It seemed like a good idea at the time: A documentary for TVO showing Kathleen Wynne behind the scenes — unguarded, unvarnished, uncensored.

And now, unseen. Six months after the premier agreed to bare her soul, the documentary is dead.

Scheduled to be aired on TVO next month, the broadcast has faded to black. What once seemed an idealistic project now appears politically delusional, a self-inflicted public relations disaster.

Wynne’s team invited the camera crew into cabinet meetings and political strategy sessions. But they recoiled at what was recorded and refused to sign off on it.

How did the premier recast herself in the role of censor? Why would Wynne, who keeps boasting of open government, shut down a documentary?

Imagine if Stephen Harper attempted a similar stunt — allowing cameras into his sanctum sanctorum, then censoring them after the fact. He’d be pilloried in the press.

Yet that’s precisely what the prime minister does every week: ,Tune in to 24 Seven, on the PM’s YouTube channel, and watch hours of behind-the-scenes footage shot by a team of civil servants on the public payroll — edited to Harper’s standards and political tastes.

Why did Wynne agree to an outside camera crew she couldn’t control? Perhaps hubris after a post-election honeymoon.

Wynne wouldn’t be the first politician to succumb to the lure of the camera. It’s an occupational hazard for leaders who entertain visions of recording history for posterity.

The latest project, produced by longtime filmmaker Peter Raymont, was inspired by a similar documentary he made nearly four decades ago on former premier Bill Davis, The Art of the Possible. With its behind-the-scenes look at the enigmatic Davis consulting and deliberating, it was a classic NFB production — informative but institutional and deferential as it chronicled preparations for the annual budget and a first ministers’ conference.

Raymont pitched an updated version to Wynne, recycling the format of pre-budget preparations. But what worked in the 1960s and 1970s, an era when journalists were cozier with politicians, seems dated today. Perhaps that’s why TVO asked Raymont to hire an independent director, Roxana Spicer.

But as the Star’s Robert Benzie reported this month, the Wynne camp grew wary of the project as it strayed from budget preparations and focused on a separate scandal: allegations that Wynne’s staff had tried to persuade a former Liberal candidate to stand aside in a Sudbury byelection, asking him to consider other jobs or government appointments, prompting an OPP probe and Elections Ontario investigation (no charges have yet been laid).

When Spicer showed excerpts of her work to Wynne’s staff early this month, they insisted on seeing the entire documentary before signing the required “errors and omissions” forms (a broadcast industry standard for insurance purposes). Spicer refused, and the project stalled.

Wynne’s spokesperson cited concerns about cabinet confidentiality and privacy (hardly insurmountable). It now seems clear that, in return for exclusive access, the Wynne team was expecting a reprise of Raymont’s deferential Davis film, not an unsparing exposé on their damage-control operations amid the whiff of scandal.

It seems Raymont couldn’t deliver on his side of the implicit bargain, notably a film focused on the budget. After he discussed the standoff with Spicer, she and her editor quit, citing “editorial integrity.” Without an independent director, TVO walked away from the project.

The story of this untold film narrative is not without historical precedent. An early cinéma vérité project foundered in 1963 after the CBC commissioned a famous filmmaker, D.A. Pennebaker, to chronicle former PM Lester Pearson for a day (Pennebaker had just produced remarkable footage of U.S. President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert in the White House, described by author Andrew Cohen in his new book, Two Days in June).

When Pearson’s staff screened the final version, which cast him as distracted and vacillating (closeted in his office to watch the World Series), they were mortified. Sure enough, CBC cancelled the scheduled broadcast.

Pearson had presumed the film would cast him in a positive light (hadn’t it worked for JFK?), just as Wynne did five decades later (hadn’t it worked for Davis?). But access for deference doesn’t cut it anymore.

Hence Harper’s preference for his pioneering 24 Seven videos — a format that creates the illusion of access while retaining control of the final cut. Times change, but Wynne seems stuck on the decades-old cinéma vérité format — with its built-in conflict between exclusive access and journalistic integrity.

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Unsentimental as ever, Harper long ago changed the channel with his video vérité selfies. Not Wynne, who blithely assumed — whether out of naïveté or hubris — she could win over the filmmakers by force of will.

Rookie mistake.

Martin Regg Cohn’s Ontario politics column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. mcohn@thestar.ca , Twitter: @reggcohn

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