The ghost of Mark Bingham narrates animated film, Bye Bye Bin Laden!

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Bye Bye Bin Laden website

When writer and director Scott Sublett chose the ghost of Mark Bingham to direct his feature-length, animated musical Bye Bye Bin Laden!, he wanted to honor a 9/11 victim.  Mark Bingham, one of the passengers on United Airlines Flight 93, is a hero of the September 11, 2001 tragedy.  Flight 93 was hijacked and re-routed towards Washington, D.C., and Bingham was one of the passengers who managed to keep the plane from hitting its targets.  A tall, athletic man, Bingham had stood up to muggers in the past; as an openly gay person, he did not fit the stereotype.  “So many police officers, Marines, and football players are gay,” Sublett told me.  “Their sexuality is hidden.  That was not the case with Mark.”

Bye Bye Bin Laden! is an animated musical that combines the sensibilities of South Park and The Daily Show.  Independent, animated feature films are rare due to the enormous amount of work involved. “There is no type of filmmaking that is as complex and expensive as making an animated musical,” says Sublett, who is a professor of screenwriting at San Jose State University.  All of the skills needed to make an animated film – i.e., sound recording, singing, designing animated characters – are taught on campus, so the film became an “amazing learning experience where students were able to apply these skills within the context of an actual feature, and to understand how their piece of the process fit into the overall project.  It’s one of the things that makes our film program at SJSU one of the most interesting in the country.” 

The film’s cast of characters include bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and Jenna and George Bush.  Mark Bingham’s narration is a lesson in history for Josh, a post-apocalypse roach-boy, whose questions keep the movie rolling through a series of game shows based on real game shows (instead of I Love Lucy, we have I Love Prakhbar, where bin Laden’s favorite wife keeps trying to help her husband at the terrorist training camp).  The film grew out of Sublett’s earlier stage musical, which was performed in San Francisco after its debut at San Jose State and became one of Bay Guardian’s top five premiers of 2004.   The San Jose Metro said, “The play is a bold campaign for laughter's medicinal properties. As the ghost of Mark Bingham declares in the play: ‘We, here, today, in 21st-century America, seem to think that at last, things have finally gotten so rotten that one is no longer allowed to laugh. ... People take themselves so seriously! Lighten up. Laugh at danger. Laugh at the Taliban. Most of all--laugh at yourself.’”

Bye Bye Bin Laden! opened to a packed house at Miami’s South Beach International Animation Film Festival, and was named the festival’s 2009 Best Feature.  The film takes on war, TV and religious fanaticism in Middle East and the United States, and in one hilarious episode, George Bush and his daughter Jenna vie for their own TV sitcoms.

“Myth and heroism are good for our country,” Professor Sublett stated.  “The legend of Mark Bingham is not only good for the country but good for the gay community.  It’s really important that Mark Bingham be remembered.  The point of including Bingham in the film was to emphasize that what’s best about our nation is that it accepts the contributions of all kinds of people.” 

Bye Bye Bin Laden! will be released to DVD on September 22, and is available on Netflix.  To see a trailer, visit http://www.bye-byebinladen.com/trailer.php.  To contact the director: cinemaprofessor@cs.com.