Death of a President

CNN.com - Some chains refuse Bush assassination film - Oct 6, 2006:

Is reaction against Death of a President; justified or downright censorship? Newmarket Films set itself an unusual challenge when it decided to release the controversial faux investigative documentary Death of a President just six weeks after acquiring the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival last month. But it might face an even more formidable obstacle because several major theater chains are refusing to play the film, which mixes real news footage with dramatized segments depicting the fictional 2007 death of President Bush.

Theaters Balk on Bush Death Film - Oct 06, 2006 - E! Online News:

This gives new meaning to “presidential veto.” Some of the country's biggest theater chains are reportedly refusing to screen Death of a President, the controversial British-made drama that depicts a fictional assassination of President George W. Bush. Death of a President sparked controversy when it premiered last month at the Toronto Film Festival, where it won the International Critics Prize and scored a U.S. distribution deal with Newmarket Films. But according to the Hollywood Reporter, due to the R-rated film's incendiary subject matter, Newmarket is facing a tough time finding exhibitors willing to show Death of a President. Newmarket plans to unspool the ersatz documentary on Oct. 27, less than two weeks before the Nov. 7 midterm elections.

The Republican Party in Texas has said it is 'shocking' and 'disturbing' that a TV drama is to depict the assassination of US President Bush.

Death of a President uses archive footage, actors and computer effects to portray the president being shot dead.

UK broadcaster Channel 4, who made the mock documentary, said it explored the effects of the War on Terror on the US.

But Gretchen Essell, a spokeswoman for the Republican Party of Texas, called for it not to be screened.

Bush 'Assassination' Film Makes Waves Across the Pond - washingtonpost.com: By Kevin Sullivan, Washington Post Foreign Service, Saturday, September 2, 2006.

Nearly every British newspaper on Friday carried photos of the “assassination” of President Bush -- or, rather, the eerily realistic depiction of it from a new documentary-style television film that is causing an uproar in Britain. The film, “Death of a President,” has been alternatively derided as a tasteless publicity grab and defended as a serious look at a plausible event that could have dramatic ramifications for the world.

“It's a disturbing film,” said Peter Dale, head of More 4, the television channel that will telecast the film in England in October. It is scheduled to debut this month -- on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks -- at the Toronto Film Festival."

I believe that the First Amendment right of freedom of expression is sacred to our nation. That is why I don’t mind, and even encourage opinions differing from mine. I also believe in freedom of artistic expression. So I would never ban Andress Serrano’s Piss Christ, the Muhammed cartoons, or satire on the Pope. So, too, I would not ban Death of a President. On the other hand, I would applaud any distributor who would refuse to show it. It is a disgusting film, no matter what we can “learn from it.” Anyone who sees it, or supports it, is a sick person. We’ll have enough “learning” experiences with real-life assassinations, I assume, without having to fictionalize them—especially when this movie is about a sitting president. Real assassins will love it, and pathological Bush-haters, and sadists, and many in the Muslim world. Good Muslims, and good people, will abhor it, and just not see it.

Rock


(*Wikipedia is always my source unless indicated.)