Tim Robbins Attacks Iraq Reporting

Tim Robbins’ work on films like “The Shawshank Redemption,” “Dead Man Walking,” “Bull Durham,” and last summer’s “War of the Worlds” have helped make the actor/director a media celebrity. But during a nationwide conference call, conducted last week, which included The Crimson, Robbins accused mainstream media outlets of “misrepresenting” a recent project he wrote and directed about journalism and the Iraq War.

Recently, Robbins has struggled to publicize “Embedded Live!” a DVD recording of his 2003 play ”Embedded.” A satirical depiction of the War in Iraq and its domestic effects, “Embedded Live!” was written and directed by Robbins. It has been critically assailed, and is currently unavailable in major video retailers such as Blockbuster Video and Wal-Mart.

Robbins says he is unsurprised by the backlash the piece has created. “It should be offensive. Satire shouldn’t have friends on both political sides,” he says.

“Iraq is just a tremendously huge blunder,” Robbins says, and that opinion permeates the show. It tells the story of a group of journalists embedded alongside war-time troops who are fighting in the fictional country of Gomorrah (named after a biblical city of sinners; here meant to resemble Iraq). Containing scenes of a cabinet meeting of masked officials shouting “double fuck France,” and a chorus of easily-swayed journalists rocking back and forth to the rhythm of a military official’s speech about his nation’s “can-do spirit,” “Embedded”’s commentary on the Iraq War comes out loud and clear.

Even in its theatrical incarnation, “Embedded Live!” had its opponents. Opening in L.A. in July of 2003 and moving to New York soon after, the play drew jeers from audience members, Robbins claims. Eventually, the theater company started to hold town-hall style discussions after performances. According to Robbins, negative audience response was a treat.

“Part of the reason I loved doing the play was the 20 percent of the audience that was [made] uncomfortable,” he says.

So, if the original play version drew such negative reactions, why did Robbins decide to film it for DVD? Ironically, he says he was inspired by a group of journalists.

During the production’s four-month, sold-out New York run, the administrative staff regularly invited war journalists, who had just returned from Iraq, to see the show and participate in the talk-back sessions. Robbins says these reporters expressed newfound uneasiness with the war.

“What made me do this film was the validation those journalists gave to this film. And the validation of four months of sold-out [New York] performances, despite bad reviews,” he says.

Initial reviews of the DVD version were scathing. A Fox News review called it “grossly inaccurate,” The Weekly Standard deemed it “politically silly,” and even The New Republic, typically left-leaning, described “Embedded Live!” as “poisonous, a production-length conspiracy, guilty of the very sins it attributes to the ‘cabal’ that it claims to expose.”

But Robbins believes that national surveys showing American disdain for the war to be at a high point signify that the public is increasingly on his side. “The American people have been lied to, and they know it now,” he says.

Despite the show’s political subject matter, Robbins says his reasons for writing the play were extremely personal. After reading what he calls “unfettered and unbiased reporting” in British newspapers and Internet sources, he began speaking out against the war. He claims that American news outlets began a backlash.

“When people started vilifying me and my family, I decided to write the play,” he says. Recalling his low-income upbringing, and how his younger brother missed being drafted in the Vietnam War by only a year, Robbins says he was outraged that America was “letting the lower class fight this war.”

But, once the play opened, he says, the fact that critics didn’t acknowledge the gravity of the subject matter infuriated him. “I think at the beginning, people thought I was making these things up,” he says.

In most of these frustrations, Robbins points his finger at the “media,” which he believes was responsible for faulty reporting during the war’s earliest stages and continues to do so. “The shameful thing is that CNN allowed that to happen. And NBC, ABC, and the rest [of the major news outlets],” Robbins says. “There was no journalist standing in the way at the time, even though we all knew what was going on.”

When questioned as to why he felt it necessary for artists to speak out about foreign policy, Robbins once again expressed his lack of faith in much of the journalistic community. “Who else will do it?...There are no Edward R. Murrows out there in the major media.”

“Embedded Live” is now available on DVD through www.embeddedlive.com, www.cinemalibrestudio.com, and Netflix.