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CINEMA SEEN - "Thankfully Heroic" By William Margold We all need "heroes" to believe in. Even the most (seemingly) confident of us, although perhaps, in fact, we are the ones who are constantly questioning our security the most, need someone "bigger than life" to look up to, and to "idolize." Flashing back to the early 1950's, I believe, albeit in somewhat hazy black and white images, that I discovered my first "hero" through the awkward manipulation of reflections off of a kitchen window from a TV set in my living room on 26th Street and Santa Monica Blvd, adjacent to The William Tell Motel. With the urgency in his voice making every comment sound like he was delivering sermons from the mount, a gentleman named Edward R. Murrow flickered into my life, and became) and not just because my mother said so), someone that I sensed I could trust, look up to, and even dream about becoming. You might be wondering about the kitchen window/reflection thing…so allow me to explain that because I was cursed with severe myopia at the very early age of four, I was only allowed to watch TV sparingly. Therefore, during one period---"for my own good"---I was banished to the kitchen from where I could still hear the shows, but supposedly was not able to "burn my eyes out" by getting to watch the programs. However because our TV set, a massive thing that looked as if an entire redwood tree had been sacrificed to encase its formidable screen, had been positioned on an angle that cast its rays onto our kitchen window, I could see, although I guess that the images were reversed, what I could hear, with enough intensity (both audibly and visually), that indelible impressions were made on me that have survived in my mind's eye over 50 years. And with the recent release of GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK (Warner Independent Pictures), the magnificent Mr. Murrow (masterfully cloned by David Strathairn, in an obvious Best Actor Oscar nomination effort), has reaffirmed himself, and many of those images, as justification for him being my first "hero." And…at this writing (for the Thanksgiving Day, 2005 installment of Cinema Seen), although the George Clooney-directed production is paradoxically too long for its topic---Murrow's noble and very daring confrontation with Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare days---while at the same time maybe being too short…I will go on record by calling it "the best movie of the year." I guess that it's sort of fitting that "I am paying honor to what is because of the honor that it does." Clooney, who portrays Murrow's staunchest ally, Fred W, Friendly, has crafted together (appropriately captured in Black-and-White) a remarkably timely history lesson-cum- warning (that tragically won't be heeded), about the power of paranoia and the dangers of demigods, and it is, in the long, or the short, run of all matters considered---a motion picture that MUST be seen. Mr. Murrow was further ingrained into my psyche in the late Fifties through a three-part series of records from Columbia Masterworks entitled "I Can Hear It Now…" (featuring historically relevant radio transmissions between 1919 and 1949) that I played and played and PLAYED until I wore the items almost bare. I exhumed them for this column, and held them tenderly, as tears of grateful adoration welled up, for I could very much "hear them now." During my own journalistic career from deep within (and even deeper about) the Adult Entertainment Industry, I have never lost sight of the importance of my life's cornerstones: truth, loyalty, friendship and honor. Therefore, with passions reignited by Mr. Murrow, I am proud to announce the long needed formation of AMERA (Adult Media Entertainment Responsibilities Association). And I strongly suspect that my "hero" would approve of its purpose: "to promote the ‘common-sense-sorship of extreme hardcore materials, so that the mainstreaming of XXX can continue without further reckless and offensive creations." For as he once so eloquently stated: "dissent is not disloyalty." And in my own humble way, I will close with: " take care…and care take." end NOTE: Originally published in LA Xpress, November 24, 2005, issue. |