Finally saw "All The President's Men" -- now THAT'S a journalism movie!!! Hell yeah, makes me want to go back to the night shift!! Well, maybe not that. But yeah! Go journalists! Go people bringing down the crooked government! Go young cub reporters getting the trust of the publisher! Go people doing all kinds of shady, twisted questioning to get the truth! Yeehaw!
There was so much clacking of typewriter keys in that movie that my fingers are twitching to move. How great. I absolutely adored the scene right toward the end when Woodward goes to Bernstein's house to tell him Deep Throat told him everything -- and that their lives were in danger and they were being bugged. Woodward (a quite nice looking young Robert Redford, now I understand the hype) cranks up Bernstein's stereo to blast trumpet-laden classical music, then goes to the typewriter, unwilling to speak. He types, Bernstein types, the clacking of keys and the booming of brass, and the power of that cinematography is fabulous.
And the age of the film was fabulous. Bernstein smoking everywhere, rotary phones, an ancient Xerox machine, all the manual typewriters that didn't even do automatic return at the end of a line. And the decor at the Post: flourescent lights, tacky carpet, horrible desks and filing cabinets, whitewashed pillars -- all brand new in the 70s, and all somehow still the decor at my old paper ... Shana, it's like deja vu, only no swastikas in the ventilation screens.
And I love how you have absolutely no clue who Deep Throat was. Now I see how it was such a mystery.
Woo-hoo, so glad I saw that! So glad, also, that I didn't read the book. That cast of characters would have been mind-boggling and the various crimes confusing. But a great movie.
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Welcome to my odditorium, a collection of curiosities made up of snippets about my life and occasional machinations on deeper subjects.
1 comment:
It's 1:07 a.m. on a Friday night, and i'm here at ye olde office. Do you really want to come back? :D
Yeah, I saw it after I graduated from college, and I loved it, too. And yep, Redford is QUITE the hottie back in the day. It reminded me of here, but also of the newsroom in Fayetteville, before the HUGE makeover they did there that is now considered a "model" newsroom. It was really pretty. There were even WINDOWS. Can you imagine?? And you know Dys would love it if he could sit at his desk and puff away like in the old days. I'm very glad I've held on to my two type writers — one electric, but one manual that makes that loud noise!
I still want to read the book, but yeah, it does take quite the bloom off once you actually know who Deep Throat was.
--Shana, minion in old-fashioned (but nonsmoking) newsroom, wasting my 20s away ...
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