The Most Promising Young Playwright in America

Beau Willimon turned a stint on the Howard Dean campaign into the best no-bullshit political drama in a long time, which then turned itself into a movie starring some guys named Clooney and DiCaprio.

By Richard DormentPublished: Dec 12, 2008

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All great drama is about negotiating with loss, but the losses in political drama are something else. The egos are titanic. The ambitions are stratospheric. And only the sharpest playwrights can cut through all the pathos and bullshit to find moments of genuine humanity and -- God willing -- a little entertainment. That's what Beau Willimon manages to accomplish with his latest work, Farragut North, and it's what makes him one of the most incisive and exciting playwrights working in theater right now, and soon, well beyond.

The two-act play, which recently made its off-Broadway debut and is headed to the big screen with George Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio producing, follows a young press aide to a maverick candidate as he tries to navigate the snake pit of presidential politics without losing his soul. Filled with rat-a-tat banter and soaring monologues, it pulses with yearning and loss -- not just of an election but of ambition and idealism -- and rings true in large part because Willimon worked on various political campaigns before writing it.

"I write about a lot of different worlds," says Willimon. "I've written about the military in War Story because I grew up around it. I've written about rural North Carolina in Smoke in the Mountains because I have a lot of family from down south." He writes about what he knows, and he tells stories about how we live. Willimon's loss is most certainly our gain.