Donald Rumsfeld, for no apparent reason, agreed to allow Fog of War documentarian Errol Morris to interview him. Was it to assure his legacy? We may never know. When the filmmaker asks him that very question after a long evasive interview in the new film Unknown Known opening this week, he evades even that, replying, “That’s a vicious question. Damned if I know.”
At dinner at Circo after a special screening introduced by Tom Brokaw, Errol Morris was all gesture and grimace when asked why he did not push his subject farther as he had done with Robert McNamara on the Vietnam War. “McNamara had nothing to apologize for regarding that nightmare,” Morris quotes Rumsfeld. “Some things work out. That didn’t.” A room full of media mavens, Ken Auletta, Candice Bergen, Greg Kelly, Commissioner Ray Kelly, Keri Kennedy, Bob Simon, Gay and Nan Talese among them, was abuzz questioning Morris’ interview strategy, a reaction many will have to this film’s fascinations.
Comments