An upcoming TV-Movie tells the story of George W. Bush on the morning of 9/11 and from all reports, it depicts him as heroic, tough, determined, etc. At one point, it supposedly has him yelling, "If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come and get me. I'll be at home…waiting for the bastard." And with that, Bush makes the decision to head back to the White House from Florida. I'm not sure there's one human being on the planet who believes that really happened but that's what they're saying is in the film.
I'm always reticent to critique a movie I haven't seen yet but I sure don't have a good feeling about this one. It's being produced and written by a gentleman named Lionel Chetwynd who some in the TV business still haven't forgiven for his conduct during the 1985 Writers Guild strike. Basically — to condense a long, tortured tale — the '85 strike was about payments to writers for shows and movies that were released on the then-new medium of videocassettes. The Guild had earlier won a very nice deal on this format and the studios wanted to roll it back and lower the formula by which you'd be paid if a show or film you wrote was sold on tape. Mr. Chetwynd was the very vocal leader of a group that called themselves the "Union Blues" and the Blues' position was that a strike on this issue could not possibly be cost-effective; that home video would never be an important source of income and that most writers would never see serious money from tape sales. Still, they insisted, the studios were prepared to keep us out on strike forever if we didn't give in.
The Blues' argument didn't make a lot of sense but then most arguments don't in the imperfect institution we call the Writers Guild of America. In this case, it set everyone to fighting…and then some of our leaders did a spectacular job of muddying the issues and making us look rudderless. We had a short strike that collapsed in great rancor, the producers got what they wanted…and hindsight has certainly proven that the Guild was bonehead stupid to give in as easily as it did. I don't blame Chetwynd completely for this — a lot of people believed what he believed — but I had a few arguments with him in the lobby of strike meetings, and one post-strike encounter in the offices of Orion Pictures. He sure impressed me as being willing to believe whatever he thought would put the most money into his pocket that week.
If the Bush film, which is called DC 9/11, is what current leaks say it is, I doubt even Bush supporters will want to defend it. One bit of evidence that suggests G.W.B. wasn't a heroic man of action that day is this video which is now available on the Internet. It's on a website called The Memory Hole which digs up old news stories and footage that history might otherwise forget.
In the video, Bush is reading a story to children in a Florida classroom. I don't know why that alone is not sufficiently embarrassing. Didn't the man have anything more important to do that day? I think all our presidents waste way too much time and effort on ceremonial matters and silly photo-ops. Anyway, in the tape Chief of Staff Andrew Card gives Bush the news that America is under attack and Bush immediately snaps into action…and does nothing. Let's see how far the Chetwynd version goes to preempting this portrait of our Chief Exec.