[MLUG - DISCUSSION] [POLITICS] For a British TV Movie, a Real President Is Shot

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

It is hard for me to see how this movie would not help Bush.  For one, 
they are going to use a Syrian assassin.  The danger of assassination is 
already well-known and precautions are being undertaken all the time, so I 
doubt the film would increase risk much.  I wonder if this was Karl Rove's 
idea!  --Mike

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/02/movies/02shot.html

N.Y. Times
September 2, 2006

For a British TV Movie, a Real President Is Shot

By SARAH LYALL

LONDON, Sept. 1 -- The time is October 2007, and America is in anguish, 
rent by the war in Iraq and by a combustive restiveness at home. Leaving a 
hotel in Chicago after making a speech while a huge antiwar protest rages 
nearby, President Bush is suddenly struck down, killed by a sniper's 
bullet.

That is the arresting beginning of "Death of a President," a 90-minute 
film to be broadcast here in October on More4, a British digital 
television station. And while depicting the assassination of a sitting 
president is provocative in itself, this film is doubly so because it has 
been made to look like a documentary.

Using archival film as well as computer-generated imagery that, for 
instance, attaches the president's face to the body of the actor playing 
him, the film leaves no doubt that the victim is Mr. Bush rather than some 
generic president.

The movie has not yet been released; indeed, the filmmakers were still 
editing it on Friday and were not available for comment, said Gavin 
Dawson, a spokesman for More4. But the station's announcement this week 
that it planned to present "Death of a President" as part of its autumn 
season has raised something of a furor here.

"Whilst one is aware of other films that have shown assassinations, those 
have been in the realm of fantasy," said John Beyer, the director of 
Mediawatch-UK, which campaigns against sex and violence on television. "To 
use the president of the United States, the real person, in some fictional 
presentation, I think that is wrong."

The United States Embassy here directed calls to the White House, which 
said: "We won't dignify this with a response."

[snip]

"It is an appalling way to treat the head of state of another country," 
Eric Staal, a spokesman for Republicans Abroad in London, told The Evening 
Standard. "We've seen from early in his presidency the extremes the 
political left are willing to go to vilify him as an individual. This 
takes this vilification to a new and disturbing level."

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