The Reflecting Pool

The Reflecting Pool is 106 minutes long according to its back DVD cover, but it's really twice that. The "Bonus" section consists of the video again, but with the sound track replaced by explanation and commentary by the director and star Jarek Kupsc.

Let me just say what I find fault with in the film first and get that out of the way. The commentary at approximately the video section where the drawer is opened says of the Penatgon, "The size of the hole is consistent with a jet airliner, because the wings and engines would be sucked into it by physical forces." I don't know where he got this, but it wasn't from me.

No pods or flashes or Flight 93, but so what?

With that out of the way, I want to say that this is the most masterful presentation of 9/11 Truth to date, directed to both Truthers and (primarily of course), to the general public. There has never been anything like it. It is obviously the product of dozens of hard-working geniuses, and probably, if you are reading this, you will own a copy. Without any question, you should own a copy.

It is copyrighted. I don't know how much it cost to make, but it must have been a lot. These people deserve to get their money back. Spread the word, and this movie.

Donald E. Stahl

With the 9-11 Truth movement gaining
steam by the day (this week alone, Willie Nelson ?came out,? joining a
growing list of celebrities to question 9-11; Dario Fo & Gore Vidal?s 9-11
documentary ?Zero? is dropping jaws and creating buzz in Berlin at the European
Film Market; and NY Times reporter Philip Swenon's expose "The Commission" hit
bookstores) we believe this is an important topic worthy of serious
discussion, and thus we are proud to bring you this interview with the courageous Mr.
Kupsc.
Jim Cirile: Tell us a little about your background.
Jarek Kupsc: I?m over forty, so the background is pretty vast and littered
with a lot of debris. But, in telegraphic terms, here it comes. Born and raised
in Warsaw, Poland. Art and History major in high-school. Participated in
juvenile delinquency politics during martial law with mild consequences. Escaped
military service by becoming a political refugee in Greece. Emigrated to the
U.S. in 1987 (after an unsuccessful attempt to enter Australia and Canada).
Worked my way through college and state university in San Francisco, studying
acting and film directing. Wrote a book on film history as a way of
financing first feature film (didn?t work out). Subsequently, went bankrupt making
two movies.
JC: Wow. What was the genesis of ?The Reflecting Pool??
JK: The movie came as a direct result of my personal interest in 9/11, which
began on 9/11 at 9:03 a.m., the moment the second tower got hit. As a born
skeptic fed totalitarian propaganda in my native Poland, I never bought the
official story of nineteen hijackers. After three years of research, I amassed
enough information to believe that this tragic event was orchestrated within
the U.S. government circles. I never intended to make a movie about 9/11. I
was absolutely positive someone else would. Sure enough, some excellent (and
some outlandish) documentaries started to (emerge). I thought it would be a
matter of short time before the notoriously ?liberal? Hollywood or some
independent producer would tackle the subject in a dramatic form. By 2005, that didn?
t happen. So I decided to do it on my own. I was simply driven by anger and
disbelief that the narrative sector of the movie industry would not deal with
this issue. Since I am trained in the narrative form, it was only natural to
develop a character-driven fictitious film based on actual events.
JC: The idea of turning all that research into a narrative investigative
drama sounds pretty daunting. What was your writing process?
JK: From my personal research, I had all the facts. And by ?facts,? I mean
sources that came directly from mainstream media -- New York Times, Washington
Post, Los Angeles Times, even Fox News, believe it or not. All these outlets
reported some pretty damning information. Granted, it was never front-page
news. Those articles were buried deep. Luckily, as a grad student, my wife (?
The Reflecting Pool? producer) Jodie Baltazar had access to an online library
that rivals the Library of Congress, so I could cross-reference any
officially published 9/11 topic. I also looked at some of the best 9/11 Truth websites
to find links to mainstream articles. They are very thorough in indexing
their sources to avoid any suspicion of fabricating or distorting the facts.
Having had these facts at my disposal, I then begun a truly arduous process of
selecting what should stay in the script and what should go. It was an
editorial process of elimination of those facts that were still questionable, less
relevant, or could be misconstrued as misinformation. I ended up with a
short-list, which I then trimmed to what a two-hour movie could support without
overwhelming the audience. The facts you hear about in ?The Reflecting Pool?
were ultimately chosen to give a solid foundation for the narrative of two guys
who go after the truth. The fiction part of the script is what gives the
movie human dimension, real drama, as opposed to a fact-driven documentary.
JC: I noticed the DVD is meticulously sourced. These are facts, and the
picture they paint is inarguable. Yet many will dismiss them because the concept
of government and media complicity is just too horrifying for some folks to
handle.
JK: If you dismiss the facts of ?The Reflecting Pool,? you have to dismiss
every source we used, including Fox News and the most prominent newspapers in
the country. So you have to ask yourself, if Fox News is telling me that
every intelligence service in the world sent us warnings about the attacks, what
does it mean? Now, Fox News, for all intents and purposes, is a propaganda
channel for the Bush administration. They are not apologetic about it --- they
provided the President with a Fox News spokesperson for heaven?s sake! But
now and then, even Fox has to report some truth just to give us an illusion of
objectivity. In this case, reporting on the foreknowledge of the 9/11
attacks, they got it right. Of course, they didn?t break this story - they wouldn?t
dare. But once they saw it being reported on the other networks, they were
forced to pick it up in fear of not falling behind. The worst form of
censorship is self-censorship. Not reporting something you know is true is far more
damaging than burning a few library books. What we have in this corporate
media-driven society is a combination of self-censorship and marginalizing the
inconvenient truth. If you bury it by the obituary page, nobody will read it.
If you listen to our commentary on ?The Reflecting Pool? DVD, you?ll hear all
these quotes from corporate media, and you may think, wait a minute, they
DID report this! They must be on our side! What you don?t realize is that none
of the facts we quote were ever front-page, or even back-page news. They were
meticulously marginalized and, obviously, nobody came out in the mainstream
media to connect all the dots. Which is what ?The Reflecting Pool? attempts
to do -- to paint a larger picture based on marginalized reports.

JC: I understand the film was at least partially financed by credit cards.
How did you go about raising the money?
JK: We didn?t. We, Jodie and I, and (producer/actor) Joseph Culp, combined
our meager personal resources to make this film. There was no time to wait for
outside money, which could take years to raise. It had to be done in the
moment. For the same reason we are self-distributing the DVD on
_www.reflectingpoolfilm.com_ (http://www.reflecting...) . A lot of people don?t
realize that even if you do secure a distribution deal, the so-called turnaround
time for the movie to see the light of day would take twelve to eighteen
months. By then, Cheney and Co. will (hopefully) be way out of the office,
laughing all the way to the bank.
JC: You have a few key cast members from Corman's original "Fantastic Four"
(Joseph Culp and Alex Hyde-White) in your cast ;) Hyde-White's Bill
O'Reilly-esque host was chillingly accurate.
JK: I met Joseph Culp about three years ago through an actor friend. Joe is
an accomplished drama teacher, in addition to his other skills. I took his
Walking Theatre Workshop for several years. About a year into my acting training
with Joe, I began working on the ?Reflecting Pool? script. We ended up
workshopping the material in the theatre on weekly basis. In fact, the script
really took shape thanks to the acting workshop with Joe.
Now, through Joe and his workshop we had access to some amazing actors. In
the early nineties, Joe had been cast in the Roger Corman original ?The
Fantastic Four? movie as Dr. Doom. He befriended Mr. Fantastic, the outstanding
Alex Hyde-White, and during ?The Reflecting Pool? casting process, he
immediately thought of Alex for the part of our TV host, who is clearly modeled after
Bill O?Reilly. The only directorial suggestion I made to Alex Hyde-White in
preparation for his role was not to think of it as parody. He really played it
straight. When you know what O?Reilly is capable of on the air, you can
almost say Alex is underplaying a bit. But in all honesty, the character of
Mahoney, the TV show host, in ?The Reflecting Pool? is a sad commentary on
reality, not on O?Reilly specifically. You have these so-called ?news shows? on
any network, and they are cast, scripted, and directed as pure entertainment.
There is no real news on television, period. Unless you?re into traffic reports
and weather.
JC: One thing that jumped out when I saw the film was that I wish there was
one brave editor somewhere who'd take on this story, as happened in the film.
And yet even Rolling Stone, American Prospect, Mother Jones and The Nation
are inexplicably silent on the issue. What do you think is going on?
JK: Vanity Fair did a fairly decent piece on 9/11 and "Loose Change" in 2006.
But even they had to beat around the bush, if you excuse the pun. On a good
day, I believe they are not educated enough on the facts of 9/11 and still
consider it another ?nutty conspiracy? case. On a bad day, I think the
pressure from the top, meaning the ownership, is just too dangerous to risk a 9/11
expose for the major publications. It?s a make-or-break issue, and most likely
they would be broken. Look what happened to Dan Rather with his "60 Minutes"
report on Bush?s National Guard service. Look at how (?The View?) dealt
with Rosie O?Donnell after the Building Seven episode. This is the message they
are sending to other prominent figures - you risk having your career
shattered. The issue of spin and damage-control by corporate media features
prominently in ?The Reflecting Pool.?
JC: What sort of reaction is the film getting? I would imagine there's praise
and also some hostility.
JK: I would have to honestly say that most people who have seen ?The
Reflecting Pool? so far are firm believers in the government complicity in 9/11. So,
by default, they nearly uniformly praise the film. We are getting applause
at every show and the Q&As. Personally, I?m very flattered by that. But the
real trick is to find a larger, skeptical audience. We have gotten a terrific
support from various political groups in spreading the word about the movie.
What we need is a fund-raiser to place a full-page color ad in LA Times and
book a nice theatre for a week-long run. Then, the papers would have to review
the movie, and people not involved in politics would see the ad and hopefully
come to the screenings. We have to cross-over to the mainstream if this
message is going to be heard loud and clear. That takes the kind of money we
simply don?t have. What we do have, however, is grass-roots support, which is a
beautiful beginning of a long journey. I?m sure we will encounter real
hostility if we show the movie to a larger audience. We are prepared and ready to
face it.
JC: What's next for you?
JK: In terms of a next film project, I would like to continue making
small-scale independent films for the rest of my life. I made three so far.
Realistically, the next project will need outside financing ? I?m tapped out. I have
about five projects of varying budgets lined up. What I do next depends on
how much money I can get. I?m not a player in the film industry, so my
prospects are grim. For now, I?m fully committed to take ?The Reflecting Pool? as
far as we can take it, domestically and internationally.
JC: Tell us where can folks see ?The Reflecting Pool??
JK: "The Reflecting Pool" screens EVERY Saturday and Sunday at 11AM at the
Laemmele Monica 4-plex in Los Angeles. Followed by Filmmakers Q & A after each
show. 1332 2nd Street, Santa Monica, CA
You can also check for additional screenings
_on our website. _ (http://www.reflecting...)
JC: And you can also order DVDs off the website. Thanks for your time, Jarek,
and best of luck with the movie and your career.
JK: Thank you, Jim.