Bringing the United States’ forgotten past to the forefront of television viewers’ minds, AU professor Peter Kuznick is joining movie director Oliver Stone to create a 10-part Showtime series.
Meant to expose the lesser-known history of the country, “Secret History of America” will premiere this coming fall.
Kuznick, who has been a history professor in AU’s College of Arts and Sciences since 1986, said the project to create the series began several years ago when Stone was in D.C. scouting locations for his film “Pinkville” about the Mai Lai massacre.
One night during that trip, the director and the professor shared dinner, during which Stone first proposed a documentary on what’s left out of history books, according to Kuznick.
Kuznick has brought a couple of students on board for assistance with the series. One is Cindy Gueli, who received her PhD from AU in 2006. The other is AU PhD candidate Eric Singer, who is currently writing his dissertation under Kuznick’s direction and teaching history at the University of Baltimore.
Kuznick asked Singer to be a chief researcher three years ago. He accepted without hesitation.
“I just fell in love with a lot of the controversial issues Peter brought up in class,” Singer said. “When he asked me for help, I couldn’t say no.”
The series starts off at the point in American history that is Kuznick’s greatest passion: the nuclear arms race.
“The history of the nuclear arms race is the greatest insanity of the post-war period,” he said. “[It was] the buildup of nuclear destructive capability in a way that can, and has, threatened the existence of humanity and animal life as well.”
Following the first part, the series will examine American expansionism in the 19th century, specifically the Spanish-American War and the counterinsurgency in the Philippines, Kuznick said. However, most of the series spans from World War II to the present.
“The series will also highlight the unsung heroes that spoke out against ill actions by the government and sparked revolutionary movements,” Singer said.
Kuznick said that, despite the title, people looking for a discussion of conspiracies will be disappointed.
“We use the title ‘Secret History,’ but it’s not secret in the way people think of secret,” Kuznick said. “It’s just unknown to the public. It’s history that the government has tried to hide from the people and has been published in newspapers.”
Kuznick told the History News Network that the biggest motivation for working on the series was the prospect of reaching a large audience — an audience of millions — rather than a hundred historians.
“We love this country, we love what this country’s given us,” Kuznick said. “But we want to show the dark history of the United States because we think that this country could be so much better and can be playing a more positive role around the world.”
While the prospect of reaching such audiences is thrilling, the process of making a documentary has been difficult, Kuznick said.
His outline was continuously rejected due to the amount of information he wanted the series to include, according to Kuznick. He said it was also difficult balancing entertainment value with sufficient evidence.
Despite the absence of supporting information in the series, Kuznick has supplemented the series with a book of his own by the same title. He said that most of the facts and sources missing from the TV series will be included in the book.
Though Kuznick said his collaboration with Stone is very exciting, it is not the first time the two have worked together. Their relationship began long before the series in 1996 when Kuznick first began teaching his AU history class “Oliver Stone’s America,” he said.
Since 1996, Stone has made several appearances in Kuznick’s class. Stone is one among such notable class speakers as Daniel Ellsberg and Bob Woodward.
Kuznick’s former student, Vincent Intondi, an AU alumnus who graduated in 2009 and is now a full-time professor at Seminole State College in Orlando, said he is excited about the series.
“Kuznick will give people another chance to reevaluate the history that has been spoon-fed to them from K-12,” Intondi said. “Kuznick and [Stone] are showing a side of history too often ignored.”
You can reach this writer at thescene@theeagleonline.com.
