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Apr. 1st, 2003 01:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lapsedmodernisti was watching the USA movie "Rudy" last night.
nicole was right: the title of the movie should have been "What a mensch! The Rudy Guiluani story"
i believe i have ranted on here before about my problems with cinematic portrayals of "complex" men (for some reason this "complexity" is always twinned with treating women in their lives like shit)
but here is a question: the movie kept cutting between Giuliani's life and September 11th. At one point, shortly after the second plane hits, in the movie he calls the White House to get clearance for airspace above the towers, (while all the press mics and cameras are in his face) and finds out that it's evacuated, the Pentagon's been hit and Bush is missing/hiding/airborne in Airforce One, whatever. Realizing that Washinton is going to be of no help (then or in the future), he says "We are on our own. We are the United States of New York." Does anyone know if he actually said it, and then it was downplayed in the press as an "unpatriotic" comment? I am really curious. I don't remember him saying that, but then again, I only had CBS with bad reception that day.
nicole was right: the title of the movie should have been "What a mensch! The Rudy Guiluani story"
i believe i have ranted on here before about my problems with cinematic portrayals of "complex" men (for some reason this "complexity" is always twinned with treating women in their lives like shit)
but here is a question: the movie kept cutting between Giuliani's life and September 11th. At one point, shortly after the second plane hits, in the movie he calls the White House to get clearance for airspace above the towers, (while all the press mics and cameras are in his face) and finds out that it's evacuated, the Pentagon's been hit and Bush is missing/hiding/airborne in Airforce One, whatever. Realizing that Washinton is going to be of no help (then or in the future), he says "We are on our own. We are the United States of New York." Does anyone know if he actually said it, and then it was downplayed in the press as an "unpatriotic" comment? I am really curious. I don't remember him saying that, but then again, I only had CBS with bad reception that day.
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Charlie thinks....
Date: 2003-04-03 12:19 pm (UTC)So did the movie show that much of the 'complexity' involved him being an evil fuckwad who everybody hated?
I think that's a really important part of the 'he divided a city' section of the tagline. It pains me to think that even after Dubya is eventually villified as a terrible, retarded leader (and yes, I really believe it will happen, someday- but probably after his reign), Guiliani will be lionized as a hero to everybody who didn't live here.
Rrrrrrrr.
Re: Charlie thinks....
Date: 2003-04-03 12:29 pm (UTC)and whatever, it's annoying that he is this complex/reified/tortured modern promethius in the movie. i gotta say, though, that even though i think he is vile and his policies were racist and horrible before 9/11 AND he endorsed Bush AND he lied over and over and over after 9/11, and my next sentiment is completely contingent on comparison/curve, if i am being fair then i have to say that in the *synchronic* context of 9/11 attack and the immediate aftermath, he was acting like a decent human being, and i was glad that he was the mayor at that moment (and that moment only). i mean, while we were all freaking the fuck out, he was out there, not hiding like Shrub and Vice, in the city, walking around, talking to people, giving press-conferences where he at least tried to be informative, and not being a scaredy-chicken-shit.
aside from that moment in time, he still totally sucked and continues to suck.