The Tillman Story

Just as there is very little unbiased journalism these days, so too are movie documentaries equally stilted. That doesn't make them bad films. Hardly. But a film documentarian sets out with a decided point of view and will craft every single frame of the work to validate it.

There are tricks to be had. The way a documentary is edited, for one, and Michael Moore is sadly an expert at that. You also can conveniently leave out 15 percent of the facts that would refute the opinion you want to transmit to the audience. After all, in 2010 America, points of view are just like bowel movements. Everybody has at least one a day.

This is in no way a belittlement of the work used to create the new documentary, "The Tillman Story." It's finely crafted, riveting, and enlightening.

It also has a point of view. And, whether you agree or not, there should be no surprise that the filmmakers have one.

Everybody knows the back story by now. NFL football star Pat Tillman ditches millions of dollars to enlist in the Army right after 9/11 and he goes to Iraq and Afghanistan. Tillman's later killed and the government trys for a little while to cover up the fact that he died as a direct result of friendly fire. The family strives to find out the truth and are spearheaded by a tenacious mother. It's a true story and not a pitch meeting for a Lifetime movie with Joan Van Ark.

Naturally, by the end of the movie, everybody working in the military and/or government is evil and you imagine George W. Bush running around the White House dressed as Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies. There's also an underlying notion that everything that sadly happened to Pat Tillman was a completely new concept. Sorry, folks. Government cover-ups and military snafus have been around longer than Coca Cola's been in small little bottles. For Pete's sake, if I closed my eyes for a minute, I would think I was seeing that old Movie-of-the-Week "Friendly Fire" with Carol Burnett.

Face the facts, gang. These kinds of nefarious activities were not copywritten in the last ten years. This stuff has gone on for years and years. Jeez, if TMZ was around at the time, we would probably know now the name of the Black hooker Abe Lincoln was allegedly sleeping with. Our country and its leadership are all humans and, therefore, imperfect by nature. You could find backroom deals and con games in every Presidential administration that's ever inhabited the residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Sure, some become super high-profile like Watergate and Monica Lewinsky. But, if the public knew EVERYTHING that goes on in Washington, DC, we might be all moving en masse to Bolivia. Read up on your history and see just what Franklin Roosevelt knew in advance about those Nazi concentration camps during World War II.

The plight of Pat Tillman and his family is not a singular one. It's just another broken link in the chain of our democracy. It's happened over and over and over. The only reason we know about this one is because he apparently could tackle a guy like nobody's business. The media is again driving the jeep and the same drama that may have happened to Private Joe Blow from Yukkapukka Flats, Iowa never gets the same attention.

There was one big ole bitchslap I got from this film, though. When some of the talking heads were talking about "friendly fire" and how that can actually happen. Because, when you peel back that onion, you realize how many youngsters are now in the military. Twenty-year-olds with practical experience but lacking one important ingredient. Life's wisdom. So many kids enlist simply because they think war is just one more level of expertise on that video game down at the mall. Anybody that age can be taught how to shoot a rifle. Nobody that age can understand the consequences. Yet, they sign up to join, one naive youth after another.

I've seen and heard this firsthand. The Marines are the absolutely shameless biggest offenders of exploiting our youth. Promises of satisfying careers and college tuitions, only to toss them into one dreary environment that they can't wait to escape. Lives that spiral quickly into the abyss. While you may not necessarily leave in a body bag, that doesn't mean your future isn't any less than dead. All for the glory of shooting at somebody who didn't look that real on the X-Box.

I left "The Tillman Story" with that nagging reminder. Of how our military completely dupes the kids of America. I thought about it for hours afterward.

So, this documentary did its job. Just not the exact one it intended.

Meanwhile, I am now waiting for the filmed expose of what just did happen to the west side of Los Angeles when a Presidential fundraising trip crippled that part of the city for almost eighteen hours. I literally could not leave my apartment for five hours. There was no way to get out of my garage. All because the POTUS was trying to shake a few loose dollar bills out of Barbra Streisand's cleavage. I'm convinced that, somewhere in Los Angeles, there are stories of people who couldn't get immediate attention from first responders because the latter was tied up in traffic.

Documentarians, there's a story there someplace. Call me. I have photos.

Dinner last night: Kung pao beef at First Szechwan Wok.