Posted on 09/08/2003 9:30:36 AM PDT by fight_truth_decay
As CyberAlert predicted, newspaper critics have denounced a Showtime movie for being too favorable to President Bush. The September 5 CyberAlert forecast: "On Sunday night, September 7, Showtime will premiere DC 9-11: Time of Crisis, what I understand will be a 'docudrama' with a sympathetic take on President Bush and his top aides in the days after September 11, 2001. So, expect some derisive reviews in newspapers on Saturday and Sunday."
BREAK
Reviews in USA Today, the Washington Post, New York Times and the Boston Globe all ridiculed the script and acting in it, but the favorable portrait of President Bush really upset the reviewers.
"Sheer propaganda," sniffed USA Today's Robert Bianco.
Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times insisted the movie delivered "a sour, partisan undertone."
The Washington Post headline declared: "Showtime's 'DC 9/11' Is a Shameless Bush Booster." Reviewer Tom Shales began the piece below:
"Simultaneously dull and disgraceful, DC 9/11: Time of Crisis...uses the tragic attack on America in 2001 as the basis for a reelection campaign movie on behalf of George W. Bush." Shales complained that the movie "is primitive propaganda that portrays Bush as the noblest hero since Mighty Mouse." The Boston Globe characterized it as "too pro-Bush."
-- Robert Bianco in the September 5 USA Today:
"Written by Lionel Chetwynd, Crisis purports to be an inside report on the Bush administration's response to the Sept. 11 attacks based on interviews with members of that administration. Never mind the obvious opportunities for self-serving twaddle, none of which are missed. How exactly did anyone at Showtime think this project was even possible?
"Decades later, we're still struggling to understand the White House response to such national flashpoints as Pearl Harbor and the Cuban missile crisis. It's ridiculous to think you can get anywhere near an accurate picture after a mere two years, especially when the administration concerned is up for re-election. What you get is sheer propaganda -- and, in Chetwynd's hands, artless propaganda at that."
For the full USA Today review:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/columnist/criticscorner/2003-09-04-critics-corner_x.htm
-- Alessandra Stanley in the September 5 New York Times. An excerpt:
....This made-for-television movie on Showtime Sunday night is less a first draft of history than a final rewrite of a Tom Clancy screenplay. George W. Bush, uncannily impersonated by Timothy Bottoms, is its action-adventure commander in chief. "If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come get me," the fictionalized President barks at an overprotective security officer keeping him hidden aboard Air Force One on that fateful day. "I'll just be waiting for the bastard."...
"DC 9/11" was written by Lionel Chetwynd, a filmmaker who is one of Hollywood's more outspoken conservatives, and it reflects his unstinting admiration for the President. (In his eyes, the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, is not particularly eloquent, and Vice President Dick Cheney is a kowtowing yes-man.)
All docudramas round out the facts to fit a story line. Few would dispute the basic accuracy of the film: even his most virulent opponents give the President credit for adapting to the unimaginable attack with speed and resolve.
But a movie about George W. Bush's first serious challenge -- broadcast at the beginning of his re-election campaign and in the middle of a murky, costly war with no marked ending -- inevitably lends it a sour, partisan undertone....
"DC 9/11" traces Mr. Bush's transition from new, untested president to committed wartime leader, but along the way it rarely misses a chance to suggest that the Clinton administration's weakness was to blame for the disaster.
"I want to inflict pain," Mr. Bush tells Prime Minister Blair over the telephone. "Bring enough damage so they understand there is a new team here, a fundamental change in our policy."
The script does not air-brush Mr. Bush's first, awkward stumbles, and it faithfully recreates his stiff televised statement from Barksdale Air Force Base. The movie also puts him back on his feet very quickly. On Air Force One, he is totally in control.
"Hike military alert status to Delta," he instructs Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld (John Cunningham). "That's the military, the C.I.A., foreign, domestic, everything," he explains to Mr. Rumsfeld, who was also Secretary of Defense under President Gerald R. Ford. "And if you haven't gone to Defcon 3, you oughtta." He then gets on the line with Mr. Cheney (Lawrence Pressman): "Vice? We are at war."...
END of Excerpt
For the New York Times review in full: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/05/arts/television/05STAN.html
-- "Showtime's 'DC 9/11' Is a Shameless Bush Booster," read the headline over the September 6 Washington Post review by Tom Shales. An excerpt:
Simultaneously dull and disgraceful, "DC 9/11: Time of Crisis," a new Showtime movie, uses the tragic attack on America in 2001 as the basis for a reelection campaign movie on behalf of George W. Bush.
The film is an insult to those who perished in the attacks and, really, an insult to America generally, but it's so insanely boring that people aren't likely to become very outraged over it. Written by conservative Republican Lionel Chetwynd, who admits to a bias in Bush's favor, the film -- premiering on Showtime tomorrow night at 8 -- is primitive propaganda that portrays Bush as the noblest hero since Mighty Mouse.
Nothing in historical record suggests Bush acted particularly heroically Sept. 11, 2001, but Chetwynd's script has him all but saddling up a horse and riding over to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban man-to-man. When Bush announces he will give a speech to the nation from the White House and aides try to talk him into seeking a safer location, Bush bellows, "If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come on over and get me. I'll be home!"
Bush repeatedly demands he be taken to the White House as Air Force One flies aimlessly about on that horrible September day: "I've got to get back to Washington because I'm not going to let those people keep me from getting home," he barks. And earlier: "Get me home!...The American people want to know where their damn president is." And still earlier: "People can't have an AWOL President!"
All this may be pure fantasy that occurred only in Chetwynd's head, or wishful thinking by members of the Bush administration, who cooperated with Chetwynd in his research....
END of Excerpt
For the Shales review in its entirety: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33336-2003Sep5.html
-- "'DC 9/11' is too pro-Bush, and too late," declared the Boston Globe headline over a September 6 review by Mark Jurkowitz. An Excerpt:
If "DC 9/11: Time of Crisis" could ever be cut down to a bite-size portion, it would make the best presidential reelection ad ever conceived, one that would force every Democratic challenger to abandon the chase for the White House.
Most Americans, of all political stripes, would agree that in the frantic days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, George Bush's steely leadership and deft tone helped stabilize a nation knocked out of its equilibrium and stripped of its comfortable preconceptions. This Showtime "docudrama" promises to give viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the administration's machinations and deliberations in the days right after 9/11. Instead, it proves a slick piece of propaganda that deifies the president and portrays the wheels of government as turning with well-oiled precision in the face of the gravest crisis to confront the country in a generation.
Whether visiting the injured, ordering an ultimatum to the Taliban, perusing Psalm 23, or affirming American values in a misty-eyed conversation with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Bush (Timothy Bottoms) is unbowed, unflappable, and unwavering. He is, to put it in Hollywood terms, part John Wayne and part Gary Cooper, with a little Jimmy Stewart tossed in for good measure....
END of Excerpt
"A liberal can go out and make...'The West Wing,' which is not even thinly disguised as a liberal view of politics, and do hours of propaganda every week, and no one questions it," he says.
"It's not something that's done behind closed doors. It's openly accepted by everyone, including me," says Mr. Chetwynd, whose previous credits include "The Hanoi Hilton" (1987), about American prisoners of war during the Vietnam War, as well as numerous TV films and news specials.
Mr. Chetwynd says he faced withering questioning, some insulting, at the recent Television Critics Association meeting where he promoted the film.
"They demanded to know, did I contribute money to George Bush, how much did I contribute," he says. He also got questions about his personal life and the people with whom he associates.
"Because I'm a Republican, I am suspect and should not be trusted," he says.
He says if Harry Thomason, a longtime TV producer and famous pal of former President Bill Clinton's, had made a film depicting that presidency, he wouldn't face such an assault....
END of Excerpt
For the story in full: http://www.washingtontimes.com/arts/20030905-082353-1365r.htm
I watched the movie, I mean docudrama, last night and I didn't think it was as bad as the reviews made out, though it did come across more like a C-SPAN hidden camera effort than a full-fledged movie. I also noticed that the producers made deals with CNN and FNC for news video, so while most of the newscasts shown were made into generic feeds, Brit Hume got two clips and Wolf Blitzer got one.
Showtime's additional airings of the movie, times supposedly EDT and PDT: - Showtime Too East 09/08/03 9:30 PM
- Showtime Showcase East 09/10/03 5:30 PM
- Showtime Showcase East 09/10/03 5:05 AM
- Showtime East 09/11/03 9:00 PM
For Showtime's page on the "docudrama," go to: http://www.sho.com/movies/movies_product.cfm?titleid=119354
For the Friday CyberAlert item on it: http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2003/cyb20030905.asp#5
Umm, I thought this was part of the historical record. Sounds like the scriptwriter was trying to be...accurate? Well I guess if you're a lib editorial writer, that would present a problem.
As annoyed as I was with Woodward holding onto Watergate with all his might and refusing to say clinton deserved impeachment, he has gained great respect for President Bush, and so gained some of my respect.
Back during the trumped up "yellowcake/uranium" controversy, Bob Woodward was on Larry King early on and said the whole thing was absolute nonsense and said this administration is honest, plus the take the story was being given showed a lack of understanding on how intelligence works.
Although most media yammered on for another week or two, recalling that Woodward interview helped keep me calm.
If Primary Colors was pro-Clinton, that just shows how depraved the liberals have become; Travolta's character was a vile human being (same for Emma Thompson playing pseudo-Hillary!).
Amen to that, especially after eight years of that self-serving, egotistical, amoral fop.
And if anyone knows about sour partisan undertones, it is the New York times.
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