When the first episode of “The Kennedys,” the costly and controversial mini-series about that American political dynasty, makes its debut on Sunday, a chapter in television history will be closed, but a debate about the balance between accuracy and creative license in historical dramas
Arriving on television shortly after an Oscars race between “The King’s Speech” and “The Social Network,” movies that put their own spin on real-life events, “The Kennedys” employs many of the same narrative devices. In chronicling the presidency of John F. Kennedy, it compresses time, consolidates characters and invents dialogue for moments never recorded by history’s pen.
It also dwells on the sexual appetites of the Kennedy men, the use of prescription drugs by the president and his wife, and Joseph P. Kennedy’s interactions with the Mafia, in ways that, depending on your point of view, expose the flaws of historical figures or besmirch the legacy of an American hero.
That would be complicated enough, even without two additional factors. The producer of “The Kennedys,” Joel Surnow, a co-creator of the Fox action series “24,” is an outspoken conservative. (He says that despite his personal politics, the mini-series depicts the family “in an honest yet really reverential and patriotic light.”)
And the History Channel, which commissioned the $25 million series, ultimately rejected it in January after deciding that its “dramatic interpretation” was “not a fit for the History brand.”
Stephen Kronish, who wrote the script (and says he is a liberal), acknowledges that his assignment put him at the center of a paradoxical conflict between truthfulness and telling a good story — a tension exacerbated by an enduring reverence for the central character of the mini-series, President Kennedy himself. “It is a challenge unlike just about any other in our business,” Mr. Kronish said, “when you’re being asked to write dramatic scenes but you’re constricted by what is factually workable.”
That is a challenge amplified by the unique place that President Kennedy and his family continue to occupy in the American psyche.
“Presidents are magic,” said the journalist Richard Reeves, author of several books on the modern presidency. “They walk into a room, and the air changes, and this one, in our lifetimes, above all.”
“The Kennedys,” which will be shown on ReelzChannel, a little-known, film-oriented cable network, has for months been the subject of a heated dispute over its faithfulness to the facts.
Before production began, the mini-series was criticized for a lack of veracity by a group of historians and the Kennedy adviser Theodore C. Sorensen, who were shown early drafts of the scripts after they were obtained by a liberal filmmaker, Robert Greenwald. Historians who consulted on the mini-series had misgivings throughout its production, and reports surfaced that the Kennedy family or its surrogates had sought to have the project shelved.
Filmmakers who frequently work on biographical movies say that success in the genre requires a command of the historical record and the instincts to know when to set history aside.
“At a certain place, you have to leave the research behind and you have to go into the world of drama,” said the director Oliver Stone, whose films include “JFK.,” “Nixon” and “W.”
For these films, about the investigation into President Kennedy’s assassination and the presidencies of Richard Nixon and George W. Bush, Mr. Stone produced heavily annotated screenplays, with numerous footnotes to historical documents, scholarly texts and original interviews — necessary for getting the movies financed and insured, and for responding to claims of inaccuracy or partisan political agendas.
None of which discouraged Mr. Stone from creating what he said were “wholly invented” scenes where he needed them: Nixon being haunted by his dead mother, or comparing Daniel Ellsberg to Alger Hiss.
“That’s all intuition; there’s no evidence of it,” Mr. Stone said. He added: “Every decision that every political leader makes is a result of numerous phone calls, meetings and the ordinariness of life. Very rarely is life as dramatic.”
Dennis Bingham, an associate professor and director of film studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, and the author of “Whose Lives Are They Anyway? The Biopic as Contemporary Film Genre,” said that fictionalized scenes could be found in practically every biographical film from “The Story of Louis Pasteur” (in 1936) to “Lawrence of Arabia.”
Whether or not audiences forgive these transgressions, Mr. Bingham said, has a lot to do with how they perceive a film over all. “A film that cheats on the actuality may succeed artistically,” he said.
Mr. Bingham said the events of a film like “The King’s Speech,” set in Britain in the 1920s and ’30s, were far enough away in time and, for Americans, in space, that contemporary viewers were unlikely to scrutinize it for its accuracy.
Yet audiences can also forgive “The Social Network,” which portrays the future Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg as a socially maladroit loner, because it “conforms with our own expectations of what he might be like,” Mr. Bingham said.
“If you want to want to find out what Mark Zuckerberg is like in life,” Mr. Bingham said, he is “still young and has the rest of his life to set the record straight.”
But there are no hard and fast rules for how much time must elapse before a biographical film can be made about a person or an event.
Len Amato, the president of HBO Films and a producer of its 2008 film “Recount” about the disputed 2000 presidential election, said, “Generally, distance from the event is your friend.”
But by producing “Recount” as soon as they did, Mr. Amato said, the filmmakers were able to interview many of the people who participated in the events it chronicles. HBO Films is following a similar process for its coming biographical movie “Game Change,” about Senator John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate in the 2008 presidential race.
“We like to speak with everyone,” Mr. Amato said. “Now, everyone doesn’t always take us up on the offer.”
Mr. Reeves said he was not particularly a fan of biographical drama or the historical fiction it perpetrates.
“Is it a legitimate art form?” he said, adding, with some reluctance: “I think probably at this point it is. We accept docudrama in a way now that we didn’t, say, 10 or 20 years ago.”
After viewing “The Kennedys,” Mr. Reeves said he was surprised that its producers cited him as an author whose work they drew upon for its screenplays. “If they did,” he said, “they took the wrong stuff.”
Mr. Reeves was skeptical of several scenes in the mini-series that depicted private conversations among the family members: Joseph P. Kennedy (who is played by Tom Wilkinson) declaring to his sons, “This country is ours for the taking,” or telling Jacqueline Kennedy (Katie Holmes) that he will give her $1 million and allow her to divorce John (Greg Kinnear) if he loses the 1960 election.
And Mr. Reeves said there was so much emphasis on drug use by the president and his wife that “it was like they shot it in a pharmacy.”
But he said over all it was “so ham-handed” and “harmless” that it was unlikely to influence anyone’s opinion about the Kennedys.
“I was hoping it would be very good or just an absolute hatchet job, but it is pretty bland stuff,” Mr. Reeves said. “There’s nothing new in there except stuff that’s made up, and none of that is good enough to make a difference.”
Still, Mr. Reeves argued that the tragic manner of President Kennedy’s death, and the perception still held by many people that life today might be different had he lived, called for some sensitivity to how he was portrayed in these kinds of films.
On this point there was agreement from Mr. Kronish, the screenwriter of “The Kennedys.”
Mr. Kronish said that for Kennedy admirers, a group in which he counted himself: “What they constructed was certainly not made of whole cloth, but it hid a few things. The image that was created was not the full picture of them as people. Images never are.”
Before a frame of “The Kennedys,” a television mini-series about that political clan, has been broadcast, here is its track record so far:
Months prior to filming, it was criticized for its perceived inaccuracies by historians (including Theodore C. Sorensen) who were shown early drafts of its screenplays by a left-leaning filmmaker, Robert Greenwald.
In January, the History Channel, which had ordered and produced the mini-series for $25 million, announced that it was dropping the project, saying only that the mini-series did not fit its brand. Concerns about the accuracy of “The Kennedys” had persisted throughout its production, and there were reports that Kennedy family members had reached out to the History Channel board, seeking to stop it.
In February, ReelzChannel, a film-oriented cable network, announced it had acquired “The Kennedys. On April 3 its first episode will be shown there.
The mini-series, which stars Greg Kinnear as John F. Kennedy, Katie Holmes as Jacqueline Kennedy, Barry Pepper as Robert F. Kennedy and Tom Wilkinson as Joseph P. Kennedy, is produced by Joel Surnow, a co-creator of the Fox series “24″ and an outspoken political conservative, and written by Stephen Kronish, a “24″ producer who identifies himself as a liberal. Mr. Surnow and Mr. Kronish spoke recently to ArtsBeat about the controversy surrounding “The Kennedys,” their experiences working on the mini-series and the inherent challenges of making biographical films. These are excerpts from that conversation.
Q.
How did you learn that the History Channel had decided it was not going to broadcast “The Kennedys”?
A.
JOEL SURNOW It was conveyed to me on a very regretful phone call from the executives at the History Channel. I don’t even remember the time right now, was it January? Early January. They had let us know that the network wasn’t going to be airing it, but that they would be trying to help us sell it to another network.
Q.
In its statement announcing that it would not show “The Kennedys,” the channel said the “dramatic interpretation is not a fit for the History brand.” Were you offered a fuller explanation of what that meant?
A.
SURNOW That statement was a fiction. They mentioned the words historical inaccuracy – there’s zero historical inaccuracy in our show. We’ve had approvals on all the scripts and on all the cuts so that was just a press statement.
Q.
In The New York Times, we reported there were concerns about the historical accuracy of the mini-series that persisted after it was filmed and produced, and that these concerns played a role in the History Channel’s decision to drop it.
A.
SURNOW That’s not true. That’s a fiction that you printed. And Steve Gillon [the resident historian of the History Channel] approved all eight scripts, and we have proof of it. And the network approved all the cuts, so that’s a fiction.
Q.
It has also been reported that the Kennedy family or its surrogates used their influence to get the History Channel to drop the mini-series. Do you have reason to believe this occurred?
A.
SURNOW I believe the Kennedy family did not want this seen, but I have no blame and nothing negative to say about the Kennedy family. Any family who’s going to have a show done about them has every right to want to protect the image of their family. The blame lies squarely on the people who canceled the show.
Q.
Before ReelzChannel picked up “The Kennedys,” were you concerned that it might not be shown anywhere at all?
A.
SURNOW Yes, of course I was. It would have been, really, a calamity if we had spent two and a half years making this brilliant show and no one saw it. It would be really unfathomable. STEPHEN KRONISH I also think that the fact that this is going to be seen in 40 countries around the world, were it not to be seen in the United States would have been, in a way, embarrassing. SURNOW John F. Kennedy was our president. He was my president and Steve’s president, too. That’s not something this country really does, which is prevent people from expressing themselves.
Q.
Is that what you feel happened here, that you were prevented from expressing yourself?
A.
SURNOW My ability to express myself was fine. But once we did express ourselves, they decided to cut us off at the knees. This had a lot to do with my known politics, and it was very sad that whoever decided to protect the Kennedys didn’t watch the show and see how reverential and patriotic the show really was before they made a determination whether a known conservative could be a producer about a show, and be even-handed and intellectually honest, which we were.
Q.
Given the outcry over “The Reagans,” which was dropped by CBS after complaints by political conservatives, should you have expected that you would take heat for being a conservative making a film about a revered liberal?
A.
SURNOW What about Steve’s personal politics? Steve is the writer. KRONISH That would be like saying, well, a white man can’t write about black subjects. A black man can’t write about white subjects. The purpose of this mini-series was to neither deify nor destroy. We’ve seen all the valentines and they’ve been done. Our goal here was to try to be honest about who these people were as human beings. And we all know that they have flaws. Everybody does.
Q.
Stephen, could you talk about how you conducted your research and compiled the biographical materials you used to write your screenplays?
A.
KRONISH Steve Gillon basically decided what sources he would accept, and they had to be sources that were written by people whose journalistic credentials were beyond reproach. They were not quote-unquote popular biographies. They were not stuff in People magazine. They were volumes that had been written by people like Robert Dallek, Richard Reeves and Evan Thomas. There were probably 40 some-odd sources that we used. We certainly benefited by the fact that on the Internet there’s access to material that heretofore you would have spent years in a library to try to glean. We took a library of material, based on Gillon’s instruction of what would be acceptable as source material, and that’s what we used.
Q.
Is it fair to say that all biographical films have to rely on a certain amount of reconstruction, and creating scenes where there’s no record of what was said or what occurred?
A.
KRONISH Of course. For example, the scenes between Jack and Jackie in the bedroom, where nobody knows exactly what was said, but we do know what the attitudes were and we do know, for example, that she knew about several of his affairs and was deeply distressed by them, but she stayed with him. Although she would periodically leave, she would always return. We know that. That is historical fact. And so we used those facts to create scenes that had that basis in mind. You’re compressing 50-odd years of a family’s history into eight hours. That compression is going to have to show somewhere. It doesn’t mean that the facts are changed or invented. SURNOW And having said that, we were still vetted microscopically. They saw dailies of a scene that we were shooting in the White House, where there was a rifle in the Oval Office. We got a call the next day: why is there a rifle in the Oval Office? We had to then call our art department, produce a photograph of J.F.K. sitting in the Oval Office with a rifle behind him in 1961. That is the level of detail that they were concerned about.
Q.
The mini-series also uses composite characters, including a female aide to Joseph Kennedy who, it is suggested, is having an affair with him, with Rose Kennedy’s knowledge, and who is later fired by Rose Kennedy after Joseph has a stroke. Is that based in historical fact?
A.
KRONISH She was a composite of several people who were in Joe’s life. But again, we did not invent the situation. We did not invent the situation in which Joe Kennedy had a physical relationship with women who worked for him, who were known to Rose. This, I think, gets at one of the most fascinating aspects of the relationship between these characters. Because what does that say about Rose Kennedy? Do you say that it is her religious faith that enables her to accept that behavior? SURNOW It resonates in the Jackie story as well. KRONISH As women they were very different, but they did share that aspect of their lives.
Q.
Is there a factual basis for the scene in which Joseph Kennedy tells Jackie he will give her a million-dollar trust and allow her to divorce Jack if he doesn’t win his presidential race?
A.
KRONISH Absolutely. Absolutely.
Q.
Coming off a year in which the Oscars race came down to two biographical films, “The Social Network” and “The King’s Speech,” that both employed degrees of dramatic license and contained scenes for which there was no factual basis, do you feel that “The Kennedys” is somehow being held to a different standard?
A.
SURNOW I would say yes. I think we were probably vetted much more carefully than either of those two. KRONISH And I think that’s as it should have been. Yes, the King of England occupied a very important position 80 years ago. Nobody remembers really much about that period – at least Americans tend not to remember much about that. But these were people who were very much a part of American history in the 20th century, and I think their impact remains for a variety of reasons. I think it would have been grossly irresponsible for us to even attempt to play fast and loose with the facts, and that’s not what we intended to do. We intended to make the best drama we could while living up to a historical standard that we imposed upon ourselves, and that the History Channel imposed upon us as well.
Q.
Do you think it’s possible that sensitivities remain because of who the Kennedys were and are, and because people who lived through that era want to remember it in a certain way?
A.
KRONISH I think that’s completely true. The manner of someone’s death quite often has a lot to do with how they’re remembered. Even for those of us who lived through that period of time, [John F. Kennedy] is frozen in time. He embodied a sense of hope and optimism, not only for the Democratic party but for the United States, maybe for the world. The construct [of "The Kennedys"] was that you would see growth in these people, that they would change over a period of time. The guy who was riding in the car in Dallas on that day was very different than the guy who turned around and found himself confronted with the Bay of Pigs. I still believe this mini-series leaves you feeling, maybe things would have been better [if Kennedy hadn't died]. And that I think is the thing that makes the Kennedys so enduring, because it’s an unknowable question. What they constructed was certainly not made of whole cloth, but it hid a few things. The image that was created was not the full picture of them as people. Images never are.
A big-budget miniseries about John F. Kennedy’s presidency that was criticized over its historical accuracy before it was even filmed will not be shown on the History Channel, the cable network has announced.
The series, called “The Kennedys,” was supposed to be the History Channel’s first major move into scripted programming, with a high-profile cast, a well-known if controversial producer and a multimillion-dollar price tag.
But on Friday, the channel said in a statement that this “dramatic interpretation” of the Kennedys’ story, which had been filmed and was being prepared for broadcast in the spring, “is not a fit for the History brand.” The decision was first disclosed by The Hollywood Reporter.
In December 2009, the History Channel announced that it had ordered “The Kennedys” from the producer Joel Surnow, an Emmy Award-winning creator and former executive producer of the Fox series “24,” who is well known for his conservative politics. At that time, Mr. Surnow said he could handle the Kennedy saga fairly, telling The New York Times in an interview: “We’re not making judgments about their political decisions. This is a family story.”
But last February, “The Kennedys” was criticized by a group of historians who were shown early drafts of the script by Robert Greenwald, a liberal filmmaker who had obtained copies. Among the critics was Theodore C. Sorensen, the former Kennedy adviser, who said of the screenplays, “Every single conversation with the president in the Oval Office or elsewhere in which I, according to the script, participated, never happened.” (Mr. Sorensen died in October.)
The History Channel said then that the scripts in question were incomplete drafts and that it stood by the accuracy of more current drafts that were annotated by the screenwriter, Stephen Kronish.
Production on the series began in the summer with a cast that included Greg Kinnear as President Kennedy, Katie Holmes as Jacqueline Kennedy and Tom Wilkinson as Joseph P. Kennedy.
Brave New Films, the documentary film company behind a series of damaging anti-McCain viral videos in the 2008 presidential campaign, has put its sights on Carly Fiorina, the Republican candidate for Senate in California.
In the latest of three videos attacking Ms. Fiorina that the company has released since July, several former Hewlett-Packard employees who say they were laid off during Ms. Fiorina’s tenure as chief executive of the company describe her as ruthless and extravagant.
The video, which asserts that the workers are among 30,000 whose jobs were shipped overseas when she ran the company, comes as dozens of candidates in both parties run campaign advertisements criticizing their opponents for supporting policies that encourage outsourcing American jobs.
A spokeswoman from Ms. Fiorina’s campaign said the company had a history of distorting the facts. ”This group has consistently made misleading videos,” Andrea Saul, the spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.
Indeed, the group’s first film linking Ms. Fiorina to the The Tea Party splices footage of Ms. Fiorina addressing a Tea Party crowd with shots of angry Tea Partiers calling President Obama a communist at a rally that her spokeswoman said Ms. Fiorina did not even attend.
Robert Greenwald, who founded the California-based production company in 2005, says the state’s Senate race between Senator Barbara Boxer, a three-term Democratic incumbent, and Ms. Fiorina, a Tea Party-backed political neophyte, is emblematic of the choice that voters face around the country.
“There are clear alternatives,” Mr. Greenwald said. “There are substantive differences of opinion. We aren’t talking about some ridiculous character flaw — it’s about the fundamental direction of the country.”
Mr. Greenwald made his first big political splash in the 2008 presidential campaign with a series of films that, among other things, shed light on Mr. McCain’s real estate holdings and highlighted his relationship with a conservative evangelical leader who’d made harsh statements about Islam. That was the company’s first foray into electoral politics, and though Brave New Films is undeniably liberal in orientation, it still does not claim to support a party or endorse particular candidates.
The other videos in the latest series — entitled “The Real Carly” — focus on her ties to the Tea Party and her stance on immigration, including her support for the tough new law in Arizona.
Brave New Films, the documentary film company behind a series of damaging anti-McCain viral videos in the 2008 presidential campaign, has put its sights on Carly Fiorina, the Republican candidate for Senate in California.
In the latest of three videos attacking Ms. Fiorina that the company has released since July, several former Hewlett-Packard employees who say they were laid off during Ms. Fiorina’s tenure as chief executive of the company describe her as ruthless and extravagant.
The video, which asserts that the workers are among 30,000 whose jobs were shipped overseas when she ran the company, comes as dozens of candidates in both parties run campaign advertisements criticizing their opponents for supporting policies that encourage outsourcing American jobs.
A spokeswoman from Ms. Fiorina’s campaign said the company had a history of distorting the facts. ”This group has consistently made misleading videos,” Andrea Saul, the spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.
Indeed, the group’s first film linking Ms. Fiorina to the The Tea Party splices footage of Ms. Fiorina addressing a Tea Party crowd with shots of angry Tea Partiers calling President Obama a communist at a rally that her spokeswoman said Ms. Fiorina did not even attend.
Robert Greenwald, who founded the California-based production company in 2005, says the state’s Senate race between Senator Barbara Boxer, a three-term Democratic incumbent, and Ms. Fiorina, a Tea Party-backed political neophyte, is emblematic of the choice that voters face around the country.
“There are clear alternatives,” Mr. Greenwald said. “There are substantive differences of opinion. We aren’t talking about some ridiculous character flaw — it’s about the fundamental direction of the country.”
Mr. Greenwald made his first big political splash in the 2008 presidential campaign with a series of films that, among other things, shed light on Mr. McCain’s real estate holdings and highlighted his relationship with a conservative evangelical leader who’d made harsh statements about Islam. That was the company’s first foray into electoral politics, and though Brave New Films is undeniably liberal in orientation, it still does not claim to support a party or endorse particular candidates.
The other videos in the latest series — entitled “The Real Carly” — focus on her ties to the Tea Party and her stance on immigration, including her support for the tough new law in Arizona.
“The Kennedys,” the coming History Channel miniseries, has found its lead actors to play the central members of that Democratic political clan. Greg Kinnear, an Academy Award nominee for “As Good As It Gets,” will play John F. Kennedy; Barry Pepper (“Saving Private Ryan”) will play Robert F. Kennedy; Tom Wilkinson, an Emmy Award winner for “John Adams,” will play the family patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy; and Katie Holmes (“Batman Begins,” “Dawson’s Creek”) will play Jacqueline Kennedy.
The miniseries, produced by Joel Surnow, a creator of the Fox action series “24,”has been criticizedby historians who were provided early drafts of the scripts by the liberal filmmaker Robert Greenwald. They said the scripts contained historical inaccuracies and presented an unflattering depiction of President Kennedy and his family. The History Channel plans to show the eight-hour miniseries next year.
Add David Talbot to the list of authors who are pre-emptively criticizing “The Kennedys,” a planned mini-series that the producer and “24” co-creator Joel Surnow is preparing for the History channel.
At that time, the mini-series was under fire from Robert Greenwald, the liberal filmmaker who had obtained early copies of Mr. Kronish’s screenplays and provided them to other historians, whose critiques he recorded and posted at a Web site, stopkennedysmears.com. Mr. Kronish said he identifies himself as a liberal Democrat and suggested the criticism was politically motivated because Mr. Surnow is an outspoken conservative.
In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Mr. Talbot said that after the article appeared, he was contacted by Mr. Greenwald, who provided him with preliminary scripts for four episodes of “The Kennedys.” Having read the scripts, Mr. Talbot said they had many historical errors. “It’s soap opera as character assassination and an egregious distortion of the historical record,” he said. “I’m completely dumbfounded as to how he used my book as one of his sources.”
For example, Mr. Talbot said, the scripts presented President John F. Kennedy as dithering and indecisive on the issue of civil rights. In one scene, he said, the president is seen asking if James Meredith can be persuaded (even bribed) out of attending the University of Mississippi, where he would become its first black student, or if pressure can be applied to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to persuade Mr. Meredith not to attend. (In fact, Mr. Talbot said, Mr. Kennedy dispatched Army troops to enforce Mr. Meredith’s enrollment and fought vigorously with his military advisers to see that the order was carried out.)
Mr. Talbot said the “Kennedys” scripts also portrayed Robert F. Kennedy as being soft on organized crime and caving in to a demand from his father, Joseph, not to pursue a case against the mobster Sam Giancana. “That is a lie,” Mr. Talbot said, adding that such a depiction was in “complete violation of the historical record.”
In a statement, the History channel said:
The History Channel’s mission is to give a balanced view of history without a political agenda. History produces historical documentaries and programs on numerous topics and presents them to viewers, allowing them to cultivate their own informed opinions. Our mini-series “The Kennedys” was just commissioned in December 2009 and is planned to air in 2011. Not a frame of footage has been shot nor a final script delivered to the network. Our in-house group of historians have not vetted or for that matter seen any scripts yet. The scripts are in early draft form and are currently being annotated and revised every day. There are no final versions. The mini-series will be historically accurate and based on the work of multiple noted scholars. Anyone claiming otherwise is basing their claim on inaccurate information that has not been vetted by the History Channel.
A new mini-series about John F. Kennedy’s presidency that is being prepared by the History channel does not yet have a cast or a premiere date. Not a frame of footage been shot. It does, however, have prominent critics who want it brought to a halt.
The critics, including Theodore C. Sorensen, a former Kennedy adviser, say they have read the scripts for the project and that those contain errors of fact and emphasis. But like a similar controversy over a 2003 television film about Ronald Reagan, the dispute over the embryonic Kennedy series seems to say as much about the enduring place of the Kennedys as a battleground in the culture wars as it does about history itself.
The miniseries, called “The Kennedys,” is the brainchild of Joel Surnow, a creator of the Fox action show “24” and an outspoken political conservative. That raised alarms among Kennedy partisans when the History channel said in December that it would pick up the project.
Now, a documentary filmmaker who makes no secret of his liberal politics is releasing an Internet video in which a group of Kennedy scholars says the scripts for the miniseries offer a portrait of the president and his family that is, at best, inaccurate, and at worst, a hatchet job.
“It was political character assassination,” the filmmaker, Robert Greenwald, said of the screenplays in a telephone interview. “It was sexist titillation and pandering, and it was turning everything into a cheap soap opera of the worst kind.” Mr. Greenwald said he is hoping that his 13-minute video and an accompanying petition, at stopkennedysmears.com, will take on lives of their own on the Web. A title card at the film’s conclusion reads: “Tell the History channel I refuse to watch right-wing character assassination masquerading as ‘history.’ ” The charges come as a surprise to the production team behind “The Kennedys,” who say that the scripts for the eight-part series are still being rewritten and that any criticism of the project is premature.
“Next year, when it’s done and it’s on the air, if people want to criticize it, so be it,” said Stephen Kronish, the screenwriter of “The Kennedys,” who says he identifies himself as a liberal Democrat. “But at this stage of evolutionary development, it seems that Greenwald’s agenda becomes all the more obvious.”
Given the résumés of the players in the debate, it is understandable why everyone sees agendas everywhere. On one side is Mr. Surnow, an Emmy Award-winning producer and friend of prominent conservatives like Rush Limbaugh. During Mr. Surnow’s tenure as executive producer, his hit series “24” was criticized for its seemingly permissive attitude towards torture.
On the other side is Mr. Greenwald, the founder of the advocacy media company Brave New Films, who has created documentaries like “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism,” a condemnation of the Fox News Channel, and “Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers.”
Before turning to non-fiction films, Mr. Greenwald was a director and producer of made-for-television movies. From his contacts in that industry — agents, managers, casting directors, location scouts — he said he began receiving copies of “The Kennedys” scripts earlier this year. He then recruited a group of historians to appear in his video, including Mr. Sorensen and Nigel Hamilton, whose 1992 best-seller “J.F.K.: Reckless Youth” was criticized by the Kennedy family.
They say the “Kennedys” screenplays contain many factual errors, some benign and others less so. For example, they say the scripts refer to exit polling for the 1960 presidential election when exit polling had not yet been invented; and that Mr. Kennedy introduced the Peace Corps during the Bay of Pigs crisis in April 1961, when in fact he signed an executive order creating the corps one month earlier.
Beyond this, they say the scripts invent scenes that never occurred, like an exchange that suggests Mr. Kennedy came up with the idea for the Berlin Wall. As Mr. Sorensen bluntly says in the video, “Every single conversation with the president in the Oval Office or elsewhere in which I, according to the script, participated, never happened.”
In another scene cited, a Secret Service agent approaches the president while he is having sex in a pool with a young woman who is not his wife; in yet another, Mr. Kennedy asks his brother Robert, “What do you do when you’re horny?” and tells him that if he doesn’t have sex with unfamiliar women “every couple of days I get migraines.”
In short, Mr. Greenwald said, “The Kennedys” “does everything in its power to demean and make them quite disgusting figures. No network or cable channel has ever done anything anywhere close to this, in the way in treats a president.”
Actually, the debate around “The Kennedys” recalls a similar flare-up around the miniseries called “The Reagans” that CBS was to show in 2003. In that case, the network canceled its planned broadcast after conservatives criticized the project — before it was shown, and based on scripts and portions of the film — for depicting President Ronald Reagan as being insensitive to AIDS victims, and showing Nancy Reagan as being reliant on a personal astrologer. (“The Reagans” later played on Showtime, a cable channel.)
Mr. Kronish, the “Kennedys” screenwriter, said that the History channel’s standards for producing its miniseries are more rigorous than the broadcast networks’, and that his finished scripts will require bibliographic annotations and legal vetting before filming proceeds. He also said that he was drawing upon nonfiction works, including books by Seymour Hersh, Robert Dallek, David Talbot and others. “If I’m wrong,” he said, “I guess all of them are wrong.”
Mr. Kronish acknowledged that some factual details, like the date that the Peace Corps was established, were changed for concision or dramatic license, but not with malicious intent.
“This is not a documentary,” he said. “It is a dramatization.” As its author, Mr. Kronish said, it was his job to “take these people off the dusty pages of history and make them come alive.”
“We do not go into this with an agenda other than to be factually accurate and entertaining,” he said. “The rest of it, let the chips fall where they may.”
David McKillop, the senior vice president of programming and development for the History channel, said that Mr. Kronish had already begun submitting annotated drafts of his scripts, and that the channel stands by their accuracy.
Mr. Greenwald said that he was not seeking to censor the History channel.
“Anyone has a right to do whatever they want,” Mr. Greenwald said. “I would never suggest that History channel doesn’t have a right. What I’d suggest is something called the History channel should not be doing political propaganda.”
Mr. Kronish, for his part, said that he was “not out to destroy the sacred cow” of the Kennedy presidency, but in being faithful to history, he said, the miniseries would necessarily contain elements that might upset Kennedy adherents.
President Kennedy, he said, “was part of my youth and the first president I was aware of. But there are things that are part of their story and aren’t admirable, because they were human.”
Former Congressman Harold Ford Jr. has yet to make official a primary bid against Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in New York. But by raising his hand and expressing interest, he has unleashed a torrent of opposition among liberal Democrats, bloggers and activists who are mining his every quote. Never mind that the New York media have yet to move into full-blown, old-style tabloid gear, either.
So far, the latest is a Web video put out by Brave New Films and Robert Greenwald, which clips together interviews and TV appearances Mr. Ford gave (mainly on Fox News) during his years as a member of the House from Memphis and when he ran in his home state of Tennessee for the United States Senate in 2006. The video calls him “Ann Coulter’s favorite Democrat” and runs through his previously stated positions on gun rights, abortion, former President Bush’s policies on military tribunals and warrantless wiretapping.
In addition to the new video, lots of other tidbits of news have been pouring (or spewing) forth about a potential Ford candidacy in his newly found environs of Manhattan (or perhaps Sag Harbor).
The Rev. Al Sharpton, who, as we all know, loves to stay in the thick of things and be wooed for his endorsement, has invited Mr. Ford to travel with him to Haiti. Our colleague Michael Barbaro writes of the invitation — which might have been extended to Ms. Gillibrand as well — at our sib-blog, City Room.
Senator Gillibrand, appointed last year to the seat vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton, last night basically told Mr. Ford to bring it on. But some of his fellow lawmakers seem a bit lukewarm about Mr. Ford’s tenure in Congress, according to the latest from Jonathan Martin at Politico.
Of course all these developments follow Mr. Ford’s interview with Mr. Barbaro earlier this week. Just search Harold Ford’s name on Twitter, and you’ll understand that swaggering New Yorkers haven’t stopped mocking the lifestyle facts he divulged this week.
That interview was a lesson in what not to say, the Tweeting furies have declared. To prove you’re a New Yorker, you don’t brag about helicopter flyovers that only let your tail rotor touch down on Staten Island or admit that you don’t ride the Lex Line ’cause it’s too cold to walk to the subway. (By the way, it is generally the quickest route from offices in lower Manhattan or home in the Flatiron district to any of the TV studios where screen-time punditry awaits. Of course, not if you’re traveling from Sag Harbor, but that’s another transportation nightmare.)
At least Mr. Ford hasn’t wondered aloud, as Al Gore once did during an introductory campaign visit to New York years before 2000, what a bialy was! The tabs had a field day.
That was way back then, when Ed Koch was mayor and would promote his favorite places to buy your morning bialy or bagel. Before mayors began cracking down on things like butter and salt.
But we digress. The point being New Yorkers are dogged defenders of the code. It’s a test.
They’re not alone. given that this is a statewide race, wait’ll upstate New Yorkers test his pronunciations of scenic places like, say, Skaneateles.
When the Obama administration last week rolled out its new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, it competed for media coverage with White House gate crashers and Tiger Wood’s indiscretions, along with the Senate debate on health care reform, its more worthy and relevant adversary for our attention.
The usual suspects weighed in from the right: former Vice President Dick Cheney warned anew of the wages of weakness, and Rush Limbaugh could discern only marginal relief from the long weeks of “dithering”.
But where was the left? Conspicuous in its absence has been protest over the surge from much of the antiwar movement. Whether from reluctance to challenge the president they supported, or perhaps wanting to trust in his judgment, and possibly short on resources to devote to world affairs in the current economic climate, there was not much push back from that quarter.
That doesn’t mean people aren’t thinking and talking about it. A dozen or so members and guests of the local group “Essex County For Change” gathered to do just that on Sunday, in the South Orange living room of a couple whose children were out for the afternoon.
They met for a few hours to try to figure out what the surge is likely to accomplish, and how to respond, as an organization and individually. The discussions occurred after watching segments of Robert Greenwald’s film “Rethink Afghanistan” (which can be streamed free). The film itself presents little new material, but is organized into six different aspects of the Afghan war and its consequences, showing video clips and interviews with familiar figures like Andrew Bacevitch, Linda Bilmes, and Matthew Hoh.
The questions, developed by the group’s discussions after viewing each segment, illustrate the complexity of the Afghanistan problem, and they reflect a surprising diversity of views among what could be described as a progressive group.
The issue of whether we could do ourselves or the Afghans more harm by leaving than staying led to questions about what we are trying to accomplish, and what is actually possible there. Numbers of troops seemed to matter less than having a clearly defined mission.
Does the corruption of Afghanistan’s central government render long term stabilization of the country unattainable? Is the physical challenge of containing an insurgency in an area encompassing parts of Pakistan, as well as Afghanistan, too great for the present troop commitment? How can the stability of Pakistan be factored into our Afghanistan planning, and is a unified approach even possible?
Does India have a dog in this fight? Is what we learned in Iraq applicable in Pashtunistan? Where is the money to pay for all this going to come from?
Consensus eluded the gathering, except that none in the room advocated abrupt unilateral withdrawal of all forces, and everybody wants local Afghan cultures respected rather than simply coerced. Someone observed that the meetings President Obama held before making his decision likely mirrored some of today’s discussion.
Another generally held view among the group is that the world community is skeptical of our stated intentions in Afghanistan. The fiasco resulting from our attacking Iraq, our rendition and torture policies, and the disclosure of huge profits by corporations and individuals are more on the minds of our allies than we might suppose, and makes this mission harder to sell.
The cost of maintaining a soldier in Afghanistan is said to approach a million dollars a year. Where does all that money go? What if it were used to build schools or hospitals in Pakistan or Afghanistan, or even in America?
Greg Mortenson was mentioned at several points during the meeting as an example of how to approach a population you need on your side but don’t understand. He is topical for having worked in the area of focus since the 1990s, and for having gained both the trust of Pashtun villagers, and an understanding of their culture.
On a NPR talk show to promote his recent book “Stones Into Schools”, he described the most basic aspiration of the Pashtun, not as seeking to destroy our way of life but “not to have their babies die, and to have their children go to school.” This past summer, the opening of one of his schools was attended by Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen, which may indicate more willingness on the part of the military to engage local communities in peaceful ways.
The risks and costs of our foreign policy need to be debated, both in Congress and in living rooms. Sunday’s discussion in my neighbor’s living room included pragmatic acknowledgment of the economic benefits of operating a huge military, including the conduct of this war, though the very discussion of the topic feels vaguely uncomfortable, even unpatriotic.
During tough economic times, while also trying to reform our health care delivery/payment system, such factors need to be analyzed to make reasoned decisions.
The arrival back home of the children signaled adjournment of Sunday’s discussion, but all were in favor of continuing the conversation, possibly in another living room, maybe in a larger forum, co-sponsored with other local groups.
