By Mark Cerulli
Everyone
in the west knows the name – Gaddafi. For over 40 years he was an international
riddle, visiting world capitals yet sleeping in a bulletproof tent; a statesman
who surrounded himself with female bodyguards and, of course, a pariah scorned
by the west for acts of international terror…
In
Mad Dog: Inside The Secret World of
Muammar Gaddafi , a remarkable Showtime documentary premiering April 11th,
director Christopher Olgiati and his team went deep inside the late despot’s
hidden world. The resulting portrait is
chilling, horrifying and impossible not to watch.
The
film’s Executive Producer, Roy Ackerman spoke with Cinema Retro about putting together
this daunting and dangerous project. “Chris (Olgiati) and I had worked together before… and he came to me
about doing a film on the Lockerbie Crash and we spent a lot of time developing
that but for various reasons we came to focus on Gaddafi.â€
The
film took three years to research and shoot in ten countries around the globe –
from the United States to the Marshall Islands. (Try even finding them on a
map!) Along the way the dictator’s
finely honed image as a Nationalist Statesman completely unravels, revealing a
desperate and perverse man who preyed on his own people.
Making
any movie is all about challenges, but shooting inside Libya was in a whole
other league – “It was very, very dangerous.†Roy remembers, “we went in three times and there were bombs going off
and car bombs, one time we had to just leave because it was too unstable.â€
The
Libyan footage they did get is apocalyptic and stunning – a Mad Max moonscape
of ruined buildings and burnt out interiors. They also interviewed several people who did business with the regime, including
international fugitive Frank Terpil who supplied Gaddafi’s military with
weapons. Another notable interview was
former CIA officer Valerie Plame who provides perspective on Gaddafi’s dramatic
hunt for nuclear weapons. The producers
left no biographical stone unturned, even interviewing Gaddafi’s plastic
surgeon who told a surreal tale of late night operations in an underground
bunker, the dictator refusing general anesthesia for fear of assassination.
Through
rare archival footage, we see a dashing young Gaddafi as an army officer with a
killer smile, eager to bring his country out of its Colonial past. Gradually he becomes corrupted by his immense
power and oil wealth (one billion dollars PER WEEK), which stripped away everything
but a desire to stay in power at any cost. Outwardly a “family manâ€, in reality he
indulged an array of dark and repulsive desires that the documentary illustrates
in haunting detail.
The
final chapter of Gaddafi’s tale is ironic and tragic – Western powers were
willing to turn the page on Gaddafi’s notorious past due to the great equalizer
- oil. Only the Arab Spring, which
ripped through many countries, including Libya prevented reengagement and
ultimately cost him his life. But the
film’s Roy Ackerman felt that if there’s any lesson to be learned from Gaddafi,
it’s proceed with caution – “You do deals with these people, they’re not
stupid, they’ll get a price for it.â€
Mad Dog: Inside The
Secret World of Muammar Gaddafi premieres Friday, April 11 on Showtime.