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Oxford graduate, vowed to write a
book about his grandfather. The well-
received tome led to documentaries on
filmmakers such as Howard Hawks, the
majority of them for television.
But by 1997, Macdonald says, he
had wearied of directing TV documen-
taries. He longed to make a cinematic
film that would push the boundaries of
the form, a movie
that felt more like
jr a thriller than 60
Minutes.
He had a vague
concept — some-
thing about Israel
and terrorism in
the 1970s — when
producer John
Battsek suggested
the Munich mas-
sacre. Macdonald
jumped at the idea.
Of course, his
investigative jour-
nalism experience
was nil, he admits.
"I had to learn by
doing, and it was
very, very tough,"
he says. "People
weren't talking to
us and everyone
was closing down.
I despaired a lot.
There were times I
would have given
up if I could."
While the vic-
tims' relatives were eager to talk, Zvi
Zamir, the then head of the Mossad,
refused an interview for eight months,
relenting only when producer Arthur
Cohn (Central Station) personally met
with him.
Dr. Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the
then German Minister of Interior who
offered himself as a hostage in
exchange for the Israelis, granted a 10-
minute interview three days before the
film was completed. A crew member
on the aborted airport mission agreed
to talk only if he were paid,
Macdonald says.
Then there was Brigadier General
Ulrich Wegener, Germany's anti-terror-
ism guru, who was surprisingly frank
and open but "oddly nervous," the
director recalls. Wegener laughs inap-
propriately and tells tasteless jokes on
camera about the gun battle with the
terrorists. He also indicates that
Germany staged a fake hijacking ro
free the three surviving terrorists,
ostensibly to assure German immunity
from Arab terrorism.
"He was a key person," Macdonald
notes. "I knew if we had him in the
movie, being critical, no one could
refute what was said."
Macdonald's greatest coup was
tracking down the sole surviving ter-
rorist, Jamal al-Gashey, a junior mem-
ber of the Black September team. In
the movie, he appears in an archival
clip wearing a striped jacket and guard-
ing a door on a first-floor balcony.
The Mossad managed to kill his two
surviving colleagues. There had been
many attempts on his life, but al-
Gashey was still alive and hiding with
his wife and two daughters somewhere
in Africa.
Macdonald finally contacted him
through "a strange kind of 'six degrees
of separation,'" specifically through a
Palestinian man who had befriended al-
Gashey growing up in a refugee camp.
The interview was on-again, off-
again. Just as Macdonald was about to
board an airplane for an unknown
destination in the Middle East, he
would learn that al-Gashey had can-
celled yet again.
Finally, he found himself in a hotel
room somewhere in the Arab world in
April 1999, awaiting instructions. He
had been ordered to bring a wig-and-
mustache disguise for the terrorist to
wear on camera. But Macdonald did
not know his destination until al-
Gashey's friend appeared and drove
him to a small television studio.
Over the next six hours, al-Gashey
spoke in fits and starts, sometimes
angrily leaving the room or shouting
and arguing with his friend, who con-
ducted the interview. "He was extreme-
ly worried and paranoid," recalls
Macdonald, who wasn't allowed to ask
any questions.
"After struggling for so long to keep
quiet, I think he got irrationally upset
and irritated when confronted with the
camera," he says.
Macdonald, who wasn't permitted
to leave or make telephone calls, did-
n't know what al-Gashey had said
until he returned to London and
hired a translator.
"Emotionally, it was a very strange
thing to be sitting in a room with this
terrorist," the director says. "But I felt
strongly
y
. that I did not want to demo-
nize him. I wanted to present him as a
human being who did what he did for
compelling reasons.
. "Whether we agree with him or not
is another matter." 71
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