Posted on 10/13/2005 9:41:15 PM PDT by nunya bidness
From Clooney's website:
About The Movie
"Good Night, And Good Luck." takes place during the early days of broadcast journalism in 1950's America. It chronicles the real-life conflict between television newsman Edward R. Murrow and Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee. With a desire to report the facts and enlighten the public, Murrow, and his dedicated staff - headed by his producer Fred Friendly and Joe Wershba in the CBS newsroom - defy corporate and sponsorship pressures to examine the lies and scaremongering tactics perpetrated by McCarthy during his communist 'witch-hunts'. A very public feud develops when the Senator responds by accusing the anchor of being a communist. In this climate of fear and reprisal, the CBS crew carries on and their tenacity will prove historic and monumental.
President Truman said that Senator Joseph McCarthy, the junior Senator from Wisconsin, was “the greatest asset that the Kremlin has.” Agreeing with Truman were many anti-communist Hollywood liberals like Ronald Reagan, Hollywood labor leaders Roy Brewer and Howard Costigan, and Sidney Hook, a Marxist scholar who turned against the Communist Party.
Although there was a lot of fire in McCarthy’s smoke (one of his main claims, which is the prologue for this movie, was that there were “200 card-carrying Communists” in the State Department. Release of FBI files relating to the Verona Project after the fall of the Soviet Union pretty conclusively confirmed that Alger Hiss, a high-ranking State Department official, was a Communist traitor in spite of 40 years of denials by the left, so the State Department was Communist-infiltrated, as McCarthy alleged, although he later reduced the number), his tactics were those of a police state. Even so, using this quote of McCarthy’s as the prologue for the movie discredits the movie because it leads the audience to believe that the basis for McCarthy’s anti-communism was false, when it was clearly not false. It wasn’t McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade that brought him down, it was his tactics.
For the record, there were communists in the United States, in Hollywood, and in the State Department. They were actively supporting Joseph Stalin, who is still the greatest mass-murderer in history. During the ‘30s he killed the Russian kulaks, its entire middle class, 50 million people, by starving them to death. There is nothing admirable or heroic about any of these American Communists. They were despicable people supporting a despicable monster.
As to the notorious Hollywood Ten, sometimes referred to as the Unfriendly Ten (because they refused to name the names of their fellow Communists before the House Un-American Activities Committee, the alter ego for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, of which McCarthy was Chairman), legendary director Billy Wilder said, “Two were talented, the other eight were just unfriendly.” Even so, the Hollywood Ten who took their marching orders from Stalin have been elevated to secular sainthood by the Hollywood left, who are the people making this movie.
In 1954 McCarthy’s reign was attacked by a newsman, Edward R. Murrow, and it was the beginning of the end for Joe. This is a well-crafted, if sometimes draggy, documentary-style film about that attack. It is shot in black and white for a couple of reasons. First is that it adds to the verisimilitude of the story. The second is that the producers, rather than hiring someone to portray McCarthy, wanted to use Tail Gunner Joe uttering his own words, so they used old black and white news footage. Cutting back and forth between color and black and white to show McCarthy speaking would have interfered with the apparent currency of the film.
David Strathairm gives an Oscar-worthy performance as Murrow. If you never saw Murrow, what you see in Strathairm will give you a good feeling for what you missed. Writer-Director George Clooney plays Fred Friendly who was the co-producer, along with Murrow, of Murrow’s show, “See It Now” (1951-57). Frank Langella gives a brilliant performance as William Paley, the autocratic head of CBS, who backed Murrow’s attack, even though it threatened the viability of his network.
At one point in the film it is alleged that Paley said that McCarthy wanted William F. Buckley, Jr. to do his rebuttal to Murrow’s attack. Buckley graduated from Yale in 1950. He didn’t found “National Review” until 1955, one year after the McCarthy-Murrow dispute. I remember attending some of Buckley’s debates when I was at the University of Virginia Law School in the early ’60s. But I questioned whether he had the cachet in 1954, at the age of 29, to be considered as someone who could take on a national monument like Murrow on behalf of the most powerful man in the United States Senate. This is a strange, one line, insertion in the film that seems out of place with no apparent raison d’être. So I checked with Bill Buckley himself and he confirmed it, but he added something the filmmakers conveniently omitted. While McCarthy did ask him to do the rebuttal, and he agreed, when the McCarthy people submitted the request to Murrow, it was flatly rejected. Apparently Murrow wanted McCarthy to hang himself and knew that Buckley would be too formidable an adversary to achieve Murrow’s desired end. Clooney obviously didn’t want to reveal Murrow’s fear of Buckley, since the point of the film is to parade Murrow being steadfastedly brave. How would it look to have Clooney's valiant 50-year-old hero appear as a quivering lump of jelly, cowering in a corner hiding from an erudite 29-year-old?
Even so, this is an entertaining, behind-the-scenes docudrama about how one man propelled television into a powerful presence in its infancy. If you didn’t live through these times, this movie does a good job of recreating them.
thought it was the VeNona Project, mese'f
see #20 - I'ze ejoo-kaybull
I am not the author. And I resent your accusation.
2) Stalin didn't starve the kulaks (small private landowners/farmers)except some of those in the Ukraine (see below). He simply liquidated the Great Russian and White Russian, and Don kulaks if they refused to surrender their land to the kolkhozi, the so-called collective farms. The people Stalin forcibly starved were the Ukranian people, for numerous reasons, not least of which was the enthusiam of the Ukranians for the German invasion of Russia in WW I, plus their firm loyalty to the Orthodox church. Recommend you see the excellent and brutally accurate documentary film ''Winter of Despair'', made decades ago, and which (of course) the LSM wouldn't dream of allowing the American people to view.
Some of those in the Ukraine? How about 4 million? Is that enough?
3) Stalin ranks in second place as the greatest mass murderer in history. Mao killed at least 3 of his citizens for every one that Stalin killed (or caused to be killed, same thing net-net-net). Pol Pot, btw, holds the all-time record for the highest percentage of citizens deliberately killed by their government.
Obviously you've got a thing for Uncle Joe but the point of this thread is that Communism was the greatest genocidal threat that has ever hidden behind an ideology. Or is 100 million just a statistic?
This is a good bookmark to have:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1996/vo12no18/vo12no18_mccarthy.htm
Just a suggestion but you might want to take the girls for a walk up to the Kodak in March. You never know, they might get a piece of this pretty boy on his way in.
You're not the author, eh? OK. Next time, make it clear, boyo -- because, even after reviewing the thread, your first commentary makes it sound as if you were, or at least were supporting the contentions made in the article. Resent away, by my guest; that's always the purview of the incompetent.
If you think I've a ''thing'' for Joseph Stalin (how DARE you, you bleeding bozo!), you're an outright effing moron, and obviously you can neither read nor think. Stalin was inarguably one of the half dozen most evil men to ever walk the planet, you stupid sod.
And, once again, do **try** at least to pay attention to fact, as opposed to your ego and your opinion. Doubtless difficult, but you might be able to manage if you try. Here's one little tip: when you post an article with OBVIOUS falsities, you might consider pointing them out. Failing to do so, as you have so badly done here, indicates your support. ''Silence gives consent'', as Cicero noted more than 2000 yrs ago.
Ta-ta.
thanks.
No quarrel at all, King. I wonder what the poster is all about, though (shrug).
Facts are facts, the guy is a leftist.
LOL!
at the risk of making this a 3-way pissing contest, may I respectfully suggest that each of you has misunderstood the other, in part or in toto, and said misunderstandings are leading both of you into a totally pointless episode of sturm und drang for no damned reason at all?
come on, we're better than this.
"Whatever", me noting in 2005.
For someone who's been here since 2001 you should know by now to look at the format of the thread and the citations to know who the author is and what the position of the poster of the article is by his own comments.
Otherwise, have a nice day.
Postulating coherence in said presentation, you're quite right; it's no trick at all.
A very sensible view, King. Well said!
I did say have a nice day.
Also I'll make it clear, I think all Communists are the lowest form of human life and that includes their red-diaper-doper-babies.
Take care.
By the way, about 15 or 20 years ago I used to regularly watch reruns of "See It Now". I believe they were shown on a PBS station. The shows generally had Murrow interviewing famous people, and a couple of the shows I remember had him interviewing newly elected Senator John F. Kennedy and his bride, and another had Harpo Marx (who, of course, answered questions without speaking).
I watched the shows mostly to see cool snapshots of history, but I wasn't especially impressed by the famous Murrow. He was pretty good, but I suspect that history has hyped him up way beyond what he was.
Excellent!
Yep, the author put a lot of thought and research into his article.
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