“Flynn—Deliver the Truth. Whatever the Cost,” premiered to a full house at the Community Center in Venice, Florida on April 5.
The documentary explores the life of Gen. Michael Flynn, from his rise through the ranks during his 33-year career in the United States Army to the years of political persecution he faced after exposing government corruption and being forced to resign as national security advisor to President Trump.
The film features Tucker Carlson, journalist Lee Smith, former U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), and several members of Gen. Flynn’s family including his wife Lori, brothers, sisters, and his son.
The movie also reveals several surprises related to his politics, the players involved in forcing his resignation, and some previously unknown facts about his eventual pardon from President Trump.
The film, which is two hours and seven minutes long, elicited multiple cheers from the audience during the showing.
Scott Wiper is the creative producer of the film, which he said took about 14 months to complete.
Mr. Wiper is best known for action movies, such as “The Big Ugly,” “A Better Way to Die,” and “The Condemned.”
“I had never made a documentary,” he told The Epoch Times. “I did action films, and I was a screenwriter, and I’m always trying to get things into scripts that mean something, that matter.
“There’s a difference between an action movie with Bruce Willis and a documentary about something real, and the Flynn story is very real, very heavy.”
As an action filmmaker, Mr. Wiper, 53, said the whole concept of doing a documentary was unexpected.
“It was like building an airplane while we were flying.”
The challenge was to distill Gen. Flynn’s long, colorful life story into a two-hour film.
“Storytelling is the art of omission,” he said, explaining that “you take 10,000 bits of information and figure out which 249 bits will tell the story.”
What makes Gen. Flynn’s story fascinating, he said, was that “it wasn’t a sound bite.”
Legacy media ran headlines like “General Flynn pleads guilty,” or “General Flynn receives a pardon,” Mr. Wiper said, but they still leave out the two years in between and the fact that the Department of Justice dropped the charges.
“Corporate media has had their chance to tell this story through thousands of hours of coverage,” he noted. “Now General Flynn and his family deserve to have this story told, and it’s the truth.”
Aside from portraying what he calls the judicial persecution of Gen. Flynn, Mr. Wiper said, he “was searching for humanity.”
“You can get so deep into the judicial process, the military, and lawfare. But I was looking for the universal story about love, family, sacrifice, and pain,” he said. “There’s a lot of suffering but there’s light at the end of the tunnel.”
Mr. Wiper said the most difficult part of telling Gen. Flynn’s story was keeping it to two hours.
“The story finds you,” he said. “You begin with something in your head, and you become very stubborn. But then you surrender and the story pops.”
Asked what he hopes people will take away from the movie, he used a single word:
“Truth.”
In an exclusive interview before the premiere, the general shared what he considers to be the most life-changing highlights of his career, the people he served with in the military, and helping Donald Trump win the presidency in 2016.
“There have been some tough moments when you’re dealing with families that have suffered a loss, primarily their husbands,” he reflected. “Families that suffer a loss are always a difficult thing. But then you have the up moments where you helped somebody win the presidency of the United States. That’s pretty cool.”
Asked about great challenges, he responded, “War. Definitely. The wars we’ve been involved in have been unnecessary.”
Then came a day he realized “just how deeply corrupted our government has become.”
Because of what he calls an absence of strong American leadership, Gen. Flynn said he believes a shift is coming.
“I think there’s a global alliance forming against the United States of America and that global alliance is an alliance of strange bedpartners,” he said.
“It will be difficult to defeat unless the people of the United States of America realize it exists.”
“It starts with economics, and it ends with war, and I don’t know if our current administration is capable or competent enough to stand on the moral high ground where we always thought America was. We have fallen off of that moral high ground.
“And when America falls off that moral high ground that’s a huge shift. That’s what I believe.”
Asked who was the inspiration behind his agreeing to appear in the movie, Gen. Flynn credited his wife and the American people.
He spoke of the letters he received from Americans as his world crumbled around him. There were “upwards of 100,000” letters, he said, noting that he would read them to his wife.
Some moved them to tears. He kept them all.
What struck him hardest in reading the letters was the extreme level of distrust that his fellow Americans have in their government.
“I mean, a lot of people in this country are in fear of it, which is not a healthy thing,” he said.
“To have a healthy society you don’t want to have people in fear of their government, and we do have that right now, whether the White House wants to admit it, we have that sentiment right now.
“Most people want hope. Most people want to know that they’re not alone and most people want to know there are leaders among us that are willing to step on that platform and say ’stand with me and we will be okay.’
“That to me is probably the greatest inspiration that made me do this film.”
