Wendy R. Williams Talks with Gabriel Range Director of The Death of the President Press Roundtable October 24, 2006 The Essex House Opposite Photo Credit Wendy R. Williams

Gabriel’s Range’s provocative film, Death of a President, opened on Friday, October 27, 2006 amidst a lot of controversy. I saw the film and thought it was excellent and not at all what I was expecting. Here is a copy of my review of the movie. Please scroll down for my interview with Range regarding the making of the film.

Gabriel Range’s
Death of a President
Opens Friday, October 27, 2006

Starring: Hend Ayoub; Brian Boland; Becky Ann Baker; Robert Mangiardi; Zahra Abi Zikri; Jay Patterson; Jay Whittaker; Michael Reilly Burke; James Urbaniak; Neko Parham; Seena Jon; Christian Stolte; Chavez Ravine; Patricia Buckley; Patrick Clear; and Malik Bader.

Tagline: Do not rush to judge.

Let's get one thing straight: this film does not glorify violence nor does it incite violence. Instead it is a thought provoking exploration of the United States’ culture of violence and of our present administrations assault on our civil liberties.

Here is a quote from the film’s press release: Death of a President follows the investigation of the fictional assassination of President George W. Bush in October 2007. Combining real archival footage with a credible but fictional story, Death of a President presents a fascinating and thought-provoking political thriller.”

Filmmaker Gabriel Range has stated that he picked the fictitious assassination of President George Bush as a catalyst so he could explore how our present administration would react to such a horrific event.

The film is formatted like a documentary; Range uses actual news clips of President Bush interspersed with film he (Range) took of protest groups in Chicago. These film clips are interspersed with interviews with people who were supposedly with the President in Chicago on the day of the assassination and also with the Secret Service agents who were charged with his protection and with the FBI agent who was in charge of the investigation afterwards. The film also shows interviews with the wives of the two suspects: a Syrian engineer and the father of a slain African American soldier.

This film is riveting without being exploitative. You never see the President being shot, only the lead up to the assassination and the aftermath. This film is also incredibly sad. I walked out of the film depressed with this one thought, “How can a nation who was founded on the wonderful principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, have gone so far off course?”

For more information on this film, log onto: www.deathofapresident.com

For more reading on the subject of how we are now persecuting Arab Americans, not for terrorist acts but just because we think they look funny, read my theater column for June of 2006.
http://www.newyorkcool.com/archives/2006/June/theater_1.html.
Scroll down on the linked page to see the review of Alison Maclean and Tobiase Perse’s documentary film Persons of Interest .

The Interview with Gabriel Range  

Question about why he decided to make a movie about the fictitious assassination of President George Bush:

Gabriel Range : I was inspired by the situation after 9/11 and how so many Arab Americans were picked up off the streets only because they were Arab Americans and how they were subsequently deported. The current administration [of the United States] as shown no respect for what it considers to be legal niceties.

Question about why since he is British, he decided to make a film about the assassination of President George Bush rather than the fictitious assassination of Prime Minister Tony Blair:

Gabriel Range : I wanted the film to describe the world after 9/11 and America was attacked on 9/11 and American made the decision to invade Iraq. You do not need to be American to be affected by the War on Terror.

Question about why so much is made of 9/11 when there is so much killing and bombing everywhere else:

Gabriel Range : 9/11 was huge and it affected the entire world.

Question about the reaction to the film. [Hillary Clinton has said that the subject of the film is “despicable” and NPR and CNN have refused to run ads for the film.]

Gabriel Range : There has been a strong reaction to the film. Some people thought it would be cheering on the assassination when in fact the film is quite different. Some people even thought that the audience would cheer when Bush was shot, but they did not. Anyone who was expecting a cathartic effect when Bush is shot will be in for a terrible surprise. This film is about the pernicious effects of violence.

Hillary Clinton condemned the film as being sick and disgusting without even seeing it. The film was never supposed to be an attack on Bush personally, but a critique on how his administration has handled the aftermath of 9/11 and the War in Iraq. But I can see how some people would find it offensive.

I decided at the end of 2004 to use the assassination of the President as a tumultuous event [to make my film]. I used the assassination as a device to tell a story about the current political climate and what has happened in the last five years.

Question about why he decided to use a long gunman:

Gabriel Range : History has shown that Presidential assassins are not international conspiracies.

Question about the footage he used in the film and how some of it appeared to be degraded:

Gabriel Range : I used actual archival footage that I got permission to use in the usual way. The hardest part was selecting which archives to use. The film was written with the available archive [of film] in mind]. We filmed Bush’s trip to Chicago ourselves. We filmed the protestors during a March 18, 2006 protest in Chicago. We actually did degrade some of our film to match the archived film.

Question about how frightening the protestors appeared to be in the film:

Gabriel Range : The protestors were very frustrated because it is almost impossible to be seen by the President. The [fictional] scene we filmed where the President’s limousine is surrounded by protestors and unable to move was inspired by a situation in Portland, Oregon where the President’s hotel was under siege. President Bush’s father used to refer to Portland as Beirut.

I wanted to convey the sense of frustration felt by the police officers who were charged with controlling the crowds. But the Chicago police have been known to use disproportionate force in controlling demonstrations.

Question about how the film has been received:

Gabriel Range: I have received some death threats.

Question about why he choose to make the assassin an African American:

Gabriel Range : Race had nothing to do with it even though minorities are bearing the brunt of the costs of this war. The Claibornes are a military family and that is why I choose [to tell the story using those characters]. The Administration has misled [minorities and military families] about the reason we went to war. But my choice of an African American as the assassin was not a racial issue [to me].

And that is all we had time for. Many thanks to Gabriel Range for talking to www.newyorkcool.com and for having the courage to make his film