UPDATED BELOW:
I've produced or exec produced 12 TV movies this year, including
Life is not a Fairytale and
Firestorm. i thought, given some of the
silliness i'm seeing in the diaries that it might be useful to some here to understand the process that gets such movies made.
so, below the fold, a primer on how it works.
there aren't very many of these made any more--the heyday of the TV movie is long since behind us. when selling to the networks only an event is going to get their interest. 9/11 was always going to be a movie on one of the networks or on cable--it was just a question of where. when cyrus was pitching the story, he had insider info as a movement conservative, so he knew how to get the line on the commission report and so on.
what follows is speculation (a dramatic recreation, if you will, with some license taken, some composite character, and some fictionalizations. hell, maybe there's even some improv.)
at ABC, you have various lines of defense. someone in the middle ranks (a VP or slightly higher up) gets a call from cyrus's agents saying: "we have a great take on 9/11 as a mini-series". a pitch would be set immediately, because cyrus is considered a solid writer (he in fact IS a solid writer, with some decent credits and a few good scripts behind him). And given the profile of the pitch, Steve MacPherson would be in that first meeting, most likely. I doubt VERY much that Cyrus pitched a political slant--more likely he just pitched a "i know people on the inside" angle. as well, everyone wanted to tell john o'neill's story (that was oliver stone's original angle as well) and cyrus had a bunch of info from that end as well.
ABC probably bought this in the room, as they say--a good writer, a great story, a true event. kind of a no-brainer. with that deal done, cyrus commenced to writing, with some input from ABC but probably very limited at that point. once he finished his draft, then the network got involved. notes are written (by both VP types and probably higher ups) and those notes are both creative and now quite possibly political in nature. the highest-ups at ABC would be well aware of this project, and were i'm sure very keen to have this movie on for the fifth anniversary, putting everyone under the gun. that this coincided with the election coming up was most likely not on people's minds-i am reconsidering my intemperate remarks on digby's blog yesterday. airdates have their own logic--this one was too obvious to need to question.
now here's where things get murky: i'm sure cyrus did what he has promised to do--delivered a piece of right wing propaganda, albeit a well-written one. or maybe he figured he'd add the sneaky stuff in when the shooting draft was done with the director (david cunningham was attached early on in the process as well, so they were collaborating from the get-go) and kept it neutral. but given that the highest ups care and cared about this (though McPherson is the president of ABC believe me he has bosses as well, and those are the guys who make decisions about, for instance, where to donate political dollars) project, they may have given their own notes.
now they have a start date, and they go out to actors. actors are actors--their are some juicy roles in this project, and ABC was not afraid to pay actors well to be in it. so the actors do what they do--read for parts and hope to get cast.
what they don't do: have strong political opinions about major material that probably didn't read so tendentiously on the page. i can assure anyone reading of that. harvey keitel or patricia heaton (NB my company distributed her last TV movie) and their political views have nothing to do with it. that doesn't mean that cyrus might not know someone like patricia via political meetings--hell, i got my first job in hollywood because i was a member of Southern Californians against the Death Penalty--just that actors do what they do, not anything more, unless they are producers or writers on a project as well.
so, the scorecard on who most likely is and is not responsible for any political and polemical content in this movie:
ABC mid-level exec: not responsible, 90% chance a lefty like me.
ABC prexy: probably not responsible
ABC highest ups: possibly responsible
Writer/producer: definitely responsible
director: definitely responsible
actors: definitely not responsible
ABC affiliates: definitely not responsible
advertisers: definitely not responsible
tom kean: a total dickhead liar and most assuredly responsible
all in all, it's doubtful to me that there was a concerted effort to attack Democrats here by ABC in general, they were hoping to be more subtle than that. i think that too much autonomy was probably given to cyrus and david c. and those guys took that autonomy as license to unleash their own biases and prejudices, ones that might well dovetail with ABC (at the VERY TOP) execs own beliefs. someone else will have to check on policial donations at the top of the company, but i would be shocked if they didn't skew right wing.
then comes marketing. marketing took one look at this movie and said--hey, rush limbaugh will love this. so will hugh hewitt. remember, ABC owns lots of radio as well, and in paticular right wing talk radio. synergy! and their audience will watch our movie if they tell them to (they don't call them dittoheads for nothing.) so marketing took the ball and ran with it (probably with cyrus's "friend of limbaugh" help). that's all about generating ratings and buzz.
well, that's what i'm guessing is the case, with limited (but some) insider scoop. it's both better than some are positing here, but bad in result, i'm afraid.
UPDATE:
from the responses here, i'd like to add a few things. 1) I'm in an obvious and extremely compromised position, in that ABC is one of the few places left (along with showtime, Lifetime, TNT and ABC Family) that buys tv movies. so you have to take my...neutrality...with a grain of salt.
2) the people who work in my industry are far to the left of the average american. it's just a fact. but there are levels of this. i've spent the past ten years trying to get ahead and get jobs, and my left politics have often helped me and NEVER hindered me. but on the other hand, neither have i ever incorporated my belief system into anything i've worked on, with the possible exception of SPY GAME, on which i was an executive. in that movie, the writer (michael beckner) and i colloborated on some very political content, including the 1983 lebanon debacle etc. michael is as right wing as anyone in hollywood. we were able to work together nonetheless and i believe our differences made for an enhanced quality of the script (a script that was more intellectual than what was shot, which was more visceral and not as much my cup of tea. but i love you tony scott, please don't take that as criticism!).
3) the owners of my and our business here in hollywood are like the owners of everything else--big businessmen doing what they believe is best for big business. for all the (deserved) criticism that rupert murdoch takes for his beliefs, he is also capable of recognizing success wherever it may come--THe Simpsons has been to the left of any other american TV for 10 years, and that's him just as much as Fox News Channel. this shit is complicated and not given to easy pigeonholing. BUT
AND THIS IS THE PART THAT MATTERS
if the powers-that-be are republicans and the legislation that they write can deeply effect the bottom line of my bosses, what do you think they are going to do? they are going to kiss that ass (or suck that dick, and never confuse when to do one and not the other, to steal an old Roseanne Barr joke) even, often, at the expense of their own personal beliefs. one can find this hypocritical or nasty or evil or whatever. i'm sure the 18 year old me would kick the 38 year old me's ass, but then i didn't have a mortgage back then either. so, yes, careering (PiL reference!) is a big part of this. no one is going to quit their job at ABC just because they don't like what is going on. no one. the jobs are too scarce, too hard to get, and pay WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much.
that's the fact.