On his way into screening PoliWood for a packed house at MICA's Brown Center, Barry Levinson (right, following the post-film Q&A) answered three more questions, this time about attending the White House Correspondents Association's dinner Saturday night:

Q: Just what was the event like?

A: I was there once before, and it's an interesting night. Everyone tries to make it into a big story, "More celebrities than ever, Hollywood in Washington, who's controlling what." When you're there, it's Washington, and we're just voyeurs. We're not going to be changing policy. We're [saying to ourselves], "Oh, this is nice, this is a big room. This is pretty good."

I couldn't get over the hallways where all these various little parties were being held beforehand. If someone from the Fire Marshal's came, this would be impossible, because you couldn't move -- you could not move.

But it was exciting, fun; after all, this is a potentially interesting time. Obama got some huge laughs, he had some very good jokes, and Wanda Sykes had some great lines. She's getting controversy about her one line about Rush Limbaugh being a drug addict, but no one's saying that he was a drug addict. We're so overly sensitive to lines at time it's ridiculous. They're supposed to be having some fun...some of the reaction was nonsense.

Q: Did pundits always talk about the correspondents and politicians and celebrities all getting too close the way pundits are talking about it this year?

A: Didn't seem to, and now it comes up. Celebrities are always associated with Democrats, so that becomes an issue, even if celebrities were always coming to these things. Now it's part of the cultural wars that have been created, incorrectly. We've tried to turn this into, like football and everything else, something with two teams. And that's unfortunate because we have more in common than we don't and you see it in the polls. 80 per cent say this is where we have to go, there's a hardcore 20 per cent [that resist], and by the nature of the times we're in, those 20 per cent can make a lot of noise.

Q: Were you relaxed to be without your camera, or did you wish you were still shooting PoliWood?

A: I kept thinking, "Gee, I could have added another section with this."