'Black Hawk Down' Was Set to Blame Clinton for 9/11

NewsMax ^ | December 27, 2001 | Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff

[MeekOneGOP]

NewsMax.com

 

Thursday Dec. 27, 2001; 12:16 p.m. EST

'Black Hawk Down' Was Set to Blame Clinton for 9/11

Columbia Pictures' "Black Hawk Down," the holiday action adventure movie about the 1993 Somalia debacle that cost 18 U.S. soldiers their lives, was set to explicity blame ex-President Clinton for the 9/11 terrorist attacks before the film's director and producers decided to soft-peddle the connection.

In mid-November, before the decision to tone down the Clinton angle, the film was previewed for a handful journalists.

Before its final edit "Black Hawk's" closing crawl highlighted a series of events following the Somalia mission, including Clinton's humiliating troop withdrawal from the country, the humanitarian disasters in Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo and, finally, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

"With what happened in Mogadishu, with the way that all came down, you end up with the terrorism we see today," the film's producer Joe Roth told the New York Times on Wednesday. "It's so obvious now, eight years later."

Roth said his partner Jerry Bruckheimer and "Black Hawk's" director Ridley Scott agreed with him that "we would be remiss in not making this connection to the general audience."

But ultimately the filmakers, along with Mark Bowden, author of the best-selling book upon which the movie is based, decided that blaming Clinton explicitly would be "unnecessary and too distracting."

"It was a judgment call," Bowden said. "And I know you would think that a decision like this would have had something to do with the commercial aspects of releasing a movie, but it didn't. It was all about what was the right thing to do for the film."

Noted the Times: "It would have been an unusually bold move for a big, expensive studio production like 'Black Hawk Down' to blame President Bill Clinton and American public opinion for setting the stage for the kind of terrorism behind Sept. 11."

Still, director Scott argued that even after the rewrite, the message is obvious. "I think the implication is there.... To me, it's very clear that there is a connection between Mogadishu and what is happening now. But to make it explicit at the end of this movie would have been too much."

"Black Hawk Down" is set to premier in select theaters on Dec. 28.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

Clinton Scandals
War on Terrorism

[Dante3]

When will this film be shown in the DC area?

[wku man]

I just finished the book, and look forward to the movie. I hope they don't pull any punches...those brave men, Rangers, D-boys, 10th Mountain soldiers, and pilots alike, deserve to have their story told completely. The Klinton connection should have been made, but there'd better not be a single dry eye coming out of the theaters. The story is that sad. If that isn't conveyed, Bruckheimer will have done a drastic disservice to the men who served that day in Mogadishu. God bless them all...may America forever remember them.

Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!