Tell Them Who You Are

I grew up in Chicago and was 18 years old when the riots broke out there during the 1968 Democratic Convention. I didn't go down there because my Chicago Democrat father would have thrown me out of the house if I had gotten involved. So I saw the riots going on 8 miles from house on TV, while Haskell Wexler was down in the streets making a film about how the media was shaping my beliefs about the situation. I think that about sums up my "personal" relationship to Haskell Wexler. When I saw the film Medium Cool, my mind was altered forever. I eventually got a doctorate in communications research and I teach young people about the influence of media in their world and about how they can use the media to change the world.

I sense that the mediocre rating of this film may be due to the fact that people could miss the absolute perfect symmetry of this film. They fail to see how the father forces the son into cinema verite mode (far away from the controlled format of the Smithsonian type of documentary that Mark was used to) and how the son accepts this and creates a film that the father can sign off on. There is a lot of truth in this film. Even if Mark's values do not mirror Haskell's, he is unafraid to expose his own feelings. And I get a sense that Haskell's influence on his son is more profound than he realizes through much of the film. Also, coming from my own lefty perspective, I found the exploration of a life well lived to be inspirational. This film has just surfaced on Sundance Channel in 2006 and if you are interested in finding some of the connecting threads in Haskell's life or are the sort of man who cried watching "Field of Dreams," it's well worth the watch.