Is 'Death of a President' mockumentary all too real?
In this time of terror and uncertainty -- when presidents in peril are staples on TV -- it was probably only a matter of time before a major feature film imagined an assassination.
But "Death of a President," the British-born film that premieres nationwide Friday, doesn't knock down a fictional leader. Structured as a "real" TV documentary from 2008, the film conjures up the death of George W. Bush. So it might have been inevitable, too, that the film would generate controversy as soon as word got out.
Since its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September -- where it won the International Critics Prize -- the film has been denounced by political players as disparate as the Republican Party of Texas and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who called the concept "despicable." Two national theater chains have refused to screen it, including
To Gabriel Range , the British filmmaker who directed and co-wrote the film, the backlash has come as a surprise. "I always knew that it would be provocative," Range said in a telephone interview last week. "I knew that it would be a sensitive issue for some people. I didn't expect people to be so ready to condemn the film before they'd seen it."
But some scholars of film and American history say the reaction is predictable -- at least, to anyone who experienced the Kennedy assassination or studied the cultural impact of Oliver Stone's "JFK," a fictional film that launched a new wave of conspiracy theories.
It's not the death of this particular president that makes people squirm, said Oklahoma State University professor Peter Rollins, the co-editor of "Hollywood's White House: The American Presidency in Film and History." It's that the death of a president would feel like an attack on the nation.
"The White House is the temple of democracy, and the American president is not just a politician. He is a symbol of the American spirit," said Rollins, a former Marine . "The presidency is almost sacred," he said. "Maybe some people don't feel that way anymore. I do."
That was the reason for Regal Entertainment's boycott -- a decision that was made after a Regal representative saw the film in Toronto, company spokesman Dick Westerling said.
"We feel that it is inappropriate," he said, "to portray the future assassination of a sitting president."
The American presidency, of course, is hardly a taboo subject in homegrown film and TV. In recent years alone, we've seen fictional presidents wooing women (the 1995 film "The American President"), having affairs (1997's "Absolute Power") , and deceiving the nation about his multiple sclerosis (the NBC series "The West Wing"). We've seen them die of natural causes, the setup for last year's ABC series "Commander in Chief." We've seen them stalked and shot on Fox's "24."
And given the rise of ad hominem politics -- the bald hatred of President Bush and other politicians that breezes across the Internet each day -- "Death of a President" actually comes across as almost kind. Yes, the movie criticizes Bush administration policies, from the Iraq war to the Patriot Act. But it hardly advocates for murder. The moment of death isn't grisly. And Bush is portrayed as a likable man, affable and reasoned.
For the sake of the drama, it had to be so, Range said.
"For one to understand the assassination as a horrific event, and for the horror of that event to be expressed," he said, "you have to have a sense of President Bush as a human being."
Much of the film speculates how a hunt for the assassin could intersect with hot-button debates about civil liberties in the age of terrorism.
Range acknowledges that Americans have a different perspective on presidential deaths. "I think the reaction is unique to America, in the way that the office of the presidency is unique."
But he insists that he didn't aim to insult Bush or America. "The film, in fact, I think is incredibly American," he said. "It's exercising a right to comment and provide a fresh perspective on some of the events that affect us."
And the mockumentary format, he said, is a powerful way to spark a discussion of current events. Range's 2003 film, "The Day Britain Stopped," uses similar techniques to imagine a massive British transportation crisis. "If this story had been told in the style of a conventional narrative drama, then it would have much less power," Range said.
Range took extraordinary efforts to make the mockumentary look real. To recreate the day of the assassination, Range mixed original footage with archival shots of a Bush speech in Chicago. Using computer graphics, he placed Bush's head on an actor's body. He lifted a eulogy from President Ronald Reagan's funeral and re-cast it as an homage to Bush. He read praise of Bush from former aides, and used those ideas to script interviews with a fictional speechwriter and Secret Service agent.
"Every single twist and turn of the story has some factual basis," Range said.
His approach has some high-profile defenders. "We think art is supposed to generate discussion," wrote Mark Cuban, co-owner of Landmark Theatres, in an e-mail to the Globe. The art-house chain will screen the film at 12 theaters nationwide, including the Kendall Square Cinema in Cambridge.
"Personally, I hope it does cross boundaries," Cuban wrote. "That's what movies are supposed to do."
Still, selling an assassination story to the American public has been a delicate proposition, said Richard Abramowitz, marketing director for Newmarket Films, the movie's American distributor.
The film's Canadian distributor has run print ads in the form of death announcements: "George W. Bush: July 6, 1946 -- October 19, 2007." Newmarket's advertising has been more circumspect, Abramowitz said; the movie poster deliberately doesn't show Bush's face.
Newmarket has also taken pains to combat the perception that the film is an attack on Bush. The website, deathofapresident.com, pointedly lists reviews from "people who haven't seen the film," then asks viewers to decide for themselves.
When they watch, Abramowitz said, they'll find that the movie is less a polemic than a high-tech whodunit. "It's a thriller," he said. "It's not a how-to. It's a what-if."
For some younger viewers, not old enough to remember the death of John F. Kennedy or the attempt on Ronald Reagan's life, the film might also function as a sort of "what-was," said Gregory Payne, a professor of political communication at Emerson College.
For a critical thinking course at Emerson this fall, he's crafting an assignment around the film. He'll instruct students to see it, compare it to a book about the Kennedy assassination, and write about how "factual" a fictional documentary can be.
Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com. 
© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.
