LOS ANGELES — With 2006 drawing to a close, you might recall a dozen or so movies that were worth watching, but "Bobby" is the first flick that deserves to be stared at.

Maybe it's because the "Love Boat" of biopics has virtually every major star you could name. Perhaps it's the "Titanic"-like gimmick of a pivotal historical moment as backdrop for intimate, human stories. Or maybe it's '80s icon Emilio Estevez making a stunning leap from "Mighty Ducks" punch line to Oscar-bait writer, director and ringleader.

"This was insane," Estevez smiled recently, remembering one of the most bizarre shoots in recent Hollywood history. "You were juggling all the time. Schedules: That was our biggest hurdle, because Sharon Stone would be available for six days, Lindsay [Lohan] would be available for four or five, and Demi [Moore] was for four. We needed them all on the same day, but none of them were available, so how do you do it? It was the grace of God."

Take a deep breath and read over this cast list: Lohan, Stone, Moore, Helen Hunt, Anthony Hopkins, Martin Sheen, Shia LaBeouf, Nick Cannon, Ashton Kutcher, Elijah Wood, Laurence Fishburne, William H. Macy, Heather Graham, Christian Slater — and on and on. Each assumes a character with some sort of strife — be it racism, infidelity, poverty or Vietnam — whose hopes are invested in a charismatic presidential candidate from Massachusetts. When history steps in, in the form of Palestinian assassin Sirhan Sirhan, their dreams of a united America are swept away by the mistrust and divisiveness that has since shaped our political system.

"You don't get a cast like this often; these people don't work in every old movie," observed Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who plays a naive waitress in the flick. "The fact that [all these actors] are working in a film for almost no money, that's got to really mean something. It has got to mean that they want to do this movie and are passionate about it."

Such passion shines through this odd cross-section of Hollywood — from those who met Robert F. Kennedy when he was on track to be president to those who'd only someday read his stirring speeches in a history book. "I'm growing up," said Lohan, explaining her attraction to the role of a Vietnam opponent willing to marry a man (Wood) to keep him from going to war. "I've matured publicly in front of people, and now I'm taking more time to do pieces of work that really mean something to me."

After Estevez visited the real-life hotel where Kennedy was assassinated, he became obsessed with a story featuring characters of varying wealth, race and moral backgrounds whose lives would be altered by an event every bit as massive as the sinking of the Titanic. Then, the actors all lined up — and they were all willing to work for scale.

"I was on the phone with Emilio pacing in my office, talking," Moore remembers of the signings of herself (as a boozy nightclub singer) and her hubby, Kutcher (as a long-haired hippy). "It was probably like two o'clock in the morning, and Ashton is in watching TV. [Estevez] said, 'Do you think Ashton might do this?' And I said, 'Oh, let me just pass him the phone.' So I just handed the phone over and they started talking, and Ashton was up pacing and they were talking very animated, and they reworked the schedule."

In the flick, Kutcher sells LSD to a pair of uptight Kennedy campaign workers including LaBeouf. In real life, however, the 20-year-old "Constantine" star felt like he was tripping whenever he'd walk around the set. "I never thought I would see Lindsay Lohan and Demi Moore talking about the things they were talking about, about playwrights," LaBeouf grinned. "Once, me and Freddy Rodriguez were talking about rappers, and Martin Sheen came out of his trailer and was like, 'Yeah, I like Eminem too.' That was out of control!

"We didn't even know he was there," LaBeouf added, remembering the trailer-park community near the Ambassador Hotel. "We were freestyling, and Freddy said something about 'Apocalypse Now,' and [Sheen] was like, 'Hey, I did that movie.' "

Indeed, you could mention practically any classic flick of the last several decades on the "Bobby" set, and chances are one of the flick's stars was in the neighborhood. "We were smoking cigars, playing cards," Slater remembered.

"The vibe on set was like camp," added Rodriguez, who plays a Latino kitchen worker hassled by Slater. "The vision that always struck me was all of the actors in their trailers with their doors open, playing music. All the actors going from trailer to trailer, just saying hi and getting coffee together."

Through it all, however, they tried to never lose sight of what a different place the world could have been if Bobby and his presidential brother John had lived to serve two full terms, shaping our country for a mind-boggling 16 years.

"We can only imagine," said Nick Cannon, cast as a Kennedy staff member alongside Joshua Jackson. "I definitely think [the U.S.] would have been in a better state."

"It was part of the breaking of the American heart, it seems, in retrospect," observed Jackson. "You kill JFK, you kill Malcolm [X], you kill Martin Luther King, you kill RFK — then you elect Nixon, he commits Watergate, and that was the moment where everything was just falling apart."

"You lose hope in the political system," Cannon added, "and in the dream that change can occur if you believe in it."

The question that needs to be asked, then is whether we'll ever see another politician in the tradition of the brothers Kennedy. "We need to do something to inspire the young people to re-engage, and I think it's going to take somebody who is charismatic, who speaks from his heart and who is not afraid to, you know, flub," Estevez said. "There's nobody out there yet. [Senator] Barack Obama, I think, has a ton of potential. I certainly like his style, and we will see what he ultimately is."

"Clearly, Barack Obama is someone who is optimistic and positive in terms of what he feels is possible for this country," said Fishburne, who plays a chef in the Ambassador kitchen. "That is very refreshing and very much needed today."

"Bobby Kennedy went to South Africa during his senatorial campaign — I mean, think of that! That's pretty cool," marveled Stone, a jaded hairdresser in the film. "Obama just went to Africa too. ... He is certainly a very charismatic man who knows how to speak to the nation as a whole and not in a bipartisan, singular way. ... He understands that we are a multicultural, multiparty nation. He tries to think of us as a united states."

Will there ever be another politician like the Kennedy brothers? It's unlikely. But if a movie can bring together 22 disparate movie stars, maybe there's hope that someday, someone can unite the country too.

Check out everything we've got on "Bobby."

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