I saw Death of a President Tonight-Made me uncomfortable

Funny thing was when I went to the theater (Destinta Bridgeville, PA (Pittsburgh) the older lady selling the tickets said we aren't showing that movie. I had to step back and double check the sign and told her the sign said they were - then she found it and sold me the ticket. H'mmmm.

The lone ticket taker (older guy) said he heard it was a good movie.

I think there were only 5 of us in the theater 6:25 showing.

As to the film. I found it to be a very good film. Chilling. Even though I want Bush out of office, I certainly would not want it to happen in this manner. Having been through that horrible 5 years in the 60's when we lost JFK, MLK and RFK to assassins I would never want this to happen again. I almost had a tear in my eye when the female Bush speechwriter talked about Laura coming to the hospital and when they showed the caisson and riderless black horse.

But to tell this story I felt the filmmaker could not make the President a fictional character. Some other event could have been chosen though to tell the story such as another terrorist attack, but I can't fault the filmmaker for choosing to tell it the way he did. It did make me uncomfortable that it was a sitting president. I have to ask myself if I would've been outraged if it was Clinton or another sitting Democratic president and a moviemaker chose to do this. Of course this is the president who has grabbed the power and sought to concentrate it all in the Oval Office and who has so blatantly abused this power.

I didn't even feel it demonized Cheney, but just showed how he and our government would use this event to put a Patriot Act III in to force, jail people w/o rights, try to use it as an excuse to go to war against another ME country, etc. And how many would see these as necessary rights of the government. But I really felt the filmmaker did not come off as a leftist.

This film will probably be just a footnote in filmmaking history after Bush leaves office, either on Jan 20th, 2009 or impeachment(though I find the latter improbable).

It certainly got me to thinking. What excesses in a time of the Cold War could have been sought after the assassination of JFK?

though, that making this film about a sitting Prez, no matter who it is, feels wrong. I'm also a bit surprised that there were so few people in the theater with you. Is Bridgevillea Pub area? I lived in Pgh. for 45 years, but I have no idea what the political leanings of many of the areas are. I just know Pgh. used to be very Dem!

I would think it's a mix. It's near my office not my home. Has mix of older neighborhoods and newer suburban houses from middle income to McMansions.

In other words, "What if..." doesn't mean much in hind sight.

A what-if future scenario based on current history. Much fairer IMHO than the total fictionalization of real history and events done in Path to 9-11.

Gave me flashbacks to the Reagan shooting and the Zapruder film. Like I said something I hope I will never see again in my lifetime no matter what I feel about the person in office.

But again a very interesting piece of film-making, though I think it will quickly date itself unless the unthinkable would happen.

And yes I'm treading very carefully here.

I was wondering tonight if after JFK if there would've been criticism of even a fictional account of a Presidential assassination? But now as a plot point for fictional presidential characters there seems little hesitation. West Wing's first season ended with an attempted assassination very similar to what happens in this film. 24's first season centered around the plot to kill the African-American presidential candidate. In another season Air Force One was shot down gravely injuring the president. This past season opened with the assassination of former President Palmer. In Prison Break the president was killed apparently in a plot by the evil female VP and people inside the government and Secret Service.

that can be exploited by the neocons (aka current GOP trogs.)

But I won't be buying a ticket or renting the DVD. This film holds no interest for me.

I think he has done despicable things, but I still cry for him. Poor fella, that has to be horrible having a movie out there talking about killing you, and on top of him being so unpopular and being a President. I think the director should have used a generic President, like the West Wing, Independence Day, Wag the Dog, and that one where the President gets a girlfriend.

He lied us into a war, killing 2900 Americans, wounding 20,000+, and taking 600,000 Iraqi lives, and you say "poor fella"? Were you reading a children's book while typing this piece of shock and awe.

Edit: Oh, and the whole gutting of the constitution thing.

this movie is bs, it supposedly exploits the mass loathing for geeb (that's john ellis bush, or 'jeb' s brother lol) when what it really doing is isolating the anti bush logic; making bush's murder like jfk, when jfk was real and bush? well he's farting and puking etc everyday

If you didn't then I take your comments as bs. We had a couple of presidents who were murdered and who are essentially forgotten to history. Only Lincoln and JFK are still remembered by most of us.

Of course if this happened in this time with TV it would initially be huge and whomever no matter how bad a president would be eulogized as some great figure. But IMHO eventually someone like Bush would be a comma in history.

I found this a very fair film.

this movie was part of a series of movies/shows events all planned to subtly dull the suspicion that something was very wrong, and the men running the country were desperately trying to buy time so they could hide the facts for a little while longer; would you really feel surprise?
'oufoxed' was ignored, and seen by very few, yet it was more pertinent to history then any bs movie fiction about geeb getting shot....
i believe we're being had, and it's not that big a secret: 911 was a staged event, as was the 2k election. you might not be cynical enough for this world! (which is actually kind of admirable, but....)

go read how John Gibson of Faux is just outraged about this movie. This one is not a RW movie. I think you're as delusional as the black helicopter folks from wingnut side. Yes I believe that thanks to Repuke manipulation(Jebbie and Harris) the 2k election was stolen (oh and those damn Nader voters in FL as well) but I don't think even these bastards pulled off 9-11 - LIHOP maybe but I don't think they were competent enough for MIHOP.

Do you think that was pro-Republican? I'd have said not - and that is the main message of the movie, being the second half.

i haven't seen the movie, and probably won't. point is, it was the systematic deception of the american people, over a long time, that created grounds for junyer's silly gig in the wh in the 1st place.....the corruption wasn't really bush's, it was the men who focused the media spotlight on everybody but bush right up until today. bush would have been destroyed had even a fraction of the guy's lurid past been publicised; bill clinton was mocked for smoking pot while in college ferchrissakes! again, the proof's in the puddin'; as george oilwellian noted, nbc refused to air the dixie chicks ad cuz it was anti bush, yet run promos for this movie, which features the dipstick's murder! jokers like gibson then playact they're angry, as if to bestow integrity on the film....the real reason is it greases bush's passage through life, and that cannot but cost everyone even more, in terms of the national well being etc

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5616611/

Does that mean it was a sneaky Republican movie?

Really, I don't think you should criticise it without considering its content. There's a good summary of it in post #25.

I'm a bit queasy about it myself, (even though I haven't seen it yet) because somehow the idea of a movie with a central plot about assassinating a sitting president just seems a bit off.

Many thanks for the review, though.

Let's see a movie about a Congress that does its duty and impeaches the usurper,
and then sends him and his whole gang of war criminals off to the Hague for trial.

some enterprising film-maker or author will do someday as an alternate history.

.... for a sharp, funny, and ultimately, inspiring satire.

It would be possible to portray Bush in a much more realistic and critical fashion. In the DOAP film, the version we see is basically the "White House Spin" view of him ... which I suppose is to be expected in somber and tragic circumstances of the type they present.

My first instinct after seeing the first trailer on television today for this film was, it may illicit pity for Bush. I found it odd to read first thing this morning, that NBC refused to air the trailer for the Dixie Chicks documentary because it was considered an attack on Bush. Yet hours later, I saw the Death of a President trailer on NBC and it was about the assassination of Bush. It just doesn't make sense that NBC wouldn't show a trailer that criticizes Bush yet would advertise a movie that has him assassinated.

criticizing this movie. There are chains refusing to show it and I applaud Destinta in my area for having the courage to show it. I don't find the timing suspect. I just love at DU how everything is a plot to help Repukes. :tinfoilhat:

I think the following is a very good description of this film:

http://www.e.bell.ca/filmfest/2006/films_schedules/films_description.asp?id=88

An unknown gunman assassinates George W. Bush. A couple of years later, an investigative documentary is made. It features all the people involved that fateful day: the protestors outside a Chicago hotel; the suspects in the shooting and their families; the Secret Service men who failed to protect their charge; the press; and an array of experts, desperately seeking meaning in this horrible act of violence. We learn, agonizingly, what happened to America… after the death of a president.

This is easily the most dangerous and breathtakingly original film I have encountered this year. Director Gabriel Range’s 2003 project The Day Britain Stopped – which asked what might happen if Britain’s transportation grid was suddenly halted – was his first experiment with this style. He assembles a vast array of media, manipulating and subtly altering it to act as a continuous background illustration of falsified history – and then employs the conventional, after-the-fact style of History Television and its ilk as narration.

But it’s a long leap from Britain’s trains to a gunned-down Commander-in-Chief. Range is up to the task: collaborating with some of the finest special effects wizards in the world, he inserts his characters seamlessly into existing footage. His narrative is also airtight. Cautionary tales are too often flights of fancy; as they push the envelope of credibility, the lessons gleaned from dark speculation become somehow tarnished. Not here. Every moment is completely believable, every comment is somehow appropriate – to the point of chilling, horrifying certainty.

As one might expect, Range is ultimately interested in addressing today’s political issues through the lens of the future. Xenophobia, the hidden costs of war and the nature of civil liberties in a hyper-media age all come under the microscope. The film is never a personal attack on Bush; Range simply seeks to explore the potential consequences that might follow from the President’s policies and actions.

It is the very technique of D.O.A.P., finally, that poses the most haunting questions of all. Not only do we feel the authenticity of mass media imagery slipping away, but Range suggests that his manipulation is merely a more radical example of what we encounter every day.

GIBSON: Here now is the director and writer of the film, Gabriel Range.

So Mr. Range, do you understand why that picture of George W. Bush getting shot makes Americans so angry?

GABRIEL RANGE, DIRECTOR AND WRITER OF "DEATH OF A PRESIDENT": Well, I can understand that it's a provocative image, it's a very striking image and I can understand, of course, that this is a sensitive subject. But I think that sometimes it is right for a film to be provocative. The film doesn't take the assassination of President Bush as a starting point for entertainment. It is a serious film that I hope is thought provoking.

GIBSON: Yeah, but it takes the assassination of President Bush as a perfectly logical thing. You have this riot going on at the arrival of President Bush that has never happened in America, ever. And it has happened in Britain. It looks like a British riot dropped into Chicago on which you then graft this assassination.

And here's the point: Look at this double image. This double image shows President Bush being assassinated in your film and in the real life image that every American knows, Lee Harvey Oswald is being shot by Jack Ruby. You took that iconic image of Oswald being shot by Ruby and made it Bush. Oswald, the guy who assassinated President Kennedy, some would argue deserved to be shot. President Bush, the argument seems to be in this movie, deserves to be shot.

RANGE: Absolutely not. First of all, I take issue with what you say that President Bush has never been met with a riot. As it happens, the events in that first part of the film are absolutely a reflection of what happened when President Bush visited Portland in 2003. He absolutely has been met with that kind of response in a city.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,225982,00.html

And Gibson is sure living in an alternate U.S. cause I've sure seen protests like this in the U.S. and against the Republicans and this president. Hell this guy was protested like this at the 2001 inauguration though Faux and the other networks wouldn't show that to us.

...no protesters are allowed near the moron.

Cause I know they would've never had a first amendment zone so close to where Bush would be and especially on the motorcade route.

I think that Bush will have to live like Elvis did after he leaves office, isolated, perhaps behind 16 inch bulletproof glass, surrounded by hundreds of SS instead of the few afforded our previous elected Leaders. At what cost to the taxpayers I have no idea, probably Incredibly HIGH sums. Hell, who knows if WE might be paying for a WHOLE section of the US Military to patrol 9000 acres of Paraguayan jungle?

He has with his policies pissed off perhaps a billion Muslims who have sworn to take americans out and I assume they may mean him as well, I feel sorry for any person in that position, but it was his choice, along with Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, etc. I would hope that it doesn't come true. Our country does not NEED to have a state funeral where people might want to throw EGGS at a coffin, and someone who is SUPPOSED to represent a Prized POSITION in our govt.

They could have left those people attacking each other in the middle east, but instead inserted US into their fight.

He'll be protected for the rest of his life and kept safe I'm sure, the problem is that his Legacy will leave ALL OF US UNPROTECTED against whatever Jihads he provoked against americans, and for that I'm pissed. I have enemies of another faith that *I* personally never insulted or wished for any harm to come to them, just by being an american.

I'd like to see this film just to guage it's potential for historical context as to how America might react or what evil Laws would be passed against our own citizens for exercising their at minimum First Amendment rights.

Which do not include the right to be Violent or to Kill ANYONE.

Thanks for the review, I've been wondering if I'd get a fair review with this goddam "liberal" media protecting the Fraud squatting in our Precious White House.

It saddens me in many ways.

The air must be good down there in the islands, no? Is it far enough?

That is what I thought would happen to OJ after the trial, but he wanders around golf courses seven days a week (looking for Nicole's killer).

I think people or organizations who want to assassinate a public person prefer to do it while they are in the spotlight. Once out, they are of little value to them.

What an image. And it wouldn't be just potential jihadists who'd want to do it.

When Bush dies of old age, as seems to be the standard for ancient repukes with excellent health care, and his cronies want to have a big state funeral for him, it will be the first one where the protesters outnumber the mourners. If the family has any sense whatsoever, they'll do something small and private a la Nixon.

I just got back from it, and I left the theatre feeling pretty sombre. Let's just say that there were more laughs during "Fahrenheit 9/11", so if you want a film that will rally people around a cause and get them stoked up, this film isn't meant to do it.

This was showing in Canada, and I'm not an American so the issue of a "mockumentary" on a sitting President doesn't have quite the same resonance for me. We've been fortunate enough to escape the political assassinations that affected the US in the 1960s, with the 1970 October Crisis probably being the most dramatic event like that for us (and they're actually airing a miniseries on it this week). I tried to compartmentalize things to distance them from Bush himself as a human being, so I could view it as a "what if" scenario, looking at the consequences -- in fact, the movie opens with an interview voiceover about "consequences" which could be interpreted as criticism of Bush's foreign policy decisions, but which we gradually realize is directed at the assassin. I didn't interpret the film as exhorting people to rise up and try to kill or injure Bush or any other public figure ... quite the contrary, in fact.

Not that I'm an expert, but I thought the thing was very professionally done. More competent at blending the staged and the archival footage than, say, "DC 9/11" did. And as for the actual assassination scene, it's over in a fraction of a second, you don't see blood -- and they hustle "Bush" into the car and take off so quickly that you aren't even sure what you saw, even though you're braced for it. (I recall seeing the Reagan assassination attempt in news clips, and this seems even quicker.)

I should note that the staged interviews with fictional White House staffers and other officials, combined with edited archival footage, combine to make Bush seem like a friendly, reasonably-competent guy. It's rather at odds with all the "Bush is stupid" and "Bush is evil" protest signs being carried around outside (and the signs depicting him with a bulls-eye on his forehead appear not just extreme, but ominous).

The Karen Hughes stand-in (with a different name) is obviously fond of him, and the Secret Service man becomes quite emotional. I felt sorry for that character, even more than for Clint Eastwood in "In the Line of Fire", because while he told the President about his concerns, "Bush" insisted on working the rope line rather than disappointing the crowd, and the film leaves it open whether that was poor judgement or courage on the President's part. We don't see Laura Bush's reaction, though her grief is described -- the film implies that she doesn't get to talk to her husband because he loses consciousness en route to the hospital, and I found that saddening, just because I know several people who weren't able to get there in time when a family member was dying. (By the way, he is not shot in the "gut" as early reviews suggested, but higher up in the lung and heart -- similar to the Reagan shooting, only with severe damage to the aorta -- the fictional doctors remark that Bush's heart is in extraordinarily good shape "for a man of his age", implying that most other people would not have made it as far as Northwestern Hospital.)

The cops and investigators probably have the trickiest roles because they can't make it too easy for the audience to blame them for what goes wrong (prosecuting and convicting the wrong guy), but they do have to get us to think about things like ethnic bias and use of force against the protesters. I know the right-wingers will probably be labelling the filmmakers as "Michael Moore types", but I agree with RamboLiberal's observation. The law enforcement side gets in many arguments about the protesters being misguided, and some of them being outright violent (and also the stuff about "conspiracy theorists"), so we end up seeing a lot of the proceedings through their eyes. Basically the film turns into a police procedural -- since the real-life Bush is supposedly a mystery fan, he'd recognize the genre type.

The protester who gets arrested as a possible suspect just does not come across as sympathetically as, for example, the wife of the Muslim man who's wrongfully charged with the crime. (The filmmakers may be trying to focus the plot on the investigators making the same mistake as the Bush administration itself -- "reaching the conclusion and then trying to find the evidence", as the fingerprint guy, one of my favorite characters, points out.) There's a scene where some of the protesters, on hearing the news of the shooting, start to applaud -- this will probably be played up by the commentators on FOX, though from the context it seems like a wild rumor which most of them don't believe. (Even the veteran's son, himself back from Iraq, said that he did not join in protest marches "like Cindy Sheehan".)

But at the end, I found that the implication that the information about the President's schedule was leaked to the protesters, who (unwittingly or otherwise) passed it along to someone who did want to harm him, is as disturbing as the permanent installation of "Patriot Act III". They don't reveal who did the original leaking, which leaves plenty of room for speculation by the government and opposition sides. And the identity of the actual assassin (a disgruntled African-American veteran of the First Gulf War, who lost his son in Iraq) also raises more issues. He leaves a suicide note after the fact, but his involvement is again not entirely proven .... another thing which would be debated in real life, where cases which seem to have even more evidence are argued over. Other political thrillers like "Wag the Dog" and "Silver City" have also used this kind of ambiguous "ending". RL's comment that it's an uncomfortable film is on the mark, since hardly any of the groups come out of this looking good -- with the possible exception of the veteran's son and the fingerprint expert, both of whom have resolved to tell the truth even if they and their family/associates will be criticized.

Re: the state funeral, I found myself thinking this is the ONE thing which is definitely going to be part of the real Bush's future (distant, I hope) -- I don't think it's ever been denied to a President no matter what he did, even though many of them haven't opted for all the extras (riderless black horse, etc.). I did look at the jet fighters in the "missing man" formation, and wonder whether the Texas Air National Guard would be performing that. (Like RL, I almost teared up at that point, realizing that when he was of that age, he hadn't really messed anything up yet.)

I intend to watch it when it comes to my town

But even the title gave me flashbacks to Shelisenger's Death of President account, on the death of JFK.

So I am not too surprised

As in back in the RL US democracy is dead...

Heard about this movie, don't really plan to see it (honestly don't know if it's playing in this area). Thanks for the review, though. I think a better movie to make featuring the American trgedy that is George W. Bush would be titled "Impersonation of a President."

:)

I'll start by saying I understand why you went to see it & I am totally NOT attacking you in any way.
This is just MY opinion.


I think that regardless of how well filmed, this is a disgusting piece of fiction. Making a movie about the assassination of a LIVING person (ANY living person) is wrong. What kind of person would want to make a movie like that?

I think Bush is a terrible President & a complete jackass. That said, the idea of him being assassinated is abhorrent to me.
Imagine how his daughters, friends and family feel with this movie out there.

I totally understand everything you wrote about how it was tasteful and not over the top... all I have to say is, HOW COULD A MOVIE ABOUT THE ASSASSINATION OF SOMEONE LIVING BE TASTEFUL? The entire subject matter leaves me cold.

premise/content of the movie on the Dems some negative way...