The Assassination of Richard

This past week I watched The Assassination of Richard Nixon, starring Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, and Don Cheadle. The film deals with some dark subjects about life during the 70s and how the everyman is challenged on various levels. Penn puts together a cocktail of various elements, including Death of a Salesman, Grapes of Wrath, and possibly a squirt of American Psycho.

In the end, you are left wondering how the average Joe of the 70s ever put up with all the diner crap that came his way. There was so much going on in the 70s, but most of it was dirty, not glamorous, it was the country's way of transitioning from the explosive 60s decade of change and social reform to the unfettered greed of the 80s. The 70s was the decade when the pendulum was caught in the middle, when the janitor is working the nightshift on a thursday night, hoping for something better, taking out the trash and hoping to get paid on Friday. The film captures that feeling, the hopelessness of running out of everything, gas, time, love, family. And fortunately for America, Friday came in the form of the 80s. The TGIF decade. Don't Get Mad, Get Glad.

The Assassination of Richard Nixcon, 2004, directed by Niels Mueller.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364961/
"Fact-based story about a disturbed office furniture salesman (Sean Penn) who in 1972 concocted a plot to kill then-President Nixon by hi-jacking a plane to fly over the White House to drop a gas bomb."

What am I doing in this photo? My little brother Abraham and I were visiting our community library where he will be volunteering this fall. I was pretending to be a PBS local correspondent.