Subject: Mail digest
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 19:10:44 +0200 (METDST)
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From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [toncas1] please read...
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 12:35:56 EDT
FYI, guys. This virus is a hoax:
WOBBLER Virus Hoax
VirusName: WOBBLER Virus Hoax
Aliases: California
Known Variants: Hoax
Infection Length: Hoax
Area of Infection: Hoax
Likelihood:Hoax
Region Reported: email
Keys: Hoax
Description:
This information is a hoax and should be ignored.
Sample of hoax message:
Dear All,
Fr your reference, take necessary precautions. If you receive
an email with a file called California, do not open the file. The file
contains WOBBLER virus.
WARNING
This information was announced yesterday morning from IBM;
AOL states that this is a very dangerous virus, much worse than
"Melissa", and that there is NO remedy for it at this time. Some
very sick individual has succeeded in using the reformat function
from Norton Utilities causing it to completely erase all documents
on the hard drive. It has been designed to work with Netscape
Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. It destroys
Macintosh and IBM compatible computers. This is a new, very
malicious virus and not many people know about it.
Please ignore any messages regarding this "hoax" and do not pass on any
messages regarding it. Passing on messages about this hoax serves only to
further propagate it.
Write-up by: Motoaki Yamamura
Updated: May 15, 1999
If you ever get word on a virus, and you are concerned about it eating your
machine, go to www.symantec.com and look in the announcements and archives
for Virus Research (there is a section for hoaxes, which will save you some
time)
Su
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From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: People Magazine
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 12:07:48 -0500
At 3:41 PM -0400 8/25/99, wrote:
Has anyone on the list every called a TV physic? Got the
>number?
>KJ
Er, that would be psychic. A physic is a medicinal purge ... not a bad
idea, all things considered, for those suffering from impacted mandyitis,
but probably not what you had in mind.
Kendal -- always happy to instruct
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From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: CH article NY TImes-OFF
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 13:26:25 EDT
In a message dated 8/25/99 6:44:33 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
[email protected] writes:
<< I still question CBS commitment when they put it up against Frasier... >>
*blink*
Huh?
Did I miss something? Is CH moving to Thursdays at 9PM?
----------------Message-boundary
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: CH article NY TImes-OFF -Reply
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 12:42:58 -0500
>>> 08/26/99 12:26pm >>>
>*blink*
>Huh?
>Did I miss something? Is CH moving to Thursdays at 9PM?
In a non-word, *yup*.
You musta blinked during that memo...
DR
----------------Message-boundary
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: CH article NY TImes-OFF -Reply
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 13:50:08 EDT
In a message dated 8/26/99 10:43:09 AM Pacific Daylight Time, [email protected]
writes:
<< In a non-word, *yup*.
You musta blinked during that memo... >>
Yup, I must've ;->
Actually, this works out pretty well. I can tape Frasier and
whatever-NBC-decides-to-air-after-that upstairs, and watch CH downstairs. I
was almost having a problem deciding between CH and Law and Order (Jesse
Martin, y'know).
----------------Message-boundary
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: CH article NY TImes-OFF
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 10:57:02 -0700 (PDT)
I believe so. It was printed somewhere although I couldn't say
specifically where. I couldn't believe it when I heard/read it. What
are they thinking??? I think MP's the best but gotta say Frasier is
pretty funny! Not only that but ER comes on after CH so Frasier already
has that base. I wish they had stayed on Monday. Why didn't they? The
new shows that premier at that time bite the dust anyway, so what did
CBS have to lose?
Renee- getting a little worried about this season going beyond 13
episodes
--- [email protected] wrote:
> In a message dated 8/25/99 6:44:33 PM Pacific
> Daylight Time,
> [email protected] writes:
>
> << I still question CBS commitment when they put it
> up against Frasier... >>
>
> *blink*
>
> Huh?
>
> Did I miss something? Is CH moving to Thursdays at
> 9PM?
>
__________________________________________________
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Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com
----------------Message-boundary
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: CH article NY TImes-OFF -Reply
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 14:36:26 EDT
In a message dated 8/26/99 10:52:04 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
[email protected] writes:
<<
Actually, this works out pretty well. I can tape Frasier and
whatever-NBC-decides-to-air-after-that upstairs, and watch CH do >>
The point is .. * why * are they going to do it. Seems to me like they are
going to make the same mistake twice.
KJ
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From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject:
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 18:56:15 -0000
subscribe patinkin
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From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: MP - A new concert date??? (Long)
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 20:46:47 -0400 (EDT)
Hi folks. Imagine my shock today when a fellow teacher (who uses my room
one period and sees my MP pictures, articles, calendar, etc. all over my
room) said, "Did you see MP in the paper today?" "What?", I exclaimed,
coming out of my zombie state (first week with students!!). "Yes", he
said, "There's an article about the fact that he has to reschedule his
concert." "Concert, what concert?????" - I asked. "His concert here", my
friend said. Well, by this time, I figured he was delusional. Concert?
In Greensboro? Here? One I didn't know about and it is in my own
town!!?? Impossible!
I rushed home this afternoon to check the paper. Be still my heart.
There it was, picture and all. (The one in the baseball jacket...). The
article can be seen at:
http://www.thedepot.com/cgi-bin/frameit.pl?id=ae&url=http://www.thedepot.com/ae/arts/ucls26.htm
For those without internet access, here is the text of the article:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mandy Patinkin to sing, Alvin Ailey company to dance at UCLS
8-26-99
By CATHY GANT-HILL, Staff Writer
News & Record
Mandy Patinkin is coming back to UNCG's University Concert and Lecture
Series for the 1999-2000 season. That's the good news. The down side is
that it audiences will have to wait longer than originally planned,
until sometime next April, before Patinkin gets here. The scheduling
snafu is owed to Patinkin's return to television. The acclaimed
performer, who dazzled UCLS audiences here in 1992 with his "Dress
Casual" concert, is returning to his Emmy-winning role as singing
surgeon Dr. Jeffrey Geoffrey Geiger in the CBS television drama,
"Chicago Hope." Patinkin left the role in 1995 in a much publicized
decision to spend more time with his wife and two sons. The boys are
teenagers now, and Patinkin is returning to the grueling world of
television and to a tour schedule that will include UCLS. "He is
absolutely sincere about rescheduling for spring 2000 and has instructed
his touring company to make our Greensboro performance a priority," says
Dawn Mays, the new director of UCLS. Patinkin, who had been scheduled to
perform in Greensboro Nov. 3, is expected to give organizers a firm date
by mid fall. Once described by New York Post critic Clive Barnes as "the
greatest entertainer onBroadway today -- period," Patinkin is said to
work magic with his voice, a voice that composer Stephen Sondheim called
"brilliant -- a gift from God."
April 2000 (date TBA): Mandy Patinkin: In Concert. To fans, Patinkin
stands out in his roles as Dr. Jeffrey Geiger in "Chicago Hope" or the
swash-buckling swordsman Inigo Montoya of "The Princess Bride." But he
is also one of the leading interpreters of the American popular song,
and his return to Aycock Auditorium promises to delight audiences once
again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I rushed on over to UNC-G's site and found this page about season
tickets and phone numbers, etc:
http://www.uncg.edu/iss/LATEST/ucls.htm
It says:
Season tickets are now available through the University Box Office and
Arts Information Center. The University Box Office and Arts Information
Center, located in Elliott University Center, will open on Monday, Aug.
16, and hours will be noon-5 p.m. weekdays. The telephone number is
(336) 334-4TIX (4849). UC/LS season ticket prices range from $99 to
$129 depending on seat location. All seats are reserved and performances
will be at 8 p.m. in historic Aycock Auditorium. Individual tickets will
go on sale approximately three weeks prior to performance dates.
Well - I still can't believe this. I don't know how this April date
works with the Broadway rumors?? But, if he comes here - I'll be there.
I usually buy 3 tickets - so I know I can't afford season tickes for
this series....... But, at least perhaps I can try to stay on top of
when single tickets will go on sale to the public and be one of the
first!!
Well, sorry to be so long.
I hope some others in the Greensboro, NC area will be as excitied as I
am about this news!!
Kathy
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From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Emmies
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 21:05:54 -0700
tickets.com has tickets for the 9/12 Emmies and the after-show parties
http://www.tickets.com/travel_package_emmy.cgi?newsletter082699
But they also, under "other events," have a way to request tickets for
unlisted events. Bet it would be easier and cheaper to get tickets for the
one Mandy will be at......Carol (there definitely are advantages to living
in LA)
----------------Message-boundary
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re:
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 05:32:38 -0700 (PDT)
Does anyone have the address to unsubscribe to this mailing list? My
mail server is not set up to handle the volume of e-mails.
Thanks!
__________________________________________________
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Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com
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From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Emmies
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 10:38:17 EDT
In a message dated 8/26/99 9:07:37 PM, [email protected] writes:
<<..Carol (there definitely are advantages to living
in LA)
>>
NOT Many!!!!
----------------Message-boundary
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: SJ review - NY Daily News
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 10:58:05 -0400
Here's a review of "Strange Justice" from today's NY Daily News:
Doing 'Justice' to History=20
Hill-Thomas telefilm alters facts but finds the dramatic essence=20
by Eric Mink
Anyone who endured the frenzy of the 1991 confirmation hearings of Clarence
Thomas to be an associate justice of the U. S. Supreme Court has a right to
ask why he or she should watch a fictionalized TV movie about those
sickening events.
Watching "Strange Justice" Sunday night at 8 on Showtime, viewers will
experience a provocative and brilliantly stylized film with a complex and
ultimately dispiriting perspective on America's political/media culture.
They also will witness tour de force acting that veers from deceptively
subtle to startlingly ferocious.
The performances are the work of the film's three central players: Regina
Taylor, best known for "I'll Fly Away," as Anita Hill; Delroy Lindo, whose
credits include "Malcolm X" and "Clockers," as Thomas, and Mandy Patinkin,
the Emmy Award-winner returning this season to "Chicago Hope," as Ken
Duberstein, the freelance Washington fixer hired by the Bush administration
to manage (i.e. control) the Thomas nomination process.
Drawing its factual content from the book by ace investigative reporters
Jane Mayer of the New Yorker and Jill Abramson (now Washington editor at The
New York Times), "Strange Justice" concentrates most of its rapid-fire
energy on the take-no-prisoners tactics used to neutralize Hill's shocking
assertions of sexual harassment.
In the end, Hill emerges from "Strange Justice" as more sympathetic and more
credible than Thomas, in part because the fairness-be-damned approach of
Thomas' camp proved successful.
Even so, it is Thomas' memorable testimony condemning the ugliness of the
confirmation process from which the film derives its most dramatically
powerful sequences. It is there that screenwriter Jacob Epstein and director
Ernest Dickerson attempt to convey not just the words Hill and Thomas spoke
during their separate Senate committee testimony but the emotions they felt.
The sequences are shocking: Thomas tearing off his shirt and yanking his
necktie upward when he speaks of a "high-tech lynching," and Hill becoming
hysterical as she recounts Thomas' alleged query about a pubic hair on a can
of Coca-Cola.
These displays of intense emotion never happened, as history records and as
anyone who watched the hearings knows. But Jonathan Freeman's dazzling
high-contrast cinematography and Dickerson's ingenious staging =97 complete
with ghost-like images ominously haunting the fringes of the hearing room =
=97
leave no doubt that we're not seeing things as they happened but, rather,
things as they may well have seemed to Hill and Thomas as they sat at the
center of the firestorm.
Viewers have good reason to be skeptical of the historical accuracy of any
dramatic film, "Strange Justice" included, based on real people and events.
Yet, as in the better films of its genre, the first priority of "Strange
Justice" is to convey human and philosophical truths in the framework of a
compelling dramatic story and to avoid gross violations of the essential
facts. In that, it succeeds.
********************************************************************
Mandy Patinkin - High Flying Adored
http://home.att.net/~mosert/char/mandy.htm
"The blood, sweat, tears, and joys of my past=20
make up the compositions that create the music of my heart....."
Mandy Patinkin
********************************************************************
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From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Another SJ review - NY Times
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 10:59:37 -0400
Here's a review from today's Times:
'Strange Justice': He Said, She Said, and the Whole Nation Listened
by Caryn James
Someone had to be lying. During the Senate hearings on Clarence Thomas'
nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, Anita Hill testified that he had made
graphic sexual remarks when he was her boss; he denied the accusations.
And as Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson put it in "Strange Justice," their
thoroughly reported and trenchant book, "Two people with such completely
contradictory accounts cannot possibly both be telling the truth."
That nonfiction book is now the basis for one of the slyest, most
unexpectedly fascinating television dramas of the year. Showtime's "Strange
Justice" brings
fresh life to a story that is more than familiar: the Thomas-Hill saga is a
benchmark that left the country more jaded than before.
As a fictional news announcer explains at the start of the film, the
hearings were "a train wreck of race, sex, politics, all played out before a
TV audience of a hundred million people."
In those innocent days of 1991, sexual harassment was an odd, new phrase to
most of the country. Since then, of course, Paula Jones has sued President
Clinton over it, and in a backlash-inducing turn of events grammar-school
children have been accused of harassing their classmates.
The film confines itself to events surrounding the confirmation, yet the
viewer's knowledge of how the harassment issue has evolved matters: in that
light the movie emphasizes that today's murky attitudes toward sexual
harassment started with an event that remains fraught with questions. (The
film was enough of a hot potato for the rights to have been picked up and
tossed aside by Turner and Fox.)
Jacob Epstein's script and director Ernest Dickerson's sometimes brilliant
choices overcome the obstacles of knowing how the story played out. Deftly
moving from outside events to a sparing use of surrealism, the film comes to
reflect the tumultuous inner lives of the Hill and Thomas characters, whose
violent emotions were masked by their decorum at the hearings.
Taking its lead from the book's subtitle, "The Selling of Clarence Thomas,"
the film focuses on the machinations of the Bush White House to get Thomas
confirmed.
Regina Taylor is affecting as the reluctant Anita Hill, unprepared for the
hardball of Washington politics. The underrated Delroy Lindo gives one more
amazing performance as the fiercely offended, righteous Clarence Thomas.
Yet it is Mandy Patinkin who holds the film together as Kenneth Duberstein,
the consultant who is assigned by the White House to help Thomas navigate
through the hearings and who is just as much a player as the principals.
Duberstein says his job is "the same as selling a product." He rehearses
Thomas for the hearings and counsels him to avoid land-mine topics like
abortion.
In the age of spin it is not a news flash that Supreme Court nominees are
just as packaged as political candidates. What Patinkin's subtle depiction
brings to the character are decency and pragmatism in a portrayal more
chilling than if Duberstein had been presented as a monster. His
conservative politics are sincere, and a job is a job, even when he comes to
doubt the nominee's truthfulness. Here is the scary reality of politics as
usual.
The Mayer and Abramson book, written when the authors were reporters at The
Wall Street Journal (they are now at The New Yorker and The New York Times,
respectively), builds a careful argument that Thomas had a history, going
back to his college days, of interest in pornography and of making
shockingly crude remarks.
The film tilts in Ms. Hill's direction but takes a less overt position.
Blink and you'll miss its first reference to a video-store owner who was,
belatedly, willing to testify that Thomas had rented sexually explicit
tapes. Still, the White House manipulations are enough to smack of
distortion, if not dishonesty.
The movie presents other women who might have accused Thomas of harassment
or supported Hill's assertions, but who were not called by the Senate
Judiciary Committee. A Thomas adviser threatens, "When we get through with
Anita Hill, there's not going to be enough left to mop the floor."
Yet the film allows for the sincerity of both characters, a position that
relies more on the oddities of human psychology than on logic. If it seems
clear that Hill is telling the truth, Thomas' sense of baffled outrage seems
just as deeply felt.
Because she plays the simpler, more straightforward character, Ms. Taylor
has less to work with than Lindo does. He creates a Clarence Thomas who is
genuinely
tortured by these events yet who remains a mystery at the end.
He bristles when he believes that Vernon Jordan is condescending to him.
(Jordan is now so familiar, it is disconcerting to see him played by Louis
Gossett Jr.)
After the Hill accusations, Thomas writhes on the floor in the middle of the
night (a scene reported in the book, not invented). His comforting wife
tells him: "It's God's will. It's his way of testing you, Clarence. You are
his warrior."
In the film's most daring and effective set piece, the Hill and Thomas
testimonies acquire a surreal edge, taking a decisive step into pure fiction
that turns the characters inside out, as if their psyches were being
splashed across the screen.
Ms. Hill was restrained to the point of coldness during her testimony, in
her prim blue suit. Here, as the Senate chamber recedes into shadow, the
character mocks. Thomas and speaks in a ferocious voice, her angry face
captured in close-up.
The Thomas testimony is depicted in even more dynamic terms. At first the
light glares off his glasses; eventually he stands from the table and as he
shouts, he tears off his jacket and shirt.
When he arrives at his most famous line, calling the hearings "a high-tech
lynching for uppity blacks," he gestures as if hanging himself with his red
paisley tie, the image of a contemporary lynched man. Dickerson guides the
film smoothly in and out of these enhanced scenes; they are not for the
literal minded but work as extraordinary drama.
One of the movie's rare clumsy choices is to splice the actors into actual
news film. It seems less, not more real, to see Lindo stand next to
President George Bush when he announces the Thomas nomination. That is one
of the hazards of dramatizing events that played out on television to begin
with.
Yet even this pitfall comes with a reward. The news film includes a moment
that played as congressional high camp even the first time around: here
again is Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, waving a copy of "The Exorcist" and
angrily reading from it as a possible source for the "pubic hair on my Coke"
remark.
As a Hill adviser says in the most unarguable line of this shrewd, resonant
film: "These guys play rough. It's politics. Truth hardly enters into it."
********************************************************************
Mandy Patinkin - High Flying Adored
http://home.att.net/~mosert/char/mandy.htm
"The blood, sweat, tears, and joys of my past
make up the compositions that create the music of my heart....."
Mandy Patinkin
********************************************************************
----------------Message-boundary
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject:
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 09:40:38 -0700 (PDT)
Unsubscribe Patinkin
__________________________________________________
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----------------Message-boundary
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: MP: LA Times Review
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 09:58:34 -0800
RD ROSENBERG / Television
'Strange Justice': Getting at Ugly Truth
loud boom arrives Sunday. It's Showtime's Emmy warning
shot across the bow of the Academy of Television Arts &
Sciences.
A flashback to 1991, the magnetic new movie is
"Strange Justice," more evidence that world-class HBO and
fast-rising Showtime just about own the franchise when it comes to
important, topical dramas on TV.
How important and topical? Think back eight years to the
Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill show, the most tense and captivating
political telecast in years. Remember?
They were reprehensibly self-serving. They lied. They distorted.
They misrepresented. They evaded. They dissembled. They
tap-danced. They sidestepped. They pirouetted nimbly out of reach.
They postured. So much so, in fact, that it was impossible to know
who was telling the truth.
And those were just the senators.
Whether the smarmy Joseph R. Biden (D-Del.) or the babbling
Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) or the incredibly shrinking Edward M.
Kennedy (D-Mass.) or the histrionic Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) or the nasty Alan Simpson
(R-Wyo.), this chapter of Americana was as infuriating as it was enthralling.
When it came to theater, African Americans Thomas and Hill were hardly chumps themselves,
their testimony before the camera and a panel of white male inquisitors splitting the
nation over which was being truthful about her charges that he had sexually harassed her
in a lewd manner.
You searched their faces for clues to their believability.
She blanched. He twitched. She choked up. He cried. What did it all mean? Ugly stereotypes
traveled across the airwaves along with the shrill din of politics. As Thomas famously
decried this "high-tech lynching for uppity blacks," again an African American male
was being defined by his alleged sexual proclivity. And the University of Oklahoma
law professor who had emerged from anonymity to attack him was widely impugned as
a puppet of the left and victim of her own alleged sexual fantasies.
No wonder these gory Senate Judiciary Committee wars--fought over President Bush's
ultra-conservative nominee to succeed retiring civil rights pioneer Thurgood Marshall
on the Supreme Court--were TV's government hearings of the century.
Discounting the Army-McCarthy hearings, the Watergate hearings and the Iran-contra
hearings, of course. And most recently, the Clinton impeachment hearings, which made
Hill's shocking charges against her former boss Thomas (coming in extremely graphic
testimony you may not want your children to watch," Dan Rather then warned CBS viewers)
seem almost quaint. Yet the Thomas-Hill duel itself was a distinctively grim and
polarizing national TV spectacle that set off whites vs. whites,whites vs. blacks,
blacks vs. blacks and males vs. females. Convoluted reasoning too often overtook logic,
with some of Thomas' defenders labeling Hill's motives racist, even
though she also was black. Deep inside the twisty warrens of Capitol Hll, meanwhile,
Machiavellian strategies were plotted, as both sides grappled for prime time and
public opinion while staging a great pantheon of bluster every bit as rank as
President Clinton and partisan demagogues haggling over his adventures with Monica
Lewinsky. Pr eceding that impeachment epic by years, Thomas-Hill was a foreshadowing
that exposed the warty underbelly of a congressional process that in this case was
nourished less by democratic ideals than by cynical, secret deal-making. Now this
TV court of mixed messages again convenes indelibly, this time under the hot, revealing
lights of "Strange Justice," an emotionally raw, boldly stylish movie that convicts
that process of malfeasance while staying neutral on the testimony and integrity of
Hill and Thomas, even though one of them had to be either fibbing under oath or
delusional. The brawny, deeply troubling Showtime account is based on the book
"Strange Justice," by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson. Instead of Hill, this time
it's Regina Taylor, so perfectly cast as Thomas' subdued accuser that her work
here for director Ernest Dickerson and executive producer-screenwriter Jacob Epstein
is positively eerie. And instead of stubby Thomas, it's towering Delroy Lindo,
so convincing and seethingly on point as the outraged, soon-to-be-narrowly confirmed
106th justice that the physical mismatch falls away.
"Strange Justice" is a sort of trilogy in one that begins with the campaign
to sell nominee Thomas to the Senate and the public, a task entrusted by the Bush
crowd to Kenneth Duberstein (ably played by Mandy Patinkin), the seasoned GOP
operative who had been White House chief of staff under Ronald Reagan.
Deploying textbook political spin, he plans to outflank liberals and other Thomas
opponents by defining him before they do. In other words: "Block their message,
get ours out, while making it look like none of it comes from the White House."
The strategy shifts to defense once Hill reuctantly
comes forward with her surprise accusations about Thomas, a former chairman of the E
qual Employment Opportunity Commission, after being urged by friends to do
so "if he did everything to you that you say he did." Ultimately the Thomasians
outmaneuver their foes, affirming that he who speaks last and in front of more
viewers--in addition to his stirring opening remarks, the nominee is granted time
to powerfully rebut Hill's persuasively damning testimony--usually carries the day.
"Strange Justice" has Thomas willing to fudge facts to get nominated, when coached by
Duberstein, for example, to camouflage his reputed anti-abortion views by obfuscating
on Roe vs. Wade. "Your opinion is that you haven't formed an opinion." Abortion rightists
were incredulous when that became his testimony. Epstein's script also does not deflect
charges that the nomination of Thomas, a relatively obscure appellate court judge,
was driven by radical right politics, not his judicial writings. They were virtually
nonexistent, and thus, crows a pleased Duberstein here, "less to defend."
Yet the movie endorses neither Hill's sexual harassment charges against Thomas nor the
accusations against her, and in fact depicts each as apparent earnest straight arrows. Never
more so than in Dickerson's charged replays of their speeches to the Judiciary Committee,
which keep to the text while magnifying their emotions with clearly surreal, invented
material filmed in tight close-ups and theatrical silhouettes. It's stagy but effective,
and so obvious a dramatic device that even amnesiacs aren't likely to regard these scenes
as entirely factual.
During this period, for example, the Hill seen on TV
was a composed stoic who mostly bottled her feelings in front of the committee.
But after starting calmly about Thomas, Taylor's Hill soon loses it, and tears streak
her cheeks as she shouts, "I told him I did not want to talk about these things!"
And she punctuates her memory of his alleged smutty
reference to a soft drink can by standing and holding a glass of water.
Lindo is jacket-less in the last of two appearances
before the committee as Thomas, moreover, his sleeves rolled to the elbow as he approaches
within arm's length of the senators, emotions aflame when removing his shirt,
throwing it to the ground and saying "no job is worth" what he's had to endure.
And when mentioning "high-tech lynching," he lifts his necktie like a noose.
Cut to Duberstein: "Bull's-eye."
As is Dickerson's cross-cutting of footage of
real committee members with their actor counterparts, a row of stony white guys
whose uniformity behind their microphones symbolizes the nation's historic
gender and color imbalance in not only the highest realms of
government but in all corridors of power. It was history repeating itself: men judging a
woman, whites judging blacks.
"Strange Justice" vividly recalls Hill's
virtual abandonment by Democrats on the committee for reasons that included a fear
of being seen as resisting a nominee because he
was black. Hill to a supporter: "What I'm hearing [is] expect nothing from the Democrats
because they can't afford to look partisan.
The Republicans are foaming to get at me. Who's on our side?"
Not the publicly unctuous Biden, certainly, nor the
curiously mum Kennedy, unable to hurdle his own checkered past to aggressively help
the besieged Hill. Nor was it the now-retired Simpson, a two-faced Republican
who had the gall to protest political cynicism
the day after claiming on TV to be getting calls and letters about Hill from Oklahoma saying,
"Watch out for this woman." On a talk show the next morning, he refused to provide details,
saying, in effect, anything goes in politics.
Including lying, which as the Thomas-Hill hearings stressed,
Americans appear to view as part of life's indigenous furniture, having become either
cynical about it or desensitized to it, possibly through TV.
Thomas, who for all we know may have been duplicitous
himself, angrily protests to the committee in Showtime's movie: "This is not America. . . . "
Isn't it?
_ _ _
"Strange Justice" can be seen Sunday at 8 p.m. on
Showtime. The network has rated it TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14).
####################################################
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----------------Message-boundary
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: MP: Wall St. Journal Review
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 10:03:41 -0800
August 23, 1999
TV
Reliving a 'Strange Justice'
By LARRY D. THOMPSON
The promotional materials accompanying "Strange Justice," Showtime's TV
movie on the Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill controversy, betray the movie's point of
view. This fictionalized account is based on the book of the same name by former Wall Street Journal
reporters Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson. The materials proudly quote the authors as describing
their book as dealing with "the falsehoods and distortions in selling Clarence Thomas to the American
people." The movie itself is a strongly tendentious and misleading account of the confirmation
hearings of Justice Thomas before the Senate Judiciary Committee and Ms. Hill's allegations of sexual
harassment. On one level, the movie is simply tiresome; on another, it is a profound disappointment.
Almost predictably, the movie is another in a series of seemingly endless
efforts to rewrite history in the aftermath of the 1991 confirmation hearings. Conservatives and
supporters of Justice Thomas are portrayed as sinister, win-at-all-cost bad guys. Liberals and anti-Thomas
partisans are shown as virtuous citizens acting solely out of some sense of public duty. For
example, in one scene, Regina Taylor ("I'll Fly Away"), who plays Ms. Hill tenderly, is shown trying to
decide whether she should go public with her allegations. The camera focuses on her pensive face and
then turns to a close-up of a nicely framed wall mounting bearing the aphorism, "Evil flourishes when
good people do nothing." One easily gets the picture of which of the two protagonists the movie favors.
Perhaps anticipating some incongruity or irony between how the movie
portrays what happened in the fall of 1991 to a Republican nominee to the Supreme Court and the more
recent events involving allegations of sexual improprieties on the part of a Democratic president,
there is a scene in which Ken Duberstein, played compellingly by Mandy Patinkin, is told by a shocked
aide that she had been informed by an intern that the White House was going to pull Justice
Thomas's nomination. (Mr. Duberstein shepherded the nominations of both Justice Thomas and Justice
David H. Souter through the confirmation process.) The film's Duberstein, in a scolding manner,
tells the aide not to believe anything she ever hears from an intern.
Taking this kind of theatrical license explains why Jacob Epstein, executive producer/writer, admitted
during the recent television critic's press tour that certain elements of the movie were "cooked up."
Sadly, the movie is a vehicle for another hatchet job on Justice Thomas's character. Justice Thomas's
denials, although movingly dramatized by Delroy Lindo (from Spike Lee's "Clockers," "Malcolm X"
and "Crooklyn"), are presented in a vacuum. Justice Thomas, a strong and fiercely independent man,
is wrongly depicted here as a mere pawn of unscrupulous Republican operatives. In that context, his
compelling denials appear not credible when compared to the reverential presentation of the sexual
harassment allegations. These distortions are just as bad today as they were in 1991. (It is also worth
noting that African-American advisers of Justice Thomas, like White House lobbyist Fred McClure
and White House spokeswoman Judy Smith are conspicuously absent from the film.)
One would not expect a work of this nature to take sides, but it seemingly
does. Material facts in the record are ignored. There is not even a glancing reference to what I
believe was the most significant testimony of the last day of the hearing -- the testimony of 12 very
impressive, accomplished, professional women who worked closely with Justice Thomas at the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission and other places. Their testimony was powerful and cast serious
doubt on the sexual harassment allegations. Contrary to the suggestion in the movie that the
conservatives cynically manipulated the hearings, eight of these 12 women testified after midnight
and after the television audience had gone to bed. A more balanced approach would have at least
mentioned these significant witnesses.
J.C. Alvarez, who spent four years working with Justice Thomas at the EEOC
as a special assistant, testified that she could not stand idly by and watch Justice Thomas being
"robbed" of his character.
Nancy Altman, who worked closely with Justice Thomas at the Department of
Education and on the staff of Sen. Jack Danforth of Missouri, testified that she herself had
been a victim of sexual harassment and that when it occurs, other women in the workplace know about
it. She noted that it was simply not credible for Justice Thomas to have done what was alleged
without any of the women who were testifying having ever heard even a hint of such activity.
Diane Holt, Justice Thomas's personal secretary at the EEOC, testified that
she was a friend of Ms. Hill, often lunching with her. At no time did Ms. Hill ever intimate "even
in the most subtle of ways" that Justice Thomas was asking her out or subjecting her to crude and
abusive conversation.
Patricia Talkin, who worked with Justice Thomas for three years as EEOC
chief of staff, testified movingly of Justice Thomas's understanding of the inherent imbalance of
power in the workplace between men and women. Concluding what Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware and
chairman of the Judiciary Committee called a very powerful statement, Ms. Talkin stated: "I
have spent over 18 years enforcing the laws against employment discrimination. ... I have never
worked in a work environment where any individual, man or woman, was more committed to
establishing a workplace free from discrimination and harassment. It is the saddest of ironies to me
that the behavior Justice Thomas found most abhorrent is the behavior that he is now being accused of."
The movie repeats in graphic detail the language of the allegations but
ignores what I have always believed to be a very significant inconsistency; that is, after being
well-prepared by a team of skilled lawyers, Ms. Hill's testimony before the Judiciary Committee was much more detailed and titillating than what she told the FBI. This did not go unnoticed by the agents who
conducted the initial interview. In fact, they prepared new reports contradicting the hearing
testimony. The agents said they advised Ms. Hill to be as specific as possible and provide details of
her allegations. If this was too embarrassing, the male agent offered to leave the room. The agents
noted that during the interview, Ms. Hill never mentioned Long Dong Silver or the infamous
incident involving a Coke can.
Angela Wright is portrayed as a credible witness who could have
corroborated the allegations. This is despite the fact that she had been fired from a congressman's office, fired
from the Agency for International Development, and fired from the EEOC by Justice Thomas after
referring to a homosexual as a "faggot." It is suggested that Ms. Wright was prevented
from testifying. In reality, she signed a letter from Sen. Biden agreeing not to testify, even though
the senator stated in the letter that he preferred that she testify. The movie suggests that all of this
resulted from pressure by Justice Thomas's supporters when, in fact, Sens. Strom Thurmond, Alan Simpson and
Orrin Hatch favored having Wright testify, as they believed her credibility issues would
actually help Justice Thomas's case.
In the movie, Ms. Hill is shown as passing a polygraph test and Justice
Thomas as refusing to take one. Questions regarding the appropriateness and reliability of polygraph
tests in general, and the one administered to Ms. Hill in particular, are ignored. For example, in Ms.
Hill's case, the control questions, as well as the charts of her actual responses to the questions,
were never released to the public.
Justice Thomas refused to take the test, but not because he was unsure of
himself, as depicted in the movie. Justice Thomas correctly recognized that for a sitting judge to
submit to such a test in the face of these allegations would constitute personal degradation of the highest
order. But he was even more astute. Knowing that the entire proceedings resulted from a perverse leak
to the press directly contrary to Senate rules (and again ignored by the movie), Justice Thomas
set forth the exact conditions under which he would submit to a polygraph: "I'll be next in
line if they take one as to who leaked."
The movie is a disappointment because I had hoped we were beyond the
politics of personal destruction. Sen. Danforth, in his wonderful book on the confirmation
hearings, "Resurrection," eloquently tells us that the bare knuckle, no-holds-barred, win-at-all-cost
wars that this confirmation hearing exemplified ultimately detract from all of us, liberals and
conservatives, Republicans and Democrats.
Because there were no rules and all believed that their cause was just,
both sides did things during the hearings that, in the calm aftermath of several years of reflection, now
cause second thoughts or misgivings. Unfortunately, as this movie demonstrates, some have not let go
and are willing, at least in the case of Justice Thomas, to allow the character attacks to continue.
And that is sad.
Mr. Thompson is a lawyer in Atlanta, Ga. He is a former U.S. Attorney and
was a legal adviser to Justice Thomas during the proceedings before the Senate Judiciary Committee
on the Anita Hill allegations.
####################################################
The Peter MacNicol Page Mandy Patinkin Showcase
http://www.petermacnicol.net http://www.mandypatinkin.net
####################################################
----------------Message-boundary
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: MP: Reuters
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 10:06:41 -0800
Strange Justice revisits Thomas-Hill scandal
Strange Justice (Sun. (29), 8-10 p.m., Showtime)
By Laura Fries
HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - Credit should be given to director Ernest Dickerson
and his cast for taking on a movie about a political sex
scandal whose shock value pales in comparison to bigger and nastier
political scandals of late.
But the Senate confirmation hearings on Clarence Thomas marked the first
real public debate on sexual harassment in the workplace and
continue to divide people on issues of gender and race. By offering a
behind-the-scenes account of the 10 turbulent days in which Thomas
was confirmed as the 106th Justice of the Supreme Court, Dickerson forgoes
any real judgment of Thomas or his accuser Anita Hill and
instead indicts the whole political process.
Based on the book by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson, ``Strange Justice'' is a
torrid account of the war between political parties and the
take-no-prisoners mentality that drove the process of selling Clarence
Thomas to the American public. Told mainly through the eyes of
Ken Duberstein (Mandy Patinkin), a PR man hired by George Bush's White
House, the pic ultimately lumbers on a little too long after the
curtain has been pulled back on the inner workings of Washington's spin
doctors.
``Strange Justice'' is not an investigative journey like ``All the
President's Men.'' The film is pure drama fueled by the incendiary events
that surrounded Thomas, the first black conservative to be named Supreme
Court Justice, and Hill, the law professor who accused him of
sexual harassment. Both TNT and Fox passed on the project before Showtime
resurrected it.
>From the day Thomas (Delroy Lindo) is nominated, Duberstein orchestrates
the sequence of events like a Broadway musical, muscling
congressmen to support the nomination, spoon-feeding Thomas answers and
manipulating media coverage.
Not too surprisingly, we learn that Thomas' appointment was a shrewd move
by then-President Bush to place ``a friend'' in the court
knowing that Thomas, a black conservative, would be spared any real cross
examination because of his race. The tactic almost worked
until Hill (Taylor) came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct.
Far more revealing is that the movie implies that Thomas' confirmation
hearing was so puppeteered by the While House that Sen. Joseph
Biden, head of the judiciary committee, would tip off Duberstein to breaks
in the hearings so that his PR team could get to the media
microphones first. It also was finagled that Hill's testimony aired during
a workday, while Thomas' rebuttal aired in primetime. Most
importantly, key witnesses who could back Hill's claim were summarily
dismissed before they could testify, and Thomas was sworn in
by a narrow margin of 52 to 48.
Jacob Epstein's script tries to be as impartial as possible, but eventually
leans in favor of Hill. Epstein and Dickerson do manage to create
a compelling case for both Thomas and Hill, who were forced into the center
of an ugly grudge match between the parties. If Thomas was
lynched, as he claimed in his testimony, so was Hill, but according to
Epstein, it was the public that was truly burned.
The three main stars, Lindo, Patinkin and Taylor check in with powerful
performances, although Lindo, as Thomas, is a lightening rod of
emotion. It is a meaty role and Lindo, playing Thomas as self righteous and
ambitious, sucks the marrow from it.
At times, Dickerson indulges in too many artful shots, lingering on milk
swirling in coffee and turning Thomas' and Hill's testimony into
near fantasy sequences. Still, his lens work is skillful and technical
credits are above board.
Kenneth Duberstein ...... Mandy Patinkin
Clarence Thomas ......... Delroy Lindo
Anita Hill .............. Regina Taylor
Sen. Danforth ........... Stephen Young
Charles Goodman ......... Philip Shepherd
Krean Hall .............. Leila Johnson
Vicki Desavia ........... Julie Khaner
Ginni Lamp .............. Janet Land
Sydney Duberstein ....... Kathleen Laskey
Shirley Wiegand ......... Lisa Mende
Thurgood Marshall ....... Paul Winfield
Vernon Jordan ........... Louis Gossett Jr.
Filmed on location in Los Angeles and Toronto by Showtime Networks.
Executive producers, Steven Haft, Jacob Epstein; director,
Ernest Dickerson; writer, Jacob Epstein; editor, Steve Lovejoy; sound, Bill
McMillan; casting, Lisa Freiberger, Ross Clydesdale.
Reuters/Variety
####################################################
The Peter MacNicol Page Mandy Patinkin Showcase
http://www.petermacnicol.net http://www.mandypatinkin.net
####################################################
----------------Message-boundary
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: MP: AP article
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 10:10:51 -0800
Clarence Thomas vs. Anita Hill: The drama of `Strange Justice'
FRAZIER MOORE, AP Television Writer
Friday, August 27, 1999
(08-27) 01:30 EDT NEW YORK (AP) -- Like the man said, the process stinks.
That was perhaps the only thing everyone could agree on during the
Senate confirmation hearings for Judge Clarence
Thomas. Those 10 stormy days in October 1991 left the nation
polarized and the nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, in
his own bitter words, dying ``a thousand deaths.''
Now Showtime presents ``Strange Justice,'' a drama of the campaigns
waged to save, and to sink, the nomination.
Premiering Sunday at 8 p.m. EDT, this splendid film, based on the
book ``Strange Justice, The Selling of Clarence
Thomas,'' seems a logical extension of the hearings themselves.
Broadcast gavel-to-gavel, day after day, they unfolded
as a galvanizing TV event. To view the film is to feel the
intervening years evaporate.
In his performance, Delroy Lindo seems to be channeling Thomas, the
conservative federal judge nominated by President
Bush to replace retiring Justice Thurgood Marshall, a liberal
champion of civil rights and the first black member of the
high court.
And Regina Taylor, best known from the TV series ``I'll Fly Away,''
is picture perfect as Anita Hill, the former Thomas
colleague who reluctantly, forcefully accused him of sexual harassment.
But the film, directed by Ernest Dickerson, is told from the
perspective of a not-so-public player, Washington strategist
Kenneth Duberstein, who was hired by the Bush Administration to
shepherd Thomas through.
As depicted by Mandy Patinkin, the likable, relentless Duberstein is
the focal point of the off-stage drama to land the job
for a candidate seen by his opponents as unfit and, worse, a quota
appointment and a traitor to his ethnic group.
Early on, Duberstein spells out the challenge: ``To make the case
that our candidate is decent, honest, qualified, intelligent
and fair, while the other side's gonna claim he's ultraconservative,
against women and minorities, and a little bit
strange.''
Patinkin, a Broadway musical star and a returning regular to TV's
``Chicago Hope,'' captures the blunt realism of this
political pro.
``Our job,'' says Duberstein, ``is the same as if we're selling a
product in the marketplace: Block their message, get ours
out, while making it look like none of it comes from the White House.''
Of course, the nomination nearly capsized after Hill stepped forward
with allegations of her former boss' crude remarks
and come-ons when they worked together at the Department of
Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission.
As delivered by Taylor, Anita Hill's testimony at first faithfully
mimics the real-life scene we viewed eight years ago. But
in the film's surreal restaging, the cool, composed witness is
permitted to cut loose, to exhibit the fury we remember her
for keeping in check.
The words are Hill's, but here she seethes, she snarls, she sheds
bitter tears. It's a startling display.
But no more so than the re-enacted testimony of Clarence Thomas, a
defiant man who felt cornered and under siege. As
with Hill, the film lets Thomas put his rage into action.
``This is a circus! A national disgrace!'' he erupts heroically, now
on his feet before the senators. He rips off his shirt.
``And as far as I'm concerned, as a black American, this is a
high-tech lynching!'' He tugs his necktie skyward, as if
hanging by it.
``Bull's-eye!'' says Duberstein, looking on with satisfaction.
In the end, Duberstein won the high-stakes game he had coached so
well. The Bush Administration won. And, oh yes,
Thomas pulled it out, gaining senate confirmation by a razor-thin
vote of 52-48.
But as the film makes clear, Thomas would never concede victory.
Nor, apparently, has his resentment abated. In a rare speech a year
ago, he bitterly attacked critics black and white,
declaring his refusal ``to have my ideas assigned to me as though I
was an intellectual slave because I'm black.''
``Strange Justice'' exposes a politicized process of which no one
could feel proud. It revisits the issues that made
everyone participating squirm: color and sex.
But, necessarily, it begs the question that keeps this sorry episode
from fading away: Who -- Thomas or Hill -- lied under
oath? Whoever you think, ``Strange Justice'' will only harden your
stance and reinspire your anger.
####################################################
The Peter MacNicol Page Mandy Patinkin Showcase
http://www.petermacnicol.net http://www.mandypatinkin.net
####################################################
----------------Message-boundary
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Another SJ review - NY Times
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 13:05:46 -0400
There is also an AP review in my hometown paper that gives Strange Justice
and MP a rave. Yea! Mary p.s. you can access the article from the AP site.
----- Original Message -----
From: Char
To:
Sent: Friday, August 27, 1999 10:59 AM
Subject: Another SJ review - NY Times
> Here's a review from today's Times:
>
> 'Strange Justice': He Said, She Said, and the Whole Nation Listened
> by Caryn James
>
> Someone had to be lying. During the Senate hearings on Clarence Thomas'
> nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, Anita Hill testified that he had made
> graphic sexual remarks when he was her boss; he denied the accusations.
>
> And as Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson put it in "Strange Justice," their
> thoroughly reported and trenchant book, "Two people with such completely
> contradictory accounts cannot possibly both be telling the truth."
>
> That nonfiction book is now the basis for one of the slyest, most
> unexpectedly fascinating television dramas of the year. Showtime's "Strange
> Justice" brings
> fresh life to a story that is more than familiar: the Thomas-Hill saga is a
> benchmark that left the country more jaded than before.
>
> As a fictional news announcer explains at the start of the film, the
> hearings were "a train wreck of race, sex, politics, all played out before a
> TV audience of a hundred million people."
>
> In those innocent days of 1991, sexual harassment was an odd, new phrase to
> most of the country. Since then, of course, Paula Jones has sued President
> Clinton over it, and in a backlash-inducing turn of events grammar-school
> children have been accused of harassing their classmates.
>
> The film confines itself to events surrounding the confirmation, yet the
> viewer's knowledge of how the harassment issue has evolved matters: in that
> light the movie emphasizes that today's murky attitudes toward sexual
> harassment started with an event that remains fraught with questions. (The
> film was enough of a hot potato for the rights to have been picked up and
> tossed aside by Turner and Fox.)
>
> Jacob Epstein's script and director Ernest Dickerson's sometimes brilliant
> choices overcome the obstacles of knowing how the story played out. Deftly
> moving from outside events to a sparing use of surrealism, the film comes to
> reflect the tumultuous inner lives of the Hill and Thomas characters, whose
> violent emotions were masked by their decorum at the hearings.
>
> Taking its lead from the book's subtitle, "The Selling of Clarence Thomas,"
> the film focuses on the machinations of the Bush White House to get Thomas
> confirmed.
>
> Regina Taylor is affecting as the reluctant Anita Hill, unprepared for the
> hardball of Washington politics. The underrated Delroy Lindo gives one more
> amazing performance as the fiercely offended, righteous Clarence Thomas.
>
> Yet it is Mandy Patinkin who holds the film together as Kenneth Duberstein,
> the consultant who is assigned by the White House to help Thomas navigate
> through the hearings and who is just as much a player as the principals.
>
> Duberstein says his job is "the same as selling a product." He rehearses
> Thomas for the hearings and counsels him to avoid land-mine topics like
> abortion.
>
> In the age of spin it is not a news flash that Supreme Court nominees are
> just as packaged as political candidates. What Patinkin's subtle depiction
> brings to the character are decency and pragmatism in a portrayal more
> chilling than if Duberstein had been presented as a monster. His
> conservative politics are sincere, and a job is a job, even when he comes to
> doubt the nominee's truthfulness. Here is the scary reality of politics as
> usual.
>
> The Mayer and Abramson book, written when the authors were reporters at The
> Wall Street Journal (they are now at The New Yorker and The New York Times,
> respectively), builds a careful argument that Thomas had a history, going
> back to his college days, of interest in pornography and of making
> shockingly crude remarks.
>
> The film tilts in Ms. Hill's direction but takes a less overt position.
> Blink and you'll miss its first reference to a video-store owner who was,
> belatedly, willing to testify that Thomas had rented sexually explicit
> tapes. Still, the White House manipulations are enough to smack of
> distortion, if not dishonesty.
>
> The movie presents other women who might have accused Thomas of harassment
> or supported Hill's assertions, but who were not called by the Senate
> Judiciary Committee. A Thomas adviser threatens, "When we get through with
> Anita Hill, there's not going to be enough left to mop the floor."
>
> Yet the film allows for the sincerity of both characters, a position that
> relies more on the oddities of human psychology than on logic. If it seems
> clear that Hill is telling the truth, Thomas' sense of baffled outrage seems
> just as deeply felt.
>
> Because she plays the simpler, more straightforward character, Ms. Taylor
> has less to work with than Lindo does. He creates a Clarence Thomas who is
> genuinely
> tortured by these events yet who remains a mystery at the end.
>
> He bristles when he believes that Vernon Jordan is condescending to him.
> (Jordan is now so familiar, it is disconcerting to see him played by Louis
> Gossett Jr.)
>
> After the Hill accusations, Thomas writhes on the floor in the middle of the
> night (a scene reported in the book, not invented). His comforting wife
> tells him: "It's God's will. It's his way of testing you, Clarence. You are
> his warrior."
>
> In the film's most daring and effective set piece, the Hill and Thomas
> testimonies acquire a surreal edge, taking a decisive step into pure fiction
> that turns the characters inside out, as if their psyches were being
> splashed across the screen.
>
> Ms. Hill was restrained to the point of coldness during her testimony, in
> her prim blue suit. Here, as the Senate chamber recedes into shadow, the
> character mocks. Thomas and speaks in a ferocious voice, her angry face
> captured in close-up.
>
> The Thomas testimony is depicted in even more dynamic terms. At first the
> light glares off his glasses; eventually he stands from the table and as he
> shouts, he tears off his jacket and shirt.
>
> When he arrives at his most famous line, calling the hearings "a high-tech
> lynching for uppity blacks," he gestures as if hanging himself with his red
> paisley tie, the image of a contemporary lynched man. Dickerson guides the
> film smoothly in and out of these enhanced scenes; they are not for the
> literal minded but work as extraordinary drama.
>
> One of the movie's rare clumsy choices is to splice the actors into actual
> news film. It seems less, not more real, to see Lindo stand next to
> President George Bush when he announces the Thomas nomination. That is one
> of the hazards of dramatizing events that played out on television to begin
> with.
>
> Yet even this pitfall comes with a reward. The news film includes a moment
> that played as congressional high camp even the first time around: here
> again is Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, waving a copy of "The Exorcist" and
> angrily reading from it as a possible source for the "pubic hair on my Coke"
> remark.
>
> As a Hill adviser says in the most unarguable line of this shrewd, resonant
> film: "These guys play rough. It's politics. Truth hardly enters into it."
>
> ********************************************************************
> Mandy Patinkin - High Flying Adored
> http://home.att.net/~mosert/char/mandy.htm
>
> "The blood, sweat, tears, and joys of my past
> make up the compositions that create the music of my heart....."
> Mandy Patinkin
> ********************************************************************
>
>
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