It's typically a cold, snowy day in Hollywood when time-pressured, well-moneyed producers agree to face-to-face talks with a nonprofit group armed with an agenda inherently critical of their shows' themes. But like most successful Hollywood ventures, relationships and serendipity played a big part in bringing the sides together.
Last year, Human Rights First was contacted by David Zabel, an executive producer of NBC's "ER," who was fact-checking a show story thread about the crisis in Darfur. The connection ultimately proved fortuitous. Zabel knew his counterparts at "24" and "Lost," whose ensemble includes a sympathetic torturer named Sayid, and introduced them to the human rights group.
Meanwhile, Danzig, whose father was former secretary of the Navy under the Clinton administration, helped recruit military interrogators and West Point's dean to travel to Hollywood.
"I was pretty skeptical to begin with," said retired Col. Stu Herrington, who worked U.S. Army interrogations from Vietnam to the first Gulf War. "I mean, these guys have a load of Emmys, a top show. Why should they listen to us? Their business model is based upon a shtick where Jack tortures the hell out of someone and they save the world."
The "24" team immediately challenged that view with openness and candor. It's true that Jack Bauer has tortured suspects, but he's no cartoon character, Gordon argued. "Our opinion is Jack Bauer hurts people and whether right or wrong, he's suffering for it," said Gordon.
Bauer, himself the victim of horrible violence, clearly is traumatized by what he's forced to do to others in the name of national security. In one instance this season, while in pursuit of information on the whereabouts of a suitcase nuke in Los Angeles, Bauer didn't have the stomach to torture a suspect. Later, however, the action hero recovered his steely nerve and put a plastic bag over the head of his evil brother for information.
To Gordon and the "Lost" producers, it's almost absurd that they should have to make clear that the fictionalized torture events are intended for anything other than entertainment.
" '24' is a television show with its own dramatic requirements which are reductive and unreal," said Gordon. "And to that extent, we would like to participate in any way we can with disabusing young kids in the military of any confusion over that."
