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EXCLUSIVE: ’2016 Obama’s America’ Filmmaker Reacts To President’s Slam; Looking For Network To Air Before Election; Says Mainstream Media Refusing Coverage
Deadline Hollywood
Dominic Patten
9/11/2012
Excerpt:
’2016: Obama’s America’ Docu Slammed By President’s Campaign As “Lies”
BREAKING… EXCLUSIVE: Dinesh D’Souza is the conservative author of the best-seller The Roots Of Obama’s Rage which was the basis for the #2 political documentary of all time 2016 Obama’s America. He is also its co-director. He answers today’s slam on the film by the Obama-Biden campaign, which comes just as the movie is hot in battleground states and its producers are looking for a network to air it before the November election. D’Souza attacks the mainstream media for “refusing” coverage:
DEADLINE: What is your reaction to today’s Obama-Biden campaign slam of 2016 Obama’s America??
DINESH D’SOUZA: “I welcome Obama’s critique of the film. He has probably figured out that he cannot ignore it any longer. Obama’s response is a characteristic mix of name calling and false allegations. Some of the claims he makes refer to things that are not even in the film. Elsewhere Obama just gets it wrong. For example, he disputes that he funded $2 billion in Brazilian oil exploration. In reality, Obama has given billions of dollars not only to Brazil but also to Colombia and Mexico to drill for oil. On March 19, 2011, Obama gave a speech in Brazil in which he deplored the legacy of colonialism, promised technology and support for Brazilian energy development, and concluded “when you are ready to start selling we want to be one of your best customers”. The facts in the film stand up very well to the closest scrutiny. I think people should see 2016 and make up their own minds.
DEADLINE: What do you think of the criticism the film has received?
D’SOUZA: The criticism of the film actually bothers me less than the neglect of the film. If I were Michael Moore and I were to make a film that was the No. 2 political documentary of all time, I would be on every network. I would be on Meet The Press, and I would be profiled in The New York Times, and I would be all over MSNBC. Instead large sectors of the press are refusing to cover the film. They are just pretending it doesn’t exist.
DEADLINE: What is your response to charges that you are simply an anti-Obama propagandist?
D’SOUZA: I tried very hard with this film to make an intelligent film with credible sources and new information. I’m a college president [D’Souza in 2010 was named the president of The King’s College, a Christian college located in New York City], I’ve been a fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the American Enterprise Institute, so what is kind of funny is in a guy like Michael Moore we have a true propagandist and a true conspiracy theorist. A guy who is fast and loose with the facts. My film was to some degree inspired by Fahrenheit 9/11. In the sense that I remember that Michael Moore dropped that film in the middle of the 2004 campaign and it had a big impact. But nevertheless, I set out to make very different type of film than Michael Moore. One that is, first of all, not just preaching to the converted. And second, one that doesn’t insult the intelligence of the audience. And I really think that is actually a large part also of the film’s appeal. That even though the left says it’s propaganda, it’s a risky attack on the film because when people go to see it, they actually see whether they agree or disagree that it is not propaganda. Whatever your politics, you are going to come away from this film saying at least, “Hey, I do know a whole bunch of things about Obama I didn’t know 90 minutes ago.”
DEADLINE: How do you respond to claims that the film is racist?
D’SOUZA: There have been some factual attempts to puncture the film but those I think have not worked. So now we have the sleezeball attack. Basically an attempt to blacken my name and imply the film is some sort of a birther type film, which it most emphatically is not, or to suggest that there is some racial element in the film. Whereas in reality I go out of my way to diffuse the race issue to say this is not about race. What Obama is about, in my opinion, is he is a Global redistributionist. He’s pursuing reparations but it’s not racial reparations. It’s global reparations for the sins and conquest of colonism. So the film is manifestly not racial. Now it does explain that part of Obama’s appeal is that he, you know, offers White America the certificate of racial absolution, if you will. That he makes people feel good about voting for him, as if by doing that they are somehow transcending America’s racial past. …But that hardly makes the film a racial film. That’s simply part of the film’s intelligent analysis of what’s going on out there.
DEADLINE: You have been accused of saying that the President doesn’t have America’s best interests at heart.
D’SOUZA: Look, what I say is it’s not that Obama hates America. It’s not that he’s a traitor, that he’s a secret Muslim, that he’s a Manchurian Candidate. He simply subscribes to an ideology that thinks it would be good for America to have a diminished economy and a diminished role in the world. In other words, Obama is all about what he perceives as global justice. And global justice to him means a redistribution of wealth and power away from America and towards the rest of the world. That’s his ideology. He thinks it would be good for America to have a humbler role in the world. He thinks it would be good for America not to be No. 1 but to be No. 18 or No. 34 in the world. It’s part of his vision of global justice. Nowhere do I question his motives or say that he is a bad guy. Rather what I’m saying is these are his beliefs, this is his ideology.
DEADLINE: Why do you think the film has been successful at the box office?
D’SOUZA: I’ve been pleasantly surprised and thrilled by its success which I attribute to the deep hunger on the part of people for factual information about Obama, combined with a sense that the full story about Obama is not out there, combined with an intuitive sense that the mainstream media has not been doing its job in fully vetting Obama. So when people watch the film there is a powerful sense of “Wow, I didn’t know all this stuff” and “Why didn’t I know all this stuff because this information is really valuable in helping me think about Obama and the future of this country?” I also attribute it to the riveting Obama story. Obama has a fascinating story. I think there’s almost an element of Greek drama here of a boy who is left, abandoned by his father and goes on an odyssey to find his father and to find himself. I think it’s the storytelling element of the film that is part of makes it so effective. I wanted to make a film that didn’t look like a TV documentary but looked more like Out Of Africa. A beautiful shot film that would take you from Hawaii to Chicago to Indonesia to Kenya to tell the Obama story. So I feel very good about the quality of the film."
...........................................
View the complete article at:
http://www.deadline.com/2012/09/excl...sing-coverage/
Deadline Hollywood
Dominic Patten
9/11/2012
Excerpt:
’2016: Obama’s America’ Docu Slammed By President’s Campaign As “Lies”
BREAKING… EXCLUSIVE: Dinesh D’Souza is the conservative author of the best-seller The Roots Of Obama’s Rage which was the basis for the #2 political documentary of all time 2016 Obama’s America. He is also its co-director. He answers today’s slam on the film by the Obama-Biden campaign, which comes just as the movie is hot in battleground states and its producers are looking for a network to air it before the November election. D’Souza attacks the mainstream media for “refusing” coverage:
DEADLINE: What is your reaction to today’s Obama-Biden campaign slam of 2016 Obama’s America??
DINESH D’SOUZA: “I welcome Obama’s critique of the film. He has probably figured out that he cannot ignore it any longer. Obama’s response is a characteristic mix of name calling and false allegations. Some of the claims he makes refer to things that are not even in the film. Elsewhere Obama just gets it wrong. For example, he disputes that he funded $2 billion in Brazilian oil exploration. In reality, Obama has given billions of dollars not only to Brazil but also to Colombia and Mexico to drill for oil. On March 19, 2011, Obama gave a speech in Brazil in which he deplored the legacy of colonialism, promised technology and support for Brazilian energy development, and concluded “when you are ready to start selling we want to be one of your best customers”. The facts in the film stand up very well to the closest scrutiny. I think people should see 2016 and make up their own minds.
DEADLINE: What do you think of the criticism the film has received?
D’SOUZA: The criticism of the film actually bothers me less than the neglect of the film. If I were Michael Moore and I were to make a film that was the No. 2 political documentary of all time, I would be on every network. I would be on Meet The Press, and I would be profiled in The New York Times, and I would be all over MSNBC. Instead large sectors of the press are refusing to cover the film. They are just pretending it doesn’t exist.
DEADLINE: What is your response to charges that you are simply an anti-Obama propagandist?
D’SOUZA: I tried very hard with this film to make an intelligent film with credible sources and new information. I’m a college president [D’Souza in 2010 was named the president of The King’s College, a Christian college located in New York City], I’ve been a fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the American Enterprise Institute, so what is kind of funny is in a guy like Michael Moore we have a true propagandist and a true conspiracy theorist. A guy who is fast and loose with the facts. My film was to some degree inspired by Fahrenheit 9/11. In the sense that I remember that Michael Moore dropped that film in the middle of the 2004 campaign and it had a big impact. But nevertheless, I set out to make very different type of film than Michael Moore. One that is, first of all, not just preaching to the converted. And second, one that doesn’t insult the intelligence of the audience. And I really think that is actually a large part also of the film’s appeal. That even though the left says it’s propaganda, it’s a risky attack on the film because when people go to see it, they actually see whether they agree or disagree that it is not propaganda. Whatever your politics, you are going to come away from this film saying at least, “Hey, I do know a whole bunch of things about Obama I didn’t know 90 minutes ago.”
DEADLINE: How do you respond to claims that the film is racist?
D’SOUZA: There have been some factual attempts to puncture the film but those I think have not worked. So now we have the sleezeball attack. Basically an attempt to blacken my name and imply the film is some sort of a birther type film, which it most emphatically is not, or to suggest that there is some racial element in the film. Whereas in reality I go out of my way to diffuse the race issue to say this is not about race. What Obama is about, in my opinion, is he is a Global redistributionist. He’s pursuing reparations but it’s not racial reparations. It’s global reparations for the sins and conquest of colonism. So the film is manifestly not racial. Now it does explain that part of Obama’s appeal is that he, you know, offers White America the certificate of racial absolution, if you will. That he makes people feel good about voting for him, as if by doing that they are somehow transcending America’s racial past. …But that hardly makes the film a racial film. That’s simply part of the film’s intelligent analysis of what’s going on out there.
DEADLINE: You have been accused of saying that the President doesn’t have America’s best interests at heart.
D’SOUZA: Look, what I say is it’s not that Obama hates America. It’s not that he’s a traitor, that he’s a secret Muslim, that he’s a Manchurian Candidate. He simply subscribes to an ideology that thinks it would be good for America to have a diminished economy and a diminished role in the world. In other words, Obama is all about what he perceives as global justice. And global justice to him means a redistribution of wealth and power away from America and towards the rest of the world. That’s his ideology. He thinks it would be good for America to have a humbler role in the world. He thinks it would be good for America not to be No. 1 but to be No. 18 or No. 34 in the world. It’s part of his vision of global justice. Nowhere do I question his motives or say that he is a bad guy. Rather what I’m saying is these are his beliefs, this is his ideology.
DEADLINE: Why do you think the film has been successful at the box office?
D’SOUZA: I’ve been pleasantly surprised and thrilled by its success which I attribute to the deep hunger on the part of people for factual information about Obama, combined with a sense that the full story about Obama is not out there, combined with an intuitive sense that the mainstream media has not been doing its job in fully vetting Obama. So when people watch the film there is a powerful sense of “Wow, I didn’t know all this stuff” and “Why didn’t I know all this stuff because this information is really valuable in helping me think about Obama and the future of this country?” I also attribute it to the riveting Obama story. Obama has a fascinating story. I think there’s almost an element of Greek drama here of a boy who is left, abandoned by his father and goes on an odyssey to find his father and to find himself. I think it’s the storytelling element of the film that is part of makes it so effective. I wanted to make a film that didn’t look like a TV documentary but looked more like Out Of Africa. A beautiful shot film that would take you from Hawaii to Chicago to Indonesia to Kenya to tell the Obama story. So I feel very good about the quality of the film."
...........................................
View the complete article at:
http://www.deadline.com/2012/09/excl...sing-coverage/