Cyrus Nowrasteh (Persian: سیروس نورسته), born September 19, 1956, is an Iranian screenwriter and director of theatrical films, television shows, and made-for-TV movies. He is best known for his involvement in the controversial docudrama The Path to 9/11.

Biography

Of Iranian descent ^[1][2], he was born in Boulder, Colorado, and grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. He graduated from Madison West High School in 1974 and was a city boys high school tennis champion. ^[3] Nowrasteh attended New Mexico State University and later transferred to the University of Southern California to attend the School of Cinema, graduating in 1977. ^[4] Currently, he is married to wife Elizabeth G. Nowrasteh (born March 9, 1953) commonly referred to as “Betsy.” ^[5]

History

Nowrasteh began his career in 1986 writing on the CBS television series, The Equalizer. He went on to work on other series (Falconcrest, D.E.A.), and wrote the pilot for the USA network show La Femme Nikita (1996). He also worked on independent films such as the American/Brazilian production The Interview (1997, writer/co-producer), which played at Sundance and on the Showtime network; and Norma Jean, Jack and Me (1998), a film that was not theatrically released but played the festival circuit and aired on HDNet.

In 2001 he wrote and directed the Showtime presentation The Day Reagan Was Shot, which starred Richard Dreyfuss as Alexander Haig and was executive produced by Oliver Stone. The following year he wrote 10,000 Black Men Named George, the story of the Pullman strike of the 1930s, for Showtime.^[4]

For both of the above films Nowrasteh received the Pen USA West Literary Award for Best Teleplay — the only writer in the history of the Pen awards to win two years in a row in the same category. The Day Reagan Was Shot also received the Eddie Award and the Golden Satellite Award for Best Motion Picture for Television, 2001, as well as a SAG nomination for Best Actor (Richard Dreyfuss).

More recently Nowrasteh wrote the “Manifest Destiny” episode of the highly regarded (16 Emmy nominations) Steven Spielberg and TNT miniseries presentation, Into the West.^[4]

Political orientation

Due to the controversy surrounding release of the ABC docudrama The Path to 9/11 (see below), which he wrote and co-produced, Nowrasteh came under scrutiny for exhibiting an alleged “conservative bias,” but he describes himself as more libertarian than conservative and has expressed a desire to not “just be a conservative version of Michael Moore.” ^[6].

The allegation of conservative bias was based partly on his association with conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who described Nowrasteh as a friend on his radio show. By Nowrasteh’s own account, however, the extent of his “friendship” with Limbaugh (quotations his) is “a connection limited to two social encounters.” ^[7]

Nowrasteh has been a featured speaker and columnist for the Liberty Film Festival^{[1][8] [9]}– a conservative film festival^[10] which merged in 2006 with David Horowitz‘s Center for the Study of Popular Culture (now the David Horowitz Freedom Center) to form a joint conservative film organization.^[11]. He also provided the Liberty Film Festival with an advance copy of The Path to 9/11^[12]. In addition, in 2006 the group awarded him “with a special Freedom of Expression Award.”^[13]

He was quoted in an article on conservatives in the film industry as saying “You’re safer being a child molester [than right-wing] in some circles in Hollywood,”^[10]

Nowrasteh also came under fire for The Day Reagan was Shot, for its perceived lack of historical accuracy. In this case, criticism of the film arose predominantly from conservatives.^[14]

The Path to 9/11

The 2006 ABC/Disney miniseries “The Path to 9/11” aired under much controversy. Critics said it fictionalized the lead-up to the September 11, 2001 attacks in order to direct blame to the Clinton administration.^[15]. Although Nowrasteh’s screenplay for The Path to 9/11 was billed by the ABC network as having been “based on the 9/11 Commission Report“, there were accusations that the screenplay evidenced political bias because of its allegedly contrafactual portrayal of events.^[16]

Nowrasteh admitted dramatic license in the movie. However, he maintained that a certain amount of dramatic license must be allotted in the process of writing a dramatic script with a historical underpinning (see docudrama and biopic). Although the precise conversations depicted in the script may never have taken place, he alleged that the general tone and content of events depicted in The Path to 9/11 were true. Nowrasteh was quoted in the conservative FrontPage Magazine as saying that the film “dramatizes the frequent opportunities the administration had in the 90’s to stop bin Laden in his tracks but lacked the will to do so.” ^[17] When asked if he thought of the script as a “historical document,” Nowrasteh has responded:

No, but I stand by the original version of the movie, and I stand by the edited version… There has to be conflation of events. The most obvious problem any dramatist faces is that of sheer length. I had to collapse the events of eight and a half years into five hours. I don’t know any other way to do it except collapse, conflate, and condense. ^[18]

Critics, including 9/11 Commission member Richard Ben-Veniste pointed out that some scenes in the film were complete fabrications.^[19] Richard Miniter – a conservative author and critic of the Clinton administration, said that a key scene with Sandy Berger was based on “Internet myth”: “If people wanted to be critical of the Clinton years there’s things they could have said, but the idea that someone had bin Laden in his sights in 1998 or any other time and Sandy Berger refused to pull the trigger, there’s zero factual basis for that.”^[20].

Nowrasteh wrote about his work on Path To 9/11 in an opinion piece in the opinionjournal.com on September 18, 2006. He stated:

“‘The Path to 9/11’ was set in the time before the event, and in a world in which no party had the political will to act. The principals did not know then what we know now. It is also indisputable that Bill Clinton entered office a month before the first attack on the World Trade Center. Eight years then went by, replete with terrorist assaults on Americans and American interests overseas. George W. Bush was in office eight months before 9/11. Those who actually watched the entire miniseries know that he was given no special treatment.” ^[7]

Critics – including President Bill Clinton, Sandy Berger, Madeleine Albright, former Clinton aides, an FBI agent who quit as a consultant to the film, 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton, and some conservatives including Bill Bennett and John Fund asserted that the film contained inaccuracies such as its depiction of Clinton as so distracted by the Lewinsky scandal that he neglected the terrorism issue (although the 9/11 Commission Report states that “we have found no reason to question” the testimony of Clinton aides who claimed that the Lewinsky scandal had no bearing on national security considerations^[21]). Nowrasteh is quoted in the documentary Blocking the Path to 9/11 as saying that his intention in depicting Clinton as “somewhat hamstrung” in his response to terrorism was, ironically, to make Clinton a more sympathetic figure.^[22]

Blocking The Path to 9/11 documentary

In August, 2008, talk show host and documentary filmmaker John Ziegler and producer David Bossie of Citizens United premiered a documentary co-produced, written and directed by Ziegler entitled Blocking The Path to 9/11,^[23][24][25] which revisits the political controversy behind the ABC miniseries The Path to 9/11.^[26] Through interviews with the Path to 9/11 filmmakers (including Nowrasteh) and others, news clips regarding the controversy, and footage from the miniseries itself, the documentary asserts not only that accusations of the filmmakers’ covert political agenda were unfounded, but that they were generated by Clinton-era politicians concerned that the miniseries tarnished their political legacy, and were reported uncritically by bloggers and a biased news media. The documentary also claims that Disney/ABC ultimately shelved plans to release a DVD of the miniseries as a result of pressure from the political left, specifically the Clintons themselves. As noted in the documentary, Disney/ABC denies this and claims the decision not to release a DVD was purely a business decision.

Regarding the documentary’s intention, filmmaker Ziegler stated, “…the point of my documentary is not to ‘blame’ 9/11 on Bill Clinton. We just want to expose the real history that led to the attacks and correct the historical record about what happened to this film so that we can help prevent this from happening again in the future.” ^[27]

The Stoning of Soraya M.

The Stoning of Soraya M. (Persian: .سنگسار ثريا م) is a 2008 American drama film adapted from French-Iranian journalist Freidoune Sahebjam‘s 1994 book of the same name based on the true story of a woman falsely convicted of adultery in Iran and subsequently stoned to death. The film version was directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh and written by Nowrasteh and his wife, screenwriter Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh. It stars Academy Award nominee Shohreh Aghdashloo, as well as James Caviezel and Mozhan Marnò.

Because of its highly critical attitude toward the Iranian legal system, the controversial book, an international bestseller, was banned in Iran.^[28] Likewise, the film version of The Stoning of Soraya M., even before its release, made its way onto a list of American films that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad deemed offensive and for which he demanded an apology.^[29] But the film’s release also drew enough attention to the issue of stoning in Iran that it sufficiently embarrassed the Iranian authorities into announcing consideration of a ban on stoning and other harsh legal punishments.^[30]

Awards

The Stoning of Soraya M. had its world premiere at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival, where it won Runner-up for the Audience Choice Award.^[31] It also won Second Runner-up for the Cadillac People’s Choice Award, as well as the Audience Award for Best Feature at the 2009 Los Angeles Film Festival.^[32] The film also won the Heartland Truly Moving Picture Award,^[33] and the 2009 Ghent Film Festival’s Canvas Audience Award.^[34] At the 2009 Satellite Awards, it was named one of the year’s Top Ten Films and nominated for Best Drama Film, while its star Shohreh Agdashloo won Best Actress in a Drama. ^[35]

In 2010, the film was hailed as one of Movieguide‘s Ten Best 2009 Movies for Mature Audiences and was the co-winner, with Invictus (film), of Movieguide’s Faith and Freedom Award for Promoting Positive American Values for 2009^[36]. It also shared, with “Women in Shroud,” the Cinema for Peace Award for Justice in conjunction with the Berlin Film Festival^[37] and won Outstanding Foreign Motion Picture at the NAACP Image Awards^[38].

Reviews

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, John Jurgensen said^[39] the film was shot over six weeks in a mountain village in Jordan. The stoning sequence itself took six days to shoot. Jurgensen reports that “some human-rights advocates call the film inaccurate and sensationalistic,” but that director Cyrus Nowrasteh responds, “A movie like this needs to be absolutely uncompromising in its approach. The subject demands it.”

Linking the film’s June 2009 release to the 2009 Iranian election protests occurring simultaneously, and referring to the continued practice of stoning in that country, Hugh Hewitt wrote^[40] in the Washington Examiner, “Every American who sees ‘The Stoning of Soraya M’ will emerge from the theater far wiser about what is driving the revolt of the people in Iran.”

Upcoming projects

Among Nowrasteh’s upcoming projects will reportedly be film adaptations of Thomas Tessier‘s book The Nightwalker ^[41] and The Last Campaign, Thurston Clarke‘s account of Robert F. Kennedy‘s 1968 presidential campaign.

Filmography

• Veiled Threat, writer (1989)
• Norma Jean, Jack and Me, writer/director (1998)
• The Day Reagan Was Shot, writer/director (2001)
• 10,000 Black Men Named George, writer (2002)
• The Path to 9/11, writer (2006)
• The Stoning of Soraya M., writer/director (2009)

Quotes

• On Michael Moore and producing movies: “To quote Team America, he’s an out of control socialist weasel (laughs). Listen. I’m probably more of a libertarian than a strict conservative. In my writing and directing, I don’t want to just be a conservative version of Michael Moore. I’m here to tell a good story first and foremost – and that’s why I can navigate the networks and get my work produced.” ^[42]
• “You’re safer being a child molester [than politically conservative] in some circles in Hollywood,”^[43]