Transcript
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The new movie "War Game" asks us to imagine - what if? What if the events of January 6, 2021, were the tip of the iceberg? What if a more dangerous turn of events is yet to come in the wake of a contested 2024 presidential election? What if some faction of the military chose not to follow the chain of command? What if our elected leaders haven't done enough to prepare to defend democracy? The codirectors of "War Game" are Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber. They are in our studios in New York. They're with me now. Welcome.
JESSE MOSS: Thank you.
TONY GERBER: Thank you.
KELLY: So I want to explain. The film is - it is part documentary. It is part thriller. You're playing out an imagined coup, but you use real people, real former officials who have served in real life at the highest levels of our government, in Congress, in law enforcement, in the military, and they're gaming out how the conversation to try to manage this would unfold in the bunker. Just jump in, flush out the premise for us a bit more.
MOSS: Exactly. What made this scenario interesting to us as filmmakers was, first of all, it was organized by a military veterans organization. So a group with a lot of credibility that - they're asking themselves, what happens if the military fragments on January 6, 2025, and we're faced with a crisis? And they brought together people in their network who have served in the highest levels of government, and they're bringing their real world experience to the table. And that's what we get to see in the film.
KELLY: Yeah. One of those former senators is former Senator Heidi Heitkamp, North Dakota Democrat. She appears, and the role she is playing is senior adviser to the president. She sums up the gist of the exercise this way.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "WAR GAME")
HEIDI HEITKAMP: I think what brought us all together is a need to be better prepared. And the exercise is Introduction to Coup Prevention 101.
KELLY: Coup Prevention 101 - it's such a striking way to explain it. Jump in and tell me a little bit more what she means.
GERBER: Yeah, you know, the real threat to democracy is a failure to imagine the worst-case scenario. You know, our vulnerabilities are that - the peaceful transfer of power, for example, is a time-honored tradition and a gentleman's agreement, you know, but it's a vulnerability. And we realized that last January 6.
KELLY: So the threat is a fictional group called the Order of Columbus, who are, among other things, spreading disinformation in real time all over social media. Tell me more about them. Why put them at the heart of this exercise?
MOSS: They're fascinating. So it's not just our senior-level White House officials and the president managing this crisis. It's their opposition force. They're called the Red Cell in the film, and Vet Voice recruited veterans of the military who investigate extremist ideology in the United States to create this fictional group, the Order of Columbus, drawing on recent history. And they are...
KELLY: Are they modeled on any particular real-life group?
MOSS: They are - they take elements from the Oath Keepers, Three Percenters and other real world extremist groups that I think our audience would recognize - people modeled on someone like General Mike Flynn, someone with military experience who was a significant voice challenging the credibility of the election. So there is a character in our story called the Patriarch, a former military official who calls his flock to defect this sliver of the military that has extremist views to support the losing presidential candidate. That is the threat, the challenge that our president faces in this real-time crisis.
KELLY: This is one of the things I found fascinating as I watched is the officials trying to figure out - there's this clear threat unfolding, and they're thinking, are we overreacting? Are we underreacting? Nobody wants to fiddle while Rome burns. On the other hand, nobody wants to invoke the Insurrection Act, suspend democratic norms that may be really hard to claw our way back to. I'm curious what each of you learned as you thought through those risks and tried to bring them to life on screen. Jesse Moss, you first.
MOSS: Well, it made me realize what a tough job the president has.
KELLY: Yeah.
MOSS: You know, when a crisis like this reaches his desk, it is really an existential challenge. We could be looking at a scenario like this. And it felt responsible for us as someone - as people who care about our democracy and our political future to look at what needs to change. Are there reforms that need to be made to the Insurrection Act and the application of that law? But also fundamentally, what does wise decision-making look like in crisis? And I think that's what the film shows us.
KELLY: And Tony Gerber?
GERBER: Yeah, I think we live incredibly in an age in which reality is called into question, right? And this is one of the extraordinary things about this opportunity for a film because we're looking at something that is ostensibly fake, a role-play exercise. But in the course of it, it becomes more real than real. The information/disinformation space that swirled around this game and the six hours that the president and his team had to certify the vote was extraordinary, right? And it was a real sort of lesson in parsing propaganda from fact.
KELLY: One of you just used the word - the unimaginable. This film is about imagining the unimaginable. As you have gotten early audience feedback, early screeners, that type thing, has anyone said, hey, this is scaremongering? Or we have enough to worry about that's actually happening in this country without imagining some doomsday scenario?
MOSS: We haven't heard that. I think the film is scary, but we've also just lived through an assassination attempt. That's actually something that's talked about in our film. I think the film is prophetic. Let's hope that the reality that it contemplates doesn't come to be. But I think also, importantly, the film is empowering and inspiring. I think it looks at how we de-escalate a crisis and how we avoid political violence. It shows us people who care about protecting our democracy.
KELLY: To the last what-if question I raised as I introduced you, the - what if our current leaders have not adequately prepared? Have you shown this film to current officials? I'm curious what kind of response you've gotten.
GERBER: We are in the process of screening it. We're planning a screening on the Hill in the fall. And you know, when Vet Voice organized this exercise, their intent was to generate a report. And that report has been written, and it has been distributed. It's been sent to the Pentagon. It's been sent to the White House. To what extent that report has actually moved the dial is anyone's guess.
One of the wonderful benefits of being able to film this exercise is that film has this ability to reach people in a way that 100-page report does not, right? So that's the hope. We think of the film as a provocation for a conversation. It's as if there's a conversation we all as a society need to have but haven't reckoned with it yet. How did we get to this point? How do we stand at this precipice? You know, this didn't happen overnight. We have a lot of reckoning to do. And if we can be part of that conversation, we would be honored.
KELLY: Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss are the directors of the new movie "War Game." It's out now in select theaters. Thanks so much to you both.
MOSS: Thank you.
GERBER: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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