Saturday, September 02, 2006

Three Days of the Condor

HBO's Signature Channel is showing "Three Days of the Condor" - a classic movie of all time, but made even more eerie and relevant today, just days before the fifth anniversary of 9/11. It's loaded with super-science of the '70s, including my personal favorites of old-timely wire tapping, where you actually had to tap into phone wires with a Bell line worker's hand-held plug-in phone, with that frigging rotary dial on the backside of the ear piece. He uses a cassette player to record the tone of a call placed from the assassin's phone, and calls in to Langley to get the digits. Then he calls another Langley office and gives the secret passcode to get the address for the number.
All of which today takes about .001 seconds, and is entirely electronic, and doesn't see the light of an analyst's eyeballs until or unless key words are actually muttered into the line. I won't repeat the key words here for fear Langley computers will deem me a "person of interest."
In another scene, Robert Redford breaks in to a CIA official's home and wakes him up by... you guessed it... cranking the Hi-Fi credenza stereo. C L A S S I C.
Some things are timeless. Cliff Robertson's massive comb-over is a contender for The Donald's ridiculous hair cap. Also timeless: Robert Redford uncovers a plot to invade the Middle East. Deja vu all over again.
Sadly, the "shit hits the fan" moment in the movie is when Redford tells Robertson that he gave the story to the New York Times. I guess that meant something in 1975. Although even then, Robertson implies that the power of the paper can be corrupted, and they may not print the story. It's interesting that the movie ends before you know if the story gets out. I guess people back then were just starting to wonder if the media really served the public trust or not. No such dilemma today.

As "liberal" became a bad word for Democrats, and "Christian" is becoming a bad word for Repulicans, will "consipiracy theory" become good words for the general public?

The times, they are a-changing.