need some entertainment!!?? how about "9/11..the movie"!?

washingtonpost.com

'D.C. 9/11' Spins Tale of President on Tragic Day

Showtime Docudrama Depicts a Defiant, Decisive Bush

By Paul Farhi

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, June 19, 2003; Page C01

LOS ANGELES, June 18 -- In the hours after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, a bold, forceful President Bush orders Air Force One to return to Washington over the objections of his Secret Service detail, telling them: "If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come and get me! I'll be at home, waiting for the bastard!"

Well, the president didn't actually speak those words. But it's close enough for the Hollywood version of events. In a forthcoming docudrama for the Showtime cable network, an actor playing the president spits out those lines to his fretful underlings in a key scene.

The made-for-TV film, "D.C. 9/11," is the first to attempt to re-create the events that swirled around the White House in the hours and days immediately after the strikes on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

The quintessentially American story was shot primarily in Toronto, where drafts of the movie's dialogue were leaked to the Globe and Mail newspaper.

Sources here confirmed the generally heroic portrayal of the president and his aides, including the dramatic scene in which Bush is hopscotching the country in Air Force One as a security precaution. When a Secret Service agent questions the order to fly back to Washington by saying, "But Mr. President -- , " Bush replies firmly, "Try 'Commander in Chief.' Whose present command is: Take the president home!"

The two-hour film, to air around the second anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, stars Timothy Bottoms as Bush, reprising a role Bottoms played for laughs on the short-lived Comedy Central series "That's My Bush!," which went off the air a week before the Sept. 11 attacks. Many of the movie's secondary roles, such as Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell, are played by obscure New York and Canadian actors. Among the familiar faces in the cast are Penny Johnson Jerald (she plays the president's ex-wife on the Fox series "24"), who appears as national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, and George Takei (Sulu on the original "Star Trek" series), who plays Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta. The movie's veteran director, Daniel Petrie, made such films as "Eleanor and Franklin," "Sybil" and "A Raisin in the Sun."

The writer-producer of "D.C. 9/11," Lionel Chetwynd, declined to discuss specific scenes or dialogue in the film. But he defended its general accuracy, saying: "Everything in the movie is [based on] two or three sources. I'm not reinventing the wheel here. . . . I don't think it's possible to do a revision of this particular bit of history. Every scholar who has looked at this has come to the same place that this film does. There's nothing here that Bob Woodward would disagree with." Woodward, a Washington Post assistant managing editor, is the author of "Bush at War," a best-selling account of the aftermath of Sept. 11.

Chetwynd said his approach to the post-Sept. 11 story was similar to that of a 1974 TV movie, "The Missiles of October," a dramatization of the showdown between President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev over Soviet missile emplacements in Cuba in 1962. "This is about how George Bush and his team came to terms with the reality around them and led the country in a new direction," he said.

He noted that the take-me-home scene is based on actual events. "Did [the president] assert his right to go home? Did the president decide to overrule the Secret Service? Yes, he did."

But the movie, which includes some documentary news footage, has already drawn scattered criticism. Writing in the Toronto Sun, columnist Linda McQuaig compared it to Hollywood's mythologizing of figures like Wyatt Earp and added that it "is sure to help the White House further its two-pronged reelection strategy: Keep Americans terrified of terrorism and make Bush look like the guy best able to defend them." And Texas radio commentator and self-styled populist Jim Hightower has derided "D.C. 9/11." On his syndicated radio program this week, Hightower said the movie will present Bush as "a combination of Harrison Ford and Arnold Schwarzenegger. . . . Instead of the doe-eyed, uncertain, worried figure that he was that day, Bush-on-film is transformed into an infallible, John Wayne-ish, Patton-type leader, barking orders to the Secret Service and demanding that the pilots return him immediately to the White House."

Neither McQuaig nor Hightower has actually seen "D.C. 9/11," notes Chetwynd, a Canadian emigrant whose earlier films ("Hanoi Hilton," "The Siege at Ruby Ridge," "Kissinger and Nixon") have often touched on national politics and policy.

However, Chetwynd acknowledges that he began the project as a "great admirer" of the president. Chetwynd is among the few outspokenly conservative producers in Hollywood, and one of the few with close ties to the White House. His 2000 Showtime film "Varian's War" (about an American who rescued French Jews from the Nazis) was screened at the executive mansion for the president and Mrs. Bush. In late 2001, President Bush appointed him to the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

In researching "D.C. 9/11," Chetwynd had access to top White House officials, including Bush. What's more, Chetwynd ran the script past a group of conservative Washington pundits, including Fred Barnes, Charles Krauthammer and Morton Kondracke.

But he insists that only he and Showtime had control over the film's content and tone. "This isn't propaganda," he says. "It's a straightforward docudrama. I would hope what's presented is a fully colored and nuanced picture of a human being in a difficult situation."

Originally posted by BROWNer

"This isn't propaganda,"

you hear that?

one more time...NOT PROPAGANDA.

"If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come and get me! I'll be at home, waiting for the bastard!"

and then he tied a firehose around his waist and jumped off a building just as it exploded. he then repelled down the side to safety and landed on osama's head, hit him a few times with the aformentioned firehose, roundhoused him, stabbed him with the pointy end of a flag pole [with american flag flapping gently in the night] and then pee'd on him while a bald eagle perched on his right arm.

the end.

Dude i could so write for hollywood.

Given the fact that any historical event that gets 'documented' needs at least a time span of 5-10 years for historians and researchers to look at it a tad more onjectively and with more 'evidence' on hand...leaving alone that noone seems to have a semi convincing plot about 9/11....its clear that its NOT PROPAGANDA....

http://www.dumbesttv.cheeb.com/images/timbot2.jpg'>

holy crap, the guy from THAT'S MY BUSH is playing him

hahaha

"But Mr. President -- , " Bush replies firmly, "Try 'Commander in Chief.'

...Keep Americans terrified of terrorism and make Bush look like the guy best able to defend them.

Man...leaving aside the fact that this is so very much propaganda...

it's just shitty.

i wouldnt even watch that.

Bush=Cocksucker

have a nice day

www.moveon.org

http://www.gristmagazine.com/images/features/lenin-propaganda.jpg'>

i hate girls with mad bush...

my body just required that i barf after reading that.

unfortunately so many people are going to eat this shit up and jump around in fuckin american flag underoos...

it is all fuckin filth.

ditto.

My worst day... today.

Ruined my day, the entire week, and maybe even months of my life.

The quintessentially American story was shot primarily in Toronto

first SARS... now this?

:sick:

wow.. what a classy idea for a new movie.. :nope:

We're going to be stuck with his ass for four more years.

Tesser made a good point about events needing to be farther past so an objective viewpoint can be given.

sorry mamerro/tearz.

i know the feeling.

Originally posted by Quiet Riot

i want a movie about myself

wasn't that movie "Simon Birch" about you?

YOUR ALL TERRORISTS

cheap ass bitchs always shoting movies in my city

Originally posted by BROWNer

 

The quintessentially American story was shot primarily in Toronto ."

haha

ive thought about writing an incredibly corny stupid patriotic mega christian 9/11 movie before. i wanted Bruce Willis to play the couragious family man/ fire fighter who eventually dies waving the american flag. I also wanted tim curry to play Osama.....................

Originally posted by ARCEL

YOUR ALL TERRORISTS

a 9/11 movie huh?..are they expecting it to be another titanic or something?..i think it's gonna be the opposite..well..not really i would watch it..just to see how it is..i already know what happens in the end..(sorry if i offended anyone)

this is not propaganda.

dude, im so xtreme stoked for the christian movie about bush and how good he is at saving america.

usa usa usa

Originally posted by NOUM

i already know what happens in the end

hahahahaha