Interview: Gabriel Range

Death of a President is director Gabriel Range’s speculative documentary set in December, 2008, that tells the story of the assassination of President George W. Bush on October 19, 2007. Part political thriller, part murder mystery, Range’s film documents the President’s ill-fated trip to Chicago to make a speech about economics, the violent protest that ensues outside, the shooting of the President, and the search for the assassin.

Range’s previous films include the BBC drama The Day Britain Stopped and The Man Who Broke Britain, both of which employed the same fictional documentary technique seen in Death of a President. Both films garnered Range awards, record-breaking television ratings, and critical acclaim. Death of a President has already aired on British television and screened at the 006 Toronto International Film festival where it won the International Critics Prize.

Range achieves the challenge of creating the fictional assassination of the current President of the United States by combining pieces of archival material with his own footage of President Bush, and also throwing in taped interviews with investigators, President Bush’s friends and collogues, suspects in the assassination and their family members, among others. There are no real recognizable actors in the film, which adds to the illusion Range has created. Some of the footage has been manipulated with computer effects – fictional characters inserted into shots alongside President Bush, clothes digitally altered for consistency between edits. All in all, Range’s fictional scenario is seamless.

Obviously with this premise, the film has been met with much criticism and controversy. Though she hadn’t seen the film, Hillary Clinton offered her thoughts on it to The Journal News in September of this year: “I think it's despicable. I think it's absolutely outrageous. That anyone would even attempt to profit on such a horrible scenario makes me sick.” Clinton acurate in her assesment that the film presents a ‘horrible scenario.’ Do a few Google search about President Bush (or turn on the TV, or just go around asking a few people what they think of him) and you get the idea there are a lot of people in the world who absolutely loathe the 43rd President of the United States. But anyone buying a ticket for Death of a President and expecting 90 minutes in a world that is a better place for President Bush’s assasination is going to leave very disappointed – the post-assasination world of Ranges film is more oppressive and bleak than it was before the assasination. The event is a catastrophe, not a liberating moment, but one that leads to more war and more lies.

The film – and Range – wisely avoids any political stance on the Bush administration and leaves all opinions to the characters in the film. Range thoughtfully depicts President Bush as a good man, one who is fair to those who work for him, liked by his peers, who holds his family and friends in high regard. He is probably the most powerful man in the world, but he is still only a man. Likewise, Range is willing to depict the protestors in the film as being violent and maniacal – they are hypocrites who protest a war and oppression, yet themselves seem to believe in facist values of absolute right and wrong. The film’s only definate stance is it’s condemnation of violence.

I had the chance to participate in a round table interview with Gabriel Range during his reccent visit to New York to promote the opening of Death of a President.

Question: So it’s been a bit of a whirlwind, huh?
Gabriel Range: It’s been busy, it’s been busy.

Q: So from start to finish, how long did it take you to plan this?
GR: Well, I guess I was probably thinking about this in Christmas of 2004, but I didn’t get started writing it till quite a way into 2005, so it’s pretty quick. I’d say the film was made pretty much in 18 months.

Q: That is pretty quick. What was the toughest part of the film, what was the toughest decision you had to make about it? I hate to ask such an obvious question, but it begs it.
GR: Well, I think just structuring the film was… obviously the way the film was structured was quite deliberate, and choosing the identity of the suspects and the identity of the assassin was obviously so essential to the political messages of the film, so they were tough decisions I guess.

Q: So when you’re making a film like this, which is obviously going to rely on footage that somebody else has taken, how hard is it to get the rights to that stuff, footage of President Bush speaking, or the stuff from the protests…
GR: Well much of the footage in the film I shot myself, myself and Graham Smith, the director of photography. We traveled to Chicago in January of this year, we got White House press accreditation at very short notice, and filmed President Bush arrived there, and filmed the protest that was there to coincide with his visit. I also filmed a big protest in Chicago on the 18th of March, which was planned to coincide with the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, and in fact by that stage I had cast my actors, so we had actors working their way in and out of that real protest. We also filmed President Bush when he came to Chicago on a subsequent occasion, so it’s a mixture of different things really. There is archive in the film. That archive was licensed in just the usual way, the difference being that we’ve…. There are places where that archive has been given a fresh context, or it’s been manipulated in some way to make it our own. So, either one of our characters has been added using special effects, to the back of the shot, or someone’s voice has been changed, or there’s a whole variety of different ways in which that footage has been kind of molded to fit the story.

Q: When you’re getting your White House press pass I’m assuming you don’t tell them you’re there filming the assassination of George Bush…
GR: Well, I mean the only thing the White House asked was which media organization you’re affiliated with, so we were able to tell them honestly that we were affiliated with Channel Four. And that was the only question they ever asked. At no point did any of the White House press officers ask me if I was making a film about killing the president, I guess it didn’t occur to them.

Q: What do you think their response will be now?
GR: I don’t know, I hope they recognize the film is thoughtful. I think the initial reaction, which was obviously a very strong reaction, came at a time when people thought the film was something else, when they thought this film was kind of… that they thought it would offer some cathartic experience in sort of representing the assassination of President Bush, they thought it would be some kind of liberal fantasy, and it was none of those things. I think the film portrays the assassination as a very horrific event with terrible consequences, and I hope if they were to see it now they would recognize it at least as a thought provoking film.

Q: With regard to thoughtful, obviously you had to make a measured decision how to structure your telling of the two candidates for the crime, and also you selected Chicago, with it’s obvious parallels to other protests in the past. Talk about making that decision of selecting Chicago and also the decision of how to time the setting.
GR: Sure. I think that setting aside Kent State, I think there is a sense in which many historians who point to those images of Chicago PD and hitting the protestors outside the Hilton on Michigan Avenue at the Democratic National Convention as being a very significant moment, a defining moment, in which there was a much greater awareness of how devoted the war in Vietnam was. And so I think it resonates with that, in the sense that the choice of Chicago was deliberate, because I do feel that the war in Iraq is having a very polarizing effect, and I think the choice of that location helps etch that out a little.

*SPOILER ALERT!*

Q: With regard to the ending though, with regard to the choice of the assassins, there’s an interesting little ballet or orchestration with how you set the timing of it and when you place where we find out about the father and all that. Talk a little bit about how you paced that.
GR: Well, I think of the film as part political thriller and part murder mystery, so I hope that the sort of bulk of the film plays out as a whodunit. But as a whodunit I hope has a purpose, in the sense that each one of those suspects was chosen, each one of the characters in the film was chosen to explore in some way real opinions and real events. I think that although the film is fiction, every single twist and turn in the story is somehow inspired by a true story. So setting aside the assassination itself of course, there is some kind of factual precedent to account for every part of the story, whether it is the way in which, for example, one of the central suspects, the Islamic character Zikri, is held up by the administration as kind of a poster boy for terrorism. And I think that is something that has happened repeatedly in the last five years. I’m not saying that those people who are held up are very innocent, nor in fact is this character in the film. But it is the case that it has been the desire of the administration to hold up terror suspects as poster boys, as a means of saying the battle is here, right here, that we are at war, the battle is here in your town. And I think that is part of the politics of fear, and I hope that is what the film goes some of the way to exploring, the sort of consequences of those politics.

Q: In the search for your actors, was it something you were trying to stay away from, actors that were too recognizable?
GR: Absolutely. I mean I think that if, I hope that most people won’t recognize most of the actors in the film. And because the moment that you do, the illusion is shattered really, for some people anyway. And the film after all, it is fiction, and above anything I hope it is a good story, an engaging yarn, and the more you are prepared to accept it as an alternate reality and enter into it and set aside that this event hasn’t happened and engage with it as if it were a documentary, then I hope the better.

Q: With regard to the other candidate, you had said there was some historical antithesis for that, what did you have in mind? You had said there were other stories that related to.
GR: I had spoken to a lot of veterans and families of veterans in the course of making the film and structuring the film. And there has been a sentiment which has been very publicly expressed by Sidney Sheehan, but has also been expressed by plenty of other veterans, whish is the sense that, ‘George Bush killed my son, or my husband.’ There is this sense in which the process of disillusionment behind the true reasons for invading Iraq and the true reasons behind taking the country to war, have been extremely upsetting and have become a very big part of people’s reactions to the war I think. And I think that it is something which is noteworthy, and something which we should be engaged with and talk about.

*SPOILER ALERT!*

Q: All nationalities have been killed in the war, why particularly a black man?
GR: Well what’s important about the Claybon family is not particularly their race, but what’s important is that it’s a military family. I mean I think the race of the family really isn’t that important, I think it is the case that minorities have born a disproportionately high cost of the war in Iraq. But like I said, what’s important is that they are an army family.

Q: You sort of have this interesting little area carved out for yourself where you’re doing these alternate future history films, what attracts you to that sort of format?
GR: Well I think that the intent of the film is not really to make a ‘What if?’ The intent of the film is not to try and set out authentically what would happen in the future were this to happen. Some of the criticism of the film has been that it didn’t do enough to imagine how the world stage would be reset by the assassination of President Bush, and that was never really the purpose. What appeals to me about this particular kind of filmmaking is it offers a… I like that it is almost a way of using the lens of the future to look at the present. But I think it’s about presenting a hypothetical scenario as an allegory for the present really.

Q: Have you been influenced by any future science fiction stories, like the one Philip K. Dick did, Man in the High Castle?
GR: I think of films like Peter Watkin’s The War Game as more of an influence. But I think it is certainly the case that speculative fictions sometimes have a lot to say about present day.

*SPOILER ALERT!*

Q: In the end of your film, you go into something on lies and how things are put together, with regards to the two characters, Jamal and how he is still in jail even though they have all this proof Claybon’s father is responsible, and Jamal is still sitting in jail. What reality did you draw that from?
GR: Well, I mean I think it’s certainly the case that there were plenty of grand jury material witnesses that were picked up here in New York in the aftermath of 9/11 whose only crime was really to be Arab-American, and for example, perhaps then to be deported on immigration technicalities. And I think that is something that is very shocking, very striking. I can entirely understand how that came about, but nevertheless it’s quite shocking. I think there is a degree to which…. I think one of the things the attorney in the film, the attorney character in the film says which is that if you mention the word ‘Al-Queda’ then it is impossible to get a fair trial for a client. I think that happens to be true, and I think certainly the experience of Jose Pedia for example, I’m not suggesting for a moment he is entirely innocent, but bad word got out. I think this is an attempt to explore some of the consequences of this fear of, for example due process and justice. I think the current administration has shown no respect for what it sees as legal niceties in this climate. And they’re not legal niceties, they are things that are very important to criminal justice, which after all should be something we care about very much.

Q: Why Bush and not Blair?
GR: I think the film describes a world created by 9/11, and America was the victim of 9/11. And I think the consequences… America was the architect, or rather the current administration were the principal architects of the war on terror, they led the decision to invade Iraq, and I feel that’s why it was legitimate to… that’s why the film had to be about the assassination of President Bush and not Prime Minister Blair. I think that Tony Blair and George Bush are at great pains to point out that we are all in this war on terror together, you don’t have to be American to feel the consequences of the war on terror. I think this affects us all, it affects us in Britain in the same way. So I think it is legitimate for me as a Brit to have made the film, just as an American, or a Canadian for that matter. I can’t expect that…. Does that answer your question?

*SPOILER ALERT!*

Q: Why did you go with the lone gunman?
GR: Well, I think history shows that a Presidential assassin is far more likely to be a sort of a kind of loner than an international terrorist.

Q: Did this film sell as well and as fast as you expected, and did you think Cheney got reelected?
GR: I was delighted by the response the film got in Toronto. This began as a very small film for British television, and I’m thrilled that it has been so well received and that it’s sold as well as it has. It’s due to open in territories all over the world, and in the course of the next few months. And…. I’m sorry, did I think that Cheney would get reelected for a second term? I’m not sure that he would stand.

Q: What are you doing next by the way? A past history?
GR: It is actually a historical film and I’d love to tell you what it’s about, but I’m not allowed.

Newmarket Films releases Death of a President in a limited run on October 27th with a wider release to occur in the weeks to come.