A charlatan’s defense of his Hollywood screenplay
David Hare on writing nothing but the truth about a Holocaust denier
The Guardian newspaper (UK) • Sept. 3, 2016
By David Hare
In
2000 historian David Irving sued author Deborah Lipstadt for her
description of him as a Holocaust denier. As his screen version comes to
the cinema, David Hare explains why the trial was a triumph of free
speech (Lipstadt's
life work is a witch-hunting triumph for the abridgment of speech and
the smearing of gas chamber doubters as morally defective cretins
unworthy of a decent reputation or a good job. After the trial in 2000,
homicidal gas chamber sceptic Ernst Zündel was imprisoned for a total of
seven years in Canadian and German jails. Where's the "triumph of free
speech" in that? Scientist Germar Rudolf was also imprisoned, and dozens of others. — Michael Hoffman)
In 2010 I was first approached by the BBC and by Participant Media to adapt Deborah Lipstadt’s book History on Trial
for the screen. My first reaction was one of extreme reluctance. I have
no taste for Holocaust movies. It seems both offensive and clumsy to
add an extra layer of fiction to suffering which demands no gratuitous
intervention. It jars. Faced with the immensity of what happened, sober
reportage and direct testimony have nearly always been the most powerful
approach. In the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem, I had noticed that all
the photography, however marginal and inevitably however incomplete,
had a shock and impact lacking in the rather contrived and uninteresting
art.
It was
a considerable relief on reading the book to find that although the
Holocaust was its governing subject, there was no need for it to be
visually recreated. In 2000 the British historian David Irving, whose
writing had frequently offered a sympathetic account of the second world
war from the Nazi point of view, had sued Lipstadt in the high court in
London, claiming that her description of him as a denier in her
previous book Denying the Holocaust had done damage to his reputation.
In English courts at the time, the burden of proof in any libel case lay
not with the accuser but with the defendant. In the United States it
was the litigant’s job to prove the untruth of the alleged libel. But in
the United Kingdom it was up to the defendant to prove its truth. It
was in that context that London was Irving’s chosen venue. He no doubt
thought it would make his legal action easier. All at once, an Atlanta
academic was to find herself with the unenviable task of marshalling
conclusive scientific proof for the attempted extermination of the
European Jews over 50 years earlier.
There
were many interesting features to the case – not least the condescension
of some dubious parts of the British academic community to an upstart
American – but three aspects appealed to me above all. First, there was a
technical script-writing challenge. In conventional American pictures,
the role of the individual is wholeheartedly celebrated. In a typical
studio film, even one as good as Erin Brockovich, there is always an
obvious injustice which is corrected by an inarticulate person suddenly
being given the chance to find their voice. The tradition goes back to
Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda and beyond. But what was unusual about
Lipstadt’s experience was that she was an already articulate and
powerfully intelligent woman who was ordered by her own defence team not
to give evidence. The decision was made that her testimony would give
Irving, conducting his own case, the opportunity to switch the focus of
the trial from what it should properly be about – the examination of how
his antisemitism infected his honesty – to an attack on something
entirely irrelevant: the reliability in the witness box of Lipstadt’s
instant capacity to command every scattergun detail of history.
It was
quite a professional undertaking to make drama out of such a complete
and painful act of self-denial. One thing for sure: we would not be
offering a boilerplate Hollywood narrative. At great expense to her own
peace of mind, Lipstadt had agreed to be silenced. The fascination of
the film would lie with the personal cost of that choice. What were the
implications for someone who, having been brought up to believe in the
unique power of the individual, discovered instead the far subtler joys
of teamwork?
The
book she had written turned out to be her complete defense, and the
verdict vindicated that book in almost every detail. But in order to
effect that defense she had to trust the judgment of two other people
from a country and a bizarre legal system different from her own – her
Scottish barrister Richard Rampton and her English solicitor Anthony
Julius. Rampton arrived fresh from defending McDonald’s in the McLibel
case, the longest trial in English legal history. Julius had handled
Princess Diana’s divorce.
Second,
it was clear from the start that this film would be a defence of
historical truth. It would be arguing that although historians have the
right to interpret facts differently, they do not have the right
knowingly to misrepresent those facts. But if such integrity was
necessary for historians, then it surely had to apply to screenwriters
too. If I planned to offer an account of the trial and of Irving’s
behaviour, I would enjoy none of the film writer’s usual licence to
speculate or invent. From the trial itself there were 32 days of
transcript, which took me weeks to read thoroughly. Not only would I
refuse to write scenes which offered any hokey psychological explanation
for Irving’s character outside the court, I would also be bound to
stick rigidly to the exact words used inside it. I could not allow any
neo-fascist critic later to claim that I had re-written the testimony. (Really, Mr. Hare, your critics are all “neo-fascists”? Here we see through the boasting of Mr. Hare about his fairness. He is so twisted in his partisanship that he
blackens the reputation of any potential critic with a fascist-baiting
smear. He is demonizing his opposition. Is this not an appalling act of
misrepresentation? — M. Hoffman)
Nor
did I want to. The trial scenes are verbatim. To say that such fidelity
represented an almost impossible dramatic difficulty – this trial, like
any other, was often extremely boring – would be to understate. At
times, I would beat my head, wondering why real-life characters couldn’t
put things in ways which more pithily expressed their purposes.
But it
was for a third overriding reason that I came to feel that a film of
Lipstadt’s fascinating book cried out to be made. In an internet age it
is, at first glance, democratic to say that everyone is entitled to
their own opinion. That is surely true. It is however a fatal step to
then claim that all opinions are equal. Some opinions are backed by
fact. Others are not. And those that are not backed by fact are worth
considerably less than those that are.
A few clubby English historians (this a reference, most notably, to Sir John Keegan — M. Hoffman)
had always indulged Irving on the grounds that although he was
evidently soft on Hitler, he was nevertheless a master of his documents.
These admirers were ready to step forward and attack Lipstadt’s
character and her success in the courts on the grounds that it was
likely to make others historians more cautious, and thereby to inhibit
freedom of speech.
But
far from being an attack on freedom of speech, Lipstadt’s defense
turned out to be its powerful triumph. Freedom of speech may include
freedom deliberately to lie. But it also includes the right to be called
out on your lying. (Revisionists are not allowed to "call out” the lying about homicidal gas chambers. This is a right exercised without
fear of losing one's employment and reputation [and in Canada &
Europe one's freedom], only by those who call revisionists and
dissidents liars. — M. Hoffman).
During
the early days of the Renaissance, Copernicus and Galileo would have
scoffed at the idea that there was any such thing as authority. A
sceptical approach to life is a fine thing and one which has powered
revolutionary change and high ideals. But a sceptical approach to
scientific fact is rather less admirable. (It is exactly the science of Auschwitz upon which revisionists like Robert Faurrison, Carlo Mattogno and Rudolf
have concentrated, and which Lipstadt decrees must not be debated. She
is the religious fanatic in this case. The revisionists are the
Galileos. In 2006 Irving was imprisoned for almost a year in Austria for
a WWII history lecture. Lipstadt's screenwriter doesn't even bother to
mention it. — M. Hoffman).
It is
dangerous. As Lipstadt says in my screenplay, certain things are true.
Elvis is dead. The icecaps are melting. And the Holocaust did happen.
Millions of Jews went to their deaths in camps and open pits in a brutal
genocide which was sanctioned and operated by the leaders of the Third
Reich. There are some subjects about which two points of view are not
equally valid. We are entering, in politics especially, a post-factual
era in which it is apparently permissible for public figures to assert
things without evidence, and then to justify their assertions by adding
“Well, that’s my opinion” – as though that in itself was some kind of
justification. It isn’t. And such charlatans need to learn it isn’t.
Contemplating the Lipstadt/Irving trial may help them to that end. (End
quote)
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