BEFORE: Well, the Doc Block is winding down, after tonight I'll just have three docs left, then it's back to fiction films, and at this point I've almost forgotten what it feels like to watch one of those. Really, anything, sci-fi, comedy, superhero, I'll take ANY fiction film after watching all these docs about financial collapse, the Holocaust and Lynyrd Skynyrd's plane crashing. Things have gotten just a bit too real around here, perhaps you'll agree. Plus there have been so many docs about dead people - Sam Kinison, Paul Reubens, Barbara Walters and so on. I keep thinking that instead of lining up films with people's birthdays, I'll accidentally line up a doc with its subject's passing. Well, Martha Stewart is 84 and Dan Rather is, umm, 93 and turns 94 this Halloween. Perhaps I'm right to be concerned - hang in there, Dan, don't leave us just yet.
Dan Rather carries over again from "Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse". You see what I did, right? The last three films were about print media - Ms. magazine, Martha Stewart's magazines, and then graphic novels about historical events. Thematically it's just a small hop over to TV journalism tonight, get it?
THE PLOT: Chronicles Dan Rather's rise to prominence, sudden and dramatic public downfall, and redempton and re-emergence as a voice of reason to a new generation.
AFTER:I was kind of raised in a CBS household, my grandmother wouldn't get her evening news from anyone but Walter Cronkite - he could do no wrong in her eyes. When he retired, I think she stuck with Dan Rather, I kind of remember when he took over the anchor desk, and he lasted a good number of years before he clashed with George Bush the elder and also walked off the set when his broadcast got held up by an important (?) tennis match. Well, you mess with the bull and you get the horns, which is probably something that folksy Texas Dan might say.
Disaster was his muse, too - the first big story he reported on was Hurricane Carla, which hit the Texas Gulf Coast in 1961, when he convinced 350,000 people to evacuate rather than stick around. After gaining national attention and being hired by CBS, they kept him down South during the Civil Rights movement, and he talks in this doc about seeing the race riots in the early 1960's, which made him question his duty as a reporter to not get too involved, he wanted to do more for the cause but you know, just reporting about it probably did a lot of good. This meant he was based in Dallas when the biggest news story ever practically dropped into his lap in November 1963, of course I'm talking about the 95th birthday of former Vice President John Nance Garner.
Just kidding - but that's why Dan Rather was in Dallas at the time of the JFK assassination, though he drove right through Dealey Plaza to pick up some film from a camera truck, parked on the other side of the railroad tracks behind the grassy knoll. Hmm. Hey, did you ever notice how Dan Rather managed to be in so many famous newsworthy places? Somebody should probably investigate that. Rather also claims to be one of the first people to view the Zapruder film, then he kind of made himself a household name by reporting on the events that took place after, with Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald and then the national period of mourning. That got him assigned to the London bureau, but also he reported from Vietnam in 1966. The big problem there was that reporters were showing American viewers how horrible the war was, while LBJ and Nixon were telling Americans that it was all just one big misunderstanding, and it would be over as soon as the U.S. soldiers got it all sorted out.
Nixon must have really hated Dan Rather, they did that uneasy half-joking sort of thing during press conferences, neither one willing to say to the other what they really wanted to say. Jeez, guys, get a room already. Rather must have really loved investigating Watergate, because as they say, he who laughs last laughs best, while the other guy gets impeached. Can some of today's reporters please take some notes here, we all know every damn thing Trump has done wrong, we know he was behind the January 6 coup, and now he's getting my favorite TV shows cancelled, in a blatant misuse of power. I know there must still be some reporters out there who remember how to do their job, unfortunately I think we're too far gone now, nothing the reporters can dig up could possibly get Trump impeached for a third time. Still, why not go for it? (cough) Epstein Files! (cough) Somebody hack the Epstein Files and print them! What the hell do we even HAVE Wikileaks for, if not that?
My point is, JFK was killed, and who benefited? The war wasn't going well in Vietnam, and hwo benefited? Nixon was forced to resign, and who benefited? Dan Rather got promoted each time, and he was right there to take over when Cronkite resigned. Just saying. He held the anchor spot at CBS from 1981 to 2004, though they gave him Connie Chung as a co-anchor from 1993 to 1995, just like ABC made Harry Reasoner share the evening news with Barbara Walters a few years before.
There's footage here of Dan Rather interviewing Fidel Castro, and my Spanish may be a bit rusty, but I think Castro was saying, "Can we hurry this up? I'm meeting with Barbara Walters at 2:00." Later Dan Rather is seen meeting with Saddam Hussein, and so I guess both he and Barbara had a knack for landing face-time with America's enemies, and that includes Dan keeping it light in a press conference with Richard Nixon. This doc also shows Rather traveling to Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan War, and then later during the first U.S. Gulf War, getting an interview with Saddam Hussein, and he interviewed Saddam again in 2003, like what could possibly go wrong there?
It wasn't all fun and dictators, though, there's the older footage of Rather getting handled roughly and punched in the stomach during the Democratic National Convention in 1968 while Walter Cronkite sat safely at a desk on an upper level in the same building. Yeah, you can see what the pecking order was.
Then his biggest stumbling block came when the story broke about George W. Bush's military record, how he might have been derelict in his duty and got the equivalent of a free ride during his time in the Texas Air National Guard, and not Vietnam, during the Vietnam War. The documents CBS was using to prove that Bush Jr. didn't fulfill his military obligations were called out as forged, even though the information within them was later deemed to be correct. But then nobody really remembered the facts of the case, they just heard "false docs" and assumed that CBS was wrong, when they were in fact right, they just couldn't prove it. So after 44 years at CBS News, Dan Rather was escorted out the door. I feel your pain, Dan, though I'm a bit late with the sentiment.
Rather filed a lawsuit against CBS because of his dismissal - and by the time 2009 rolled around, there was more proof that George W. had in fact left his military service a year early. But the lawsuit was unsuccessful, and largely it was because the news is brought to us by large corporations, and those corporations don't want to upset the President, because that would be bad for business. Hey, does any of this sound familiar? Like how Paramount agreed to cancel Colbert so the President wouldn't mess with their upcoming merger? Just checking - go back to Rather's 2004 lawsuit and you'll see the start of the very slippery slope.
The news was done with Rather, but Rather wasn't done with the news. He had a weekly one-hour news show, "Dan Rather Reports", that ran on HDNet (now called AXS TV), and then "The Big Interview With Dan Rather" after that. I recently watched his interviews with Billy Gibbons and Weird Al Yankovic, they're still playing in reruns. And then in his mid-80's, Rather finally discovered social media, and became a presence on Facebook and Twitter (now called X). Great, just what we all needed, another senior citizen on Facebook. But at least he's still speaking out (or complaining, every senior citizen's favorite hobby) about political influence in journalism. Which is great, but I have to wonder if anyone is really paying attention at this point.
Directed by Frank Marshall (director of "The Beach Boys" and producer of "The Special Relationship")
Also starring Samantha Bee, Tom Bettag, Douglas Brinkley, David Buksbaum, Andy Cohen (last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything"), Mark Cuban (last seen in "Hustle"), Larry Doyle, Ronan Farrow, Jim Murphy, Wayne Nelson, Soledad O'Brien (last seen in "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot"), Rick Perlstein, Martin Rather, Robin Rather, Dana Roberson, Shepard Smith (last seen in "Rigged; The Voter Suppresion Playbook"), Howard Stringer, Margaret Sullivan, Andrew Young (last seen in "I Am MLK Jr."), Susan Zirinsky,
with archive footage of Roger Ailes, Glenn Beck (last seen in "Capitalism: A Love Story"), Julian Bond (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"), Tom Brokaw (last seen in "Martha"), Jimmy Fallon (ditto), Peter Jennings (ditto), Conan O'Brien (ditto), Bill O'Reilly (ditto), Charlie Rose (ditto), Morley Safer (ditto), George H.W. Bush (last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything"), George W. Bush (ditto), Jimmy Carter (ditto), Fidel Castro (ditto), Bill Clinton (ditto), Walter Cronkite (ditto), John F. Kennedy (ditto), Martin Luther King Jr. (ditto), Richard Nixon (ditto), Nancy Reagan (ditto), Donald Trump (ditto), Laura Bush (last seen in "The Queen of Versailles"), Tucker Carlson (last seen in "Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution"), Johnny Carson (last seen in "Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print"), Ronald Reagan (ditto), Harry Reasoner (ditto), Dinah Shore (ditto), Dick Cheney (last seen in "The Special Relationship"), Brian Doyle-Murray (last seen in "Belushi"), Fred Friendly, Jean Grace Goebel, Sean Hannity (last seen in "Mike Wallace Is Here"), Mike Wallace (ditto), Jesse Helms, Magee Hickey, Hubert Humphrey (last seen in "WBCN and the American Revolution"), E. Howard Hunt, Saddam Hussein (last seen in "The Devil's Double"), Laura Ingraham, Alex Jones (last seen in "A Scanner Darkly"), Lyndon Johnson (last seen in "ReMastered: Tricky Dick and the Man in Black"), Megyn Kelly (last seen in "Join or Die"), Lee Harvey Oswald (ditto), Jim Lehrer (last seen in "Zoolander 2"), G. Gordon Liddy (last heard in "Rules of Engagement"), Mary Mapes, Scott McClellan, James McCord, Julie Chen Moonves, Rupert Murdoch, Edward R. Murrow (last seen in "My Mom Jayne"), Joe Piscopo (last seen in "De Palma"), John Roland, Jack Ruby, Joe Scarborough (last seen in "Irresistible"), Jon Stewart (last seen in "Trainwreck: Poop Cruise"), Garrick Utley, and the band R.E.M.,
RATING: 6 out of 10 Peabody Awards
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