anderswolleck

Since Death of a President premiered at the Toronto Film Festival this year, there has been a lot of criticism thrown at the film--much of it from people who havent even seen it. Many of those criticisms came from people who thought the film would be a cathartic wet dream for liberals, when in fact it ducks a lot of politics and instead presents what a horrible event the death of a president--even one as incompetent as George W. Bush--could be. I had a chance to speak with Death of a President co-writer/director Gabriel Range when he was in New York on a press tour.

Check out the official website for Death of a President

Daniel Robert Epstein: In a way I think you skirt a lot of politics in this movie.

Gabriel Range: I dont think of it as a Party political film. Its not an anti-Republican film. It isnt a personal attack on President Bush but I hope it does offer a critique of the way the administration has handled so many important things in the last few years.

DRE: This would have been a much different film if the president was Bill Clinton rather than George W. Bush.

GR: The film really is less about the personalities and more about the response of an administration to a horrific event. In the sense that the film uses the assassination of President Bush as a dramatic device to look at the way the administration reacted to 9/11 and the way it designed the war on terror and the way it led the invasion of Iraq. Were a Democrat to have presided over that then I think I would equally have made the film.

DRE: Your film The Day Britain Stopped was created in a similar way to your new film, what did you learn from the previous that helped you on this one?

GR: I think that making a film in the style of a documentary means that an audience will engage with the material in a different way. I think when you make a piece of regular narrative fiction you engage with it in a different way. Although this is fiction, I think that you react to it in a different way because its told in a very particular style. There is something quite powerful about using an event set sometime in the future as a means of looking at what is happening today.

DRE: Many filmmakers feel that as artists they have no responsibility to anyone. With the making of this kind of film, do you feel like theres ethics involved?

GR: Sure I do. This film was made in an incredibly careful way. Great care was taken for the assassination to be portrayed as a horrific event, for it not to be gratuitous and for it not to linger on the act of the assassination. I think that the film has a very strong anti-violence message and that those are things that come with the responsibility of making the film. At the same time, the film should be provocative and it should be outrageous. I think that the provocation in making a film that begins with the assassination of President Bush is justified.

DRE: Its hard to imagine what would be scarier, an assassination of a president, which hopefully will never happen to anyone, even the presidents I hate. But the idea of President Cheney is absolutely terrifying to me. Did you ever think about going more into that aspect?

GR: The intent of the film was never really to try and authentically imagine what would happen after President Bush was killed. Some of the criticism of the film has been that it didnt do enough to imagine how the world stage would be reset by this event and thats not really the point. The point was to use the assassination as a way to look at the things that have already happened. When you make a film thats set in the near future the further you go into the future, there is the danger of world events taking a different path than the one youve mentioned. One thing that was reassuring or chilling, was that the film was released in the UK on the day that North Korea announced that it had completed its first successful nuclear test and President Bush was on our television screens saying things that were similar to what he says in the film. So I think in some ways were getting some predictions right.

DRE: Of course when Martin Scorsese, Jodie Foster, Robert De Niro and Paul Schrader made Taxi Driver, they never could have imagined that John Hinckley would try to assassinate Ronald Reagan. John Hinckley would have done something horrible even if he hadnt seen Taxi Driver. I know some people have suggested that if the president is assassinated that your film would be responsible in some way. God forbid something happens and someone points to you, what would you say?

GR: I would of course be horrified utterly horrified. But I really strongly believe that anyone seeing this film would not think that assassinating President Bush would be a good idea or that it could in any way help matters or make the world a better place. Its clearly shown as a horrific event with terrible consequences. I dont think that this film would give anyone those ideas. Im surprised that people would suggest that somebody would get the idea from watching this film.

DRE: The date in the film that the president is assassinated is October 19th. Did that have any significance beyond almost having a lame duck president?

GR: It was certainly a point in the not too distant future when President Bush would still be in power and we could make some reasonable guesses at the kind of things that would be on the administrations plate at that time. I think that it was reasonable to suggest that the situation in Iraq might not have increased significantly by then and that there would be continuing tension in North Korea and that there would be continued dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq.

DRE: People have made films utilizing this technique before but people dont usually make two of them.

GR: Ive made three actually. But I think this is definitely the last. Fictional documentaries are generally used for comedy and I wanted to try and make this work as drama. I think and hope that this particular style of film can bring a big audience to what is otherwise quite a difficult subject matter.

DRE: I read that you actually videotaped Bush giving a speech in Chicago and then used it in the film.

GR: Some of it is footage licensed to us and some of it is stuff we filmed.

DRE: Were you already listening to a speech thinking how it was going to work in your movie?

GR: The bulk of that speech about North Korea was from a speech made in 2003. So Simon Finch and I wrote the script with that speech in mind. We didnt film the actual speech that he made about North Korea. That had been filmed by somebody else in 2003 so knowing that that archive existed and that he made that speech in Chicago, we then started to write the rest of the scenario around that.

There was a full script and the actors had a huge amount to learn. One of the big things is really doing their homework so they can have the confidence to be able to improvise around the material. For example James Urbaniak, who plays the forensic scientist in the film, did an enormous amount of homework and could speak for hours about fingerprint analysis. Then having workshopped with the actors a little bit what I tend to do is give them the script either the day or a couple of days before we shoot and ask them not to learn it. I told them to read it a few times and not to learn it rote because the minute an actor learns those lines that way, then you can really see on camera someone just repeating those words. That has a very different energy to it and a very different feel to it than something that is in part improvised.

DRE: Whats interesting is that films are big hits at festivals, like yours was, and then theyre bought and we dont get to see them for a year. But this is coming out around a month after it premiered. Obviously the studio wanted to capitalize on all the press.

GR: I think thats it really. There were some people who said, Is this because of the elections? It really wasnt. I think that the timing of the film coming out was because Newmarket recognized that it got a lot of heat when it was in Toronto and they wanted to get it when people were aware of it.

DRE: Well its nice to hear about a movie and then see it a month later.

I know you got some death threats, which I read you didnt take too seriously.

GR: Those came at a time when people thought that the film was something which it isnt. So I think now that people realize that it isnt incitement to kill the president, I have not had anymore since then.

DRE: The BBC produced the first film you did with this technique [The Day Britain Stopped]. What did they say when you said you wanted to do a film this way?

GR: They wanted to find a way of making an interesting film about a subject that was, on the face of it, not particularly exciting. They wanted to find a way to bring a big audience to something that was quite dry so they gave me pretty free reign to experiment. I worked again with Simon Finch and we sat down together and tried to figure out the most compelling story that we could weave out of imagining this catastrophe.

DRE: What is your next film?

GR: Its a conventional narrative drama again inspired by actual events. Thats all I can say about it.

DRE: How soon do you expect your passport to be canceled?

GR: [laughs] I certainly wouldnt have been surprised if it had taken me a little longer to get back into this country this last time but fortunately Ive had no trouble.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck