A chilling nightmare plays out inside a nuclear missile silo in Director Robert Kenner’s new documentary, Command and Control.
Based on the critically acclaimed book by Eric Schlosser, Kenner’s Command and Control is a minute-by-minute account of one terrifying night in September 1980 in a Titan II missile complex in Arkansas. After a worker accidentally drops a socket, puncturing the fuel tank of an intercontinental ballistic missile carrying the most powerful nuclear warhead in the US arsenal, a series of feverish efforts is ignited in order to avoid a deadly disaster. Kenner brings this nonfiction thriller to life with stunning original footage shot in a decommissioned Titan II missile silo and eyewitness accounts – from the man who dropped the socket, to the man who designed the warhead, to the Secretary of Defense – and chronicles nine hours of terror that prevented an explosion 600 times more powerful than the blast that destroyed Hiroshima.
On October 13, following the DGA Special Projects Committee’s Documentary Series screening in the Guild's Los Angeles Theater, Kenner discussed the making of the film and just how close we came to disaster in a conversation moderated by DGA Special Projects Documentary Series Subcommittee Chair Chuck Workman (Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles.)
In addition to Command and Control, Kenner’s filmography include the documentary features Merchants of Doubt, Food, Inc. and Origins; the television movie documentaries America's Endangered Species: Don't Say Good-bye, Russia's Last Tsar and The Lost Fleet of Guadalcanal; and episodes of the television documentary series American Experience and National Geographic Explorer. Kenner has been a DGA member since 2000.
You can listen to Kenner's Q&A by clicking the podcast episode embedded below. You can find all DGA podcast episodes here.