November 21, 2016

Men of Crisis: The Harvey Wallinger Story Woody Allen gets political. In 1971, Allen writes and directs this 26 minute movie for PBS about a character who shares a great deal in common with Henry Kissinger. Diane Keaton and Louise Lasser both appear.
posted by bernockle 8 years ago
  • Just glanced at this very quickly ad misread it as "The Harvey Wallbanger Story" and I have nothing of interest to add to that.
  • I remember in 1982 the Milwaukee Brewers made it to the World Series with a line-up that was comprised of a lot of home-run hitters. The owner at the time was Harvey Kuenn. The team was nicknamed "Harvey's Wallbangers." Being twelve at the time, I had no idea that the drink existed.
  • Interestingly enough, this short movie was apparently never aired by PBS. They were afraid because it was so pointedly mocking the administration at the time that they might lose their public funding if they aired it.
  • Today is Woody Allen's 81st birthday. He continues to write and direct a movie every year. That is really crazy. I recently watched the television series he did for Amazon. Critics were not kind to it, but I sort of liked it. My wife really liked it. It reminded me a bit of Manhattan Murder Mystery. It definitely was not a television show, though. He likes to make movies that are about 90-100 minutes long. This was a movie that was about 130 or so minutes. It was then divided into six 22 or so minute episodes. There was nothing to distinguish one episode from another. None of them had a self-contained story. It was just a chopped-up movie. Given that he likes to make movies that are 90-100 minutes long, I suspect he just filled a regular movie and then just edited out 30 minutes less than he would have liked to. Anyway, I enjoyed it.