REELSURPRISE FOR OBAMA
Dinesh D’souza targets US president in a documentary, ends up with a box office hit
There’s an unlikely film starring at the American box office this summer: The documentary film 2016: Obama’s America, based on Indian- born, New York- based author Dinesh D’Souza’s 2010 book The Roots of Obama’s Rage. The film reflects D’Souza’s contention that US President Barack Obama’s policies are rooted in his Kenyan father’s anti- imperialist and leftist ideology, and argues that his re- election this November will damage US interests even more than during his first term.
“I believe this is not an accidental result of Obama’s ineptitude, it’s actually his goal,” says D’Souza. “It’s not his goal because he’s an America- hater or any of that nonsense. It’s because he subscribes to an ideology that doesn’t want to see one country lord it over the rest of the world.”
The film is already the year’s highest grossing political documentary— and No. 6 in this genre overall— with a box office take of over $ 10 million ( Rs 55 crore). After opening in just one theatre in Houston in mid- July, it reached 1,100 theatres in mid- August, and will soon hit 1,800. It even grossed more per screen than the weekend’s top film, The Expendables 2.
For D’Souza, who is also a writer and co- director of the documentary, it’s his first foray into filmmaking. He still managed to raise $ 2.5 million ( Rs 13.5 crore) to make the film, and another $ 7.5 million ( Rs 41.2 crore) to market it.
The film, shot across three continents, traces Obama’s early life— from Hawaii, where he was born, to Jakarta, where he lived as a young boy, to his father’s family in Kenya. It also features an interview with his half- brother George Obama. D’Souza holds up George, who lives in a Nairobi slum, as an example of what he calls the US president’s hypocrisy.
“Obama is willing to use taxation to force people to help others whom we’re not related to,” says D’Souza. “And one of Obama’s favourite phrases comes out of the Bible—‘ We are our brother’s keeper’. So here’s his own brother, living on a few dollars a month, and Obama hasn’t lifted a finger to help him.”
Parts of the film were also shot in Mumbai and Goa to show D’Souza’s life in India until he left at the age of 17 to study in the US. D’Souza says that he came up with his theory regarding Obama because their lives took similar paths. Both were born in 1961; grew up outside the mainland US; attended Ivy League colleges and graduated in 1983; married in 1992; and are part of interracial families— while Obama had an African father and a white mother, D’Souza’s wife is white. D’Souza also believes India and Kenya’s shared past as former British colonies was another factor in understanding Obama.
D’Souza, who worked in former US president Ronald Reagan’s administration as a policy analyst, is currently president of King’s College in New York. He is regarded as a leading conservative intellectual in the US, and is the author of many books that have made it to The New York Times bestseller lists. He admits he follows Indian politics only from a distance, but is fascinated most by the country’s economic direction. “There’s a whole generation of politicians who neither understand the private economy nor are sympathetic to it. They only like it to the degree that it creates a bin of wealth from which they can loot,” he observes.
Just like Fahrenheit 9/ 11, Michael Moore’s 2004 hit documentary skewering former US president George W. Bush, D’Souza’s film also seeks to cash in on the charged pre- election political atmosphere in the US. He’s aware of the irony, he says: If Obama loses, interest in his film will wane. If he is reelected, it may make D’Souza unhappy, but it would give his film a fresh lease of life.