By Kevin A. Stoda
Suggestion #3: WRONG IS RIGHT (1982) I NEVER FORGOT ITWell, I as I indicated earlier this week, the WRITERS’ STRIKE is a great time to either:
(1) Stop wars—like the one brewing with Iran—,
(2) Make America a more environmentally safer place to be living and raising children in, or
(3) Help new progressive candidates clear the House, Senate and Presidency in 2008.
Alternatively, one should go out and order a copy of the classic (1982) film, WRONG IS RIGHT ,by Richard Brooks.
I had seen the movie in February the year it came out during the Reagan Era domination of U.S. Politics and Memory. It was a cynical comedy that has left as much an impression on progressives of my generation as did the film, Dr. Strangelove, two decades earlier.
I had taken my dad and brother to the Sean Connery film after hearing it being discussed in Wichita, Kansas on the local radio stations. It is likely the most important film—in terms of technological change & ethics and awareness-building (educationally speaking)—than any other film Sean Connery was ever involved in.
A very short synapses of the film, WRONG IS RIGHT , states:
“Only Patrick Hale (Connery) can prevent a desperate president, the head of the CIA, a trigger happy general, terrorists, an arms dealer, and religious fanatics from destroying our world, But he has other things on his mind.”
When the movie WAG THE DOG came out more than 15 years later, that film simply expanded on the earlier theme of a government usage of media and technology to manipulate the U.S. public on behalf of a particular U.S. president—i.e. as already portrayed in Brooks’ cleverly written WRONG IS RIGHT .
Almost as soon as I learned in August 2002 from a DEMOCRACY NOW radio report that Bush & Cheney were planning an all out media manipulation of Americans and American leaders—leading to bombing-to-hell out of an Arab country: Iraq--, I began trying to come up with a copy of the film, WRONG IS RIGHT .
At the time, I could not find the film, video or DVD of Brooks’ important film. It was like someone had bought up and hidden away all copies in America of WRONG IS RIGHT .
This is because the end of the film shows an Arab leader holding up a nuclear weapon in a suitcase. That weapon was actually given that Arab fanatic only a few hours prior to this final scene by U.S. political intriguers. However, in this final scene, viewers discover that that the politically ruthless U.S. President uses this Arab’s possession of the WMD as an excuse to declare war and to bomb the hell-out-of the Arab leader and his country (simply in order to get the U.S. President reelected).
Worse still, the director and writer of the film, Brooks, makes it very clear that that fanatic Arab leader never had the intention of using the weapon. He only wanted the weapon as leverage against the U.S.
As bombs rain down on the frazzled Arab leader, he looks up and seems to be shouting at the distant American leadership phrases like, “I am not really as crazy as you.”
