THE WORLD ACCORDING TO DICK CHENEY
Premieres Friday, March 15 at 9:00 PM ET/PT on SHOWTIME®
Documentary Directed by R.J. Cutler
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO DICK CHENEY, a bold, dramatic and intimate examination of Cheney's life, career, key relationships and worldview, will air Friday, March 15 at 9:00 PM ET/PT on SHOWTIME. Narrated by Dennis Haysbert, the documentary, directed by R.J. Cutler, airs as part of SHO: CLOSE UP, a new banner of original documentaries featuring provocative profiles of culturally significant personalities by award-winning filmmakers on SHOWTIME. The film, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, is directed by Cutler and Greg Finton, and written and produced by Cutler & Francis Gasparini. Cutler also serves as the film's executive producer.
Dick Cheney is arguably the most powerful, most controversial and in his words, "most consequential" Vice President in American history. Featuring hours of exclusive interviews with Cheney as well as staunch allies and fierce critics, THE WORLD ACCORDING TO DICK CHENEY charts his journey from small-town Wyoming to the four-decade career that made him one of the single most powerful non-presidential figures America has ever known. With a particular focus on the way Cheney acquired and utilized his growing power over the decades, THE WORLD ACCORDING TO DICK CHENEY examines the pivotal role Cheney played in the George W. Bush administration and in the formation of domestic and foreign policy in a post-September 11th world. Cheney's relationships with George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and such key advisors as David Addington and Scooter Libby are all explored in depth, as are his decisions and actions in the wake of the 9/11 attack and in the build-up and aftermath of America's decision to go to war with Iraq.
The film is the third in filmmaker R.J. Cutler's political trilogy, which also includes 1992's Oscar-nominated The War Room and 1995's Emmy®-nominated A Perfect Candidate. Presented in association with Cutler Productions, the film is directed by Cutler and Greg Finton, and written and produced by Cutler & Francis Gasparini. Cutler also serves as the film's executive producer.
R.J. CUTLER is an award-winning filmmaker whose work includes the movies The War Room and The September Issue and the television series American High and 30 Days. Currently, Cutler is the executive producer and director of the ABC series Nashville. Cutler’s first film was The War Room, the Oscar®-nominated documentary about Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign for the presidency. In 2009, Cutler produced and directed The September Issue, the feature documentary about legendary Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, which won the Best Cinematography prize at the Sundance Film Festival and enjoyed successful theatrical runs throughout the world. Other projects include the films A Perfect Candidate and Thin and over twenty television series, including American High, 30 Days, Black White, Freshman Diaries, The Residents and Military Diaries. Cutler began his career as a theater director and was responsible for the original productions of Marsha Norman and Lucy Simon’s The Secret Garden, Kevin Heelan’s Right Behind the Flag and Jonathan Larson’s Superbia, among many others. Cutler has won an Emmy Award, a Peabody Award, and a GLAAD Award and has been nominated for an Academy® Award, a Producers Guild Award and an Independent Spirit Award among others. In 2009, Cutler received the Television Academy’s prestigious Honor Award for his work “creating television with a conscience,” and the Museum of Television and Radio held a five-day retrospective in celebration of his work.
Future SHO: CLOSE UP films include Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic and Suge Knight: American Dream/American Knightmare.
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Contact:
Jackie Ioachim
212-708-1220
A Q&A with Director R.J. Cutler
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO DICK CHENEY is your third film in a trilogy of political documentaries (The War Room in 1993 and A Perfect Candidate in 1996). Have you always intended to make a trilogy of political docs? Why did you choose to focus on Dick Cheney for the third film in this series?
I certainly love exploring the world of politics. It’s such a rich landscape for storytelling. Having made The War Room and A Perfect Candidate, I knew I would want to revisit the American political world at some point. It was just a question of finding the right story and time. It wasn’t until I was speaking with David Nevins at SHOWTIME about projects we might do together and we started talking about Dick Cheney that I realized this would be a great opportunity to further explore themes that had been examined in The War Room and A Perfect Candidate. Particularly in A Perfect Candidate, we take a look at what really makes a democracy run and whether political conviction is preferable to political expediency even when that political conviction veers towards demagoguery and zealotry. I found this to be an interesting question because the answers are not always what you would assume. Documenting the life and career of Dick Cheney offered me a chance to revisit these themes. Here’s a man who arguably is the single most significant non-presidential political figure in our nation’s history. He’s been involved in presidential administrations since Richard Nixon. Mr. Cheney is a monumental figure in American politics and rarely can one say that about someone who has not served as president.
Can you tell me about how this project came together? When did you first approach Dick Cheney? Was he always receptive to the idea? When did you start and complete filming?
It took a while to get Vice President Cheney to agree to participate, and I think the key to our success was patience. Fortunately my good friends at SHOWTIME were fully supportive of the fact that we needed to start work on the film long before we knew that the Vice President would agree to be interviewed. We worked on the film for close to nine months before Vice President Cheney invited me to have lunch with him and discuss it. That was February of 2012 and we spoke that day for a couple of hours. As always, I think that people who have agreed to let me make movies about them, whether it’s James Carville and George Stephanopoulos or Anna Wintour or any of the other people about whom I have made movies, are driven in part by their desire to have their story told. I told the Vice President that I approach my subjects not with preconceived notions or an agenda, but first and foremost with curiosity. I also told him that it was very important to me that this film takes the form of a dialog and that his voice be as central in that dialog as anybody else’s. And I gave him a copy of A Perfect Candidate. A few weeks later he agreed to participate. And in June 2012 my team and I went to Wyoming and sat with him for four days of interviews, five hours a day. He was extremely forthcoming and giving of his time. And then on the fifth day, he invited us to go fly-fishing.
Dick Cheney is a polarizing figure; people seem to have very strong opinions about him, whether positive or negative. Do you expect this film to change how viewers look at Dick Cheney? Did the experience of making this film alter your opinion of Dick Cheney? What will surprise viewers about Dick Cheney?
I certainly expect a broad range of reactions to this film. And that broad range is going to reflect the broad
range of opinions people have going in to a movie about Dick Cheney. But I also am confident that the film is illuminating and surprising and engaging and provocative in a way that I am extremely excited about. I’ve been very fortunate in that my two other political films have turned out to stand the test of time and I feel that this film will become even more revealing over time as people are removed from the immediacy of the subjects that we explore. But I’m all in favor of a wide ranging of responses: to the film, to the man, to the issues that are explored here. So far, we’ve got an extremely gratifying response. The couple of screenings we’ve held, people tend to stay in the theater talking about it for a long time afterwards, often arguing about it and him. I’m all in favor of that. I’m sure that even those who disagree politically with Vice President Cheney will recognize in him many qualities that they believe are virtues, qualities that we value in our leaders. A fierce intellect, total conviction, loyalty, patriotism, etc. And one of the questions that the film asks is when are those qualities we want our leaders to have and when are they not? Leaders of passion and conviction, I would argue, are crucial to a successful democracy—we are far better off with men and women who believe in things rather than those whose only convictions are about getting themselves reelected. But at what point does conviction serve a democracy, and at what point does it harm the democracy? That, to me, is a really interesting and important question, and one that we mean to explore in this film.
What was the greatest obstacle you encountered while making THE WORLD ACCORDING TO DICK CHENEY? What aspect of the film are you most excited about?
It’s always challenging to reduce a forty year career to a one-hour and forty five-minute film. Cheney’s career could fill volumes. This is a man who has been in the fray since the Nixon administration, making decisions of enormous consequence. But as we worked on the film over time, we started to realize that it was possible to frame it around certain key elements of the Vice President’s life—his forty-year relationship with Donald Rumsfeld, for instance—as well as around certain themes, such as the ways in which he mastered the machinery of government and utilized the power that he had acquired. The other key challenge was gaining Vice President Cheney’s support for the project. Of course he was given no editorial rights and he had to be comfortable agreeing to participate knowing he would have no editorial control or any commitments in terms of what subjects I would or would not discuss. Earning his trust was critical to the film’s existence. Like any movie, the thing you’re most excited to do is put the film in front of an audience. That’s thrilling stuff for a director. I hope the film will be around for a long time to come and people will have the opportunity to see it in the continuing context of American history and politics.
What are some of the differences between working on documentaries and narrative projects like Nashville, which you executive produced and the pilot of which you directed?
The process is certainly different but more similar than one might expect. When you’re directing narrative you’re first developing a script and making a lot of decisions during that process that will impact the shooting of the project. Though you’re always ready to make discoveries, you start the shoot with many questions answered. With a documentary, you mostly start with questions. Curiosity is what drives the process, not agenda. But in each case, the goal is to create engaging, entertaining storytelling that your audience will connect with. I began my career as a theater director then moved to non-fiction for almost 20 years. Returning to narratives with Nashville has been one the most satisfying experiences of my life.
BIOGRAPHIES
Dick Cheney
Former Vice President of the United States
Across four decades of public life, Dick Cheney has served at the highest levels of government during some of the critical days in modern American history. In the post-Watergate administration of Gerald Ford, the president turned to 34-year-old Dick Cheney to lead the White House staff in the work of restoring the nation’s confidence and waging the president’s 1976 campaign. After leaving the White House, Cheney returned to his home state of Wyoming, where was elected in 1978 as the state’s sole member of Congress. Re-elected to the office five times, Cheney served in several leadership positions and was chosen by his colleagues as deputy majority leader of the House of Representatives. Early in Cheney’s sixth term, in 1989, he was confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate to serve as Secretary of Defense under President George Bush. In 1991, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Through most of the 1990’s, Cheney worked as CEO of the Halliburton Company. When Texas Governor George W. Bush secured the Republican nomination for the presidency in 2000, he selected Cheney as his running mate. President Bush and Vice President Cheney were inaugurated for the first of two terms on January 20, 2001. During the Bush presidency, the vice president was best known for his involvement in national security matters following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Vice President Cheney was born on January 30, 1941, in Lincoln, Nebraska. He and his wife, Lynne V. Cheney, have two daughters and seven grandchildren.
David Addington
Senior Vice President of The Heritage Foundation
As senior vice president and deputy chief operating officer of The Heritage Foundation, David S. Addington supervises four departments -- Marketing, Communications, Government Studies and External Relations -- dedicated to educating key audiences about the think tank’s public policy recommendations. Addington previously held senior posts in both the executive and legislative branches of the federal government, as well as in the private sector. He served as chief of staff and counsel to Vice President Richard B. Cheney after having been a senior official in the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense and the White House. During the Reagan administration, Addington was an assistant general counsel for the CIA. The Reagan White House later tapped him as a special assistant and then a deputy assistant for legislative affairs. During the administration of George H.W. Bush, he served as special assistant to the secretary and deputy secretary of defense. He then was appointed, with Senate consent, as general counsel of the Department of Defense. On Capitol Hill, Addington served as the Republican staff director for the Senate intelligence committee. He also was the Republican chief counsel or counsel for the House intelligence, foreign affairs and Iran-Contra committees. Addington is the recipient of the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service; the Department of the Army Medal for Distinguished Civilian Service; the Department of the Navy Medal for Distinguished Public Service; and the Intelligence Commendation Medal. Addington and his wife, Cynthia, currently reside in Alexandria, Va. They have three children.
Donald Rumsfeld
Former U.S Secretary of Defense
The 13th and 21st U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld completed his second tour as Secretary of Defense in December 2006. A former naval aviator, Secretary Rumsfeld previously served as U.S. Congressman, U.S. Ambassador to NATO, White House Chief of Staff, Special Presidential Envoy to the Middle East, and chief executive officer of two Fortune 500 companies. Mr. Rumsfeld attended Princeton University (B.A., 1954) on scholarships. He served in the U.S. Navy (1954-57), and was all-Navy wrestling champion and a captain in the Naval Reserve. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois in 1962, at the age of 30. He resigned in his fourth term in 1969 to join President Nixon's Cabinet, where he served successively as the Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, Director of the Economic Stabilization Program, and U.S. Ambassador to NATO. In August 1974, he was called back to Washington, DC to chair the transition to the Presidency of Gerald R. Ford. He later served as White House Chief of Staff and a member of the Cabinet (1974-1975), and as the 13th U.S. Secretary of Defense, the youngest in the country's history (1975-1977). From 1977 to 1985 he served as Chief Executive Officer, President, and later Chairman of G.D. Searle & Co., an international pharmaceutical company. Mr. Rumsfeld served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of General Instrument Corporation from 1990 to 1993. Until being sworn in as the 21st Secretary of Defense, Mr. Rumsfeld served as Chairman of the Board of Gilead Sciences, Inc., a pharmaceutical company. Throughout his business career, Mr. Rumsfeld continued his public service in a variety of posts, including Special Presidential Envoy on the Law of the Seas Treaty, chairman of the U.S. Ballistic Missile Threat Commission in 1998, and chairman of the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization.
RON SUSKIND
Author, The One Percent Doctrine
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Ron Suskind has written some of America's most important works of nonfiction, framing national debates while exploring complexities of the human experience. Mr. Suskind’s latest New York Times Bestseller, “Confidence Men, Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President” (September, 2011) is a multi-layered narrative about the fall of the U.S. economy, the rise of Barack Obama, and the President’s battles to guide his White House and earn the confidence of the American people. Calling it “the most ambitious treatment of this period yet,” Frank Rich of New York magazine compared Confidence Men to David Halberstam’s classic, The Best and the Brightest, “but the quagmire isn’t a neo-Vietnam like Afghanistan - it’s the economy!” Joe Nocera in his New York Times review called it “a truly groundbreaking inside account” and The New Yorker simply declared it, “The Book on Barack.” Mr. Suskind’s previous works include the New York Times bestsellers, “The Way of the World, AStory of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism” (August, 2008), about the forces fighting the global “hearts and minds” struggle at a time when awesomely destructive weapons are available to the common man; “The One Percent Doctrine, Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of its Enemies (June, 2006), a signature work on how the U.S. government frantically improvised to fight a new kind of war after 9/11; “The Price of Loyalty, George W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill” (Jan 2004), a sweeping tour of the inner workings of the American government in the modern era; and “A Hope In the Unseen, An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League ” (1998), a critically-acclaimed bestseller that has redefined national debates on race, class and achievement. He often appears on network television and is a contributor to The New York Times Magazine and Esquire. Mr. Suskind was the Wall Street Journal’s senior national affairs reporter from 1993 until 2000, and won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. He currently the senior fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics.
STEVEN HAYWARD
Author, The Age of Reagan
Steven F. Hayward, is currently the Thomas Smith Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, and the William Simon Distinguished Visiting Professor at Pepperdine University’s Graduate School of Public Policy. From 2002 to 2012 he was the F.K Weyerhaeuser Fellow in Law and Economics at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC. He holds a Ph.D. in American Studies and an M.A. in Government from Claremont Graduate School. He writes frequently on a wide range of current topics, including environmentalism, law, economics, and public policy for publications including National Review, Reason, The Weekly Standard, The American Spectator, The Public Interest, the Claremont Review of Books, and Policy Review. His newspaper articles have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, and dozens of other daily newspapers. He is the author of Index of Leading Environmental Indicators, published in 14 editions from 1994 – 2009, and its successor, the Almanac of
Environmental Trends (www.environmentaltrends.org). He is the author of a two-volume narrative history of Ronald Reagan and his effect on American political life, The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order, 1964-1980, and The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counter-Revolution, 1980-1989 (CrownForum books). National Review has called the first volume “grand and fascinating history,” comparing it favorably to Macaulay’s History of England. The Times Literary Supplement said that “the book reads at times like a grand historical drama, a kind of War and Peace of the American century, complete with romance and adventure and tragic characters, a thrilling survey of what we might have thought to be familiar history but which appears here quite transformed.” William Niskanen, chairman of Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, called volume 2 “simply the best history of the Reagan presidency,” while former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett said “this is the book we have been waiting for.” His other books include Churchill on Leadership, The Real Jimmy Carter, and Greatness: Reagan Churchill, and the Making of Modern Statesmen.
JAMES MANN
Author, Rise of the Vulcans
James Mann is author-in-residence at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He was previously a Washington correspondent, Beijing bureau chief and foreign affairs columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of three books about U.S. foreign policy: Rise of the Vulcans (a New York Times best-seller); The Obamians: The Struggle Inside the White House to Redefine American Power; and The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan). He has also written three other books about America’s modern relations with China (Beijing Jeep, About Face and The China Fantasy). Mann’s writing was included in The American Idea: The Best of the Atlantic Monthly, a collection of the magazine’s best articles of the past 150 years.
CHARLIE SAVAGE
Boston Globe, 2003-2008
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charlie Savage is a Washington correspondent for the New York Times. A native of Fort Wayne, Indiana, Savage graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1998 and later earned a master's degree from Yale Law School while on a Knight Foundation journalism fellowship. He began his career as a local government and politics reporter for the Miami Herald, and covered national legal affairs for the Boston Globe from 2003 to 2008 before moving to the Times. Savage lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, the journalist Luiza Ch. Savage of Maclean's Magazine, and their sons, William and Peter Savage's work on presidential power and other legal policy matters has been widely recognized. His articles in the Boston Globe received the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award, and the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency. Savage's book about the growth of executive power, Takeover, was named one of the best books of 2007 by both Slate and Esquire. The book also received the bipartisan Constitution Project's inaugural Award for Constitutional Commentary, the NCTE George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language (pdf), and the New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism.
THOMAS DEFRANK
Newsweek, 1970-1995
Tom DeFrank is one of Washington's most respected President-watchers. He's been a White House correspondent and political analyst since 1968. He's covered every president since Richard Nixon and the last 12 presidential elections. He spent 25 years at Newsweek as a White House correspondent and deputy bureau chief and was Washington bureau chief for the New York Daily News from 1996 to 2012. He's an award-winning journalist and bestselling author; his books include "Write it When I'm Gone: Remarkable Off-the-Record Conversations with Gerald R. Ford." He was also the collaborator on the memoirs of Secretary of State James Baker and political consultant Ed Rollins. He graduated with high
honors from Texas A&M in 1967 and has a master's degree from the University of Minnesota. He's covered Dick Cheney since the Ford administration.
NORMAN ORNSTEIN
American Enterprise Institute
Norman Ornstein is a long-time observer of Congress and politics. He writes a weekly column for Roll Call called "Congress Inside Out" and is an election eve analyst for BBC News. He served as co-director of the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project and participates in AEI's Election Watch series. He also serves as a senior counselor to the Continuity of Government Commission. Mr. Ornstein led a working group of scholars and practitioners that helped shape the law, known as McCain-Feingold, that reformed the campaign financing system. He was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004. His many books include The Permanent Campaign and Its Future (AEI Press, 2000); The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track, with Thomas E. Mann (Oxford University Press, 2006, named by the Washington Post one of the best books of 2006 and called by the Economist "a classic"); and, most recently, the New York Times bestseller, It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism, also with Tom Mann, published in May by Basic Books, named Book of the Year by Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog, one of the ten best books on politics in 2012 by The New Yorker, and one of the best books of 2012 by the Washington Post. Ornstein was also cited as one of 2012’s 100 top global thinkers by Foreign Policy Magazine.
BARTON GELLMAN
Author, Angler, The Cheney Vice Presidency
Barton Gellman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, is author of the bestselling Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was named to the New York Times Best Books of 2008. He is contributing editor at large at Time magazine, where his stories focus on national security and government, and author in residence at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School. During 21 years at the Washington Post, Gellman was legal, military, diplomatic, Middle East and special projects correspondent. His professional honors include two Pulitzer Prizes, a George Polk Award, Harvard's Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting and the Sigma Delta Chi medallion from the Society of Professional Journalists.
BOB WOODWARD
Washington Post, 1971-Present
Since 1971, Bob Woodward has worked for The Washington Post where he is currently an associate editor. He and Carl Bernstein were the main reporters on the Watergate scandal for which the Post won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Woodward was the lead reporter for the Post's articles on the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks that won the National Affairs Pulitzer Prize in 2002. In 2004, Bob Schieffer of CBS News said, "Woodward has established himself as the best reporter of our time. He may be the best reporter of all time." Woodward has authored or coauthored 17 national nonfiction bestsellers. Twelve have been #1 national bestsellers -- more than any contemporary non-fiction author:
• All the President’s Men (1974) and The Final Days (1976), both Watergate books, co-authored with Bernstein
• The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court (1979), co-authored with Scott Armstrong
• Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi (1984)
• Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987 (1987)
• The Commanders (1991) on the first Bush administration and the Gulf War
• The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House (1994)
• Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate (1999)
• Bush at War (2002)
• Plan of Attack (2004)
• State of Denial: Bush at War Part III (2006)
• Obama’s Wars (2010)
His latest book is The Price of Politics, released in 2012. Woodward was born March 26, 1943, in Illinois. He graduated from Yale University in 1965 and served five years as a communications officer in the United States Navy before beginning his journalism career at the Montgomery County (Maryland) Sentinel, where he was a reporter for one year before joining the Post. Additional information at www.BobWoodward.com
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Hoover Institution
Victor Davis Hanson is a Senior Fellow in classics and military history at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a syndicated Tribune Media Services columnist, and the author of 21 books on ancient, agrarian, and military history, and contemporary issues. He is professor of classics emeritus at CSU Fresno, teaches a fall course each year at Hillsdale College in military history, and has been a visiting lecturer at the US Naval Academy, Stanford University, Pepperdine University, and UC Berkeley. His The Savior Generals. How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost, From Ancient Greece to Iraq will appear in April, 2013 from Bloomsbury.
JO BECKER
Washington Post, 2000-2007
Jo Becker is an award-winning journalist and a member of the investigative team of the New York Times. She previously worked at the Washington Post, where she shared the Pulitzer Prize for a series
on Dick Cheney called "Angler." At the Times, she has written about everything from President Obama's
terrorist "kill list" to the British phone hacking scandal that shook Rupert Murdoch's media empire. She is currently working on a book about the epic legal battle to bring the cause of same-sex marriage to the Supreme Court. She lives in New York with her husband and adopted greyhound, Humphrey.
MASSIMO CALABRESI
Time, 1999-present
Massimo Calabresi is a correspondent for Time Magazine based in Washington, D.C. He has covered the White House, Congress, the intelligence community, the State Department, the Treasury Department, the Justice Department and the Judiciary. He writes regularly on politics and policy in the capital. Calabresi began work for Time in 1993 as a freelance reporter on general assignment for the New York bureau. In April 1995 he became Central Europe Bureau Chief and over the next four years covered the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. He led a reporting team that was honored with several awards, including citations of excellence from the Overseas Press Club for coverage of the massacres at Srebrenica and the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo. Calabresi became Time's Washington-based national security correspondent in August 1999, reporting on terrorism, espionage, arms control and the United Nations. In July 2001, Calabresi was named Time's Diplomatic Correspondent. He was part of the team that produced the magazine's award-winning coverage of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and their aftermath. He wrote and reported cover stories on Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In January 2005, Calabresi was named Congressional Correspondent, covering Capitol Hill, where he wrote on lobbying, immigration, social security reform, Supreme Court nominations and the 2006 elections. In March 2007 he was named White House Correspondent where he covered the final two years of the Bush presidency and the presidential election of 2008. Since January 2009, Calabresi has written cover stories and feature-length investigations on Justice Anthony Kennedy, Wikileaks, Hillary Clinton, the Food and Drug Administration, U.S.-Israeli relations, the housing crisis, and the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. Calabresi graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy in 1989. He began his career in journalism as a freelance reporter in Moscow, Russia in July 1991 where he wrote for National Review. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife and son.
DAVID CORN
The Nation, 1987-2007
David Corn is the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine, an analyst for MSNBC and NBC News, and the author of the New York Times bestsellers Showdown, Hubris (with Michael Isikoff), and The Lies of George W. Bush, and the e-book, 47 Percent: Uncovering the Romney Video that Rocked the 2012 Election. For 20 years, he was the Washington editor of The Nation magazine. He has written for numerous magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post,
Harper's, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and Slate, and regularly appears on Face the Nation and provides commentary on National Public Radio. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown University.
DAVID COLE
Law Professor, Georgetown University
David Cole teaches constitutional law, national security, and criminal justice at Georgetown University Law Center. He is also a volunteer attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, the legal affairs correspondent for The Nation, a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, and a commentator on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. He has been published widely in law journals and the popular press, including the Yale Law Journal, California Law Review, Stanford Law Review, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times. He is the author of six books. Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror, published in 2007, and co-authored with Jules Lobel, won the Palmer Civil Liberties Prize for best book on national security and civil liberties. Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on
Terrorism, received the American Book Award in 2004. No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Boston Book Review, and best book on an issue of national policy in 1999 by the American Political Science Association. His most recent book is The Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable (2009). He has litigated many significant constitutional cases in the Supreme Court, including Texas v. Johnson and United States v. Eichman, which extended First Amendment protection to flag burning; National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, which challenged political content restriction on NEA funding; and most recently, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, which challenged the constitutionality of the statute prohibiting “material support” to terrorist groups, which makes speech advocating peace and human rights a crime. He has been involved in many of the nation’s most important cases involving civil liberties and national security, including the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen rendered to Syria by U.S. officials and tortured there. New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis has called David “one of the country’s great legal voices for civil liberties today,” and Nat Hentoff has called him “a one-man Committee of Correspondence in the tradition of patriot Sam Adams.” David has received numerous awards for his human rights work, including from the Society of American Law Teachers, the National Lawyers Guild, the ACLU of Southern California, the ABA Section on Individual Rights and Responsibilities, and the American-Arab Anti- Discrimination Committee.
STEPHEN HAYES
Author, “Cheney”
Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard and a FOX News Contributor. He has reported extensively on the 2012 presidential elections from Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and many other key Republican primary states. His recent interview with Mitt Romney generated wide discussion about Romney’s views on the size and scope of government and his potential running mates.
Hayes has interviewed many of those most frequently mentioned as possible additions to the Republican ticket, including Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Mitch Daniels, Rob Portman, John Thune, Tim Pawlenty and others. Hayes is the author of two New York Times best sellers: The Connection: How al Qaeda’s
Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America and Cheney: The Untold Story of America’s Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President. His work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Reason, National Review and many other publications. Hayes has written extensively about national politics, international affairs and the country’s current political leadership. Hayes is a regular member of the “FOX News All Stars” on Special Report with Bret Baier, frequent panelist on FOX News Sunday with Chris Wallace. Before joining FOX, Hayes was part of CNN’s“Best Political Team on Television,” which won a Peabody Award for its coverage of the 2008 elections. Other media appearances have included: NPR’s Talk of the Nation, TODAY, Good Morning America, Meet the Press, ABC’s “This Week,” FOX News Sunday, The O’Reilly Factor, Hannity, Hardball with Chris Matthews, HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Hayes is a native of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, and a graduate of DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. He studied public policy at Georgetown University and received his MS from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. He previously worked as a senior writer at National Journal’s Hotline and as director of the Institute on Political Journalism at Georgetown University. He lives near Annapolis, Maryland, with his wife, three children and their black lab.
CREW BIOS
R.J. CUTLER
Director, Producer
R.J. CUTLER is an award-winning filmmaker whose work includes the movies The War Room and The September Issue and the television series American High and 30 Days. Currently, Cutler is directing The Ordained, a CBS pilot written by Lisa Cullen and produced by Kennedy/Marshall. He is also the executive producer and director of the ABC series Nashville.
Cutler’s first film was The War Room, the Oscar-nominated documentary about Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign for the presidency. In 2009, Cutler produced and directed The September Issue, the feature documentary about legendary Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, which won the Best Cinematography prize at the Sundance Film Festival and enjoyed successful theatrical runs throughout the world. Other projects include the films A Perfect Candidate and Thin and over twenty television series, including American High, 30 Days, Black White, Freshman Diaries, The Residents and Military Diaries. Cutler began his career as a theater director and was responsible for the original productions of Marsha Norman and Lucy Simon’s The Secret Garden, Kevin Heelan’s Right Behind the Flag and Jonathan Larson’s Superbia, among many others.
Cutler has won an Emmy Award, a Peabody Award, and a GLAAD Award and has been nominated for an Academy Award, a Producers Guild Award and an Independent Spirit Award among others. In 2009, Cutler received the Television Academy’s prestigious Honor Award for his work “creating television with a conscience,” and the Museum of Television and Radio held a five-day retrospective in celebration of his work.
Greg Finton
Director, Editor
GREG FINTON has worked for twenty-five years in documentary, television and film. His collaboration with R.J. Cutler began in 2000 with the unscripted TV series American High and continued with 30 Days (with Morgan Spurlock), Black/White and The Residents. He has also edited the films Waiting for Superman and It Might Get Loud for director Davis Guggenheim. The World According to Dick Cheney marks his directing debut.
Credits
Showtime Presents
In Association with Cutler Productions
The World According to Dick Cheney
A Film By R.J. CUTLER
Directed by
R.J. CUTLER
GREG FINTON
Produced by
R.J. CUTLER
FRANCIS GASPARINI
Edited by
GREG FINTON, A.C.E.
Written by
R.J. CUTLER
FRANCIS GASPARINI
Narrator
DENNIS HAYSBERT
Directors of Photography
SEAN KIRBY
BOB RICHMAN
Music by
CRAIG RICHEY
Music Supervisor
MARGARET YEN
Line Producer
SARAH ANTHONY
Executive Producer
R.J. CUTLER
