SHLOCK AND AWE
Rob Reiner’s new film a needed defence of journalism in era of Trumpian idiocracy
With the leader of the free world clogging the arteries of democracy with the ridiculous red meat of “fake news,” it’s more important than ever that the media menu includes information gathered by a free and independent press.
I’m sitting in a newsroom as I type this and I’m a fan of journalism. Journalists holding truth to power is a paramount necessity when it comes to fighting authoritarian regimes.
That concept has been the subject of many books, plays, TV shows and, of course, movies. The latest in the Hollywood canon is the new feature film Shock and Awe from director Rob Reiner.
The film is set in 2003 and follows a group of Knight Ridder journalists who question the George W. Bush administration’s claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).
At the time, the Knight Ridder reports flew in the face of other reporting from the likes of the highly touted Judith Miller of The New York Times who said yes there are WMDs. It was later discovered that Miller’s reporting was flawed because the intelligence she was receiving was flawed.
The Knight Ridder folks weren’t buying the Bush gang ’s claims of WMDs, but a lot of outlets weren’t buying the Knight Ridder stories and didn’t want to publish them.
“I’m going to be completely honest with you right now. I don’t give a flying f--k about the movie,” said the award-winning Reiner over the phone from Los Angeles recently. “I like for people to see it, whatever, but that’s not what’s going on in this country right now. I’m worried about the country not being here. Or not being here in the way I have lived it my whole life, which is being a liberal democracy. We don’t have one right now. The Founding Fathers designed a system of checks and balances that do not exist anymore in America. You have a Republican-run Congress that is more than willing to enable a man who lies every minute of his life and is in league with an authoritarian enemy.”
What is on the mind of the director who gave us The Princess Bride, This is Spinal Tap, A Few Good Men and When Harry Met Sally is the bigger, more immediate idea that a large portion of the American people are getting their news from places that only serve to agree with their views and biases.
“You have the most-powerful person in the free world calling the press the enemy of the people and saying they’re fake news,” said Reiner. “This is the kind of talk you hear from authoritarian dictators. That’s what they do and that’s how they make it become state-run media, and right now 40 per cent of the country is listening to essentially state-run media.”
Reiner, had wanted to do a movie with the politics of the Iraq War as a backdrop since the war began. He thought a good, old-fashioned satire about Saddam and Dubya was the tact to take.
“I tried to do it like a Dr. Strangelove-type thing, but I couldn’t get a script I liked,” said Reiner, who also thought about a drama. Finally, years later, he saw a documentary that cracked the story wide open for him.
Hosted by journalist Bill Moyers, who was also U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s press secretary, the 2007 PBS film Buying the War highlighted the work of the Knight Ridder journalists John Walcott, Jonathan Landay, Warren Strobel and Joe Galloway.
The film was shot just a couple of years ago and wrapped just one day after Trump won the 2016 presidential election.
“I’m watching this thing unfold and I am thinking the media is going to be more important now than ever,” said Reiner.
Reiner says many Democrats and independents said: “No way this guy has a chance.” But it became apparent there was a chunk of America that felt underestimated by “liberal elites.”
“You have a president like a leader of a cult,” said Reiner. “They have bought in to who this guy is. They have some kind of distorted view of him being a successful businessman.
“He is the greatest huckster of all time ... The man was a failure, that’s why he became the host of a reality television show, because he couldn’t make money ... He got all this money from Russia because they propped him up and they’ve been playing a long game ... the happy, useful idiot. Put him in office and maybe we can flex our muscles and get more power because we have been decimated by the United States, the collapse of the Soviet Union,” said Reiner.
“... Right now we see democracy under attack all over the world.”