911 Operator: You know the address to Centennial Park?
Dispatcher: Girl, don't ask me to lie to you.
911 Operator: I tried to call ACC, but ain't nobody answering the phone " but I just got this man called talking about there's a bomb set to go off in thirty minutes in Centennial Park.
Dispatcher: Oh Lord, child. Uh, OK, wait a minute. Centennial Park, you put it in and it won't go in?
911 Operator: No, unless I'm spelling Centennial wrong. How are we spelling Centennial?
Dispatcher: C-E-N-T-E-N-N-I -- how do you spell Centennial?
911 Operator: I'm spelling it right, it ain't taking.
Valuable time expired, and the bomb squad, when they were finally called to the scene, had insufficient time to properly clear the area before the bomb went off.
At the start of Clint Eastwood's 2019 film, Richard Jewell, the title character is followed in a tracking shot as he makes his rounds as an AT&T security guard outside a busy Centennial Park. Goofy and overstuffed, Jewell immediately comes off as an oddball. Offering water to a pregnant woman in such a way that, though thanking him for it, she eyeballs him suspiciously. He confronts a group of drinking teens who diss him. On his way to get help, he sees the bomb under the bench. He asks passersby if the pack belongs to them. Alarmed, he alerts the assigned police crew, urging them to take action immediately, seemingly certain the pack is loaded. Bystanders are pushed to safety by Jewell, and others, when the bomb booms and blasts people backwards.
Paul Walter Hauser plays the complex character of Jewell, who's not as dumb as he looks (or sometimes acts), and who gets caught up in a media frenzy that is fuelled by the wild speculation of a misinformed newspaper reporter, Kathy Scruggs, played by Olivia Wilde, and the entrapping tactics of the FBI -- John Hamm playing the principle scofflaw fed. As the world comes at Jewell like a viral contagion, annihilating his privacy and reputation, he is buoyed up by his mother, played by Kathy Bates (in an Oscar-nominated supporting role) and Sam Rockwell as Watson Bryant, his lawyer and friend.
There's been considerable controversy over the film's devaluation of Scruggs. Eastwood, a Republican, has taken heat for her depiction, but he didn't write the screenplay. The script is based upon Marie Brenner's Vanity Fair article, "American Nightmare: The Ballad of Richard Jewell," and The Suspect, Alexander and Selwen's account of the bombing and its aftermath -- including police investigations and news reporting. Only the latter sets up the scene where Scruggs allegedly received the confirmation from police that Richard Jewell was the primary suspect.
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