911 Press For Truth

i have carbon-based visitors :-(

a husband and wife team, friends of my parents, approx 60 years old. lovely people. he's an insurance guy, she's a hairdresser. they know that i 'work' all day - so they are pretty low impact, and they know to leave me alone. they come from small town australia, and are probably as politically unaware as you could find.

they know that i blog about war and US politics, but not much beyond that.

they arrived this morning, and in the afternoon they yelled out to ask me how to control the tv.

a little light bulb went off in my ahead (if light bulbs made noises, the noise would have been 'ka-ching') - so i casually said 'oh - i have a new movie here if you want to watch it'

911pressfortruth.com

one of my unknowns re the movie was how it would play to people who didnt know very much about the 911 story.

as i said yesterday:

"The overwhelming thought that I had while watching it was that people will get really angry when they watch it - kinda like when people first saw Farenheit 911. The movie very forcefully lays out the case the something is seriously wrong. I'd love to watch it with a 'mainstream' audience in a theatre in America. I suspect there will be a rush to the exits at the end of the movie with everyone ready to take to the streets.

It's totally accessible too - you can watch it with your parents without them thinking you are kooky.'

Now I had my own personal laboratory!

I didn't give them much of an intro, but just said that it was about some of the widows and their efforts to get a proper investigation.

I told them that I wanted to watch it again and take some notes (little did they know that I was documenting their reactions - bwahahaha!)

The first third (or so) of the movie is about the Jersey Girls and their efforts to get a real investigation going (and the stonewalling) - between the two of them, I counted about 20 audible gasps, clucks, 'goshes' etc in this section.

The movie then flips to the afghan war, and then into the relationships with pakistan etc (the pakistan stuff is really damning.) And then the movie shows the clip of bush saying:

"We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them."

In unison, they both said, disgustedly, "So much for that!"

Later, Paul Thompson says something like "Was someone using Al Qaeda? Like the was the US used the Mujahadeen?"

Wife says: Gee - it sure looks like it!

Later, Husband says "We've really gotta get rid of Bush"

At the end of the movie there's a touching scene where the father of someone who died at WTC is in tears.

Movie finishes, and Husband says "wow - we really need to get a copy of this movie into the hands of every family who lost someone that day, and also the 3000 people who have died in Iraq" (I don't think the movie even mentions iraq)

We were having a chit-chat after the movie - and i decided not to say very much and just listen - they really wanted to discuss it - and they were both amazed/ropable.

Wife says: "wow - they really let them all escape in Afghanistan"

I joined them for dinner - and before I could sit down, Husband was like:

I've been thinking all afternoon about how Bush just sat there in the kindergarten for seven minutes with that look in his eyes

(the film doesnt really focus on that very much - if you wanna be freaked out by that scene, see this vid)

and over dinner, all they wanted to do was talk about the movie, and how worried he is about his 5 year-old grandson getting drafted in the future. And he was trying to think of ways to get the movie into as many hands as possible:

"how can we get a million people to see this? if we could raise $10 million dollars..."

as i said, these people are as apolitical as you could imagine - and as uncynical as you'd find. i asked them what they thought about Bush beforehand, and she said 'i've never liked him' and he said 'i didn't really have an opinion'

it looks like we might have a winner. congrats to kyle again. great job.

(as an aside, hubbie was told on Friday that he has cancer - but there was only one thing on his mind today)


updates from my guests:
here and here