i just read about this a day or two ago

i had no idea it was going on. WHAT A STROKE OF GENIUS for edward norton and what a stroke of luck for HBO

Edward Norton’s Obama Documentary Gets A Hollywood Ending

Long before President-elect Barack Obama had even made up his mind to run for the highest office in the land, Edward Norton and his Class 5 Films production company were already documenting the Senator’s life. The 39-year-old actor said that he became inspired by Obama’s 2004 speech at the National Democratic Convention and felt inspired to capture someone from his generation — and not his parent’s — inspiring so many and rising in leadership.

“At the time, he was the new senator from Illinois,” Norton told Variety earlier this year. “None of us had voted for him or contributed to his campaigns. None of us was saying, ‘I want to back this guy for president.’ It was more this generational experience, of seeing someone we felt represented us in a very unique and fresh way, and the desire to explore what would happen to the first person our age who staked a claim to national leadership.”

Since 2006 — starting with Obama’s trip to Africa — Norton and his team have had the cameras rolling every step of the way. The whole project was kept fairly secret — since neither the campaign nor Norton wanted it to fuel any criticism of Obama’s ‘celebrity’. Last month, Norton spoke briefly about the project to the Vancouver Sun saying, “We’re making a historical record, not something to play a role in the election. So we have an agreement with [the campaign] that we won’t talk about this, or publicize it until the election is over. I can’t talk about access [but] it’s a fascinating thing to document.”...........

Ed Norton, HBO and the making of President Obama

It used to be that America had to wait for Theodore White's The Making of the President books to get the backstage story of the presidential campaigns -- his most memorable being the 1960 saga of John F. Kennedy's rise to power.

Today, it is the documentary filmmaker with access to the candidate who tells that vital story. And if anyone was wondering who that filmmaker was going to be for this epic election, the answer was given yesterday by HBO's documentary maven Sheila Nevins with the announcement that her premium cable channel had reached agreement with actor Edward Norton's production company, Class 5 Films, to air a documentary that has been in production since 2006.

According to HBO's release, directors Amy Rice and Alicia Sams had "unprecedented and exclusive access to the senator and his campaign." In addition to documenting "Obama's historic rise," the film will be "examine American politics and culture through the prism of his candidacy."

According to Norton, who approached Obama and his staff several months before the senator announced his candidacy for president: "Senator Obama's history making race for the White House has given our film a perfect framework to explore the pulse of the country at this vital moment in our history. We believe this film will capture a tipping point in American history when a new generation of leadership emerged and old prejudices were finally vaulted over."

The project was started in 2006 by Rice, a cinematographer who had co-directed the documentary From Ashes. She was inspired by Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, she says. When Norton's company agreed to produce, Sams was brought in as co-director. Rice and Sams had worked together on a series of short films about public schools in New York city...........