The Democratic National Convention has been eventful, but thankfully it hasn't been 1968 eventful. That was when Chicago police and National Guardsmen busted out their billy clubs on protesters as those inside the convention hall nominate Hubert Humphrey. It was one ugly scene.
The seminal movie document of that moment remains Medium Cool, which is well worth revisiting or exploring for the first time. Haskell Wexler, who had already won a cinematography Oscar for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , took a skeleton crew to Chicago to tell a loose story about a TV news cameraman (Robert Forster) who grows disenchanted with the media business and finds himself knee-deep in the '68 unrest. Thinking the DNC might yield something cinematic, Wexler ended up integrating his actors with the chaos of the protests. The results blur the line between documentary and fiction in hypnotic fashion.
On this week's Big Screen show we welcome Dallas VideoFest director Bart Weiss to discuss the film, which is available as part of the Criterion Collection. Weiss counts Medium Cool among his favorite films, and he explains how it has shaped his perceptions of media in the subsequent years. You can hear our conversation here.
