#2922: OLD HOME MOVIES : Wilentz comments

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

From: Amy Wilentz <amywile@panix.com>

When I was researching The Rainy Season, I went to CBS to look at some
of their archived film on Francois Duvalier; don't know if some of your
home movies may have made it into their archives -- these things get
sold and sold again, but the background films I saw could have been that
old -- not sure.
Their stuff on Duvalier was also priceless, for example, the wonderful
interview I quote briefly in the book. In this interview Duvalier
refused to explain many, many things. A body placed on a chair at a
corner on the way to the airport, people imprisoned without charges,
torture, as well as why stories about himself in the Sunday NY Times
were trimmed out of the editions that arrived in Haiti.
"Cut out?" Duvalier asks.
"Yes, sir, cut out."
"With a, with a scissors?"
"I suppose."
"Hah! A scissors, you say?"

and on and on till you think it is the scissors that's important. He
must have been a masterful interrogator, you can see that even the CBS
correspondent feels physically unwell after the exchange.

Amy Wilentz