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this is being presented as a factual documentary which IT IS NOT
George W. Bush was President for over 250 days before 9/11 happened. He got multiple warnings of an immenent terrorist strike. To blame others for his failings is very cowardly.
From an individual that wrote an ABC screenplay:
"Two days before we're ready to shoot the scene, I'm on the set doing dialogue polishes, and a Production Assistant rushes over to me with a cell phone and tells me that she has the network President on the line.
Hullo?
The network President proceeds at this point to unleash such a demonic torrent of expletives and epithets at me that my legs began to shake.
He has read the script.
He does not like the script.
Specifically, he does not like the monologue. "Who the FUCK do you think you are, you little shitbag FUCK? Do you know who I am? Are you aware that I can shit down the throat of your little pissant career in about six fucking seconds?" This was the gentle interlude of the conversation.
He then proceeded to tell me that I would rewrite the monologue in a new direction, and I made the mistake of telling him I needed a new motivation for the character -- which of course unleashed yet another flash flood of expletives and epithets before he finally told me to "fuck off and get the fuck to work" and hung up on me.
I related the conversation to my producers and my director, a gentlemanly English bloke who had to be talked out of quitting the movie and/or calling the President on the phone to give him a piece of his mind. I then got down to rewriting.
An hour later I faxed the revised monologue to the network President, as requested. And we waited.
An hour later, the fax machine rang. Slowly, pages started to appear. New pages. With new dialogue. That looked nothing like what I had written.
The President of a major television network had rewritten my scene. Every. Single. Word.
It wasn't bad. In fact, it wasn't atrocious. It was beyond atrocious. It made no sense either on its own, or coming from the mouth of our protagonist.
One final page scrolled off the fax. It was a note, unsigned, in the hand of the network President. It read:
"Television shows are filler between commercials. You are replaceable."
Two days later, we shot the scene as the network President had written it -- word for nauseating word.
My point?
Decisions regarding Path to 9/11 -- from its content at every phase of development and production to its marketing and promotion and publicity -- were microscopically controlled at the very highest levels of ABC and Disney. Their obligation to advertisers and shareholders demands as much. In fact, the influence of advertisers and shareholders in all of these matters vastly exceeds that of any creative talent, including consultative producers, and executives are the stewards of those interests.
The question now becomes whose influence was powerful enough to persuade ABC and Disney executives to take such an egregious gamble when they knew their product stood a decent chance of driving away or alienating those advertisers, and costing those shareholders millions of dollars?
It takes power to pull the strings of power. The kind of power a Tom Kean doesn't have. Kean's a messenger boy in this equation.
Look elsewhere.
Look bigger."
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