THIRTEEN DAYS, a view from Father Geek

Well folks, Father Geek saw THIRTEEN DAYS tonight at a University of Texas screening room, it was a packed house, every seat taken. This is a film I've been waiting for since reading the 12/12/97 Self draft of the screenplay in early 1998. Later I got my hands on the Robinson revision from 1/7/99 and eagerly read it to see if the balls had been cut from the original, they hadn't. This is a tense historical drama, not in the sense of say THE PATRIOT with its fictionalized history, but more like THE INSIDER. NOT like JFK, or NIXON, but more along the lines of ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN. I'm not talking about the plotlines here, but the style of the drama, the pacing, the feel for the time and the events covered by the scope of the motion picture. A time, and events I remember all too well...

In October of 1962 I was just starting my junior year of high school in San Antonio, Texas. The home of Brooks Air Force Base, Lackland Air Force Base, Kelly Air Force Base, Randolph Air Force Base, and (at the time)Headquarters of the Fourth U.S. Army at Fort Sam Houston. In addition there was the Medina Air Force Arsenal, hundreds of acres of underground bunkers full of every bomb or rocket the Air Force had in stock, the Camp Bullis U.S. Army field training facility, and the place my Dad worked... the U.S. Air Force Crypto (code) Headquarters located about midway between Medina, Kelly, and Lackland on the Southwest side of town. Needless to say, we all knew we were a 1st strike location targeted for a multible warhead attack. You wouldn't be able to get away, no way. If you had half a brain, living in San Antonio during the height of the Cold War was very very tense.

One night early in that month after my little brother and sister had gone to bed my Dad called me down to the family room in the basement of our home and he told my mother and I that we were extremely close to all out war with Russia, that things had been set in motion that might get out of control, that I was not to talk about it at school, that the President would probably address the country in a couple of days. He assured us that despite what we might read in the papers or see on TV our government and military were doing everything possible to avoid our worst fears, our nightmares. My Dad was a career military officer (Navy, Army, and Air Force), he felt Russia would stop short of war if we left them that option without their losing face. I believed him.

I went to school Monday with a terrible secret eating away at my inards, but I had faith it would all work itself out. When the bus dropped me off after school a block from my house my eyes beheld a strange and disturbing sight. Our street (mostly military families) had loaded jeeps and landrovers in about every third driveway. The word had begun to spread, War was just around the corner. I became a wide eyed TV news junkie. And fortunately my Dad was proved right once again... thank god.

Years later as a working artist in Austin I would set up daily in our little street market reservation across from the university with a young hippie mother/jeweler named Kathy O'Donnell, the real life daughter of Costner's character in this movie. We worked side by side there and at art shows for five years. I learned alot about the Kennedys and their years in Washington from her back then. I haven't seen her since 1984.

This was the background I took with me to the film tonight, these were the thoughts that raced through my head as I sat in an audience of college students who weren't even born till 20 years after the events the film was to deal with. How would it rest with them? Well, you could hear a pin drop, the tension leaped the years and affected this group exactly the way I hoped. It was a sobering experience for most. Like the movies THE INSIDER and ALL THE PRESIDENTS MEN this film relies on a tight script, well acted, not action to hold your attention. The further you go into this film the more emotionally involved you become. Unlike many historical dramas there are no fictional characters here, all the characters in this picture were really there, standing exactly where their modern counterpoints are in the recreations of LIFE magazine photos of the events. For a motion picture that holds no surprises, one where we all know the ending from the very start, it does a great job of holding your attention, your interest, not just mine which was to be expected, but the attention of 200+ people between 17 and 27 years of age.

Costner's name has top billing, but he shares equally the acting with Bruce (Sweet Hereafter, Exotica) Greenwood and Stephen (Dead Again, Nurse Betty) Culp as the Kennedy brothers. All three of these actors turn in fine performances, as do Michael Fairman as a wonderful Adlai Stevenson, Tim Kelleher as a perfect Ted Sorensen and Dylan Baker as a fantastic Robert McNamara. This film is a true group effort on the part of all it actors. Actors asked to play a cast from real life that many in the audience are familar with from news histories on TV. I thought General Curtis (ran for VP with George Wallace) LeMay was chillingly played by Kevin Conway, and Kelly Connell worked real well as the out of the loop press secretary Pierre Salinger, and of course Caitlin Wachs was a personal favorite of mine as Kathy O'Donnell.

If you want to see real true life drama on the big screen, drama that captured the attention of the entire world for an incredibile 2 weeks in 1962, then you cannot do better than the writing and acting of Roger Donaldson's taut study of men of power under the most immense pressure for THIRTEEN DAYS.

Father Geek out...