Sarah Palin (left) and Julianne Moore playing Sarah Palin
Andrea Renault/Polaris; Phillip V. Caruso/HBO
Neither appears to have seen it, but Sarah Palin and John McCain both took shots this weekend at Game Change, the HBO movie about their unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign. The film premiered Saturday night.Palin, 48, portrayed in the film by Julianne Moore, told Fox News before the premiere that she was "not concerned about an HBO movie based on a false narrative when there are so many other things to be concerned about."
She added: "I believe my family has the right priorities and knows what really matters. For instance, our son called from Afghanistan yesterday and he sounded good, and that's what matters. Being in the good graces of Hollywood's 'Team Obama' isn't top of my list."
Despite the movie's depiction of him as a compassionate man, McCain, 75, took issue with how he is characterized – based on what he's heard – and also objected to the notion that he selected Palin as his running mate simply because she was a woman.
"I have been told I am portrayed as using an exceeding amount of coarse language," the Arizona senator, who is played in the film by Ed Harris, told Fox News. "I don't use coarse language very often. I have a larger vocabulary than that."
Of Palin, he said: "I thought she was best qualified person. ... I'm grateful that she ran with me, and I will always be proud of what we did."
Many former aides from the McCain-Palin campaign have blasted the movie – based on the book of the same name by journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin – as borderline fiction that paints their former bosses in an unfair light. But one aide, Nicolle Wallace, disagreed.
She told ABC's This Week that Game Change was "true enough to make me squirm." She added: "This is a movie about the vast gray area where 99 percent of our politics actually takes place. You're just feeling your way though a gray area and doing your best and that campaign was one of those instances for me."