877: The Making Of
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A quick warning; there are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. This is American Life from Ira Glass and we've been talking here at the radio show recently about a certain genre of movie, which is the making of movie, a movie about the making of another film, usually a much more famous one. A classic is Hearts of Darkness, which is a making of documentary about the film of Paco-Ups Now, which has footage that the director Francis Ford Coppola's wife, Eleanor, shot at the time the movie was being filmed, plus, incredibly, these recordings that she made of her husband without him knowing it. Who he's talking about is self-doubt, is despair. "This film is a $20 million disaster, and I'm thinking of shooting myself." There are candid moments with the actors, Dennis Hopper, Lawrence Fishburne, who's 14 years old when they were making that film. Martin Sheen, who plays the main character, has a heart attack when they're there, 36. Marlon Brando, the film's most expensive star. At some point Coppola realizes that Brando has not read the book that the movie is based on, Heart of Darkness, so he does not get who his character is, as he's being paid a million dollars a week. An author out, there are hints and glimpses of what's really happening in reality in the place of their filming this movie, they're in the Philippines, where U.S. supported autocrat fighting a war against a communist insurgency. The movie's helicopters are U.S.-made choppers, flown by pilots in the Philippine military. We keep getting pulled away to go back to the real war. "Wait a second, stand by. We just heard that taking away five of our helicopters, let's do it." The film apocalypse now is about Vietnam, but it's a big, mythic version of Vietnam, full of larger-than-life characters. The Making Up film reveals the normal-sized people building this grand cathedral, brick-by-brick. You see the ridiculous lengths everybody had to go through to create their pretend war and their fake, impossible Vietnam, which brings me to today's radio show. Today's show is a making of of a different kind. It's people creating a picture of a place and a war that's happening there, and that place is Portland, Oregon. We're going to talk about Portland as a concept where the city has come to mean in this political moment. Back in September, you may remember, President Trump declared on truth social that he was going to send troops into what he called "war-ravaged Portland" to protect ICE facilities there that were, quote, "under siege from attack by Antifa." And one thing about Fox's coverage, including that story, is that Fox's coverage includes lots of footage of protesters that is not filmed by professional TV news crews, but by the real outturs behind the right-wing's idea of what Portland is. These are right-wing citizen journalists who've been there at the protests covering them more than anybody, especially live streamers who were there. These are people who believe in Trump, believe in ICE, who stream from the Portland protests, saying that their lefty local government was soft on the protesters, putting an Antifa run amok, live streaming on YouTube next. Really? Some of the citizen journalists became regular guests on Fox, talking about this. For people who say that there's not violence going on in front of these facilities, what do you say?
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