Bayside resident Mark Metcalf is an actor who has worked in movies, TV and on the stage. He is best known for his work in "Animal House," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Seinfeld."
In addition to his work on screen, Metcalf is involved with the Milwaukee International Film Festival, First Stage Children's Theater and a number of other projects, including the comedy Web site, comicwonder.com.
He also finds time to write about movies for OnMilwaukee.com. In this week's installment of the Screening Room, Mark looks at a pair of documentaries: "In the Shadow of the Moon" and "No End in Sight."
IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON (2007)
In 1961, John F. Kennedy challenged the United States, its citizens, its scientists, and its military to be first to put a man on the moon. It was a challenge motivated by a personal vision, but also by politics and the recognition that the country was foundering for direction and pride. The Russians, who were the enemy at that time, had put a man into space. Perhaps a little like a schoolboy challenging another to a spitting contest, Kennedy threw down the gauntlet and brought the country together to meet this challenge. He didn't live to see it but by the end of the decade his vision had been fulfilled.
"In the Shadow of the Moon" documents how the few men who were chosen met that challenge. More than that, it gives us a candid and very personal look at those men and their feelings now, some 40 years later.
It is hard to imagine a sane person climbing to the top of a metal cylinder filled with rocket fuel and waiting patiently to be blasted through the atmosphere to then land on a rock 240,000 miles away. It's also hard to imagine getting back into a small ship and be propelled through that same atmosphere, with the ship reaching temperatures far beyond imagination, to splash down in an ocean somewhere, be picked up and carried to a ticker tape parade and a hero's welcome. Especially after watching rocket after rocket blow up on the pad or disintegrate in the air before even leaving the atmosphere. Who would volunteer to do such a thing? Whose sense of duty to country is so extreme? Whose desire for adventure is so great?
I've always thought Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to be amazing heroes for walking and paddling into such an unknown in 1805 when they set out across America. But they were dependent on their own ingenuity, cunning and endurance. The men who went to the moon were at the mercy of an untried technology, a technology capable of creating forces far beyond human proportion, and the assistance of hundreds of other technicians. They were going where only dreams had gone before and they were going alone.
As one of the men points out, the feeling of stepping out of the landing module onto the surface of a world where you would be the only human was a strange and daunting one.
Neil Armstrong is physically absent from the interviews. However, they all refer to him and bow to him and his noted coolness under pressure. He is said to be a recluse now. Each of the men interviewed is revealed to have been changed mightily by the events of their lives in the 1960's, when they did something no one had ever done and something no one may ever do again. They also become quite charmingly human, fun and funny, so much more accessible, and even giddy in their excitement, than they were when they walked, in their huge bulky white space suits, out to that can full of rocket fuel, climbed to the top, to wait until it either exploded and killed them or blew them into outer space.
I still question in a big way the use of money and science to send people or objects into outer space. It may be a romantic exploration that serves only the few when that money and that science might better serve man if it were turned towards a cure for disease, eliminating poverty or finding other fuels to give us what we think we need. But it is there. It has been done. And it certainly attracts the attention of the world and brings people together in the realization of what must be a common dream. Therefore, I applaud the way it makes a community out of a fractured world. Moreover, "In the Shadow of the Moon" encourages me to celebrate the event and the heroes who created it.
At this point, "No End in Sight" is an historical document. It happened in the past. There is nothing we can do about the mistakes it outlines. The war in Iraq is what it is and we will have to finish it in whatever way we can. I personally have never understood what "winning" this war meant. At the propaganda level, all wars throughout history are won or they are lost. At the human level almost everyone loses. And I don't live at a propaganda level. I don't care to do so.
I have a 13-year-old son and the odds are good that for most of his life he will live with the economic, political and social repercussions of a war that was waged for a lie by men who had only a movie's idea (more than likely a movie starring John Wayne) of what war is like; men whose ability to listen was seriously impaired by arrogance.
I don't believe that those repercussions will be positive. Estimates indicate that the war in Iraq may cost upward of $2 trillion. That's including many things like medical treatment and care for the wounded and the damaged. Hard costs are already at the $600 billion level. What could you do with $400 million per day?
"No End In Sight" recounts the story of the Iraq War from the point of view of men and women who served there throughout the early years and even before it became the focus of the military and economic energies of the United States. These are people from deep inside the military establishment, the Foreign Service establishment and the intelligence establishment. The most frightening impression is how the administration -- President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld -- chose to ignore the advise of seasoned professionals, not just about the initial invasion but at every step along the way in the so-called reconstruction period.
And they didn't just ignore the advice of their own people they also refused to listen to the Iraqi people, to consult with their leaders and to use what was offered them. In old-school, ugly American style they waltzed in with guns blazing, set up their own card game and began to reap what they thought were going to be the spoils. They didn't even bother to learn the language or to hire people who knew it.
The biggest blunder came when Paul Bremer, the man the administration appointed to manage the re-building of Iraq, issued the order to disband the Iraqi army and to turn the entire Bath Party, the political party of Sadaam Hussein, out into the streets.
These people, mostly men, in a culture where male pride is fragile, now with no occupation, with no money, already with no electricity and infrequent water, being unfocussed and apparently unwanted, began to fight amongst each other and against their ancient enemies, and suddenly, surprise, surprise, you had an insurrection and then a civil war. And the United States, with a hugely understaffed military, was unable to contain it.
The film came out in 2007 so it was before the time of "the surge." In terms of loss of life, "the surge" appears to be successful from a media standpoint. But one wonders how much damage has been done, how many enemies have been created, how big a hole has been dug, and how much longer the economy of this country must be drained to pay for a war that had no basis in immediate need and that was handled so incompetently that the quagmire became impassable.
Mark Metcalf is an actor and owner of Libby Montana restaurant in Mequon. Still active in Milwaukee theater, he's best known for his roles as Neidermeyer in "Animal House" and as The Maestro on "Seinfeld."
Originally from New Jersey, Metcalf now lives in Bayside.
