Glory Days: An American dynasty up close, in “The Kennedys.”
“The Kennedys,” an eight-episode miniseries that premières April 3rd, is being promoted by the channel airing it as “the most controversial TV-movie event of the year”—a phrase, you’ll notice, that doesn’t express pride in the quality of the show or speak to its degree of importance. It’s a fairly empty boast, but a useful one for ReelzChannel, where “The Kennedys” landed after being rejected, in January, by the History Channel, where the project originated. Acquiring a “controversial” show has given this widely available but little watched and ineptly named channel an identity—and a small superhero cape to go with it—that it never would have had if the History Channel (and then Showtime and a couple of other outlets) hadn’t declined to run the series. Reelz is half movie-industry fanzine—with programs devoted to movie trailers and top-ten car-chase scenes or Bond girls; a review show with Leonard Maltin; and a few actual movies—and half grab bag of chestnuts, some of them a little wormy at this point, such as “Cheers,” “Becker,” “3rd Rock from the Sun,” and “Ally McBeal.” And now along comes “The Kennedys,” cannonballing into the pool.
Objections to the series, which was developed by Joel Surnow, the bluntly conservative co-creator of “24,” started appearing more than a year ago, when several Kennedy historians and insiders protested its existence—before it actually did exist, or had even been cast. As reported in the Times, Theodore Sorensen, John F. Kennedy’s adviser and speechwriter, and the crusading filmmaker Robert Greenwald—whose documentaries shine a light on, for example, the ugliness of Rupert Murdoch, Wal-Mart, and the American contractors who capitalized on the war in Iraq—complained about the scripts-in-progress. Greenwald referred to the work as “political character assassination,” and Sorensen, on a Web site that Greenwald set up, called StopKennedySmears.com, argued that “this one-sided, right-wing script” suffers from “a vindictive, malicious approach.” Visitors to the site were encouraged to sign a petition stating, “Until The History Channel stops running politically motivated fiction as historical ‘fact,’ I will refuse to watch their programming.”
In the end, the History Channel executives gave up the project, releasing a statement that said, “After viewing the final product in its totality, we have concluded this dramatic interpretation is not a fit for the History brand.” Lest anyone fear that the channel had suddenly gone mad and was pretending to be something it isn’t—a straight-up history channel that doesn’t allow artistic license—they offered sugary reassurance: “We recognize historical fiction is an important medium for storytelling and commend all the hard work and passion that has gone into the making of the series.” Right: here’s a commendation for you, and don’t let the door hit you on your way out.
Viewers who never worked for the Kennedys or wrote books about them (or for them: Sorensen helped out, shall we say, with John F. Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Profiles in Courage”) may not be experts, but “The Kennedys” doesn’t actually come across to the semi-knowledgeable, Kennedy-steeped American adult as having a political agenda. It has a dramatic agenda, and, in service of that, its creators—Stephen Kronish, who worked with Surnow on “24,” is his writing partner here—made certain choices that were bound to upset interested parties. Among those reportedly in that camp are Caroline Kennedy and Maria Shriver, who are said to have put pressure on the History Channel’s parent network, A&E, with which they share a web of personal and professional connections, to pull the plug on the show. I suspect that their objections amounted to matters of taste and style: snobbery about the compromises and fakery of docudramas (which I share), a desire not to dwell on the unsavory aspects of their family’s legacy (which I understand), and an intense irritation at not being able to control the narrative as it plays out in public (which anyone can understand). Surely there was also a desire to protect their remaining elders: the miniseries was developed at a time when the last of the parents and aunts and uncles were beginning to die—five of them have gone in the past six years. (Of that older generation only one Kennedy sister, Jean Kennedy Smith, and one spouse, Ethel Kennedy, are still alive.)
The Series They Tried to Block
By Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal
It’s not likely the audience for “The Kennedys” will be spending much time pondering what it was about this potent, lavishly produced eight-hour miniseries airing on ReelzChannel beginning Sunday night that caused former JFK speechwriter Ted Sorensen, self-described political activists like the filmmaker Robert Greenwald, and concerned others to go to so much trouble to get the project quashed. That’s because that audience will be too busily enthralled by this dramatization of the Kennedy family saga—too much in the grip of powers like Tom Wilkinson’s altogether unforgettable portrayal of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.—to be concerned with such matters.
That’s not to say the matter doesn’t deserve a minute’s pondering. Those who objected to the film’s depiction of some of the not-so-sunny aspects of the Kennedys’ history—hardly any of them exactly unknown to the world—did after all succeed, for a time, in their efforts to keep “The Kennedys” from being broadcast. The History Channel, which had commissioned the work, suddenly declared, in a January statement, that this work and its dramatic interpretation were not, after all, “a fit for the History brand.” That assertion of fastidiousness must have come as news of note to longtime viewers of the History Channel. This is the same channel that broadcast—as a documentary—a 2004 film called “The Guilty Men” that claimed to prove that Lyndon Johnson had personally arranged for the assassination of John Kennedy. In defense of this special from the fever swamps, History Channel spokespersons argued that it had been “meticulously researched”—and did so till outraged response to the film forced them to reconsider.
“The Kennedys” makes no claim to be a documentary; it’s historical drama with all that the genre invariably brings with it, including invented scenes and dialogue. There is also invented atmosphere—a faintly ominous “Wuthering Heights” mood that pervades this Kennedy White House.
The Kennedys: Another side of Camelot
A $30m drama about the Kennedys, to be broadcast here next week, caused a furore in America. But does it deserve all the criticism? Sarah Hughes finds out.
It cost a fortune to make, featured an all-star, awards-bait cast including Greg Kinnear, Tom Wilkinson and Katie Holmes, tackled one of America’s most iconic periods, and was supposed to reposition America’s History Channel as having more to offer than Second World War documentaries and reality shows about alligator hunters in Louisiana.
Instead The Kennedys, which airs in the US this Sunday, will do so not on the channel which originally commissioned the glossy eight-part mini series, but on the little known cable network ReelzChannel, which paid $7m for the US rights after a number of bigger names turned it down.
So what went wrong? On paper, The Kennedys, which cost $30m to make, had surefire-hit written all over it. The Kennedy family remains a source of fascination throughout America, with documentaries still clogging up the TV channels and magazines such as Vanity Fair continuing to dedicate acres of coverage to the doings of the 35th President, almost 50 years after his death, and an era popularly known as Camelot.
Yet the first sign that all was not right came before production had even begun, with complaints ranging from the banal (the casting of US tabloid favourite Holmes as Jackie) to the rather more serious (issues surrounding the script’s accuracy). Concerns about the latter saw the left-wing documentary maker Robert Greenwald, best-known for his attack on Fox News, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, attacking the script’s most questionable scenes on his website, Stopkennedysmears.com. Greenwald was also among those who raised concerns regarding the political opinions of the series’ executive producer, Joel Surnow, the man behind 24 and that rare thing, a Hollywood conservative.
From then on, the troubled production was rarely out of the news. President Kennedy’s long-term advisor and scriptwriter, Theodore Sorensen, appeared shortly before his death in October 2010 in a video made by Greenwald in which he stated: “Every single conversation with the President in the Oval Office or elsewhere in which I, according to the script, participated, never happened.”
A report in The New York Times suggested that the two historians asked to vet the show for accuracy (Steve Gillon, author of The Kennedy Assassination: 24 Hours After and retired history professor and Pulitzer Prize nominee Robert Dallek) had concerns about the final product and had raised those concerns with History. (The production team behind the series have strongly refuted the Times piece, with Surnow calling suggestions that Gillon or Dallek were unhappy “a fiction”).
Then in January the History Channel dropped the project, their first attempt at a scripted drama, announcing, rather portentously, that: “this dramatic interpretation is not a fit for the History brand” and referring to it as “historical fiction”.
By now, rumours were flying about pressure from the Kennedy family, most notably from John’s daughter Caroline and her cousin, Maria Kennedy Shriver. In particular A&E Television Networks (AETN), History’s parent company, was rumoured to be worried about upsetting Caroline, who is currently editing a book of interviews with her mother, Jackie, for Hyperion Books, an offshoot of Disney, who part-own AETN. Those rumours only intensified after cable channels Showtime, FX and Starz also passed on the project, leaving the barely known Minneapolis-based Reelz to pay $7m for US broadcasting rights.
“I don’t know if that’s the case; I’ve heard the rumours, but that’s all that they are, and I doubt that the Kennedys had the show pulled,” says the series director Jon Cassar, who worked with Surnow on 24. “The fact is that any true story is going to have people who like it and people who object to it, and a true story about politics is even worse because people can not help but take sides. It’s just instinctive, especially here in the US. It happened with the Reagan miniseries [which was dropped by CBS following complaints by conservative pressure groups about bias and eventually picked up by Showtime] and with the recent The Path to 9/11. People condemned them, a lot of times without even seeing the finished product.”
The bullish Surnow, however, has little doubt that, Kennedys or not, his involvement ultimately led to the History Channel’s refusal to show the series. “Because I am a known conservative, it appears that I was deemed unfit to be the person to produce this miniseries,” he told The Hollywood Reporter last week. “I am a proud American, proud of the Kennedys for their accomplishments and their place in history, but none of that was given voice. I wasn’t Emmy Award-winning Joel Surnow; I was Rush Limbaugh’s and Roger Ailes’s [President of Fox News Channel] friend Joel Surnow. And that’s all that mattered.”
Cassar strikes a more conciliatory note. “You have to realise that Greenwald was using a very early script to draw his conclusions. Do I think that Joel’s political beliefs fuelled accusations of bias? In any true-life political story accusations of bias will come into play, but the thing that people should remember is that this programme was commissioned by the History Channel. We had two respected historians checking every detail and were making script changes to ensure accuracy right up to the 11th hour. It was important to everyone involved that we made no mistakes with the subject matter.”
‘The Kennedys’: After the Debate, the Debut
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.”
Camelot Revisited: The Creators of ‘The Kennedys’ Speak Out
By David Itzkoff of the New York Times
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.
Producer Joel Surnow Says ‘Kennedys’ Was Nearly Killed Because of His Political Views (Exclusive)
The most radioactive miniseries ever made airs on April 3 on ReelzChannel. Now the producer, a rare Hollywood conservative, asks The Hollywood Reporter magazine: “If Tom Hanks … did this show, would there be a problem?”
The following story appears in the upcoming issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine on
Joel Surnow was in the middle of a tennis game when he first realized The Kennedys might be in serious trouble. It was May 2010, and the Emmy-winning 24 producer was taking a break from preparing his ambitious $30 million miniseries about America’s political dynasty, a lavish production that was to signal both a new chapter in Surnow’s career and a bold move into scripted programming for the History channel. Stung by criticism from Kennedy family allies about a leaked early draft of the script, Surnow and his creative team were collaborating with History’s in-house advisers to ensure that the eight-part piece of historical fiction didn’t skew too far from the facts. But on that May afternoon, less than a month before shooting was scheduled to begin, the tenor of the relationship changed.
A routine script meeting between screenwriter Stephen Kronish and History historian Steven Gillon had not gone well, prompting Gillon to fly from New York to Los Angeles to meet with Asylum Entertainment, which was producing the miniseries with Montreal-based Muse Entertainment. At the meeting that morning, Gillon had produced more than 20 pages of color-coded notes outlining specific and wholesale new changes that needed to be made — and fast. A scene depicting the White House communicating directly with soldiers during the Bay of Pigs invasion had to be changed. The house in a scene featuring John F. Kennedy’s reputed mistress Marilyn Monroe was ordered to appear different. And so on. Asylum president and chief creative officer Jonathan Koch called Surnow on the court to relay the clear message: The level of scrutiny of the project had been ratcheted up, and if the changes weren’t made, the project would likely be killed.
“I was sitting there on the court, and I said, ‘This is real, and we might be in serious jeopardy,’ ” Surnow recalls.
Many months later in January, even after producers made the requested changes and Gillon gave his blessing to the script, The Kennedys was abruptly yanked from History in advance of its planned airdate, perhaps the most high-profile television project ever shelved by its network after being greenlighted, filmed and nearly finished. The move likely cost History parent A&E Television Networks and its owners, Disney, NBCUniversal and Hearst Corp., millions of dollars in production and marketing costs and led to questions about the level of accuracy required of historical fiction, as well as allegations that network executives were bullied by the Kennedy family into censoring or shelving a project deemed critical of the powerful clan.
Indeed, in the wake of the miniseries’ cancellation, sources close to the decision-making process told The Hollywood Reporter that executives, including Disney/ABC Television Group president Anne Sweeney, who sits on the AETN board, were personally lobbied by Caroline Kennedy, who has a book deal with Disney’s Hyperion publishing division and is planning to release a collection of interviews with her mother, the late Jacqueline Kennedy, this fall to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the first year of JFK’s presidency. One source says Kennedy’s promotion of the book on ABC’s Good Morning America hung in the balance, based on what happened with the miniseries. In addition, Kennedy scion Maria Shriver, who attends church with Sweeney in the Los Angeles area, also has close ties to NBCUniversal, where she worked in its news division. She is said to have voiced her displeasure with the project to then-NBCU execs Jeff Zucker and Jeff Gaspin. (Through reps, AETN, Disney, NBCU and Hearst executives declined comment.)
Surnow, the rare outspoken conservative in liberal-leaning Hollywood, believes the May 2010 meeting provided a peek at the political forces that ultimately led to The Kennedys moving from History to the independent ReelzChannel, where it will have its world premiere on April 3. Surnow says he is still not sure who killed the miniseries at History, but he believes the project was doomed the moment he became involved.
“Because I am a known conservative, it appears that I was deemed unfit to be the person to produce this miniseries,” Surnow says, breaking his silence on the controversy during a lengthy interview with The Hollywood Reporter at his Woodland Hills home. “This is despite the fact that I’m American, and John F. Kennedy was my president as much as anybody else’s president. I am a proud American, proud of the Kennedys for their accomplishments and their place in history, but none of that was given voice. I wasn’t Emmy Award-winning Joel Surnow, I was Rush Limbaugh’s and Roger Ailes’ friend Joel Surnow. And that’s all that mattered.”
“Because I am a known conservative, it appears that I was deemed unfit to produce this miniseries. I wasn’t Emmy Award-winning Joel Surnow, I was Rush Limbaugh’s friend Joel Surnow.” — Joel Surnow, executive producer of “The Kennedys”
The saga of The Kennedys began not with Surnow but with History senior vp programming Dirk Hoogstra, who, during a 2008 meeting with producer Jonathan Koch, mentioned that the network of Ice Road Truckers was interested in launching scripted historical dramas and that the Kennedy family might provide fertile material. On his way home from the meeting, Koch called Surnow, co-creator of Fox’s innovative counterterrorism serial 24, who had teamed with Koch on a pilot for TNT. As it happened, Surnow, now 56, was hanging out at his house that day with Kronish, a 24writer and a big Kennedys buff. Surnow told Koch to drive over immediately.
“We sat in those chairs right there,” Surnow recalls, pointing to the porch under a walnut tree behind his ranch-style home in the San Fernando Valley, “and Kronish proceeded to basically tell the story of our miniseries. The story of Joe Kennedy, Joe Jr., the boys and everything that you sort of roughly remember about the Kennedys — but then in details that really made it come to life.”
‘Kennedys’ miniseries finds new TV home
By Christian Tao of the Washington Times
History Channel turned down biopic, reportedly after pressure from family
Before ReelzChannel CEO Stan Hubbard bought the broadcast rights to the political hot potato known as “The Kennedys,” he watched all eight installments of the miniseries to settle the questions he needed to have answered.
“Was it any good? Is it an abomination of history? Is it Kennedy bashing? Those were three things I wanted to make sure I was comfortable with,” Mr. Hubbard says.
The miniseries, originally intended to air on the History Channel, is now slated to air on Reelzchannel starting April 3. Greg Kinnear plays President John F. Kennedy, while Katie Holmes dons the iconic pillbox hat to bring Jackie Kennedy to life. Barry Pepper (“True Grit”) and Tom Wilkinson (“Michael Clayton”) round out the impressive cast.
The History Channel dumped the miniseries earlier this year on the grounds it didn’t measure up to the channel’s standards. But that wasn’t the whole story. The Hollywood Reporter claimed pressure from Caroline Kennedy and Maria Shriver helped force the channel’s hand in the matter.
Longtime Kennedy adviser Ted Sorensen, who is now deceased, had earlier joined with liberal filmmaker Robert Greenwald to blast an early draft of the miniseries, according to the New York Times. History Channel sources claimed the draft leaked before more historians were consulted for accuracy’s sake, the newspaper added. Others speculated the film, from openly conservative producer Joel Surnow, might include potshots at the celebrated clan.
Greg Kinnear portrays President John F. Kennedy in “The Kennedys,” originally intended for airing on the History Channel. (www.reelzchannel.com)
The Kennedys’ Mini-Series: Sorting Fact from Fiction
By Luchina Fisher of ABCNews.com – March 31,2011
When the controversial mini-series “The Kennedys,” starring Katie Holmes and Greg Kinnear, debuts Sunday night, viewers will finally get a chance to see what all the fuss has been about.
In January, History Channel dropped the $25 million production it had optioned two years earlier, saying in a statement, “After viewing the final product in its totality, we have concluded this dramatic interpretation is not a fit for the History brand.”
Showtime, FX and Starz all passed on the eight-part drama before ReelzChannel, an Albuquerque-based digital outlet available in about 60 million homes, picked up the U.S. rights, reportedly for a fraction of the cost. “The Kennedys” will also air in over 30 countries, including on Britain’s History Channel, in the coming months.
Much like John F. Kennedy’s assassination, conspiracy theories abound for why the series was dropped by History, whose parent company A&E is owned in part by ABC’s parent company, Disney. But criticism about its historical accuracy hounded the project long before filming began.
Among the critics is liberal filmmaker Robert Greenwald, who led a campaign called “Stop Kennedy Smears” with several prominent historians and JFK adviser Theodore C. Sorensen.
Truth in Drama: Montreal Producer Under Fire For Kennedy Miniseries
By Scott Stinson at The National Post
Michael Prupas calls himself a “card-carrying liberal.” The Montreal television producer speaks proudly of his work with a one-time colleague, Pierre Trudeau, on the former prime minster’s authorized biopic. And, he says, he’s an admirer of the Kennedy family.
As such, it is in a tone that conveys bafflement that Mr. Prupas describes the campaign waged against his company’s production of a television miniseries on the Kennedys. The series has been called a “politically motivated smear job.” A propaganda film. A hit piece. The attention given John F. Kennedy’s sexual indiscretions, says Hollywood filmmaker Robert Greenwald, who has relentlessly criticized the production for the past year, amounts to “a disgusting, below-the-belt attack, both figuratively and literally.”
Mr. Greenwald’s pressure campaign has accomplished its main goal: getting the History Channel to walk away from its $15-million investment in the project starring Greg Kinnear as JFK and Katie Holmes as his wife, Jacqueline.
Mr. Prupas insists that The Kennedys, which will air in Canada in April, will leave viewers impressed with the family at its centre, and he says the claims of inaccuracies are unfair and overblown. And in a year in which two of the main Oscar contenders, The Social Network and The King’s Speech, are known to have taken liberties with actual events, is it unfair to expect a historical work to be anything more than “based on a true story?” This is John F. Kennedy, after all. It’s no secret that the man was a bit randy. “I don’t think there is anybody in North America, perhaps the world, who would argue with you if you said ‘Geez, did you know John Kennedy had extra-marital affairs?’,” says Mr. Prupas in an interview. “Or, ‘did you know Joe Kennedy was a bit of a bully?’”
The Kennedys was always intended to be a bold stroke for the History Channel in the United States. A specialty channel best known for grainy footage of long-ago wars, it committed two-and-a-half years ago to develop the miniseries with Mr. Prupas’ Muse Entertainment. By the end of 2009, scripts for the eight-hour series were complete, and History wanted to go ahead with the production. History would put up $15-million for its first foray into scripted drama; Muse would invest a similar amount. For Muse, the key to success would be selling broadcast rights internationally. That would require a big-name cast. “We were delighted to get Greg Kinnear,” says Mr. Prupas. Then came Barry Pepper (Saving Private Ryan) as Robert F. Kennedy and Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton) as the Kennedy patriarch. Finally, Katie Holmes signed on as Jackie. She brought something even more valuable from a sales standpoint: the tabloid sizzle of Mrs. Tom Cruise. “She was huge,” Mr. Prupas admits.
The casting process, though, had an unexpected side effect. Scripts made the rounds in Hollywood, and some people were not pleased by what they saw.
How Greenwald’s Brave New Films Spreads Its Political Message Online
From Simon Owens at PBS Media Shift
Last month, Politico’s Mike Allen asked presidential hopeful John McCain the seemingly innocent question of how many houses he owned. McCain’s response — “I’ll have my staff get to you” — became a major focus for both the media and Obama’s campaign, who repeated it in just about every speech to illustrate that the Republican candidate was “out of touch” with the millions of Americans affected by the housing crisis.
But months before Allen asked that loaded question, liberal activist and filmmaker Robert Greenwald, founder of Brave New Films, had come across a news item mentioning McCain’s multiple homes.
“This was maybe six or eight months ago,” Greenwald told me. “And I said, ‘nobody knows about that. This is really interesting.’ And I wondered if we could get video of the homes.”
So, in an editorial meeting with his staff, they came up with a three-pronged approach to the story.
First, they would collect video footage of all of the candidate’s houses. Then they began combing through news reports and video to find quotes from McCain about the housing crisis (”Because it was not just to show he had the homes, it was to show that his policy was reflective of him having those homes,” Greenwald explained). Finally, they sat down and interviewed Americans who had lost their properties to foreclosure.
“At which point the editors took over,” he recalled. “I worked with them for three weeks. We went up and back, making 12, 13, 14 versions, getting the timing right, getting the balance right between the three stories.”
The resulting video, “McCain’s Mansions,” launched on YouTube several days before Allen approached McCain with the question about his houses. It has now amassed over 400,000 views.