Posted on 03/11/2005 11:10:39 AM PST by Cableguy
There's something strange about seeing a 35-year marriage — your own 35-year marriage — condensed into a 90-minute movie for the television screen.
Political pundit Morton Kondracke will experience that on Sunday when CBS televises "Saving Milly," a movie based on the struggles of Kondracke and his wife with her Parkinson's disease.
Kondracke, executive editor of Roll Call and a frequent commentator on Fox News Channel, was an ambitious young journalist in Chicago when he met liberal activist Milly Martinez. It wasn't the type of woman he envisioned falling in love with, but he did.
Their life together changed in 1987 when Milly, then age 47, noticed a numbness in her fingers and difficulty handwriting. She was diagnosed with Parkinson's.
While caring for her, Kondracke confided in their therapist that he always wanted to write a book. She startled him by saying, "you're living a book."
He wrote frankly in the 2001 memoir about his struggle with alcoholism and how his priorities switched from advancing his career to caring for Milly as her disease worsened.
"If you write a book you can only dream that it's going to be made into a movie," Kondracke told The Associated Press. "The idea that this can happen is enormously gratifying and I think they've done a fantastic job with it."
Kondracke went to Vancouver to work as a consultant on the film. He showed actress Madeleine Stowe, who played Milly, how he used to help his wife walk and how the tremors affected her.
"What was most moving to me was the similarity of Madeleine Stowe at the end to Milly," he said. "That was the most wrenching thing to me of anything about the movie."
Producer David Kennedy, whose own mother struggled with Parkinson's Disease, said he was attracted to the project because it was a love story, not just a "disease of the month" picture.
The sad postscript for anyone who read Kondracke's memoir is that Milly died last year.
"Saving Milly" has gotten an important celebrity endorsement: actor Michael J. Fox, who has Parkinson's himself, has told participants how much he liked the story. Kondracke said he hope the story inspires others who have been dealt a rotten hand in life and convinces politicians of the need to support funding to research the disease.
"The intended political effect, if it has one, is to remind Congress that medical research is really important and it's not just spending," Kondracke said. "It's an investment in not only humanity but in the economy."
I had no idea that Mort suffered with alcoholism. I don't always agree with his political ideas, although in the main, he has gotten more conservative with years, but I admire him as a man. His love for Milly is inspirational.
(Although she seems to have had her lips major-Botoxed for the role which looked quite strange IMO.)
Read the book some time ago. Mort is surely one of the nicer liberals.
Does the actor playing Mort wihine about "tax cuts for the rich"?
One of the few good guys on the left.
Mort is the kind of Democrat that is rapidly disappearing.
Roger that!
I forget who's playing Kondracke in the movie, but the resemblence was striking. I like Mort.
i think it's Bruce Greenwood, he played JFK in that one Bay of the Pigs movie with Kevin Costner, the name i can't place.
I'm set to TIVO the show. A rarity for me, since I hardly ever watch CBS.
Thirteen Days and a good movie.
Sorry, haven't a clue.
Might have to watch it. It doesn't really sound like my type of movie, but Madeline Stowe is one fine looking lady, and as others have said, Mort is one of the few honest, and nice, liberals left. While I know he tilts to port in politics, he's good at calling a spade a spade on FNC when Pelosi or any other RAT goes off the deep end with their rants.
The McLaughlin Group, the speaker was Mr. McLaughlin.
Oh I thought it was something from Married with Children! I don't remember hardly anything from Manos except it bored me into a coma.
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