On June 21, the day after its scheduled Washington premiere, the powerful new documentary “War Made Easy” will go into nationwide distribution. The full-length movie — narrated by Sean Penn — is based on Norman Solomon’s acclaimed book War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.
Through painstaking research and fast-paced editing of archival footage, the movie exposes a 50-year pattern of deception that has dragged the United States into one war after another from Vietnam to Iraq. The film exhumes remarkable footage of distortion and exaggeration peddled by presidents from LBJ to George W. Bush … and often by news media as well. [Film site]
“‘War Made Easy’ is a total tour de force,” said Jay Cassidy, the editor of “An Inconvenient Truth.” “The film’s stunning archival footage shows what a tremendously important tool fair use is for dialogue in a democracy.”
The morning after its premiere in Washington (June 20 at 6 p.m., Public Welfare Foundation, True Reformer Bldg., 1200 U St., N.W.), “War Made Easy” will be released nationwide as a mass-market DVD — available for showings in homes, schools, union halls, churches, synagogues, mosques and community centers.
Loretta Alper, who produced the documentary with the independent filmmaking team at the Media Education Foundation, said the movie has the potential to become a powerful organizing tool for the growing mainstream antiwar movement.
“Through mass distribution, the Internet and grassroots organizations,” Alper said, “we hope to seize on the rising antiwar sentiment in our country to widely promote the lessons of this movie and Norman Solomon’s research. First, that deception leading to war did not begin with Bush or Iraq. And second, that an informed, awakened citizenry can prevent wars of choice in the future.”
Solomon is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. When his book War Made Easy appeared, the Los Angeles Times called it “brutally persuasive” and “a must-read for those who would like greater context with their bitter morning coffee, or to arm themselves for the debates about Iraq that are still to come.”
For more information on the film, go to War Made Easy: The Movie or contact: Kendra Olson Hodgson, (413) 584-8500 ext. 2203, kendra@mediaed.org
