Teasers, Agitprop, and Funnies

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Fictional Times  
One weekend morning I walked into the living room and Eric was watching a television program about Great Directors. Oliver Stone was on the screen, talking about JFK. I had to verify this quote with Eric, but he basically said that he wished he had opened the film with huge block letters across the screen that said "NOT A TRUE STORY."

There's been a lot of hubbub about ABC's upcoming mini called "The Path to 9/11". I'm not a huge fan of dramatizations of that day anyway, I'm not against them for others, just not particularly interested in watching. That might include dramatizations of "the road to that day". I'm not sure yet.

The main problem is that they're packaging it as a docudrama, but they've fabricated important parts of the movie.

From Variety, ABC released the following statement:

..."is not a documentary of the events leading to 9/11. It is a dramatization, drawn from a variety of sources including the 9/11 Commission Report, other published materials and personal interviews. As such, for dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue and time compression.

"No one has seen the final version of the film because the editing process is not yet complete, so criticisms of film specifics are premature and irresponsible," the statement continued.

I'd like to think the problem could be fixed by Oliver Stone's solution. But then, this is a country who believed aliens were attacking during Orson Welles War of the Worlds broadcast.

It's an interesting time. James Frey's backlash seemed to indicate that the public is more critical of just what is fiction and what is non-fiction. Of course people are still reading his book on the subway, and some people can still find value in it as fiction.

Do we live is a society that can watch fiction presented in a real way and understand that it's not true?


********Update***********

I just saw this review:

Controversy could boost viewership, except "Path" is the dullest, worst-shot TV movie since ABC's disastrous "Ten Commandments" remake. It substitutes shaky handheld cameras and dumb dialogue for craftsmanship. It could not be more amateurish or poorly constructed unless someone had forgotten to light the sets.

So, then there's that.

posted by Maxwell at 10:38 AM