YEAS&NAYS
6
M O N DAY, M AY 1 6 , 2 0 1 1
● YEEA
MORE SIGHTINGS
● the Newport Beach Film Festival and was aired
T H E WA S H I N G T O N E X A M I N E R
COURTESY PHOTO
Drake performed at a private birthday
party at the W hotel before making an
appearance at Ibiza on Saturday.
Singer Drake
does District
party hop
How about a little Drake to go with
that birthday cake? The Canadian
hip-hop star made one 18-year-old’s
birthday wish come true when he
made a special appearance at her
soiree on Saturday night.
According to a Yeas & Nays spy,
he sang some of his top hits and
performed for about 15 minutes for
a group of excited teenagers at a
private birthday bash in one of the
backrooms at the W hotel in down-
town D.C.
After the party, Drake made
another appearance for a Howard
University graduation celebration
at Ibiza Nightclub in D.C.’s NoMa
neighborhood.
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People, power
p and politics
By KATY A
ADAMS
and NIKKI
K SCHWAB
NIKK
Writte us: Want to comment?
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ee- to dish the dirt,
chew
c the fat and wag the
tongue.
yyan@washington
examiner.com
e include a picture of the actor. He also snapped pictures
VISIT
V IS US ONLINE:
YEASANDNAYS.COM
GUESSING GAME?
‘Below the Beltway’ is back, based on real-life rumors
W
hen you talk to those involved in the
movie project “Below the Beltway,”
they consider it the little indie
movie that could. Filmed in the
area back in June 2009, it received accolades at
on Showtime. It’s getting new life this month
with a DVD release.
It’s also considered the indie movie that gets
D.C. right. The film features Tate Donovan as a
Washington insider whose lobbying career is
destroyed over a viral YouTube gaffe. Donovan
tries to get back in the game by outing a sitting
U.S. senator for sleeping with an underage intern.
“The movie is pitch perfect because it is never
the sex that gets the politicians in trouble, it is
always the coverup,” explained Susanna Quinn,
who was one of the Washingtonians who appeared
in the film, alongside her husband Jack Quinn of
Quinn Gillespie & Associates.
If the movie rings true, it’s because of writer
BY THE NUMBERS
The District’s top golfers
11
Leading the pack of politicians, that’s where Sen. Mark Udall,
D-Colo., ranks among the D.C. political establishment’s top golfers
in the June issue of Golf Digest
29 Where Vice President Biden ranks
43 Where House Speaker John Boehner slips in
And trailing at
108 President Obama proves he’s par for the course.
SIGHTINGS
D’Onofrio visits Crime & Punishment museum
The star of “Law and Order: Criminal Intent,” Vincent
D’Onofrio, stopped by the National Museum of Crime &
Punishment on Saturday afternoon. He posed next to
the museum’s lie detector exhibit, which just happens to
and chatted up a bunch of museum guests, we’re told.
D’Onofrio was in town for Police Week.
COURTESY PHOTO
Tate Donovan stars as a Washington insider in the
indie political film “Below the Beltway.”
and producer Jim Wareck, who spent more than a
decade working in politics before penning a script
loosely based on his own experiences.
“What we tried to do is really capture the fact
that a lot of the work in D.C. is done by people
that nobody ever sees, hence the term ‘Below the
Beltway,’ ” Wareck said.
The movie’s title also makes reference to the
Sen. Mark Udall
ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES
COURTESY PHOTO
sex scandal, a part of the plot that Wareck based
on a real rumor about a politician still in office.
“I had heard a rumor about somebody high
up in Washington,” Wareck revealed to Yeas &
Nays, without identifying the pol. “I don’t have
the true facts. It was a spark of a story. Could it
be true? Very well. Do I know? No. Was I in the
bedroom? No.”
Wareck used the tale to develop the charac-
ter of Sen. Larry Gryder, played by actor Spencer
Garrett, whose political movie roster includes
“Bobby” and portrayals of Tom DeLay in “Casino
Jack” and a Sarah Palin adviser in the forthcoming
flick “Game Change.”
Garrett said he never knew who the rumor was
about, but based his U.S. senator on particularly
odious characters. “All these guys who purport to
be family-values, flag-waving guys, but are really
just corroded underneath,” Garrett explained,
without going further. “I’m not going to name
any names.”
SPEAKEASY
Colbert tries to get ‘PACfaced’
“Join me at the FEC today
at 4. Then we’ll cross the
street to Hard Rock Cafe
and get totally PACfaced.”
- Comedian Stephen Colbert in a Friday tweet.
The “Colbert Report” host visited the Federal
Election Commission building in downtown
D.C. on Friday afternoon to file papers in hopes
of creating a “Colbert Super PAC.” Since it was
also the comedian’s 47th birthday, the crowd
gathered at the FEC also sang to him.