Lawrence Bender Debuts Anti-Nuclear Proliferation Doc

Hollywood Hill Advisory Board member Lawrence Bender debuted his new anti-nuclear proliferation documentary Countdown to Zero, directed by Lucy Walker, at the TED conference this past week.

Wired.com's Kim Zetter details the post-screening audience interaction...

The documentary, which includes interviews with former leaders Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Tony Blair, F.W. de Klerk and Pervez Musharraf, as well as Robert McNamara, Valerie Plame and numerous others, makes a strong case for zero weapons.

But the TED audience was skeptical that it could be achieved.

Following the film, an audience member asked Bender and Plame what it would matter if the U.S. and European nations reduced their nuclear weapons to zero when hostile governments in Pakistan, North Korea and China likely wouldn’t do the same.

Plame said that western countries had to initiate the move, which would lead to tremendous pressure on other nations to follow.

Another audience member asked Bender if he thought the time was right for such a documentary. An Inconvenient Truth was released when the public mindset was already primed to receive the message of climate change and spread it. Was there a similar movement ready to carry this film?

Bender replied that when An Inconvenient Truth came out in 2006, “We had a president who didn’t give a shit [about climate change.]”

Now we have a president who is leading the way in anti-nuclear proliferation, he said.

Last year President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev committed to reducing nuclear arsenals in the U.S. and Russia and are believed to be finalizing an agreement to that effect, with the ultimate goal being to eliminate all nuclear weapons. This week, as military and political leaders met in Paris for the Global Zero conference to discuss nuclear proliferation, Obama and Medvedev issued separate statements supporting work toward complete elimination of nuclear weapons.