Year 13, Day 111 - 4/21/21 - Movie #3,815
BEFORE: Same link as yesterday, Barack and Michelle Obama carry over via archive footage, and probably several others do as well.
Set your DVRs today for tomorrow's Oscar-nominated films on TCM - Thursday is Day 22 of their "31 Days of Oscar" line-up:
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Selma" (Movie #3,650)
THE PLOT: The film explores the Georgia representative's 60-plus years of social activism and legislative action on civil rights, voting rights, gun control, health care reform and immigration.
AFTER: It's just a coincidence that I'm reviewing this film about civil rights on the day that a major judgment got handed down in the Chauvin trial, the killing of George Floyd. How could I possibly have known? I couldn't have - just as tomorrow's scheduling was also accidental, but I'll deal with that tomorrow. Minneapolis, New York City and other urban areas were braced for possible protests, which now are not going to happen. Now, of course racism hasn't been solved, there will still be killings of black Americans by cops, so it's hard to say that anything's been solved, but in this one instance, some justice has been rendered - not that it should have been necessary in the first place, but, you know...
Almost a year ago, we had the Black Lives Matter protests going on, and I saw the need to make a pivot, change my schedule and watch "Selma" so I could understand more of the protest history, and now I've hit the same topic again, only harder this time, with a biographical documentary on John Lewis, who participated in the marches from Selma to Montgomery, and also was one of the original "Freedom Riders" who rode on segregated buses from Washington to New Orleans to protest racist seating policies. AND before that he participated in the Nashville sit-ins to protest racist lunch counter service. AND as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, he helped organize the 1963 March on Washington and spoke at the event. AND he wrote a response to JFK's Civil Rights bill, calling it "too little, too late" and also taking it to task for not protecting African Americans from police brutality. Yes, this all does feel somewhat relevant, especially with the news of the day and of the last year.
All of this, protesting, getting arrested, is what Lewis called "good trouble", causing trouble for the right reasons, for a noble cause. Serving in Congress is also a noble cause, and he did that too, serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1987 until his death in 2020. He was part of many major positive pieces of legislation, and earned everything from the Profile in Courage award to the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He was awarded over 50 honorary degrees and was the first member of Congress to write a graphic novel - so, basically, he was no slouch. Watch this only if you want to feel somewhat ineffectual by comparison - like, I wish I had a cause that I felt strongly enough to protest and get arrested for. My father did a lot of charity work, and I just can't find the time to follow in his footsteps, so I don't even bother, I just send some money to City Harvest when I can. But damn, John Lewis was a busy, committed force of nature for over five decades.
(Lewis also has the distinction of referring to Donald Trump as a "demagogue" way back in January 2016, before most other people figured this out. Then after the 2016 election he called him an illegitimate President and refused to attend his inauguration. John Lewis knew what was up...)
The film does a better job, near the end of the film, of listing all the important legislation that John Lewis wrote, co-wrote, or introduced. Just watch the damn film, it's the least you can do to honor his legacy...Lewis died last year, just two weeks after the film premiered, and at that time, he was the last surviving speaker from the historic March on Washington in August 1963.
Also starring John Lewis, (last seen in "All In: The Fight for Democracy"), Stacey Abrams (ditto), Eric Holder (ditto), Hillary Clinton (ditto), Bill Clinton (last seen in "Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook"), Colin Allred, Cory Booker (last seen in "Fahrenheit 11/9"), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (ditto), James Clyburn, Elijah Cummings (last seen in "Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook"), Antonio Delgado, Lizzie Fletcher, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Anthony Johnson, Mike Kelly, Bernard Lafayette, James Lawson, Sheila Jackson Lee, Ilhan Omar, Nancy Pelosi (last seen in "Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm"), Ayanna Pressley, Beto O'Rourke, James Sensenbrenner, Rashida Tlaib, Marc Veasey, Ruth Berg, Noah Bookbinder, Lonnie Bunch, Xernona Clayton, Michael Collins, Bettie Mae Fikes, Henry Lewis, John Miles Lewis, Samuel Lewis, Ethel Lewis-Tyner, Rosa Lewis-Tyner, Charles Neblett, Jamila Thompson,
with archive footage of Julian Bond, Tom Brokaw (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton"), George W. Bush (last seen in "All In: The Fight for Democracy"), Lyndon Johnson (ditto), Martin Luther King (ditto), Ronald Reagan (ditto), Marcia Fudge (ditto), Andrew Young (ditto), Laura Bush (last seen in "An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power"), Stokely Carmichael, Jimmy Carter (last seen in "Steal This Movie"), Jamie Foxx (last seen in "Project Power"), Bryant Gumbel (last seen in "The Weather Man"), Vicky Hartzler, Robert F. Kennedy (last seen in "The Trial of the Chicago 7"), Jesse Jackson (also carrying over from "Becoming"), Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, Diane Nash, Maxine Waters, Paul Weyrich, Malcolm X (last seen in "Da 5 Bloods").
RATING: 7 out of 10 enthralled chickens
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