I sifted through my DVD screeners last night trying to find my copy of Al Franken: And God Spoke (Balcony, 9.13), the Chris Hegedus-Nick Doob doc about Franken’s political adventures over the last two or three years . The doc became a bit of a hot news item yesterday thanks to the censorious instincts of right-wing harridan Ann Coulter, as this Anthony Kaufman/Indiewire item explains.
My intent was to find that debate scene between Franken and Coulter taped at Hartford’s Connecticut Forum on 5.14.04. It’s being cut from the final release print because Coulter and/or moderator Steve Roberts (most likely the former) won’t sign a release form, and I wanted to at least provide a visual recording of this scene.
But I can’t find the damn screener…great. And nobody, surprisingly, has yet posted the video clip on YouTube.
The apparent reason Coulter has refused to okay the footage is because she looks small-minded in a clip in which Roberts asks she and Franken which historical figure they would like to be. Coulter says she’d like to be Franklin D. Roosevelt so she could prevent the New Deal, and Franken says he’d like to be Adolf Hitler so he could prevent the Holocaust. Critics have allegedly been advised to “not mention this scene in your reviews or coverage.”