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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Death Of A President

So much hubbub

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17 Responses to “Death Of A President”

  1. mutinyco says:

    I didn’t think it was about Bush. They just used him as an exclamation point for what it’s really about: using a distortion of reality to acheive an end. In the film, the subsequent administration has somebody falsely convincted in order to further the Patriot Act. And the movie itself is the result of taking real-life documentry footage and altering it to create a fictional narrative.

  2. David Poland says:

    But don’t you associate the Bush Administration quite specifically with Patriot Act, MutCo?

  3. mutinyco says:

    Of course. But I think what the movie is after is more an indictment of the general trend in our society of fictionalizing “reality,” whether it be through politics, the news or in this case a movie. And the end results of these developments. It’s simply using Bush as the hot button MacGuffin, so to speak.
    (I’m not saying I thought it was that good, just to note…)

  4. EDouglas says:

    Holy shit, I actually agree with David… enjoy it because my slam of Borat is coming soon….

  5. Blackcloud says:

    From David’s description it sounds like very lazy filmmaking.

  6. Goulet says:

    I 100% disagree here.
    DEATH OF A PRESIDENT is both an engrossing political thriller and a thoughtful “documentary”. What’s not to like?
    Fans of Moore, Jarecki or Morris should definitely see this.

  7. Nicol D says:

    I thought it was very telling that the company is directly marketing the film to people who would get pleasure from seeing President Bush harmed. I walked past my local theatre the other day and it had a big poster up and all it said was ‘President George W. Bush 1946-2006’. Underneath that it said in big bold letters, ‘See It Happen on…’ with the release date of the film after it.
    Obviously this film has nothing to sell of any intellectual value so the best they can do is sell it to the extremists who will get a sick thrill out of seeing the ‘assasination’ on film.
    Disagree with Bush all you want, but something about that poster represented some kind of an all time schlock cinema low for me. It depressed me quite a bit.
    The makers are probably arrogant (and ignorant) enough to think they made some sort of high-brow dissertation on the nature of war and the cyclical ramifications of violence. The poster told me all they made was a snuff film wannabe that is better suited in the video store next to all of those Faces of Death films from the early eighties.

  8. Josh Massey says:

    Couldn’t have said it any better myself, Nicol.

  9. mysteryperfecta says:

    “I walked past my local theatre the other day and it had a big poster up and all it said was ‘President George W. Bush 1946-2006’. Underneath that it said in big bold letters, ‘See It Happen on…’ with the release date of the film after it.”
    Hadn’t heard about or seen the poster you described. It is in terribly poor taste. At least it doesn’t have his portrait on the poster.

  10. David Poland says:

    It’s okay ED… if you don’t get it, you don’t get it.

  11. David Poland says:

    P.S. I don’t think it’s lazy filmaking. I think it is an attempt at bravura filmmaking (Pulling off the doc as drama) that misses the mark and becomes an okay so what.

  12. Nicol D says:

    Here’s a picture of the poster I saw. It is the coming soon one sheet. It also seems to be the ad image that is used in many alternative weekly newspapers.
    http://www.impawards.com/2006/death_of_a_president_ver2.html
    Again, I am a libertarian in the free speech department, but it saddens me that people would want to exploit this for such schlock value. It’s the “See it Happen…” tag that really makes it so low.
    Selling it like it was a PPV Wrestling match or a summer blockbuster.
    They obviously know the paying audience for this wants the lowest common denominator…and that’s what this film promises.

  13. Wrecktum says:

    Tacky yes. But it’s an indie movie from an indie distributor, so you’d expect the marketing to wallow in the salacious and attempt to be controversial.

  14. jeffmcm says:

    If the distributor thinks they’re being ‘controversial’ or ‘salacious’ they have a ways to go.

  15. Stella's Boy says:

    Recent interview with the director and the head of marketing at Newmarket.
    http://www.chud.com/index.php?type=news&id=7908

  16. Blackcloud says:

    I said lazy filmmaking because the “third act reveal” seems very obvious and cliched, for the reasons you discussed. Maybe the filmmaking isn’t lazy, but the ideas certainly seem to be.

  17. jeffmcm says:

    So is there anyone who is going to pay money to see this movie? I’m assuming that those who have already commented on it saw it through a festival or critics’ screening.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon