"Death of a President"

A TV movie in Britain is causing a small uproar. Shot in a documentary style, "Death of a President" begins with our current President's assassination. The publicity campaign features a photograph that "evokes the...the mortally wounded Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, and also recalls John Hinckley’s attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan in 1981 outside the Washington Hilton." Having produced a show all about presidential assassinations last fall, I readily admit I'm intrigued by the film and hope overzealous patriots won't hinder its release here in America. Peter Dale, the head of the British digital TV network More4 which is releasing the film, told the Times a few more details:

Mr. Dale said that the focus of the film was on the assassination’s aftermath, as the news media rush to judgment and investigators plumb America’s fear and anger, particularly in communities with most cause to be angry at Mr. Bush. Suspicion soon focuses on Jamal Abu Zikri, a Syrian-born man.

The movie, Mr. Dale said, is “a very powerful examination of what changes are taking place in America” as a result of its foreign policy.

“I believe that the effects of the wars that are being conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said, “are being felt in many ways in the multiracial communities in America and Britain in the number of soldiers who don’t come home, and that people are beginning to ask: ‘When will these body bags stop coming back? Why are we there? When will it stop?’ ”