008 8:01 PM

From Bobby to Barack

Davis Guggenheim (View image), the filmmaker who shot the footage for Barack Obama's 30-minute campaign commercial -- and who won an Oscar for directing Al Gore's 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth -- has a familial affinity for celebrating Democratic presidential candidates.

Guggenheim, 44, credits his late father, Washington-based biographical filmmaker Charles Guggenheim, for his first brush with the art of political ad-making: "My father woke me up in the middle of the night. I was five," he explained in an interview posted on the Academy Awards Web site. "`You want to come to work with me?'" We boarded a plane -- it was Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign -- he was doing a political film. Weeks later [Kennedy] was assassinated. And my father made the Academy Award-winning film, Robert F. Kennedy Remembered, from the footage he shot on the campaign. I was hooked forever."

                                                                                                     -- Alexis Simendinger

Charles Guggenheim was himself 44 at the time. His 1968 tribute to RFK, shot in black and white and put together in less than a month, ran 29 minutes and aired on network television. Shown to delegates during Chicago's Democratic National Convention that year, its shots of Bobby walking along a misty beach reduced the hall to tears.

Davis Guggenheim initially backed New York Sen. Hillary Clinton with a $1,000 contribution in 2007, while his wife, actress Elisabeth Shue, that same month contributed to Obama's campaign. But by this year, the couple had contributed a total of $4,300 to the Illinois senator, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The couple also supported Democratic primary contender Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut with early donations totaling $2,000.