Saturday Night Massacre

[Store Hadji]

Nothing to do with Welles, unless you're taking the Simon Callow approach (in volume one of his biography, if not volume two) of detailing the landscape which would have informed our protagonist at a particular point in time (in this case, late 1973.)

I thought Glenn would be bemused, at any rate.

http://www.archive.org/details/RichardN ... -20Oct1973

http://www.archive.org/details/RichardN ... -17Nov1973

[Glenn Anders]

Thanks, Hadji:

I was impressed by how crisp and logical the reporting of that evening and its aftermath was, how the reportage cut through what we now call "the spin" to the elementals of the Impeachment crisis.

We are really in a far worse crisis today, but the Congress is either too timid or too venal to force action.

Orson Welles did his part, in Nixon's case, by putting out the "The Begatting of the President."

The flavor of that LP is available here:

http://footnote.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=263603

Glenn

[Tony]

To keep it OT, didn't Welles have a Saturday Night Massacre during the making of The Other Side of the Wind when he fired everybody?

[Store Hadji]

Did he?

Oh that tempermental Orson. Helluva way to shoot a picture.

Regarding that old tape of the news broadcast, I'm afraid I'd entirely forgotten that John Chancellor ever existed. It was only after listening to him for about half an hour that suddenly his bespectacled visage surfaced in my mind. Cool also to hear Tom Brokaw and David Brinkley again, and Sam Donaldson must have been a mere baby.

I also dug up a tape of Edward Murrow talking about Milo Radulovich. That must be pretty old.

[Tony]

Well, he hired them all back the next day.

[Store Hadji]

Is that Robert Wise meant when he said things were never on an even keel with Orson; they were either up or they were down?

Hum, I won't say manic depressive because that would be psychobabble!

[Tony]

yeah, I tend to think of Orson as a reasonable guy, but there are so many instances of pure craziness that I can never forget, and the saturday night massacre is one of them. Everyone just went home and waited for the call.