The 2008 election year may have ended, but Bush & Co. aren't splayed out on the front steps of 1600 Pennsylvania, waiting for the Obamas to roll in.
Condoleezza Rice, for one, hasn't resorted to phoning it in. She shows up for work every day in classy Saks, brushes the Katrina victims aside, and strides through the front gate to the White House, where her boss, her hero, awaits with a non-alcoholic beer and a bag of pretzels. Together, they are Nixon and Kissinger, circa 1974, with the fireplace ablaze and the rocks in a glass of whiskey clattering back and forth, hashing out their escape plan.
Part of that plan is to ensure their legacy and making sure, for starters, that any revealing documentary films are dead in the water before they're even released...
We're not sure we buy the filmmakers claim that Karl Rove asked the Discovery Company to rescind its promise to fund the film or that the State Department had their hotel rooms bugged, but it may be true friends of or even Condoleezza Rice herself asked that Stanford University cancel an advance screening of "Courting Condi," a documentary following an actor-musician's quest to at least go on a date with Madame Secretary.
The Stanford Film Society (SFS) today cancelled a screening of a
controversial documentary about Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,
and a debate on whether Stanford University should welcome her back
to its faculty when she leaves office in 2009.
The film’s director, Sebastian Doggart
stated: “This has all the hallmarks of Rice’s cronies scaring the
Stanford Film Society into pulling the screening.”
The movie, Courting Condi, is
a documentary about Condoleezza Rice, charting her life and career from
her birth in Alabama, through her time as Provost at Stanford, to her
tenure as Secretary of State. Contributors include close friends of
Rice, her top biographers Marcus Mabry and Glenn Kessler, and senior
Republican politicians such as Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Wilkerson... [it] is due for general release in February 2009.
We'd like to add that the film also co-stars Adrian Grenier and Steve Earle's music, plus its lead by the kid (now grown) who played Macaulay Culkin's demented brother in Home Alone.
The SFS at first offered no explanation for the cancelation; after some prying, the President claimed a Professor had asked to use the space and his agenda took priority. But the SFS added that they didn't think the post-screening debate would be balanced and that that fear factored in their decision. Doggart chalks all this up to a, well, not-so-vast right-wing conspiracy:
“Our documentary has seen these tactics
of obstruction and intimidation before,” Doggart states. “Eighteen
months ago, Discovery committed to financing $600,000 for the movie.
One week before shooting, they pulled out. We subsequently learned that
Karl Rove found out about the deal and advised the CEO of Discovery
it would be bad for their ‘good relations with government’ to proceed.
Discovery pulled out the next day, leading to legal wrangling and a
final settlement of a $150,000 ‘kill loan’ from Discovery, and forcing
us to make the film on a shoestring.”
Doggart continues: “The obstructive
measures got worse. Her supporters did all they could to stop us securing
archive materials of Rice’s time at both Denver University and Stanford.
And then her agents raided our inn when we were filming in Washington
DC.”
Here's the film's trailer. Tell me-- is this a documentary or more likely a mockumentary?
Via Courting Condi.
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