Exclusive Interview with 'Kennedys' Executive Producer Joel Surnow – Part 2

In this, the last part of our two-part interview (part one is here), Kennedys Executive Producer Joel Surnow talks at length about how his personal politics were the only reason the left attacked the miniseries. Worse still, Surnow’s conservatism is apparently the only reason the History Channel’s board was willing to lose a ton of money in dumping it. Everyone’s seen the miniseries by now, and no one I’m aware of has been able to point to a single thing that could qualify it as anything close to a smear job or even problematic to the the History Channel brand. And Surnow’s not the only one this is happening to. As an example of a systemic problem in the entertainment business, Surnow mentions Paul Greengrass, who recently lost his backing for a Martin Luther King, Jr. biopic after the King family successfully put pressure on Universal.

What I’ve always called the “blacklist” — though never in the original sense of the word — Surnow calls “political correctness taken to extremes,” which is also a very good description. Greengrass, after all, is no Republican but some have reported that his MLK script didn’t shy away from the shadier aspects of King’s personal life. For reasons we can all sympathize with, King’s family didn’t want that realized on-screen, but it’s still the kind of special treatment Cheney, Palin, and Margaret Thatcher are unlikely to receive in upcoming films about them. It’s also a new kind of self-imposed Production Code, this time with a list of left-wing sacred cows.

As promised, we talk a little bit about “24,” and I would’ve loved to have talked more about that, along with a few other shows Surnow’s been involved with, specifically “The Equalizer” — and one of my all-time favorites, “Nowhere Man,” but there are only so many hours in the day.

My thanks to Joel Surnow for his time and for fighting the good fight. The business of show is hard enough without being a rethuglican.

Big Hollywood: So if you were in a situation today where someone was to come to you and say, “I’ve got this 30 million dollar project on FDR or Bill Clinton or Barack Obama,” would you put yourself through this process again?

Joel Surnow: Oh yeah, depending on what the story is. Again, I keep making this point, we were solely interested in the Kennedys because Steve Kronish, the original writer, came to my house and told me the story of the Kennedys, which I had never heard before. It was a great tragedy. The details were amazing; the incidents were amazing. The story was great.

It didn’t start from “Jack Kennedy’s story needs to be told.” It started with “look at all the rich material that has never been dramatized.” So just to say FDR, it depends. It depends on what aspect of his life. The aspect of the Kennedy story that interested me, which was interesting and had nothing to do with history, per say, had to do with a relationship between a father and his son – and his three sons. It was very Godfather-like. And it was very much a personal story.

And that’s sort of what attracted me to the material, not that we needed to see another depiction of Cuban Missile Crisis. The conceit of the [miniseries] was forget about what you know, let’s pull away the veil of the iconography and just look at who these people were. And look at all these fascinating triangles of people. You know, Jack, Bobby, Joe, Jackie, and Ethel. And it just spun out, on and on.

BH: You’d be willing to risk going through the same thing all over again, take on another liberal icon?

JS: Listen, if something’s good, if something has the potential to be of high quality — yes. The reason we got the access we did [with The Kennedys] is because my instincts told me this was a tremendous story, and Steve Kronish is a tremendous writer. And with that, you get an actor like Tom Wilkinson [to come on board]. You don’t get Tom Wilkinson with just some schlock with a political agenda to press.

BH: Absolutely not.

JS: So it’s about the material, not the politics. Frankly, I don’t think Ronald Reagan’s story is particularly dramatic. In the real world, I’ll take Reagan over other presidents, but is there a miniseries there? I mean it’s okay; it’s just not the Kennedys. The whole thing of a family just brings it to a whole different level.

BH: It also gives you a place to cut to…

JS: Right. Absolutely.

BH: You’re not on the same person all the time. And I think that one of the reasons the Kennedys live on is not just because, “Oh, it’s Camelot,” and we’re all so enamored with that. I like JFK, I thought he was a pretty good president, but I’m not enamored with the family. But I’ve read a ton of books about him and the family and that’s because everything about the Kennedys is absolutely fascinating.

JS: It’s pretty crazy.

BH: Okay, hypothetical time: You’re in the same situation with the same History Channel, and you end up with the exact same product as far as the miniseries, BUT you are a friend of Keith Olbermann and a liberal instead of a conservative — do you think History’s board would’ve dumped the series?

JS: No, not a chance.

BH: Even if the product was exactly the same, you think it would have aired?

JS: That’s the quote I’ve been saying forever. If this was a Tom Hanks/Steven Spielberg miniseries, it would have been shown at the White House, and it would have been considered a very patriotic reverential look at the Kennedys, which, by the way, it is.

BH: From what I’ve seen, yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I think just contextually, it’s all there. And when I heard you were going to make this, I thought, “Okay, we’re gonna get a contextually honest look at the Kennedys, and that’s going to be refreshing and interesting.” I think that’s what you created, and frankly, I wasn’t interested in a hit piece.

JS: It’s not a valentine; it’s not a hit job. It’s neither. It’s a family drama. The irony is that at the end of episode six — which is the Cuban Missile Crisis — the last scene of the show is Jack Kennedy giving the speech that the crisis has been averted, and Jackie is sitting there watching it on TV, sitting on the floor with Caroline, who’s coloring in a coloring book and says something like, “What’s Daddy saying?” And Jackie says, “Your daddy just saved the world,” which was a really powerful and big reverential, patriotic moment.

Well, that little girl has grown up and probably is one of the people trying to stop the show [from airing], and from being seen by a whole new generation of people who can see some of the magnificence of the family. It’s a bitter irony.

BH: It sure is. And no one I’ve read, and I’ve read as much as I can on this, no one has been able to point to one specific thing and say, “This is why History was right not to air the series.” Instead, the message is, ” Surnow’s conservative, and we don’t want those people touching our icons.”

JS: And, again, I want to make clear, I don’t have any problems with the Kennedy family trying to stop it, I just think the people who were in power, who did stop it, should have looked at it and watched it, and assured them. But that never happened. It was just all done knee-jerk, with assumptions and labels and stuff like that.

BH: I did see some reviews from those I call the Usual Suspects, those who do their usual thing. But I haven’t even seen them say, “This was a hit job.” I haven’t read anyone who said they thought you produced a partisan smear.

JS: No, they just don’t like me because I’m conservative. At this point in my career, I could probably do a show about a flower, and they would think it’s toxic and poisonous and needed to be stopped. It’s the culture war 2011.

BH: And it’s ugly.

JS: It’s really ugly.

BH: You can go back to The Passion of the Christ before Mel Gibson said those terrible things — and before anybody had seen the movie, and look at what they did to him, the hell they put him through. And not just in the entertainment and mainstream media. Look at what they put David Zucker through with An American Carol, and what they put Cyrus through with Path to 911, and now you.

JS: Did you see they pulled this Martin Luther King project?

BH: The Paul Greengrass one?

JS: Yes. And I don’t think that Paul Greengrass is particularly known as a conservative or not, but again, somebody doesn’t want something done; there’s lots of pressure brought onto producers and executives. We’re seeing something ugly right now, I think.

BH: Is “blacklist” too strong a word?

JS: I don’t know if it’s a blacklist. I work. Cyrus works. It’s political correctness taken to extremes, and there’s definitely discrimination. All you have to look at is the news business. Fox News, in any other business, would have already had ten imitators for that audience, and they’ve had none. There are people making decisions at the highest level that have more to do with Democrat and Republican than dollars and cents. It’s out of whack.

BH: I think, too that what they’re doing is – and, again, this is just my opinion — but any time someone steps off what I call the liberal plantation, they just make their lives miserable. Even if the project gets made, it’s almost like a signal to everyone else saying, “If you try this, this is what’s going to happen to you.”

JS: Yeah, the word definitely goes into the pipeline. And like you said, the usual suspects come out. In all fairness, there’s a conservative pipeline, as well. But I just don’t feel like they’re nearly as mean, or maybe as effective. [Laughter].

BH: [Laughter]. Yeah, I think both. We just want in on the debate, it’s certainly not about silencing the other side or stopping them.

JS: Maybe it’s a mistake. Maybe we should stop trying to debate. The old saying, “If you argue with a fool, who’s a fool?”

BH: But I think that’s part of their ploy, too. The siren song of “we’ll make your life easier if you lay down your arms.” It’s a very tough choice… Especially when it is always such a knee-jerk thing, where everyone says this is Joel Surnow, he’s a friend to Rush Limbaugh, so we’re going to say the Kennedys is a smear job.

JS: Yeah, a friend of [Roger] Ailes and and Limbaugh, so he’s gotta be a bad guy. What’s disturbing, to me — and, again, I don’t take it personally. I’m not a bitter guy, I’m a very positive guy, and I am still very fortunate for the career I’ve had, even on The Kennedys, which is coming out great — but every article about me is “Joel Surnow, conservative.” I mean, who does that? Does everyone need to be labeled? “John F. Kennedy, womanizer.” Why is that so important of a distinction? I’m also right-handed, you know, [laughter].

BH: And a producer… [Laughter].

JS: I always say you could just as easily go, “Emmy award-winning producer, who is a conservative friend of Roger Ailes and Rush Limbaugh — Joel Surnow.”

BH: But they make your politics your identity.

JS: That’s the identity, that’s the label, and that’s just not real journalism.

BH: It’s also a way to separate you, immediately, from the people you want to work with. A wedge.

JS: And a warning.

BH: That’s a great way to put it. And I think it’s intentional, too.

JS: Of course it is. I mean, again, when you write a story, you don’t necessarily label someone just in the course of writing the story.

BH: Right. As an example, I remember that in the first season of “24,” I think you guys went 13 episodes before you let us know that President Palmer was a Democrat.

JS: Right.

BH. Which is very, very smart because we were already involved with him. We loved the guy; we admired him. And then we’re told he’s a Democrat and it’s like, “Oh, who cares. He’s a good guy.” But if you had done that in episode one.

JS: That’s a really good point. I even sort of regretted that – there was only one time that we ever mentioned party and even that was in an offhanded way. I wonder if it would have been better not to mention it at all, now that you say it.

BH: I thought it was really well done. Because that’s kind of the way my mind works, I understood what you were doing in waiting for that reveal. But it was when I was watching the first season for the second time that I noticed it. And as someone who actually analyzes this kind of stuff, I thought it was beautifully handled.

I also thought it said something about you, because by that time, I knew your politics and thought, “This makes Joel Surnow look like a gentleman, like someone who’s open-minded. Here a conservative who created one of the most honorable and decent and patriotic characters on television and then graciously made him a Democrat.”

JS: Maybe it would have been better if I had waited two years, and then when everybody loved him, said he was a Republican.

BH: Yeah. [Laughter].

JS: That would have been really good.[Laughter]

BH: [Laughter]. That would have been great.