Wade
FeralNormal master
So last night i made the intentional decision that in lieu of watching the final debate (and from what i understand this one for the most part was a little more on target and Matthews ran a pretty tight ship) i went out to see the movie Tower (not The Tower). And i regret my decision NOT ONE BIT. The movie was all the rage of sxsw this past spring and is a documentary of the first case of mass shooting at a school in 1966 in Austin. Most if not everyone here knows of the story of charles whitman, who on a hot august morning in 1966 went to the top of the Tower on the university of Texas campus and started picking off people one by one with a rifle and a cache of other firearms.
This movie was based on the article 96 Minutes which appeared in Texas Monthly magazine which gave a personal account of what the victims experienced that fateful August morning.
The movie itself ran about 98 minutes, a couple of minutes longer than the actual event and i suspect this was no coincidence. It's done in a rotoscope method where the actors act out the events and are animated. Interspersed through out the movie is the rotoscoped people on a rotoscoped background and sometimes interposed within stock footage and possibly even on more contemporary footage scratched up to look old ( i suspect this but can't say for sure) near the end of the movie the rotoscoped versions of the actors playing the roles were interspersed with real life video of some of the survivors done more recently ( in one case it appears one of the people involved, officer Houston McCoy had passed on since his video was used. i think it was from another documentary several years ago)
To say this movie was moving, gripping and intense would be an understatement and this is no small thing considering that there are no surprises or plot twists as history has already written itself. the accounts are so compelling that it doesn't take much to imagine that you are at the scene and it's hard not to feel the anguish of the victims. Among the most compelling, if not the most compelling was that of Claire Wilson, the first victim (and played by Violett Beane who plays Jesse Quick in the Flash) who was pregnant at the time and was walking with her boyfriend. She took the first hit and although she was not killed, her unborn child was hit and killed as was her boyfriend. For probably close to 60 minutes she had laid out, bleeding in the 90+degree heat on the scalding pavement wearing a light summery maternity dress not daring to move as she knew that would signal that she was still alive and therefore she could become a target again but at the same time knew that she couldn't signal to potential rescuers as she knew that those that were considered dead would probably be left alone and priority given to the wounded. And i had to ask myself what would i do? Also was the concern would anybody come to her rescue?...She was eventually by a couple of 17 year olds... and she talked about the thought process that went through her head. Added to this was the narrative of another women who could only helplessly watch what was happening and consign herself to being a coward (Her Words) And it was this sentiment that really hit me, we all like to think ourselves as potential heros but what would we really do if we found ourselves in such a tragic situation?. In my opinion the fear of self preservation is not a cowardly act. The coward was the shooter who wasn't even named until the very last minutes and even then fleetingly in a newspaper article. there are several other personal accounts, from a "deputized" bookstore manager, a couple of paperboys, the unarmored officers armed with their service revolvers and Claire's rescuers but i won't go into detail as to spoil the movie.
As i said at the beginning, i was pretty familiar with a good part of the narrative and i knew that this movie was about people that despite being in a hopeless situation(now sadly familiar) and rose above the trauma to act heroically...although they would never concede to that..and knowing this, i felt it quite ironic to see this documentary instead of watching Donald and Hillary shrill at each other. Also despite the story and the coda at the end (touching on more recent school/mass shootings) there is no moral hand wringing about the prevalence of firearms in our society. I don't know if this is currently streaming on netflix as this seems to be the new paradigm, but do yourself a favor and see it however you can.
This movie was based on the article 96 Minutes which appeared in Texas Monthly magazine which gave a personal account of what the victims experienced that fateful August morning.
The movie itself ran about 98 minutes, a couple of minutes longer than the actual event and i suspect this was no coincidence. It's done in a rotoscope method where the actors act out the events and are animated. Interspersed through out the movie is the rotoscoped people on a rotoscoped background and sometimes interposed within stock footage and possibly even on more contemporary footage scratched up to look old ( i suspect this but can't say for sure) near the end of the movie the rotoscoped versions of the actors playing the roles were interspersed with real life video of some of the survivors done more recently ( in one case it appears one of the people involved, officer Houston McCoy had passed on since his video was used. i think it was from another documentary several years ago)
To say this movie was moving, gripping and intense would be an understatement and this is no small thing considering that there are no surprises or plot twists as history has already written itself. the accounts are so compelling that it doesn't take much to imagine that you are at the scene and it's hard not to feel the anguish of the victims. Among the most compelling, if not the most compelling was that of Claire Wilson, the first victim (and played by Violett Beane who plays Jesse Quick in the Flash) who was pregnant at the time and was walking with her boyfriend. She took the first hit and although she was not killed, her unborn child was hit and killed as was her boyfriend. For probably close to 60 minutes she had laid out, bleeding in the 90+degree heat on the scalding pavement wearing a light summery maternity dress not daring to move as she knew that would signal that she was still alive and therefore she could become a target again but at the same time knew that she couldn't signal to potential rescuers as she knew that those that were considered dead would probably be left alone and priority given to the wounded. And i had to ask myself what would i do? Also was the concern would anybody come to her rescue?...She was eventually by a couple of 17 year olds... and she talked about the thought process that went through her head. Added to this was the narrative of another women who could only helplessly watch what was happening and consign herself to being a coward (Her Words) And it was this sentiment that really hit me, we all like to think ourselves as potential heros but what would we really do if we found ourselves in such a tragic situation?. In my opinion the fear of self preservation is not a cowardly act. The coward was the shooter who wasn't even named until the very last minutes and even then fleetingly in a newspaper article. there are several other personal accounts, from a "deputized" bookstore manager, a couple of paperboys, the unarmored officers armed with their service revolvers and Claire's rescuers but i won't go into detail as to spoil the movie.
As i said at the beginning, i was pretty familiar with a good part of the narrative and i knew that this movie was about people that despite being in a hopeless situation(now sadly familiar) and rose above the trauma to act heroically...although they would never concede to that..and knowing this, i felt it quite ironic to see this documentary instead of watching Donald and Hillary shrill at each other. Also despite the story and the coda at the end (touching on more recent school/mass shootings) there is no moral hand wringing about the prevalence of firearms in our society. I don't know if this is currently streaming on netflix as this seems to be the new paradigm, but do yourself a favor and see it however you can.
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