Death of a President: The Birth of a Controversy

It’s hard to shock me. I have purposely desensitized myself with as many randomly appalling things as I can so that in the event I hear something fucked up, I can shrug it off with an, “Oh yeah, check this out.” At which point I retort with some even stranger and more unbelievable anecdote or story. However, when I heard about a film called ‘Death of a President’, I was legitimately shocked. Not in a “oh why did my friend post that picture of the girl shitting on herself on my MySpace comments section” kind of way, but in a “wow, how is that filmmaker still breathing” kind of way.

I believe there are two trains of thoughts when it comes to the government�

1.That the government is generally good and despite a few, accepted fallibilities they’re basically trying their best to make our lives better.

2. That the government is wholly evil. It is comprised almost entirely of the racist sons of former politicians, a couple of power hungry females and a few Uncle Tom types. They are out to get me and they will take me down if I step out of line.

I pretty much fit into train of thought No. 2. So, with that said, suck on this. I put forth the wisdom of Reuters correspondent Kirk Honeycutt (what a great name by the way)�

“Amid a slew of real documentaries and richly detailed nonfiction books illuminating the ways in which America’s current leadership has used deceit and misinformation to advance its political agenda and engineer greater repression comes a fake documentary trying to do the same thing.

But “Death of a President” uses the morally dubious tactic of mixing real news footage with staged events to create an imagined assassination of President Bush.

As convincing as the manipulated footage of the president’s death in Chicago in October 2007 is, the movie cannot be more unconvincing in its approach. Does it not occur to filmmaker Gabriel Range, as he takes his bows for his clever stunt, that the very forces he warns against will use his film as propaganda?”

Ha, you see, I threw ya a curveball there. You probably thought that I would A) submit an opinion-lacking take on this new movie, or B) present a more liberal leaning take on it. But I did neither, and here’s whyâÂ?¦

For the most part I agree with Mr. Honeycutt, though I still want to see this movie for my own sake. I can’t see, for the life of me, how a film like this furthers any agenda other than a ‘Beavis and Butthead’ giggle-urge to tell the world, “Look, I done killed the President on film.”

But mostly I fear for Gabriel Range’s life. If he died in his sleep tomorrow, I wouldn’t be surprised. Nonetheless, it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.