The Cable News Network plans to give viewers a sneak peek at some of the reams of footage it collected for "The Cold War" documentary series. On Aug. 30 (the date is still tentative), CNN will run a one-hour special on Fidel Castro, based largely on "Cold War" executive producer Pat Mitchell's 5 1/2-hour interview with the Cuban president in March.
Castro was the toughest to land of the roughly 600 original interviews done for "The Cold War," which debuts Sept. 27 and runs for 24 weeks.The Cuban president, the subject of persistent rumors about ill health, is extremely active and voluble in the footage included in "The Cold War."
Mitchell, who's president of CNN Productions, is scheduled to return to Cuba on July 17 to tape some footage of the country, which has a CNN bureau. Mitchell said Castro has also agreed to let CNN take video inside his personal office in the Palace of the Revolution in Havana, which is almost never allowed.
"The Cold War" is one of the longest documentaries ever made. Sir Jeremy Isaacs, who produced "The World at War," about World War II, for British TV in the 1970s, assembled the 24-hour history, which covers every possible angle of the conflict, from Yalta through the Rosenberg spy trial, the Berlin Wall, the Cuban missile crisis, Korea, Vietnam and the fall of communism.
Actor Kenneth Branagh is the narrator.
Ted Turner, who came up with the idea (and gets a "series concept by" credit at the end of every episode), reviewed every episode and even found an error that three historical consultants and all the writers and producers had missed, Mitchell said.
Turner noticed that an early segment referred to Franklin D. Roosevelt declaring war on Japan in World War II, but Turner pointed out that only Congress can officially declare war. Branagh had to be called back to make the change in the narration.