September 5

Schrödinger's News

or

Up-Close and Personal (Duct-Tape and Spit)
 

We are inundated by news. Saturated with it. Awash with it. Some is fact-checked, some have two sources, a lot of it—most of it—is just blather, speculation, filling time and selling soap...or pharmaceuticals. "I heard a guy who said..." followed by professional blowhards, who used to have a job, saying what they think, and their "act" is that they know. So much of what poses as "news" is "opinion"—newspapers traditionally limit that to just two pages. That's on the national level. On the local level, it's all sports and weather with the top story being somebody died...and the last story something about puppies. All smiles. "Have a good night."

 

It didn't used to be that way, back in the "old" days, before "24 hour news" channels (which never have 24 hours of news), and back when there were only three networks and each one had their own news department that encapsulated the news in 30 minutes (minus commercials). They didn't have time for opinion (we shouldn't have time for it at all). That's the way it was...and somehow you were assured that was right.

The only time you saw a lot of news was in the Dickensian "best of times, worst of times". Coronations. Moon missions. Assassinations. And the 1972 Munich Massacre. If you don't know about it, Spielberg made a movie of it...and its vengeful aftermath. But, to boil it down, during the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, a terrorist group called "Black September" broke into the Israeli compound in the Olympic Village, killed some, took hostages, made demands to be flown with the hostages to Egypt, and then everyone was killed, hostages and terrorists before the plane could get off the ground. And it was covered "live" on television.

 

By ABC Sports.

September 5, the film by Swiss director Tim Fehlbaum, tells the story of what was going on inside the ABC Sports facility and the herculean task of trying to report a terrorist attack with the same resources they used to show swimming, boxing, and track-and-field. In charge of their broadcast unit was Roone Arledge, head of the ABC Sports division and whose promotional mantra was "up-close and personal" in that he would have pre-produced background stories for athletes to engage viewers with the drama inherent in the matches rather then merely showing anonymous individuals competing. It was a brilliant model for sports-broadcasting, adding the back-story to the competition, raising the dramatic stakes and adding the element of "inspiration" to what was merely gamesmanship—which would, in turn, serve as inspiration to future generations of viewers who might, then, want to take on the challenges of sport—that's why "talent competition" shows these days fill up their time-slots with back-stories of simply everybody who participates. "Up-close and personal."

But, nobody was prepared for this. A world-stage of athletes from all over the world competing in peace, and that year in a country whose previous hosting was under the leadership of Adolph Hitler, who saw the Olympics as a political tool, advancing Germany's status, and trying to make a point of Aryan superiority in the process. That was the year of Jesse Owens and "The Boys in the Boat" so things didn't go according to the Master-Race plan. The 1972 Munich Olympics were envisioned by the country to bury past ghosts and be seen as a meeting place for peace after having plunged the world into war and committing genocide on an inhuman scale. And, again, things didn't go according to plan.

A Palestinian-militarist group breached the lack of security in the Olympic Village—armed guards and security would have provided a bad "image" for this post-Nazi German Olympics—and started killing Israeli athletes. They made demands that, if they weren't met, would mean the death of another Israeli on the hour. It was political warfare as theater, or—in the word that would become despicably familiar then from—"terrorism." To cover it would be to give the bastards what they wanted. But, cover it, ABC News did.

What else were they to do? Ignore it? Lives were at stake. Early on, Arledge made the decision that ABC News would not take over the coverage—they were half-a-world away and would have consisted of talking heads filling time. ABC Sports was on-site and closest to the story. In their zeal to do as complete a job as possible, they probably went too far—planting cameras across from the Israeli living quarters to get "good shots," deceiving security guards that their runners were athletes in order to smuggle film back and forth between their photographers and the ABC facilities. They punted. No one at the base could speak German, so an assistant editor (played in the film by Leonie Benesch) became the eyes and ears of official announcements and police scanners. The audio guy started soldering make-shift connections between walkie-talkies, telephones, and the control board.* For replays of video-tape, hands manually moved the reels. It was all duct-tape and spit and flying-by-instinct, but without the journalistic rigor associated with news coverage (except for the on-site presence of Peter Jennings (played by Benjamin Walker, whose voice-imitation of Jennings is eerily good).

They got the story. But, in one critical juncture, they got the story wrong—okay, they reported mis-information from the German spokespeople, but it was still wrong. And it was still put out in the world, and spread by other sources monitoring the ABC coverage, and it was just as wrong. That information was that the hostages were rescued in a daring raid by German police. It wasn't true. They were all killed and (although the truth didn't start coming out until 2012) that the raid was an unmitigated disaster. Those "rescued hostages" were all dead. There was a rush to judgment to get out the story. And rather than get the story right, they just wanted the pictures.

Eight years later, CNN started business and the business of getting the pictures, rather than the story right became a news business model. And we've seen examples of "news specialists" getting it wrong ever since. September 5 shows us where it all began...we in our bubbles and they in theirs...and how we haven't learned anything since. So much for keeping us "informed."

Gabrielle Giffords still lives...

and I hear she plays a mean French Horn. 

The WNYC program "On the Media" which is something of a "news-watchdog" has put out a series of handy "Breaking News Consumer Handbooks" with helpful advice on how to listen to "Broken News." There are quite a few of them, but I'll post a few salient ones.

* One thing they got right (but for all the wrong reasons): the invention of the "network bug"—those irritating graphics burned into the corner of network feeds to identify the source-station. ABC started burning their logo into their coverage because so many news sources were copying it and ABC wanted it known where the pirated sources came from. It also tells us who we can blame.

Don't Make a Scene: Marty

The Story: I like Paddy Chayevsky's writing a lot. I must like him, I've done enough of these scenes from his screenplays. A couple from The Americanization of Emily. A couple from Network. Another from The Hospital.

 

And one from Marty, the movie that this little scene comes from.

 

When I first watched the movie—it was only a couple years ago—this scene made my jaw drop a little. It's nothing. It's just a moment...a blip...a distraction in the screenplay, part of the stuff he wrote to expand his teleplay for The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse into a bona-fide screenplay for the movie theaters. 

But, it made me laugh. Two little Irish ladies in a bar gossiping, telling stories about other people and their stories to make their lives seem a little better. And with a little spite.

And it's perfect. You never see these two ladies again—they're extras (I can't even find the names of the actresses on IMDB)—but there's a whole story going on along with their never-mentioned back-story about why they might be there and why they're having this conversation, which has a wide range of emotions behind their words and why they would be talking about this. It's complete unto itself.

And it has nothing—absolutely nothing—to do with the rest of the movie. But, it gives you some of the atmosphere of a Bronx where leisure-time is spent looking for leisure, where gossip has more impact than what's in a newspaper, and where guys might belittle the girl you're seeing because she isn't something out of a Mickey Spillane novel.

Boy, that Paddy Chayevsky, he sure can write.

 

The Set-up: Another Saturday Night in The Big Apple. But, for such a big place packed together with so many people, loneliness is right at its core. Angie (Joe Mantell), best friend of Marty (Ernest Borgnine), is doing what he usually does on a Saturday night—looking for Marty, and so he goes to their usual hangout, the speakeasy—apparently the precursor to social media—but, Marty ain't there—he's on a date...with a girl (Betsy Blair)...unheard-of. He spends just enough time to get distracted, then leaves for another distraction. "Such a sad story."

 

Action.

 

THE BAR. NIGHT.

The SOUNDS of Saturday night revelry are loud, coming mostly from the Irish contingent of the neighborhood. They are grouped along practically the whole bar.

Three or four WOMEN and a number of shirt-sleeved MEN, mostly in their late forties, early fifties. We know they're Irish, because one of the younger men is chanting an auld country ballad. 

CAMERA ANGLES disclose the entrance to the bar in the background, showing Angie coming in, looking here and there. He starts toward the bar. 

NEAR BAR. 

TWO IRISH WOMEN, middle-aged, squat heavily on bar stools over their schooners of beer, gassing away at each other.

FIRST IRISH WOMAN ...so she told me at the risk of her life... 

Angie shuffles in, pausing near the bar and standing behind the two Irish women.

SECOND IRISH WOMAN She was always a bit thin in the hips...

FIRST IRISH WOMAN ...well, she told me that the doctor told her that if she had any more babies, she would do so at the risk of her life...  

FIRST IRISH WOMAN Well, at the time she told me this, she already had six. 

FIRST IRISH WOMAN Every time I saw the woman, she was either... 

ANGIE Hey, Lou! 

FIRST IRISH WOMAN ...going to the hospital or coming from it. She was hatching them out like eggs. 

SECOND IRISH WOMAN And that husband of hers is a skinny bit of a fellow, isn't he? 

FIRST IRISH WOMAN Well, I bumped into her on the street, and she was as big as a barrel. 

ANGIE (loudly) Hey, Lou! 

CAMERA ANGLES to include Lou, the Bartender. 

BARTENDER (looking up from opening a batch of beer bottles) What? 

FIRST IRISH WOMAN ...so I said to her, "Mary... 

ANGIE (calling to the Bartender) Ya seen Marty?

BARTENDER I ain't seen Marty all night... 

FIRST IRISH WOMAN "...Mary, for heaven's sakes,"

ANGIE (calling to the Bartender, but even more to himself) Where is everybody? I been walking around, I can't find anybody... 

FIRST IRISH WOMAN "...didn't you tell me that another one'll kill you?" 

SECOND IRISH WOMAN And her husband is a little bit of a man, isn't he? 

FIRST IRISH WOMAN Well, last week Tuesday, she gave birth to the baby in Saint Elizabeth's hospital... 

FIRST IRISH WOMAN ...a fine healthy boy of nine pounds... 

SECOND IRISH WOMAN Oh, that's fine. So the doctor was wrong, wasn't he? 

FIRST IRISH WOMAN Oh, no! She died right there in the hospital... 

SECOND IRISH WOMAN Oh, that's a sad story. 

SECOND IRISH WOMAN And her husband is that little fellow, works in Peter Reeves. 

FIRST IRISH WOMAN That's the one. 

SECOND IRISH WOMAN Oh, that's a sad story. 

Angie has nothing better to do than give his attention to the last lines of the story.

Perturbed, he turns and leaves.

 

Marty

Words by Paddy Chayevsky

Pictures by Joseph LaShelle and Delbert Mann

Marty is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from M-G-M Home Video and Kino-Lorber.

 

Presence (2024)

Teen Angel, Can You Hear Me?

Teen Angel, Can You See Me?
Why Do You Still Give a Damn

Why Do You Glide on Steadi-cam?

or

"Ghosts Are Ass-Holes, Man!" 

I have a friend who (so he says) became a psychic, though not of his own volition. One day, he walked into work and discovered that he could read people's thoughts and know what they were thinking (I should have asked him what number I was thinking of at the moment, but the story was too interesting to hear for some quick-thinking debunking). Anyway, he was a professional psychic for awhile and gave it up, settled down, raised a family. The toughest trick for a psychic is to STOP being a psychic...if you REALLY ARE a psychic.

 

Anyway, I went to a lecture he was giving and was driving him home and we were talking psychic stuff—its arcana and down-sides and my weird forays into TM—when I asked him "What about ghosts?" And he blurted, frustrated, "Aw, ghosts are ASS-HOLES, man!" He'd never met a ghost he'd liked, as they were always hanging around with some left-over agenda from their previous existence that they just...couldn't...let GO of! "One ghost was hanging around her daughter because she never returned a BOOK she borrowed from her! Can you believe that?" I actually could (and if he was really psychic he would have known that). But, he could never understand why ghosts just never let go and move on, especially as the way (I've heard) is perfectly well-illuminated.

 

So...Presence, director Steve Soderbergh's new film with a script by David Koepp that only cost $2 million bucks and (supposedly) has only 33 editorial cuts in it. That is as lean and mean as a movie can get, and I've always liked Soderbergh for his daring and his playing with the movie-form and his many invented ways to get movies made and/or distributed. He's the guy I'd want running DOGE over anybody else. Smart and experimental, but efficient as any director making movies—he even shoots and edits them under pseudonyms. And, in this one, he literally plays a larger part.

We open on a house. More actually, we open IN a house, looking through the window down at some pavement below and then the camera looks up and we see the window, turn around and we're looking at the empty bedroom of a vacant house. The camera glides through rooms, up and down stairs, down to the main floor into the kitchen, around the living room and out the window. Nothing to see here. Fade to black.

When we come back we're looking out the upstairs front window and a woman getting out of a car. "We" run down to the first floor as she enters and it's a real estate agent (Julia Fox) who's going to show the house to a family who soon arrive. They are, as we soon learn, the Payne's: Rebekah (Lucy Liu), Chris (Chris Sullivan) and the kids Tyler (Eddy Maday) and Chloe (Callina Liang), both teens. Rebekah loves the place, but Chris has questions—are the schools okay? it's by a fire-station and are the sirens going to be annoying—and the kids are... preoccupied. Tyler's a jock and submersed in his phone—it's not even sure if he notices the house ("whatever...") and Chloe wanders around, not saying a word...except...at a couple points she looks directly at the camera, which then swiftly retreats away from her gaze. Nobody else notices or looks our way, only Chloe and only a couple times. In fact, the camera will move very close to people in intense discussions and there is no reaction. It's like we're invisible.

It's like we're a GHOST. Which is exactly what's going on here. There is a spirit in the house (something the real estate agent doesn't mention and probably doesn't know as she's focused on making a sale). Everybody is busy with other issues and so they don't notice, they're not attuned to it. Only Chloe who is sunk deep in depression over the death of a friend—accidental overdose it was ruled—is aware that there's an unseen house-mate, who's useful at putting her books away or causing a fortuitous distraction. One night, on the edge of sleep, she senses something in the closet (the spirit's go-to refuge), gets up, wanders to the center of the room and tentatively asks "Nadia?" It was the name of her passed friend.

There have been plenty of "point-of-view" movies. They were quite prevalent in the day of slasher horror (but only sparingly—but enough that it became a trope—and usually to disguise the perpetrator or increase suspense ala The Silence of the Lambs), and Orson Welles was going to use it for his aborted first RKO film Heart of Darkness, and director Robert Montgomery employed it (partially successfully) in his adaptation of Raymond Chandler's The Lady in the Lake—quite naturally as Chandler wrote his mysteries in the first person. But, it's a gimmick, like those movies employing found media (I'm thinking The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield) where the point-of-view technique is meant to be claustrophobic and limit what is shown. It's a distraction, as well.

Interesting that there are a couple of extra chairs at the dinner table.

Expecting guests, are we?

But, not here. "Our" role—as we, the audience, don't have a choice in the matter—is not as a stand-in for the narrator or the director's presence (although director Steve Soderbergh DID shoot the whole thing himself, so one could say that he is portraying the ghost). We are the observer (as per usual), like the presence, unseen and unheard—but, even if we don't, it is still quite capable of making an impact.

The film is of our time, and what is going on in the lives of the Paynes is distrust, an uneven power dynamic between the four, and involves teens and bullying and social media, plus an unsolved murder or two, all seen through the eyes of a spirit who knows a few more things than we do and acts accordingly when it feels the urge to. One may have a qualm or two with its selective abilities ("Well, if it can do that, why can't it do this?") and it all may come down to cherry-picking for the sake of dramatic effect and suspense. Given the amount of detail that Koepp and Soderbergh put into the scenario, one suspects that they were just interested in telling an engaging story and didn't want resolutions to be too easy. Poltergeists can't do everything. If they could, they'd be guardian angels...which is another pay-grade.

Are ghosts ass-holes? I don't know. Presence would make the argument against—that they serve some purpose other than flickering lights and poltergeisting to their sacred hearts' content. And "Ass-holes" is a little judgy. Plus, it's never a good idea to look down on things that can look down on you (especially things known for knocking things off ledges). Maybe ghosts are just like those career-people who absolutely refuse to retire and can't imagine themselves relaxing with a harp. That's a little relatable. It certainly would be to Steve Soderbergh who's said at several junctures of his career that he's going to retire and he...just keeps...making...movies.

 

I certainly hope he does...if the spirit is willing.