Coronavirus Quarantine Diary: Day 55, Entry 15, Newsreels, The Beatles, a Movie, Workplace Relationships, an Accuser, This Post Has it All

Time marches on, or so it was always intoned on the long ago newsreel series, The March of Time. Newsreels were just dying out as I began going to the movies. I have vague recollection of seeing one at a Saturday matinee that introduced a popular new English rock and roll group called The Beatles. As a nine-year-old I was neither an enthusiast of neither rock nor roll nor particularly keen on music in general, although I did like Johnny Rivers and my favorite song was 76 Trombones from the Music Man. It would have been shortly thereafter that The Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan show and were thus formally introduced to the United States. I watched that February evening in 1964 and my life changed forever. Overnight I became a huge music fan, though for awhile I was exclusively a fan of The Beatles and thought it disloyal to listen to anyone else. That soon changed and I became an enthusiast of both rock and roll — but only in combination, of course -- rocks were never my thing and I barely got a B in Geology.

Anyway I started off with a bit about newsreels. One can still see them on YouTube and they appear occasionally on Turner Classics Movie channel and even as DVD special features on movies from the Thirties and Forties. Today we have instant news at our fingertips and it is a simple enough matter to see accompanying video, some raw and unfiltered. (Come to think of it, if footage is raw, then doesn’t it stand to reason that it is perforce unfiltered? Likewise isn’t something unfiltered also raw? I’m afraid I’m going to have to rule that writing raw and unfiltered represents an oxymoron.) Today a lot of the news we get is biased, I suppose that’s always been the case but now there is in many cases no pretense at being objective and editorializing has seamlessly been blended into news reporting. I grew up watching network news (even as a tyke I was a news junkie) and reading what we later called the straight or establishment press. Most newspapers and magazines and certainly television news, made a sincere effort at achieving objectivity. However if, for example, there were demonstrations against the U.S. government, reportage usually emphasized the government’s response while treating protestors as outliers. This was in evidence as recently as George W. Bush’s first inauguration at which there were thousands protesting the handling of the election results. The New York Times buried the story of the protests in the back of the paper and said virtually nothing about their message.

Again I’ve strayed away from newsreels. In the days before television they were surely a godsend, giving, as they did, visuals and sound to the stories that people were reading about in their newspapers. How much more dramatic are stories of floods, fascist rallies, invading armies and even political speeches when one can see and hear them? Many newsreels were comprised of snippets of news from around the country or globe including charming human interest stories. Many others were in-depth reports of serious issues effecting the country or the world.

Some theaters exclusively showed newsreels, though the vast majority were shown before the main feature at regular movie houses. This was at a time when in addition to two movies you could see a cartoon, newsreels and perhaps a travelogue (ninety per cent of all travelogues about cities included the following line: Bucharest is a combination of the old and the new.) You got a lot of bang for your buck in those days. As a child I often went to Saturday matinees at the UC Theater in Berkeley where I could see a couple of movies and batch of cartoons for 50 cents. I might instead go to the Oaks Theater where the same fare cost only 35 cents. I recall once catching a triple feature of Jerry Lewis films (as a young lad I was a huge fan of his and even joined his fan club, I also belonged to a Steve McQueen fan club because while I thought Lewis to be the funniest man in the world, I reckoned McQueen to be the coolest).

So I continue to digress from newsreels and perhaps that’s because I don’t really have a whole lot to say about them. I do urge my readers — the McGerkin twins of Kalamazoo, Michigan — to take a look at some on YouTube. To start just type vintage newsreels in the site’s search engine, though perhaps the vintage bit is superfluous.

Anyway as I started out saying: Time marches on and in a global pandemic it is a real contradiction. I’m finding that days absolutely fly by, perhaps because I jam pack each day, leaving myself very little “free time.” I write in the morning, do my exercises, watch a movie or two, read, write again, perhaps watch something on the telly with the missus and read some more. Oh yes, I take walks. If I find myself sitting around idly I feel like precious time is slipping away. As I write this it seems odd that I consider watching movies an important use of my time. I suppose that’s in part a function of how essential films are to my world view but also a reflection of a certain obsessive compulsiveness. Also I’ve got one helluva lot to watch. First of all there are films from my extensive DVD collection (numbering close to 250 different movies) then there are the two DVDs a week that arrive from my good friends at Netflix. Then there are all the movies on my viewing list on the Criterion Channel and finally there are the movies on TCM that I DVR. Add to that the movies I need to see that I don’t own and are not available on Netflix or Criterion and are not about to be shown on TCM that I have to find in other places such as on Amazon Video on Demand or HBO Go or Hulu or You Tube and I’ve got a lot going on.

Good Night and Good Luck

Speaking of films….Yesterday I watched, for perhaps the fourth of fifth time, George Clooney’s wonderful, Good Night and Good Luck from 2005. I’ll assume you know something about it and dispense with the summary (if need be you can click on the link I provided for the movie — sheesh, do I need to hold your hand through everything?). What I noted during yesterday’s viewing was how much -- though the legendary Edward R. Murrow was the face of the team -- it was about workplace relationships and camaraderie. There is a special bond that can develop between co-workers, especially when they are engaged in work they love and find meaningful and even important as would certainly be the case with people working on a news show, like the merry band of brothers from Good Night. We see not just the teamwork that is essential to accomplishing their goals but the in-jokes, the shared downtime, how they relax together, how they know each other so well and how important their relationships are.

Generally speaking, most people like being part of teams. One of the great joys of playing competitive sports is being part of a group, having a group identity along with an individual one. The group affords security and companionship and shared responsibility. Even individualistic people with strong egos can take comfort from coordinating with others, we are social beings, after all. This is why the military has remained popular throughout human history. You are not just representing your country, you are part of a group and that's group safety and success sometimes takes precedence over national aims.

In GNAGL there is a scene in a bar after a particularly important broadcast (one that took red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy to task). The news team is proud of its efforts but there could be a reckoning for taking on such a powerful — if divisive — figure. How the country will react, not to mention the senator — are one of many questions they ponder. But for now they have each other. Work is over and they can drink and talk and laugh and whatever comes they’re in it together.

I’ve been part of such times. We’ve gotten the newspaper out, the legislation has been passed, the teaching week is over and we sit together ignoring good posture, our shoulders at last relaxed and not hunched, our conversations breezy, no immediate cares, no need to rush our words and worry about what to do next. We can reflect on our labors and talk of well-earned leisure time. We did it together and it is finished. There’s more work ahead but that’s for another day, one that is both distant and looming in the contradictory way that work goes.

Good Night and Good Luck is a good history lesson, it's a good look at newspeople in action but is also a vehicle for watching dedicated co-workers functioning as a team in the very best sense of the word.

I close with this headline I saw today via the Washington Post about Tara Reade the woman who has accused democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden of sexual assault: “Biden accuser says she is ‘not here to influence a national election’” Really? That is not your intent? Even giving the timing and that you called for him to drop out? Look lady, I don’t know whether Biden assaulted you or not (nor do I fully understand why you waited until he was his party’s nominee for president before making your accusations public) but this business about not wanting to influence the presidential election is totally disingenuous. I could — if I had a gun — walk downtown and fire off a few rounds and then say, I didn’t mean to kill, injure or terrify anyone. I suppose I could be sincere too. A lot of good that would do my victims.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to my decoupage. I truly am a Renaissance man.