This footage was posted by a hater of liberals, it seems. But that doesn’t make what Panetta admits, at the time of the events, false.
Panetta does say, at the end of this interview, that there may have been better ways to get the intel. But he doesn’t deny that “enhancer interrogation” was used and that some fo the bin Laden information came from those who were interrogated.
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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
Saw ‘ZD30’ today.
I can’t believe actual critics are getting their intellectual panties in a twist about the early interrogation scenes. As you have said David, it is incredibly condescending to say the average viewer can’t read between the lines and realize that this is depicting a culture of torture, which inevitably has to be regarded as a piece of the puzzle in terms of getting the intel that led to UBL.
That being said, I’m surprised that politicians on the right are actually making a big deal about this (McCain I’m assuming just rolled of his heated back pad and decided he wanted to be in the spotlight for a day or two). While perhaps they’re making a play at calling hypocrisy on the left-leaning film community (I’m sure they have a battle plan involving the spin they’re putting on the Newtown tragedies) and the officials that (supposedly) enabled them to make this film, there is just one thing I cannot get past: The only way to somewhat legitimize the advanced interrogation techniques of the past decade is to make it seem as if they led to the intel which led to UBL. McCain goes on and on about how torture makes us seem in the eyes of the world, but newsflash you old fucktard: everyone in the entire world knows we tortured detainees (and probably most assumed it before abu ghraib etc), so why not make it seem like we actually got somewhere with it but realized it was a bad and corrupting technique?
And now I realize I just said the word “fucktard” referring to John McCain. And I apologize for that.
McCain was tortured while a POW. He’s been extremely anti-torture ever since. It’s one of his few good traits. It’s also why it’s so important for him that torture not be shown to have worked.
It would be shocking if no information came out of torture, given how much of it was done. I mean they rounded up and blacksited thousands of people. Along with the small amount of legitimate info they got, they got blood on their hands and millions of hours of human anguish, which I’m sure was satisfying to important people who appear on Sunday talk shows.