“Here I go, running for president,” Roseanne Barr declares in the new trailer for the doc, “Roseanne for President!”
The film, which follows Barr’s unsuccessful 2012 campaign for president, premiered at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival. As the trailer proves, Barr’s campaign was a serious one, though that doesn’t mean she could no longer make people laugh.
As the film’s official synopsis explains, “27 years after Roseanne Barr’s groundbreaking sitcom ‘Roseanne’ became the #1 show on television, ‘Roseanne for President!’ brings you the story of the Emmy Award-winning actress and trailblazing comedian’s 2012 gonzo campaign for president of the United States. Having written and created a sitcom that changed the cultural landscape by revolutionizing what Americans think of family, class, race, gender, and gay rights, Roseanne is uniquely qualified to fix — well, everything.
Through the warped lens of the Barr Campaign, this surreal dark comedy examines the impact Roseanne’s work has had on society and who she is as a person. Fearlessly speaking truth to power comes with a price and Roseanne has taken some bumps and bruises along the way. The movie digs deep into Roseanne’s past, unearthing a personality that even the filmmakers had no idea they would encounter. What begins as a political journey becomes a raw and revealing portrait of a comedic icon.”
Rosie O’Donnell, Sandra Bernhard, Michael Moore, and Barr’s family all appear in the film.
Running on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket, Barr ultimately came in sixth place during the 2012 election, earning about 50,000 votes, less than 0.1 percent of the popular vote.
“Roseanne for President!” hits limited theaters on July 1.