Sunday, March 9, 2008

Tara McKelvey's "Monstering"

Tara McKelvey is a senior editor at The American Prospect and author of Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War.

In June 2007 she applied the Page 69 Test to Monstering. Here she puts the book to the My Book, The Movie challenge:
My book Monstering is about Abu Ghraib, which is not a topic that an American moviegoing audience would naturally gravitate toward. But Abu Ghraib, and the use of so-called "enhanced" interrogation techniques, is an important subject, and I think Americans should have a chance to talk about these issues In fact, it seems that Americans are ready to examine the subject of torture and to look at this dark chapter in our history, especially since a documentary film on the subject, Taxi to the Dark Side, has just won an Academy Award.

Here are the actors I would like to see in the film version of Monstering. Angelina Jolie. She is gorgeous, and fascinating, and she has even been to Iraq. Or Embeth Davidtz. She starred in June Bug, and she plays Amy in the HBO show In Treatment. I met Davidtz long ago while she was promoting the Steven Spielberg film Schindler's List (she played a Jewish maid who was saved by Schindler). Davidtz is smart and sophisticated, and she speaks eloquently about things like the nature of evil. Or Salma Hayek. I spent the day with her in Washington, DC, in 2002 when she gave a speech at a march against domestic violence on Capitol Hill. (I even wrote her speech!) She is passionate about human rights, and she is something of a perfectionist in her work, and she would be great in the film.
Read more about Monstering, including excerpts, reviews, and interviews, at Tara McKelvey's website.

McKelvey is a frequent reviewer for the New York Times Book Review and a contributing writer for Marie Claire. She is also a research fellow at New York University School of Law’s Center on Law and Security. She has edited a collection about female soldiers and torturers called One of the Guys.

The Page 69 Test: Monstering.

--Marshal Zeringue