This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Was that Jon Huntsman you saw in HBO's Game Change movie on Saturday night? No, you're right, it wasn't.
Unless Rudy Giuliani was supposed to be playing the former Utah governor, the movie's producers snubbed Huntsman for his role in the 2008 Republican National Convention.
The movie — heralded by some as an accurate portrayal of Sarah Palin's rise to political stardom and blasted by Palin's supporters as Hollywood fiction — includes video and audio of Giuliani supposedly introducing Palin to the crowd at the convention right before her famous line about hockey moms, pit bulls and lipstick.
But it wasn't Giuliani who gave that speech. It was Huntsman.
Perhaps Huntsman wasn't recognizable enough for the producers, or perhaps it was how horrible Huntsman sounded when he made the intro. Huntsman, at the time, was suffering from a serious cold and talked up Palin in a very frog-like, rough voice.
You can watch Huntsman's speech here if you've forgotten about his "hockey moms of the world unite."— Thomas BurrTwitter.com/thomaswburr