The Baltimore Plot: Lincoln Gets Four More Years

On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected as the 16th President of the United States. With this election, several Southern states advocated for succession, including a sizable population in the state of Maryland. All of a sudden, president-elect Lincoln has to travel through hostile (and foreign?) territory just to physically get to the White House. Perhaps no single night in history could have changed the fabric, and the existence, of the United States as we know it as that night that Lincoln escaped an assassination attempt four years ahead of its time.

This should probably be a movie, right?

Oh yes. On February 11, Lincoln hugged his friends and family good-bye as he embarked on his trip to the White House like a soldier going to war—and in a way he was. Lincoln, more than anybody, knew he would not likely see his home ever again. Around this time, General Scott moved troops into the cities of Philadelphia and D.C. while other Northern/border cites (along with the federal government) employed private detectives to infiltrate rebel groups. One such detective was Allan Pinkerton, one of the craftiest and hard-nosed detectives in the country—possibly best portrayed by Robert De Niro in my dreams.

While staying historically accurate, can you add a little Hollywood seasoning?

Pinkerton was a Chicago-man himself and actually a friend of Abraham Lincoln from back in their abolitionist days.

So I was told there was a plot…

Regarding the story, Pinkerton employed several men to go undercover in Baltimore and devise a counter-plot to the assassination plot—of which nobody knew the specifics, though it was suspected that Baltimore’s Chief of Police, George P. Kane, had Southern sympathies. Lincoln’s trip to D.C. required several stops and speeches along the way, including when he’d have to not only switch trains but actually switch train stations in the city of Baltimore (a deadly risk for anyone, even nowadays).

Finally, a movie where a young Hollywood hunk doesn’t need to lose his shirt!

Well, actually…

Dammit!

Pinkerton’s best man was a young fellow who went undercover as “Howard from New Orleans.” According to Pinkerton, Howard (not his real name), “possessed a fine personal appearance, insinuating manners, and that power of adaptation to the persons whom they wish to influence”—a trait described in every self-help book though never articulated under such dire circumstances. Howard went undercover in Baltimore as a wealthy playboy and determined secessionist. Within days he was hitting all of Baltimore’s nightclubs, bars and concerts; and was immediately offered to dine with fellow Southern aristocrats. Pinkerton basically told Howard to go be a movie star and Howard did—often inserting details of his sexual exploits into his daily investigation reports back to Pinkerton.

"Dammit, Howard. We don't care if some girl gave you 'a Slippery Baltimore.' "

This Howard guy sounds hilarious!

Yeah, especially when one of Howard's new friends told him that a group of Southerners were planning a presidential assassination, to be carried out in less than a week and that they will, “if necessary, all die together.”

A group of them? What was the plan?

When Lincoln was to be walking through the first train station in Baltimore, a fight would break out, drawing the attention of several police escorts. Fortunately, there would not be many police officers because Chief of Police Kane (a conspirator) would have more men placed at the other station. Then, between 8 and 12 men would separately attack the 6’4’’ President from different angles with a variety of weapons (pistols, knives, swords, etc.)

Oh wow; that's kind of brutal.

Yeah, so Pinkerton rushed to Philadelphia and met with Lincoln, who couldn’t believe people would want to assassinate him when he hadn’t even taken office yet. Eventually, Pinkerton convinced his old friend to heed advice and sacrifice one public appearance for the sake of the nation’s future.

Please God let there be a fight scene.

In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Lincoln told a crowd of supporters that he’d die before giving up his principles and then said he needed to go to his hotel room to get some shut-eye, only to then sneak out the back of the hotel and get aboard the train to Baltimore. Before the train took off, President Abraham Lincoln was offered a pistol and knife for personal protection…

HOLY SHIT!

…but he turned away the weapons, saying no president should enter an American city armed. Allan Pinkerton himself guarded Lincoln for the trip, even presenting their tickets on the train—while Lincoln (hidden under some blankets) pretended to be asleep. The two of them arrived in Baltimore about 12 hours before the assassins/everyone else expected, ran to a horse carriage, rode across the sleeping city, got into the train and were off to Washington, D.C.

Anything visually interesting? You know, like the Warning Beacons of Gondor?

I was getting there! Within the Baltimore conspiracy, many would-be assassins proposed blowing up railroad bridges as Lincoln’s train passed so Pinkerton had a man at every bridge for the entire trip light a lantern as the train neared, as to indicate the all clear to pass. Eventually, the two old friends arrived in D.C., safe and…ready to fight in the Civil War.

But why isn’t this a famous story?

Because even though Chief of Police Kane was later arrested, it was not accepted as a success story. In fact, most newspapers lambasted the new president for cowardly traveling through the country at night—as a conspiracy to kill the president was too ridiculous to believe. Rumors ran wild that Lincoln had dressed like a woman, dressed like a Southerner and begged for mercy. The Baltimore Sun was particularly cruel, questioning the President’s manliness and character. Details of the plot, revealing the actual danger the President was in and his own reluctance to falsify his travels, were not released until years later and even then buried with Pinkerton’s near-synonymous connection with union labor-busting, bounty hunters and vigilantism.

Damn.

However, a 1951-film called “The Tall Target” is loosely based on the described event. The film became more notable years later for changing the detective protecting the President from Allan Pinkerton to some guy named John Kennedy. To this day, the movie has a bland 7.3/10 on IMDB. So there’s that.

So who has the Lincoln Logs to play the President in a modern film?

Daniel Day Lewis has actually been cast in Speilberg’s long-rumored Lincoln bio-pic, but I don’t like it. DDL—as I hear he LOVES to be called—doesn’t have the warmth that made Lincoln so appealing. However, it'd be comforting knowing that at least he won’t be “method acting” as some jerk on the film set. Then again, DDL did learn how to actually throw knives in “Gangs of New York,” so maybe that skill will come up again in this Lincoln film.

We can pray.

Indeed.

D-Day: When Teamwork (Almost) Failed

The worst kept secret during World War II was that the Allied forces would have to eventually make an amphibious invasion on the north coast of France. In the earliest years of America’s involvement, we were taking orders from the British who wanted to keep control of their colonies in Africa and Asia—by way of securing the Mediterranean Sea. This meant enduring many costly and slow moving invasions onto various islands and eventually the Italian mainland. On the mainland, Allied forces had to march up and down mountain terrains that make Stairmasters look like an escalator. In fact, WWII was over before we got into north Italy and if Hitler had been held up there, he might have seen the moon landing, it would’ve taken so long. Marching through Italy is like marching from Kansas to California; if you don’t have an elephant or two, it’s a helluva walk.

Once Americans figured out which end of the gun is the dangerous part (around 1943), General Dwight Eisenhower was put in charge of all Allied forces. He was not a particularly skilled war-planner but rather a great people-person who understood that all of his subordinates (Patton, Bradley, Montgomery, etc.) were as smart as they were independent as they were ego-maniacal—which was a butt load. Eisenhower agreed with everybody in early 1943 that the northern France route to Berlin was inevitable and put his men to task, each planning their perfect operations with a near disregard to one another. As the June 1944 deadline closed in, deception operations ran wild including, Operations Fortitude, Glimmer, Titanic, Taxable, Airbourne Cigar, Mincemeat and the whole 23rd HQ Special Troops—a thousand artists/engineers employed by the military to create a fictional 30,000-man division.

"In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies."

--Prime Minister Winston Churchill, 1943

Many Germans, to their credit, knew the invasion was coming but had enough problems of their own. Solving several of their problems, they put Erwin “Desert [that tank moved so fast it looked like a 60-ton] Fox” Rommel in charge of defending Nazi-occupied France, kind of. Really, Rommel became more of an advisor who advocated for all of Germany’s forces be placed by the coasts to stop the forthcoming Allied invasion on the beaches. “Fortunately” for the Allies, Rommel had a lot of success throughout WWII up to this point and was envied by his peers and superiors—who felt Rommel hogged the glory. Jealous to the point of not giving a snot about Rommel’s opinions, the German leadership followed Gerd von Rundstedt’s plan of concentrating German forces deep in France so that when the Allies attacked, both sides could have an equal fight and be exposed to more conventional, flanking, movements. The Germans became so distrusting of one another’s competencies that when a secret message was decoded that the Allies were going to stage the landing on June 6th, the warning was disregarded on the grounds that there had been a false alarm a month earlier--and Rommel still hadn’t attached a TPS cover sheet.

So the Allies were just going to walk into France? Seriously, at this point they could’ve built a bridge with no real problems, right? Nope. How to invade France became a catastrophic clash of ideologies. The Americans wanted a quick, direct, big and loud approach to fighting the war—with the benefit of booming our steel, rubber and chemical industries. The British wanted a slower, methodical, indirect war of attrition—with the benefit of controlling more global lands by war's end and keeping immediate body counts low. Could more lives be saved by going fast or by going slow? Frankly, there is no answer today, nor was there one then—so both countries just kind of did what they wanted.

In the last two years of the war, the thought process behind their aerial bombings seemed flipped, though. The British largely bombed German cities with the intention of destroying the public's will to fight. The Americans boasted “precision” bombs that could hit individual factories. Both of these methods proved rather, if not completely, ineffectual. The German people never lost their will to fight but were rather fueled to continue fighting after their houses got smashed. Incredibly, the British did not see this reaction coming, despite that it was the exact same reaction the British public had when getting bombed by the Germans in 1940. Similarly, the American “precision” bombs were largely inaccurate—as hitting the ground within one mile of the target was considered “a success.” To put that in perspective, many American cities now require porn shops to be at least 500 feet (or less than one-tenth of a mile) away from any schools or places of worship.

As a side note, the atomic bombs dropped on Japan were meant to demoralize the public (which still didn’t turn on its own government) and provide a clear landing route for the expected invasion through southern Japan.

Back in England, the Allied forces fought over whether to make Operation Overlord (invasion of France) a stealthy, by several nights, invasion or a balls-out, kick-in-the-front-door invasion. Eisenhower, ever one to delegate, let both sides kind of have their way, and so a few paratroopers were sent into France before the beach-storming and a few planes bombed the German defenses the night before over a million men played a role in the original “Saving Private Ryan” opening. As it turns out, the half-assed stealthy approach did little more than wake up the Germans just in time to see the Allied forces (including Canada!) pulling up to the beach honking their Winnebago novelty horns.

Like the movie “Your Highness,” Overlord became an operational disaster about ten minutes in. Also like “Your Highness,” the planners nearly called off the production to order a retreat. Soldiers fell off boats, the nearly unscratched German bunkers gunned down squad leaders and mass confusion was escalated when, reportedly, ice cream machines were mistaken as supply crates and dropped on the beaches during the assault. Staggeringly above expectations, the initial assault cost the lives of over 2,500 Allied soldiers.

The paradoxical strategy and nearly world-changing failure was averted by the troops on the ground, particularly on Omaha Beach, wherein decimated squads united with each other to create improvised teams and hierarchies. Their own lives on the line, the front line soldiers proved much more efficient than their bickering superiors. As a specific example of baffling leadership, General Omar Bradley—knowing he was sending American boys into France—made sure each soldier (along with food rations and medical kits) had some condoms.

"Remember men, the only thing more painful than syphilis is a Nazi shooting you."

--(possibly) General Omar Bradley, 1944

However, the soldiers, before liberating Moulin Rouge, found that the condoms were more useful protecting their guns from water and sand on the beach. One more example of history being too incredible/crude to be taught in high school.

Despite the devastating toll of the invasion, “D-Day” is not actually shorthand for “Doomsday.” Rather the “D” stands for the date of the military operation; and so “D+2” would be two days after the initial operation. This is used so that the operation day can change and people don’t have to all re-synchronize their calendars. And, in fact, the kickoff for Operation Overlord was pushed back a day due to bad weather.

Which was also lucky for me, because the original date (and subsequent anniversaries) would have made this blog post a day late.

Support the troops, forgive the leaders.

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS: Reclaiming Some Dignity

Originally published 6/3/11 on "TheMovieWatch.com":

Who are the bad guys in history? It’s a question that can make historians squirm and laymen wonder why historians squirm. Simply put, a sentiment too often forgotten is that morality can be subjective. This is one of many points made in one of this year’s top 50 superhero movies, the surprisingly philosophical, “X-Men: First Class.”

Also it's not in 3D! Hooray!

By setting the story in 1944 and 1962, the film floats any questions about our own modern world with the grace, tapestry and costume design of the better Oscar-baiting movies. And by predominately setting the movie against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis (or “the October Crisis,” for my Russian readers), the film reaches to be something just a little bit more than a forgettable, comic book, superhero flick. “First Class” doesn’t completely escape its genre’s almost inherent shortcomings, but the strong, visceral, direction by Mathew Vaughan allows the movie to be quite accessible for non-comic book readers.

The historical element of the movie hits upon a proper series of events—most notably that America placing warheads in Turkey motivated the Russians to put some in Cuba. It’s only a modest coincidence that the distance between Turkey and Moscow is roughly the same as Cuba to Washington, D.C. However, the film disregards any actually humanity within humans and they’re own ability to plan with, trick or terrify one another, or otherwise cognitively function. Both American and Russian leaders become physical pawns, despite that many actually wanted what the film’s chief antagonist, Shaw (played by Kevin Bacon), wanted: a nuclear war. Essentially, when both sides are rendered to infant-level ability, awareness and ambition, the audience can no longer imagine the, non-baseball-playing, Reds as an appropriate villain...nor can we accept the baseball team has a bunch of bad guys now that I think about it.

While humanizing Russian soldiers (and warmongers on the Stateside) in a very light way was central in Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Stranglove,” it still forces the narrative question in “X-Men” of “what is villainy?” The single most rounded character is Erik “Magneto” Lehnsherr. And as a side note, the performance was absolutely rocked by Michael Fassbender (“The British guy from ‘Inglorious Basteds’! I knew I recognized him!”). Erik is given the most horrifying prologue to the story’s events this side of “Sophie’s Choice” but remains emotional and angry--instead of just marrying Kevin Kline. He is given the audience’s complete sympathy but slowly smothers it after obtaining a piece of serenity and begins to think bigger than his own, immediate, pain. Unfortunately for every Mumbling Joe out there, Erik goes in completely the wrong direction from a raging (and mostly forgivable) animal to a calculating terrorist. I’d argue, though, that Erik is only a terrorist in thought; as he consistently has a murders-per-attempt batting average on par with Dr. Robotnik.

The failure to solidify Erik as an antagonist stems from just knowing too much about him, really. The aforementioned villain, Shaw, and all of the bad guy minions are given no history and never flash the least bit emotion or personality. They are simply inhuman in the worst possible story-telling way. It’s stunning how little information the audience needs to sympathize with anybody. Erik gets two scenes and it’s almost over-kill...I mean, over-the-top. Had there been a scene where Shaw got slapped around by his father or tried to save a puppy, he would’ve been so much more. In same vein, Holocaust victims were tattooed—as alluded to in the film—so that Nazi soldiers wouldn’t have to risk learning names or personal histories. It’s a lot easier to hate an idea than a person.

More cinematically speaking, Kevin Bacon fails to find any character traits, nuances or depth within the, brandy-swirling, character Shaw that would separate him from the blandest James Bond villains. Continuing on a more traditional review-level, I’ll note that the movie had several plot contrivances. Interestingly, they all seemed to surround Hank McCoy, whose perpetual inventiveness struck me as akin to a live-action Dr. Hubert Farnsworth. Indeed, McCoy nearly started every scene with, “Good news everybody! I’ve just invented a Whatever Machine that can do exactly whatever we need something to do!”

In fairness, the film’s best moments overshadow the film’s worst—which really does force a wide variety of intermittent cheering and groaning. Regrettably, the movie has a low, low body count among mutants and the humans that die have less emotional weight or consequence than swatting a somewhat large fly. My guess is that the filmmakers forgot that literally hundreds of mutants occupy the X-Men universe (not to mention the freedom to just create new ones), and so saving all the characters for a sequel seems just flatly unnecessary. There is also a reasonable fear that the filmmakers won’t have the patience to keep their (probable) series of films set in the past in order to play with other elements in history such as Beast having a blurry picture taken of him and mistaken for Sasquatch. Or better yet, Magneto controlling the “Magic Bullet” that kills JFK. Or Mystic impersonating the President in 1974 to erase 14 minutes from the supposed “Watergate Tapes,” wherein Prez Tricky Dick Nixon actually conferred with Magneto. Maybe this is all getting a little too Watchmen-esque but the best part of that movie was the history re-writing in the opening credits.

Also, is it just me or would the best title for the “First Class” sequel be, “X-Men: Second Class Citizens”?

Also, also--and this is very important: staying for the end of the credits will elicit nothing but groans from the audience…because there is no scene. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an audience leave a theater so angry after watching a pretty good movie. Quite the magic trick.

Thomas Riley Marshall: The Stand-Up Vice-President

Thomas Riley Marshall is a rarely remembered politician, despite (or because of) his legendarily wry sense of humor, often acting as the perfect antithesis to the icy, academician, President Woodrow Wilson. Marshall learned a lesson in American politics and while he has been forgotten, and perhaps even the lesson has been too, the influence is still evident today. During Marshall’s tenor as the nation’s Vice-President, politicians gambled (sometimes losing White House decorations), smoked (everything), drank courageous amount of alcohol (or in Roosevelt’s case, coffee). Politicians slept with mistresses, made racial slights, dodged military service, employed cronies, took bribes and in every other way acted like how politicians in pretty much any time have acted. But as Marshall flippantly discovered, nothing is more fatal in politics than a keen sense of wit.

Generally popular as a young man, Marshall was told he should go into politics, though Marshall countered such support by saying that he didn’t want to run for Congress because he was afraid that he’d get elected. Without any real effort on his part, Marshall was elected governor of Indiana and there ended up on the right side of history in almost every heated debate at the time, including child labor laws, popular election of Senators and overhauling the state’s bloated auditing agency. More stunningly, he mustered the courage to be against eugenics bills, sterilization bills and capital punishment—perhaps becoming the first governor to get disgustingly labeled by his critics as “weak on crime.” Political cartoons noted this and mocked Marshall for commuting the sentences of would-be executed criminals. True to form, Marshall got a kick of the cartoons and referenced their jokes in his own speeches.

Despite Wilson’s divergent temperament and Marshall’s own absence from the Democratic National Convention, Marshall was picked as the vice-presidential nominee, and granted a lot more time to shoot off one liners such as: “I do not talk politics between campaigns and afterward I regret what I said in them.” After winning office, Marshall reflected on the campaign noting that he couldn’t remember if he had made “169 speeches or one speech 169 times.” Shortly after taking his real oath of office, Marshall proposed a second one, vowing to “acknowledge the insignificant influence of the office, and to take it in a good-natured way.”

Most famously, during a very long and drab, laundry list, speech from Sen. Joseph Bristow (R-KS) on what the country needed in order to improve itself, VP Marshall leaned over to one of his clerks and whispered loud enough for the whole Senate chamber to hear, “What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar.” That several Senators laughed would prove this moment to be Marshall’s political high point in Washington.

As vice-president, Marshall mostly stayed in his office at the Senate, noting that it was not unlike “a monkey cage, except the visitors do not offer me any peanuts.” When appointed to the board of executives for the Smithsonian Museum, Marshall dryly noted the convenience of now being able to compare his “fossilized life with the fossils of all ages.” Marshall would go on to hone his self-depreciation, saying, “The only business of the vice-president is to ring the White House bell every morning and ask what is the state of health of the president.” As the years went on, Marshall’s increasingly unappreciated wit drifted to more depressing sentiments, such as, “Once there were two brothers. One ran away to sea, the other was elected Vice-President and nothing was ever heard from either of them again.” More depressing, while on a speaking tour, the Vice-President was given a single, local police officer as protection; which Marshall thought was outrageous, saying, “No one was ever crazy enough to shoot at a vice-president.” Apparently, Marshall was not a student of history as Aaron Burr had been in a gun duel while in office and Andrew Johnson was saved at the last moment when his would-be assassin got drunk and lost his nerve. Incredibly, Marshall had also vastly underestimated the crazies in America; as shortly after the quip, somebody was actually too crazy to shoot the vice-president, preferring instead to BLOW HIM UP.

Meet Eric Muenter. (Fair warning: this is a helluva story.) Muenter was a German-teaching, Harvard professor who, in 1906, poisoned his own wife with arsenic for unknown reasons (bad cooking?) and escaped Boston police custody by shaving his freaking beard. He moved to Texas, changed his named to Frank Holt and became a German language instructor, again. Incomprehensibly, the man was promoted several times and eventually became a professor at (I swear to God) Cornell University. There, he became frustrated with America’s commercial support of the Allied forces in the first World War. So, like any crazy person, he bought a bunch of dynamite, rigged a timer that involved dipping acid onto a cork, got into the Senate chambers late one night and put the bomb at the door of Thomas Riley Marshall as if it was a sack of poop on fire.

Not content with this display of insanity, Muenter/Holt decided to go to the house of industrialist/philanthropist J.P. Morgan, Jr.—where he planned to hold Morgan’s family hostage until America stopped selling munitions to France and England. On the train to Morgan’s house, the Senate bomb exploded before anyone had gotten close enough to be harmed, though one security guard was reportedly knocked out of his chair by the blast. When Holt broke into Morgan’s house, the multi-millionaire rushed the would-be assassin and was shot in the groin (but not killed). Hilariously, Holt had not counted on J.P. Morgan’s servants—who also rushed the intruder and subdued him until police could take him away. In prison, the Cornell professor Holt was identified as the former Harvard professor Muenter. Embarrassed, Muenter tried to kill himself with a pencil but failed. Proving he could be as determined as he was crazy, Muenter then climbed his prison cell bars and managed to dive headfirst onto the concrete floor, crushing his skull. Wit makes enemies indeed.

This all starts to come back to Marshall when people disputed who was the original target in the Senate chambers, if anybody at all. Marshall, to his end, continued to alienate colleagues, popularly noting that “wise men remain at home and discuss public questions on the end of street cars and around barber shops.” The heavily liberal Woodrow Wilson became frustrated with Marshall’s politically moderate stances and briefly tried to remove him from the reelection ticket in 1916. The only real effect then was that President Wilson was not spared Marshall’s rapier wit. For instance, when Marshall inscribed in a book to Wilson, “From your only vice.”

Get the President some Aloe Vera--because he just got burned! Ah snap!

This is not to say VP Marshall was at any point antagonistic toward the President; though it might have helped when Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke in 1919. At first, Marshall did not entertain thoughts of taking over as ‘acting President’ because he did not want to be called a usurper or otherwise potentially split the country. As Wilson’s condition worsened, Marshall still fended off his own supporters--including the Secretary of the State--saying that Wilson’s only hope for recovery was maintaining a reason to live. Moreover, Edith Wilson, essentially the ‘acting President,’ did everything in her power (and way beyond) to ensure Marshall stayed on the sidelines. During an out-of-town speaking engagement, Marshall was informed President Wilson had died and Marshall resolved to go to D.C. and assume the Presidency. However, Marshall was correctly informed at his hotel that the President had not died. Eventually Wilson (mostly) recovered and Marshall’s tenor as Vice-President was only made notable by being the first VP to serve a full eight years in almost a century.

"I have sometimes thought that great men are the bane of civilization, they are the real cause of all the bitterness and contention which amounts to anything in the world.”

--Thomas Riley Marshall (vice-president to Woodrow Wilson)

The Spanish-American War: A Historic Review

Running Time: About four months, or about as long as it took Teddy Roosevelt to run up a hill after swimming from Florida to Cuba.

Setting: Cuba, 1898.

Concept (according to America): The Spanish blew up the S.S. Maine! The Spanish are tormenting Cubans! The Cubans want to join America! We need to have free trade with Cuba!

Concept (according to Cuba): Liberation! (After the war) So, Americans, (awkward pause) do you guys have anywhere else to be? No? You sure? It’s just, you know, we got stuff to do here, and, oh, okay, yeah I guess you can have some cereal.

Concept (according to Spain): Wait, what’s going on? A ship blew up? Why would we want to go to war with America? Wait! Cuba’s being attacked!? Shit!

Before the War: In 1881, President-elect Chester A. Arthur went on a shopping spree to celebrate winning the presidency. Over the next ten years, “city folk” began to outnumber “country folk.” Words like “dandy” went by the wayside as more men avoided physical labor, outdoor independence and military service. In 1893, historian Fredrick Jackson Turner declared the American frontier was settled and America had nothing else to do but enlarge preexisting cities and develop new concepts of America culture; and boy did we enlarge those cities. Then months later, Eugen Sandow became the first professional body builder, making a living entirely by posing and flexing in public. All these elements combined to emasculate American men. This 1870s-1890s generation of men had no war, grew up in cities, bought into and then criticized the booming consumer culture.

Plot: Nobody was as emasculated as Theodore Roosevelt who grew up with asthma, and home-schooled as a result. Defiantly, Roosevelt ran around in the wilderness as often as he could and became a man of seeming paradoxes. When Roosevelt went to Harvard for being a genius, he became a boxer. He was an author at any desk and an explorer anytime he was outside. Later he’d win a Nobel Peace Prize, but in 1897 he wanted to fight somebody. Somebody turned into Spain and as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Roosevelt pushed to war. When the S.S. Maine blew up, war was declared. Roosevelt resigned his office, went to Texas to corral a bunch of gunslingers, formed a volunteer regiment and attacked the Spanish in Cuba. The most notable battle was the charge up San Juan Hill, wherein Roosevelt abandoned his horse (because it got too tired) and led forces the rest of the barbed-wire-filled way.

After the War: Roosevelt became a national war hero and elected governor of every state, but he choose New York—to fight the political corruption. Go figure, the political bosses didn’t like him having free reign over New York and so put him on President McKinley’s re-election ticket, knowing that the Vice-President only has two duties. Go figure, again, McKinley is assassinated and coffee-addicted Roosevelt becomes the most powerful man in the nation. Roosevelt expands the Monroe Doctrine, essentially declaring America “the police of the Western hemisphere.”

Contemporary Controversy: America had half-a-dozen reasons to go to war with Spain, and none of them were really that good. The S.S. Maine, while patrolling the Gulf, blew up, killing 266 soldiers. Spain adamantly pled innocent immediately, but it was too late. The other reasons for war had been simmering for years. Stories of Spanish cruelty to the Cubans got front-page coverage. Americans called Cuba a Spanish colony, though Spain thought Cuba more as a province or territory. Lastly, though not least, Cuba was a gold mine for trading and sugar. Some modern historians also believe America had “empire-jealousy” at European powers for taking over large chunks of land in Africa and Asia. This is all to say that using more reasons for war doesn’t make the war more moral; just like how explaining a joke to someone who didn’t laugh won’t prove the joke funny.

Film Adaptation: Considering the cultural criticism and brisk brutality, this war is most like the film, “Fight Club.” In fact, Roosevelt just may have been Tyler Durden—exciting, loud, cool, tough and dangerous. He was always the biggest personality in the room and just the independently-minded leader America needed. Side note: Did you know they made a "Fight Club" video game?

I would've preferred a game about Theodore Roosevelt, but whatever.

Sub-Plot: The boom of “yellow journalism.” William Randolph Heart and Joseph Pulitzer became media mongrels and very competitive at exactly the wrong time (1895-1898). Circulation (money) was the goal. They both used scary headlines in huge print (often of minor news), made lavish use of pictures (sometimes altered), used pseudo-science, parades of interviews from self-described “experts,” and displayed dramatic sympathy with the ‘underdog’ against the system. While the origins of “24-hour-news” is evident, it is also important to note that the practice of “yellow journalism” did go away. There was/will be a fact-based, impersonal reaction to news reporting after people got/get of sick of info-tainment.

Racist Moment: The U.S. Army made strong use of the all-black regiments in Cuba, thinking since ‘they were all from Africa,’ the black troops would be naturally more comfortable dealing with tropical heat, malaria and yellow fever. Baffling Southern scientists, several troops contracted said diseases and died needlessly.

Glory Level: Oh, so glorious—at the time. I mean, the Civil War was always horrible for at least half the nation. And the Mexican-American War didn’t give us images and pride on such a scale. The Spanish War was a solid war against a solid evil and finished before the election season. Also, while nearly 3,000 American soldiers died from disease, only 345 American soldiers were killed in battle. So there’s that, too.

Influence Level: Pretty low. America didn’t fully liberate any of the land it won from the Spanish, nor did America allow any lands to join the union. America paid Spain for the land but their economy was crippled for decades. To this day, the Spanish still harbor some resentment about the war that absolutely blindsided them. It’s kind of like being friends with a guy after he drunkenly punched you at a party for dancing with his girl—and you had just shown up two minutes ago. So, yeah America, we were THAT guy. Lets try to hold it together next time.

Why “Atlas” Collapsed: Everyone Missed the Point

Originally published 5/22/11 on "TheMovieWatch.com":

Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged” finally hit the big screens last April 15th— a coy nod to America’s traditional tax day (though not actually the case in 2011). After five weeks, the film has sputtered to a box office haul of $4.5 million…crushed beneath a rumored $15-20 million production. Moreover, the film garnered a 13% rating on RottenTomatoes.com and achieved just enough publicity to likely get a couple of nominations in next year’s incessantly bland Razzie Awards. The apex of this cinematic thrashing came when producer John Aglialor despondently coined the film’s epitaph sound bite, saying, “Critics, you won.”

Films lose money all the time. I even once heard some ridiculous claim that “only one in ten films ever makes money.” Regardless, “Atlas Shrugged” strikes me as an anomaly. That is, why wasn’t this movie a hit? The novel has had at least a cult following since the 1950s and a film adaptation was attempted in the 1970s, and about every ten years since. With the Great Recession and, more importantly, the election of Barack Obama, the loudest conservatives in America resurrected the novel with the phrase “Going Galt”—a catchphrase as stirring, inspired and thought-provoking as only the most mediocre beer commercials could stammer. As was, the book still struggled to get financiers. Due to Hollywood liberalism? Not likely, not with the financial success of other so-called conservative films—a classification that I feel is ludicrous—such as, “Passion of the Christ,” “300,” “Chronicles of Narnia,” “Gran Torino” and others. Conservatism aside, author Rand has credibility with young people thanks to her intellectual chest-thumping in the oft-referenced “The Fountain,” but notably so in “Atlas Shrugged.” Young people like feeling unique; Middle America likes feeling validated; Hollywood likes turning ideological novels into (inane, 3-D) films.

So why the failure? Sure the movie has pointless CGI, seemingly regurgitated from some daytime SyFy original movie. And sure, the cinematography and acting resemble work complied by film school freshmen (present readers excluded, of course). But that’s all not enough. No, the real reason “Atlas Shrugged” failed is because everyone on every level drove a hundred miles past The Point, USA. And that is that “Atlas Shrugged” is a satire of Ayn Rand’s explicit ideology.

And the train comes to a screeching halt.

The entire story is based around the concept that corporations are pushed around by the U.S. federal government. Specifically, that America’s wealthy are not only vilified but that they are discriminated against and silenced. Continuing, each of the “successful” peoples are deserving of their wealth, undeniably due to some unexplainable Tony Stark-esque intelligence and/or Tony Stark-esque strength, looks and charm. Ayn Rand’s fictional world is not an exaggeration, but completely opposite to any situation America has ever seen.

“What are you talking about Nick,” I hear my Wonder Bread readers say, “Rich people are vilified in culture…look at Monty Burns in The Simpsons!” To which, I say, “Not really.” The nation is run by corporations, CEOs and boards of executives. The FEC, Congress, other government agencies and the private sector trade business-insiders like baseball cards. Even with this Great Recession and inflated accusations of socialism, bonus-pay outs and top tier salaries have skyrocketed—unlike so many NASA projects. But Ayn Rand couldn’t have predicted the future, could have she? Well, this is the humiliating part: she didn’t have to!

Trains—the primarily discussed industry in the movie/novel—were not that big of a deal in the 1950s, less so now. However, they really were a big deal in the 1890s. Also in the 1890s, wealthy capitalists bought political offices, outsourced labor, formed monopolies and prided themselves on their own nameless skills. And really, similar sentiments can be said in the 1920s, the 1840s, 1770s and you start to get the point. However, each of these periods are also marked by the somewhat forgotten philanthropy of the nation’s millionaires and billionaires. Indeed, even nowadays, several of the world’s richest are the most generous—in terms of raw dollar amount AND percentage of wealth. I don’t give a damn if they’re still rich, let’s see you give away half of your money.

This all comes back when John Galt and Rand’s other fictional industry titans fail to embody any self-inspired philanthropy—you know, like creating the world’s most profitable charity. Instead, the characters “go on strike.” Also note that the Pinkertons, the mafia and, recently, state governors have historically crushed this lone tactic wielded by organized labor. No, Ayn Rand’s wealthy citizens aren’t acting like John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, David Packard, Bill Gates, Gordon Moore, Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey, Warren Buffet and others. And it’s really not even entirely a question of morality. If you want more consumers for your goods, you have to make sure the consumers are healthy/alive enough to buy your goods. Oprah Winfrey can’t make any money if her audience is dying from preventable diseases. Indeed, there are plenty of selfish reasons to donate money. Ultimately though, intentions don’t even really matter, just the actions.

And so Rand wasn’t detailing the likely departure of America’s most ambitious industrialists, but rather demonstrating the inappropriate outrage of the middle class. People don’t see the entire suffering of one another and so with a common passing glance retirement and unemployment have enough similarities to frustrate the middle 68% of Americans who feel themselves as equally talented as their financial superiors, yet more determined/moral than welfare queens, runaway fathers, gang bangers, immigrants, hicks and other flippant nomenclatures.

Much has been made of the book’s 70-page monologue by the secretive John Galt, wherein he describes the plot of “Inception,” describes the incredible sandwich he ate earlier or otherwise laments the necessity of brevity. All too late I wonder if I should have read the entire Wikipedia article on the novel—as I couldn’t have been bothered to actually read Rand’s magna opus or watch more of the film than the 2 minute trailer. Before I start “Galt-ing” you to death, I would liked to point out that Rand’s/Galt’s supposedly persuasive (and almost certainly unchallenged) sermon about rational self-interest, individual rights and laissez faire capitalism is further evidence for my satirical reading. Gordon Gekko was inspirational in Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street.” Similarly, Lucifer himself is extremely charming and convincing in John Milton’s classic epic, “Paradise Lost.” Not only can a story’s villain be persuasive, but, frankly, they need to be. Bad influences wouldn’t be influences if they couldn’t change people. More times than not, though, the worst influences are just ourselves. For instance, I know I shouldn't have another beer…but then again, I like this toasty feeling and fear my dumb body will start sobering up.

Galt is convincing, sure…but so is Stephen Colbert. The question then becomes, what is he convincing you of? Because interpretation is in the eye of the beer holder. As a last point, I’d like to show you a picture of a beatnik.

Is...is that lady wearing a lamp shade on her head?

Sike! It’s not a beatnik, it’s Ayn Rand—scourge of the downtrodden, rustic and oppressed. Yeah, right. Rand was clearly a 1950s beatnik herself. If someone really thinks rich industrialists could, and deserve to, go on strike I want them to be wearing at least one—but preferably two—monocles…also holding at least one—but preferably two—glasses of brandy. No, Ayn Randy was scathingly sarcastic but on a current far below most people’s radar. The newly astute reader might now be asking themselves if I, writing this review-of-sorts, am being sarcastic. Truthfully, I don’t even know anymore. I just think Rand’s novel and the subsequent film would have fared better had each ended on a scene with one of the main characters turning towards the camera and giving the audience a sly wink.

But maybe that’s just me.

*wink*

The Bonus March: America Loses Its Mind

In 1918, World War I ended (it was also the year Paul Harvey was born!) The war cost the lives of 117,000 Americans--while not even half that many died watching “Benjamin Button”. In response to the very real sacrifice WWI veterans risked and endured, Congress passed the World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924—awarding the soldiers bonuses (pay plus interest) they could redeem in 1945. The plan was that soldiers would forget about the payment after 21 years or just die from natural causes. Worst case scenario, the children of the Congressmen would have to pay the billions of dollars out of their own federal budget. Go figure, the planned ‘worst case scenario’ wasn’t bad enough and on July 28, 1932, America lost its mind.

The Stock Market crashed in 1929, and while dramatic, only really affected the some 16% of households that had any money in stocks at all. More people were affected by the recently passed tariff laws, which shot the price of imported goods sky-high—meaning that Hungarian vodka was no longer the ‘go to’ for floor cleaner but now the monetary equal of Cristal. The idea was that American workers wouldn’t have to compete with the “cheap labor” over-seas—because those Europeans/Asians/Africans are so damned expendable (or something). In reality, this meant American manufactures had no international competition and could raise their prices. Big time. People couldn’t buy things. Other companies couldn’t buy things. Stores went bankrupt. Factories closed. And just like that, thousands of WWI veterans were jobless, still knowing the U.S. government owed them (rightfully, even) payment for fighting in that catastrophe 14 years ago.

In June of 1932, 17,000 to 20,000 jobless veterans gathered in Washington, D.C. to pressure Congress into granting the bonuses immediately. Many of the veterans brought their families with them because hey, kids gotta learn about the government and this was a few years before the advent of “Schoolhouse Rock.” This raised the population of the makeshift city to some 40,000—4 times the population that marched on Helm’s Deep. And when I say “makeshift” I mean they were making a city out of nothing. The “houses” were made out of metal and wood scraps, yet separated by “streets,” surrounded “sanitation facilities,” and were “guarded” by the men who took shifts protesting. Basically there is a lot of this that is simply unimaginable nowadays. That Tea Party Rally back in the fall doesn't cut it in terms of rugged, earnest, sacrifice and suffering.

As expected, the House passed the Bonus Bill (to pay the soldiers to get off the front lawn). Unexpectedly, in the Senate, the bill was CRUSHED. The protesters, baffled, realized they had no other plan. President Herbert Hoover became paranoid that these commoners were going to rise up against him with their newspaper shields and apple-core catapults. Maybe some of them actually had bindles. I don’t know. Anyway, 6 weeks after the bill failed to pass, Hoover told the D.C. police to move the veterans. The police did this, temporarily, by shooting (and killing) two of the veterans. At this, Hoover gasped and his monocle fell into his glass of brandy, breaking in two. Hoover then ordered the U.S. military to move out the veterans. The two regiments that moved in on the homeless were commanded by, and this is where it gets fun, Douglas MacArthur and George S. Patton.

Patton led the Calvary, including six armored tanks, through the D.C. streets to the unofficial campsite. Seeing the soldiers, trucks and tanks, the veterans cheered—for they, and this is true, thought the U.S. military was holding an impromptu parade of its own, in honor of the disrespected veterans. Within moments, the veterans (and their families) realized this was an unusually somber, nay terrifying, parade as the civilians were shot at with a rudimentary form of tear gas and threatened with bayonets. The protesters fled across the river and Hoover put his thumb and index finger on the bridge of his nose, knowing that, somehow, he was going to get blamed for this debacle. The president ordered the troops to pull back, apologized and everything went back to normal. NO WAIT! General MacArthur ignored the order and issued a new attack!

For the sake of contrast, this fight scene was really cool.

MacArthur was adamant from the earliest stages of the Bonus Protest that the leaders were communists and seeking to deplete the federal treasury for all it was worth. He knew that all of those poor people in the D.C. “Hoover-ville” were political radicals despite their three articulated, and actually written, rules of the shantytown: “No panhandling, no drinking, no radicalism.” Fervently against radicals, MacArthur had his troops torch the garbage shacks as fast as they could, killing two more men. Having bulldozed the shacks into rubble and burning the rubble into ashes and pissing on the ashes, MacArthur called it a day and let everybody go home…or at least get the hell out of town. All said, 1 woman suffered a miscarriage, 4 WWI veterans were killed, 135 people were arrested and over a thousand were injured.

In May of 1933, with the country now under President Franklin Roosevelt, the Bonus marchers came back. While Roosevelt opposed the Bonus marchers’ demands, he granted them legal use of land and provided food supplies. Solving some of his own problems, he also had Eleanor Roosevelt visit the campsite. Eleanor praised the veterans for being accommodating and civil—inspiring the adage, “Hoover sent the army, Roosevelt sent his wife.” In 1936 Congress passed a compensation act to coincide with Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corp (employing veterans for manual labor jobs, including, but not limited to, stealing grandkids’ noses).

In the immediate aftermath, the press wanted MacArthur’s head on a plate. MacArthur, though, would not so much as talk to them and so had a more diplomatic subordinate act as liaison between the press, investigation commissions, the White House and city police. The Army Major acting as liaison defended MacArthur’s insubordination saying the general was “too busy,” and “did not want to be bothered by people coming down and pretending to bring orders.” The idea that the U.S. President wouldn’t come to the frontlines, with at least two forms of valid I.D., to issue an order was too ridiculous for Old Mac. In the end, MacArthur was promoted—though not as high or fast as his diplomatic aide, Dwight Eisenhower.

To this day, the Bonus March stands as a unique public relations disaster, to the point of calling it a “public relations disaster” might be doing a disservice to the event and parties. Still, these moments, while a black eye on memories of heroes and the country, show the growth we’ve made as a society. Reciprocally, these moments, through modern similarities involving heroes and the country, show the growth yet to be made.

Caffeine and Beer: My Day at a History Conference

If you work at ####### and ask for a day off from work, you really get about 17 hours. Want Saturday off? Expect to work until 10 p.m. Friday and come into work 7 a.m. Sunday! Factor in two nights of sleep and boom: 33 hours turns into 17 real quick. And actually, I didn’t so much “go to bed” Friday night as I went “to a bar”—code phrase for going to a bar.

SIDE NOTE: I elbowed Bill Self out of my way at one of the bars; he thinks he can box me out? Yeah, right. Big time college coaches: 0. Me: 2 (the first point coming from when I daftly screamed, “Waddup!” to Pete Carroll in 2008).

Back at the night in question, I eventually drank myself happy and collapsed somewhere. Around 8 in the morning, my cell phone alarm clock went off but instead of hitting the ‘snooze’ button I hit the time-traveling button, which immediately sent me thirty minutes in the future. Damn. I hate it when that happens. Anyhow, I made it to the University of Kansas Student Union by 9 a.m. and so started my day at the Ninth Annual KU-MU History Conference.

The name of the get-together is a little deceiving, as it implies only the greatest student minds (available on that late-semester weekend) from KU and the University of Missouri were in attendance. In actually, there were students and professors from NU, OU, KSU, UI, UA, UNI, JCCC, St. Louis University and Fort Leavenworth. So yeah, it was the Ivy League of the Midwest; or at least schools from the Midwest.

For the entire morning, I watched presenters talk about military doctrines, the murder of Annie Mae, the Commerce Clause, Wilhelm Wassmuss, magician pirates, and John Locke. I might have made up one of those. As one can imagine, some of it was rather dry and few presenters dressed up in costumes and performed reenactments--an untapped reservoir of material I especially noted. Fortunately, there was a complimentary breakfast table that would have shamed Motel 6 and I had my fill, and then filled my pockets. Years ago, I was without a dollar in Los Angeles but crashed several banquets on the USC campus—at least stealing pastries and jelly packets before being chased off. I guess old habits die harder than Bruce Willis. In any case, lunch came around and I popped some caffeine pills. Remembering that the food pyramid recommends more than pill-form food, I called up my friend Mac and we got some food that is (now confirmed?) 88% all-beef.

For some reason, I’m still alive.

When Mac and I got back to the conference, the KU spring football game had started. Yeah, there are a lot of questions there; for example: “They play football in the spring?” and “KU plays football?” But back at the history conference, fewer people were getting tackled and the presentations were about to start. Knowing I was the first speaker scheduled after the lunch break, I made it to the room in the Union and started talking to the session’s moderator. As the whole conference was split between two separate rooms, I made sure to talk up my group (“Media in 20th Century America”) and aimlessly bash our rivals (“Miscellaneous Topics”) for the would-be audience still deciding on a location. I especially made sure to direct the most attractive audience members into the correct room…which then turned out to be the wrong room. Yeah, I was in the wrong room and had inadvertently done as much damage to my group’s audience size as possible. So Mac, my one-man entourage, laughed at me as I became less of a “Vince” and more of a “Turtle” and walked into the correct room to give my presentation.

My twenty speech on cowboy films from the 1960s went as well as it could, considering I had spent much of the lunch rewriting segments in my head, and later on the paper. Also, I was given my five-minute warning about one minute before I was expecting and decided to cut several more sections to finish before the Man at the Back of the Room started taping his watch. Assuming nobody had a cane to pull me away from the podium, I decided to do some voices for my lengthier quotes, including impressions of John Wayne and Nate Champion—a real-life rustler who inexplicably kept writing in his pocket book during a shoot-out that cost him his life. Actually, now that I think about it, there was a cane in the audience that people could have used to beat me, but it was held by a blind woman in the second row.

During the second and third presenter in my panel, the blind woman’s dog fell asleep, turned on his back, got his foot caught by the chair in front and slept with his crotch pointed right at me. Yeah, it was a guy dog. I tried to not let the guide dog’s crotch affect my answers during the Q&A session, but it was rather difficult.

“Did the depictions of Native Americans change throughout the 1960s?”

“I'm sorry, did dog crotch what?”

When the session was over, people dispersed into the hallway and some continued asking questions, though in three separate cases the question was some variation of, “Have you seen [X movie]?” Fortunately, being a former film production major, and current film nerd, has given me enough experience with that question when I have to answers in the negative and then take responses such as, “Really? I thought you were, like, a film nerd?” or “How have you not seen that film; it’s a classic” or “Oh, you’d really like it; it’s a lot like Tarantino’s stuff.”

By 5:30 p.m. the conference had wrapped up and several of the, more professional, historians agreed to meet up at 23rd Street Brewery—a place that sells burgers, beers and such for about twice as much as I can afford…so I went along. Again, after downing a couple more caffeine pills to fend off the duel harsh mistresses of Sobriety and Slumbriety.

At the bar-restaurant, I sat at a table of grad-students, Ph.D-students and professors—some of whom have been in history academia longer than I have been able to cleverly butcher the English language. Really, I was just overcome with a flashback of an 8th grade birthday party I went to years ago and had realized everyone sitting around the cake was in the gifted program. Speaking of which, it’s nearly ten years later and I still don’t know what being “gifted” is. It’s like some kind of elementary school Freemasons thing.

Anyhow, drinking with a bunch of history nerds was a lot of fun, even if (or especially because) several conversations came back to Hitler, sex or both. It wasn’t until later that night that I realized the History Channel is, in fact, probably run by a bunch of historians. Right now though, after giving a lecture and then engaging in (unfortunately rare) discussions with other historians with drinking problems or drinkers with history problems, I can’t help but feel teaching is not my place right now. Rather, I want to tell stories and hear stories—most of which are at least based on real events.

Ultimately, these revelations can not be acted upon in one night. Fortunately, thinking about “alternative life decisions” is exactly what part-time work shifts are for.

The Canadian Caper: The Best Movie Never Made (Part Two)

Previously on “The Canadian Caper: The Best Movie Never Made”:

6 Americans were hidden by the Canadian ambassador in Tehran during the 1980 hostage crisis. The CIA learned about this and decided to “go Hollywood.” Back to where we left off…

Before long, Tony Mendez of the CIA went to Los Angeles, met with his old friend John Chambers (makeup artist of “Planet of the Apes”) and they created a production company—a feat mimicked by every film student ever—called Studio Six Productions. They then dug up a script called “Lord of Light”--a sci-fi film requiring rugged landscapes and bazaars. Despite (or because?) having no real experience in film making, Mendez knew that the title sucked and so renamed it “Argo” before moving onto the actual rescue plan. To boost their credentials, they took out ads in “Variety,” lifted Hollywood matchbooks and threw a pre-production party. Given another couple weeks they probably would have created an IMDB page and edited a teaser using stock footage.

In late January of 1980, Mendez flew to Tehran after meeting with Iranian officials in Germany. He had health cards (remember, this is Canadian healthcare), driver's licenses, maple leaf pins, receipts from restaurants in Toronto and Montreal, the Studio Six business cards, a lens for the cinematographer and other documents for the “Canadians,” and Canadians, he was meeting up with in Iran. Amazingly, to keep from breaking international laws, the CIA did not create the Canadian passports but rather the Canadian parliament held a secret emergency session and voted to grant the six Americans “real fake” Canadian passports.

When Mendez arrived in Tehran, the Americans were dining with ambassadors from Denmark and New Zealand—essentially the only two European countries we can trust anymore. Just kidding, NZ. Anyhow, the six escapees were given their new, “pre-production,” personas as the writer, the transportation coordinator, the set designer, an associate producer, the director and the cameraman. Mendez was the Irish film producer (but really, he just wanted to use the accent). For two days, the seven of them worked on creating their characters and costumes. An Iranian staffer mock interrogated them. They wrote notes about the script. Discussed concept art and took pictures. The “director” made a silver medallion, displayed flamboyantly with his borrowed low-button shirt.

Around this time, back in Hollywood, the CIA agents operating the Studio Six offices anxiously waited to hear from headquarters while being bombarded with scripts, head shots and pitches from Hollywood insiders. Writers from “Variety” and “The Hollywood Reporter” published stories about the studio start up and its brave little endeavor (filming a feature in Iran, that is). CIA agents, knowing their company would disappear any day, were even taking meetings with writers and producers just to remain credible.

"Could you write a movie about how to kill Fidel Castro?"

Early one morning, the Americans in Iran made their way to the airport after nearly 80 days in confinement. It was important to leave early in the day because by mid-day, the airport would become chaotic and the Revolutionary Guard would just take over--kind of like the TSA with sub-machine guns. While waiting in the airport, the “associate producer” tried to look calm by reading the Iranian newspaper before being reminded that he was giving Hollywood producers too much credit. After hours likely more agonizing than the normal hours spent in an airport, the "Canadian film crew” boarded their plane and it took off.

After clearing Iranian airspace, the airplane’s bar was opened and everybody got Bloody Mary’s.

And that's how you (don't) make a movie.

The Canadian Caper: The Best Movie Never Made

Often movies are used to document/retell history for contemporary audiences. Almost as often, these stories are skewed or just flatly made up (I’m looking at you, “Fargo”!). However, once in a very strange while, real history is not changed in movies but rather real history is changed by movies. In November 1979, Iranians seized the United States embassy in Tehran. About three months later a covert Canadian/American rescue team smuggled six American diplomats back to the U.S. under the guise of a film crew. This is the story of The Canadian Caper.

On November 4th, Iranian protesters, fans of Ayatollah Khomeini and young people rather disappointed by President Jimmy Carter, climbed above and broke down the gates surrounding the American embassy complex in the capital city. Unfortunately, the protesters weren’t just concerned about the gates’ zoning regulations and they stormed several building—including taking fifty-some hostages. Five Americans (and more than a token Iranian employee) escaped and made their way to an employee’s apartment outside of the complex. At the apartment, they turned on the radio, bitched about Jefferson Airplane becoming Jefferson Starship and then discovered the U.S. military forces had abandoned the city.

Unlike every other time in history, America turned to England for help. The escapees’ plan was to run through the city to the British embassy; a plan marginally safer than flying to California by jumping off the tallest building. Even then, though, they’d be risking more potential hostages and indeed could not be on the road for more than five seconds before spotted by mobs and given the sort of trial mobs are known to give. For days the Americans scuttled from empty apartment to empty apartment (fortunately, nearly fifty-some apartments had recently opened up). Eventually, they gave up on getting to the English embassy and called an employee at the nearby Canadian embassy. They got permission to crash at his, and the ambassador's, place and found one other American who had previously been shacked up with a Swede.

For weeks, the six Americans never left the Canadians’ place. Reportedly, the large amount of beer temporarily distracted the de facto prisoners from feeling like actual prisoners. Also unlike the Iranians, the Canadians rarely threatened their American guests with execution but rather just had them repeatedly play Scrabble. Any escape or rescue planned seemed impossible as the hostage takers down the street promised executions if they saw anything unusual--and the Iranians were also pretty sure six Americans had escaped during the initial chaos. So the Canadian ambassador called the Canadian Prime Minister and they both agreed getting the Americans out of Tehran was safer than keeping them there. For harboring the Americans, the Canadian Ambassador (Ken Taylor) later received the Congressional Gold Medal, and never had to pay for his beer in America ever again.

This reward inspired many Irishmen to push Americans out of the path of speeding cars.

Now the CIA has gotten a bad rap in recent years, but some thirty years ago, they had their shit together. Well, kind of. Like today, they were running thousands of secret identities around the world. Unfortunately, they only had three in Iran at the time. More unfortunately, all three had been captured during the revolution, so maybe 'undercover' has different definitions to some people. Regardless, for a few weeks, to no avail, the CIA worked on this hostage situation—including at least one plan using a dead body in place of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (who was the “emperor” of Iran). Frankly, there were probably several plans involving dead body doubles. Anyhow, word gets around that some Americans escaped the initial violence and are hiding out in Iran like disco-loving Anne Franks. So the CIA takes a break from trying to ‘punk’ Fidel Castro (read: exploding cigars) and decides to get these Americans out of Iran through the most obvious transport possible: the Mehrabad Airport. Other plans required swimming and/or bicycles.

But these plans take time, more time than secrets allow and pretty soon the 'Americans hiding in Tehran' became the Worst Kept Secret in the world of international intelligence. At least one newspaper had the story but didn't report it. Within the several plans formulated over two months one constant remained: the Americans would pose as legal visitors were going to have to appear oblivious to the political upheaval in the country. Anybody who knew anything wanted to be far away from Iran. So who can be a bunch of somebodies who know nothing? Why of course: Hollywood! It might have been a bit of a stretch, but the world is still round and it turns for money. A Hollywood production in Iran meant millions of dollars, not exactly chump change for the Iranian government. But being American was still too risky/impossible, so everybody was going to have to seem Canadian.

To be Continued…

(get over it, these people had to wait for 6 weeks).