Correction: The roots of madness
by Sam Roggeveen
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22 July 2010 9:45AM
Early this month, in one of my regular Linkage posts, I embedded a YouTube video of a documentary called 'China: The Roots of Madness', and referred to it as a '1967 film produced by the CIA'.
I soon got some correspondence from The Wall Street Journal's Hugo Restall disputing this characterisation of the film's origins, though Hugo was initially unable to say who did produce the film. He then found a copy of the book which accompanied the documentary, and discovered that it was directed by the accomplished Mel Stuart ('Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory').
Hugo emailed Mel Stuart, who confirmed that the CIA had nothing at all to do with the production of the film.
(PS. No editor likes running corrections, but as corrections go, this one is pretty cool. My thanks to Hugo Restall for setting the record straight and putting us indirectly in touch with some Hollywood royalty.)
