And on the same day, 15 July 2012, that the Petraeus letter was printed, so too was the Innocence of Muslims letter printed.
Now I know CIA is balls deep into the lapdog media but even so, that was one hell of a day for alternative channel communications by some asset in the Mighty Wurlitzer... Talk about predictive programming!
***
INSPIRED BY SCANDAL
I am a student filmmaker. My senior thesis is an allegorical look at
a controversy that took place on my school’s campus more than a decade
ago. Am I obliged to inform auditioning actors that this controversy
inspired the film? It was public and divisive when it happened but has
since been virtually forgotten. A.P., NEW JERSEY
Your question suggests that the nature of this controversy might make a
certain kind of person unwilling to participate in the film. If this is
true — if you honestly believe your actors might unknowingly find
themselves in support of an ideological position they find abhorrent,
and you don’t want this to happen — you should open the audition by
briefly explaining how and why this event became the motivation for the
movie. If (for example) this film was a sympathetic roman à clef about a
long-dead professor who was both a serial rapist and a Holocaust
denier, the lead actor might want to know this before he signs on. I
would think you would want him to know these things, and it might improve the entire project.
But are you obligated to do this? You are not. As the creative force
behind an artistic endeavor, you reserve the right to share or withhold
whatever information you believe will create the best possible version
of whatever work you intend to make. There’s no ethical imperative to
explain why a fictional story exists.
A version of this article appeared in print on July 15, 2012, on page MM17 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: A Message From Beyond.
