DHP Review: Blocking ‘The Path To 9/11′
Posted by Dirty Harry on Friday, August 22nd, 2008
Because we conservatives aren’t like liberals and find conspiracy theories and merely the suggestion of victimization anathema to our way of thinking, it can be difficult to convince even the most sympathetic among us of just how hostile liberal Hollywood is towards us. Well, we’re not victims and there is no conspiracy, but something is terribly wrong out here, and when explained in an articulate and intelligent way, fair-minded individuals, even on the left, should be outraged.
Blocking ‘The Path To 9/11′ may tell the tale of one specific liberal victory in quashing artistic freedom, but in doing so it effectively tells the bigger story of Hollywood’s ideological intolerance by laying out the ways in which conservatives, suspected conservatives, and those who defend their artistic rights can face the worst kind of bullying and character assassination (what I call “passioning“) imaginable.
The Path To 9/11 was a two-part, ABC/Disney television docudrama that aired in September of 2006. Based on the 9/11 Commission’s exhaustive report detailing the disconnected dots that led to that terrible September morning, and with the blessings of that commission’s chairman, Thomas Kean, a slew of lawyers, and ABC executives — writer/producer Cyrus Nowrasteh and director David L. Cunningham had their film wrapped and ready when just days prior to the scheduled air date all hell broke loose.
What started as a screening for Washington D.C. politicos eventually lead to a series of events so bizarre and frightening they wouldn’t hold water in a fictional story. The end result were scenes offensive to the Clintonista’s exised and a major Hollywood studio cowed to the point where, two years on, they still refuse to release the highly rated, $40 million miniseries on DVD.
Thomas Kean
If the first jerk of your knee is to compare what happened to The Path To 9/11 to what happened to the miniseries The Reagans (2003) then you don’t understand the important distinction between public and government pressure — the distinction between the right of every citizen to protest and outright government censorship by way of intimidation.
Protests over The Reagans (which did air and is available on DVD) came from private citizens. Juxtapose that with the pressure on Disney to shove The Path To 9/11 down a memory hole coming from a former President married to a sitting United States Senator (and future Presidential candidate), an army of his friends, many of whom were still in government, and worst of all, a letter from then Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid threatening ABC with their broadcast license.
And the reaction from liberal Hollywood as a major studio caved to a government-led attack on artistic freedom? Crickets. The silence, by way of the usual suspects who would’ve laid down in front of tanks were it Bush doing this to George Clooney, was positively deafening.
Good night, and good luck, indeed.
Using interviews with Nowrasteh, Cunningham, Kean, and a number of Clinton supporters who were creatively involved in every aspect of the project, Blocking does an exceptional job in laying out the tick-tock of how these events unfolded into such a horror story the director himself wasn’t sure his film would air until he saw it on his own television.
Additionally, David Horowitz, Lionel Chetwynd, Andrew Breitbart, and a host of others well familiar with the outrages committed in a town run by liberal ideologues, add additional insights.
The production values are superb — it’s a much nicer film to look at than Bill Maher’s Religulous — the pacing is excellent and the reporting solid. Anyone on either side of the aisle who understands the importance of artistic freedom in a democratic society will find Blocking ‘The Path To 9/11′ an important story, efficiently told.
With his directorial debut, former radio talk show host John Ziegler has done an impressive job in telling this single story but also in crafting the perfect primer exposing how — with the help of corrupt media personalities and D.C. Democrats – the mercurial and byzantine 21st century Hollywood blacklist operates.
Blocking ‘The Path To 9/11′ is available for purchase on DVD here. Or you can go to the website for updated screening opportunities. Bring any reasonable skeptic you know.
Filed in Movie Reviews |
Matton 22 Aug 2008 at 2:25 pm 1$24 bucks?!? For a movie about a movie that’s not on DVD? Are they fricking high?
(By the way, I agree: Release the movie.)
Carolynon 22 Aug 2008 at 2:50 pm 2Yeah, it’s high. But neither Amazon nor eBay carry it, so I’m buying it here.
BUT on the (slightly) positive side, I just discovered Amazon has put an option on its site for you to be notified IF “The Path to 9/11″ is released. I immediately signed up. I urge all of you to do the same. If enough of us do that, Amazon will have to know it has a money winner on its hands.
Christianon 22 Aug 2008 at 2:56 pm 3The link to that Amazon sign-up page is here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005JPHZ
And Carolyn’s right-volume of sign-ups can help get a show on DVD as it shows the studio there is significant enough interest.
Maxtypeon 22 Aug 2008 at 2:58 pm 4Well,I clicked on the ‘notify me’ link.
Here’s hoping this helps.
Stephanieon 22 Aug 2008 at 3:14 pm 5Yeah Matt but you are higher.
Anyway I will be on the lookout for this one to. I think what disgusts me is the help Reid who HATES Hillary’s rotten guts gave her and her hubby when this all happened. Someday Reid and his ilk like Black Nan need to hear someone look all of them in the eye and ask JUST WHO THE F**K DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? They really are tyrants. Truly. You need to ask why is it so TERRIBLE for them to see the truth of what happened? Why? What is wrong with say well we made mistakes. But they are unable to. PT911 made them feel the unimaginable guilt that anyone who is GUILTY for being a moron should feel.
EPorvaznikon 22 Aug 2008 at 3:51 pm 6Thanks for the link, Christian (I’ve signed up, too), but trust me. Disney knows there’s a demand for it. Like DH likes to say, please tell me when Hollywood’s money-driven.
Alicaron 22 Aug 2008 at 5:33 pm 7hahahaha, “merely the suggestion of victimization is anathema to our way of thinking”
ahahahaha
I can’t wait to see the hot tears that flow here when American Carol bombs
EPorvaznikon 22 Aug 2008 at 5:44 pm 8Hey, play Soul Train scrambleboard with “alicar” and you can spell “racial.” Don’t ask why I notice these things. As you were…
Stephanieon 22 Aug 2008 at 5:53 pm 9Oh Alicar you funny I can’t wait for the tears of rage when the Obamamessiah gets his fanny handed to him. Just watching you all thrash about will awesome.
Carloson 22 Aug 2008 at 6:05 pm 10Oh Alicar you funny I can’t wait for the tears of rage when the Obamamessiah gets his fanny handed to him. Just watching you all thrash about will awesome.
I second that. I have no great love for McCain, but the Liberal gnashing of teeth and rendering of clothes when the Obamessiah loses in a squeaker will be better than sex. The ultimate high. The gloating will be simply delicious!
Stephanieon 22 Aug 2008 at 6:19 pm 11considering teh worried sounds eminating from the Dem side I am thinking its gonna be a little less than close. For some reason Obama’s ten minutes of fame has gotten old. He peaked in April.
MovieBobon 22 Aug 2008 at 10:06 pm 12DH,
Oughtn’t you come up with a better word than “passioning?” Like, y’know… one where the folks ::raises hand:: who raised a clamor DIDN’T turn out to look pretty damn right?
voyanton 22 Aug 2008 at 10:12 pm 13Yes, sign up on Amazon to get a copy as soon as it is available. What if they had thousands (and thousands) of names on the list, waiting for the DVD to be released? (Minimum, somebody could say, “XXXthousdands have signed up to buy the DVD as soon as it is released.”) So I did, and I did it on this page:
http://www.amazon.com/Path-9-11-Harvey-Keitel/dp/B00005JPHZ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1219468022&sr=1-1
I watched it on TV, and daggumdangit, I should have taped it on VHS, which was still plugged in back then. It was actually quite a thrilling show.
Audietooon 23 Aug 2008 at 1:02 am 14signed up and Obambi picks another empty suit for his running mate. Biden is a walking talking scandle waiting to happen.
Jake Was Hereon 23 Aug 2008 at 3:10 am 15Movie Bob: You know, when someone apologizes for something he said, I tend to stop holding it against him. But apparently, since Mel said something antisemitic, his entire life since then is a fait accompli — he’s a racist, he’s an antisemite, he’s a misogynist (the “sugartits” remark), he’s a stinking drunk, and that is all you will ever need to know about him. The fact that he said “sorry” doesn’t take away the need to go on punishing him.
Quite frankly, I KNOW why he said those things — because he was DRUNK. If I were drunk and pissed off, I know I would be searching my mind for the vilest insults imaginable to use against the objects of my rage, insults that I have no real belief in but that drunkenness would have destroyed my inhibitions against actually using. If I was drunk and got mad at a guy I knew was Jewish, I probably couldn’t stop myself from spitting out something anti-semitic; that’s exactly what being drunk does to you. If I was drunk and got mad at a black guy, I guarantee you I’d be calling him a nigger, despite being absolutely repulsed by the N-word when I’m sober; and God knows what foul backwater language would be stirred up if I was drunk and a WOMAN pissed me off. That’s why I don’t GET drunk — I have very strong inhibitions against using vicious personal insults, and alcohol is noted for REMOVING inhibitions.
God knows if I did any of that while drunk, I’d be stricken with remorse once I sobered up, and anxious to apologize in any way I could. The things you say while drunk and angry are the ugliest things in the world. But since I used the N-word or said something about the Jews, my apology isn’t acceptable and I have to be punished for the rest of my fucking LIFE for something I said while I was drunk and angry. Because of in vino veritas — the fallacious idea that since I was drunk when I said it, I must have meant it, and these are my true feelings coming out. The truth is that you are LEAST likely to mean what you say when you’re blitzed — you’re more likely to use those words because you’re trying to hurt someone with them.
…
“Hey, he hates Jews! Who cares if he apologized! We were RIGHT to shit on his head! Let’s do it again, every day for the rest of his fucking LIFE!”
Stephanieon 23 Aug 2008 at 10:11 am 16Movie BOB as much as Mel has angered me I don’t care either. But your resentment quite frankly is kind of concerning. You really have some major issues. You need to get out and away from the computer. Do some cardio. Go for a walk. Go lift weights. Go get some salad greens and eat a healthy lunch. You gotta work through this stuff because man you aren’t even making sense anymore.
GTO Bobcaton 23 Aug 2008 at 3:30 pm 17As Chris advised, I signed up at Amazon.com for when and if (BIG if) “The Path to 9/11″ becomes available on DVD. Sadly, though, I doubt that day will ever come. ABC was scared sh*tless by that letter Reid and other Dems sent them, which threatened the network’s government-issued broadcast license. As such, I think ABC is all too happy to let sleeping dogs lie, hoping that this whole episode disappears down the ol’ memory hole.
Dirty Harry’s Place… » An Interview With John Ziegler, Director of ‘Blocking The Path To 9/11′on 11 Sep 2008 at 7:53 am 18[…] on over to Modern Conservative for an interview with the director of the terrific film, “Blocking ‘The Path To […]
Pirate Newson 11 Nov 2009 at 9:20 pm 19Does it mention Operation Northwoods?
How about the photo of USAma Bin Laden in Pakistani army uniform showing off his machine gun to Zbigniew Brezenski, when Jimmy Carter founded AllCIAduh?
Or Hussein Obama Soetoro’s visit to Pakistan when it was listed as a terrorist nation?
September 911 Surprise is better.