SEPTEMBER 5

Review.

One of the toughest things I imagine a filmmaker may tackle is a movie about a real-life event. The audience knows the story, the plot. Worse, they know how it ends. In this case, tragically. 

How do you make an engaging movie, which is meant to be entertainment, when the popcorn muncher has seen the cover of the book and flipped to the last page.

September 5 is engaging from the first seconds.

Let me veer off on a tangent for a second. There are people out there that have no idea what this is about. There are people that don’t know “classic” movies from the 80’s. They don’t know stars from the 70’s, or the 90’s. There are people that enjoy a talking toilet on TikTok, but are clueless about…. CLUELESS. The original.

There are people that know all about DEADPOOL, but have no idea who VAN WILDER is. There are people that understand the reference to rosebud, but don’t know a Black Panther.

September 5 is a movie that these people, the people that don’t know the past, should see. For multiple reasons.

It’s about the true event of terrorists at the Olympic Village in Germany in 1972. The world watched while ABC Sports, with Jim McCay, took on the challenge of reporting from the first minutes, to the tragic end. You’ll hear a young Peter Jennings report from the field, and there are some other familiar names. Howard Cosell was there? Didn’t know that.

This movies takes you into the control room where Geoffrey Mason is in command at the control board on a slower day. The usual folks are off, enjoying their time, a break from reporting on all the activities at the 1972 Summer Olympics. Then, gun shots are heard, and the crew from ABC are on the scene, as it’s happening in the Village, a short run away.

The actor, John Magaro, is exceptional in taking us through the stress, the smoke, the sweat of this time, thrown into command because the other guys aren’t around. You feel the tension as they wait for something to happen, tension as they realize the terrorists are watching what they are broadcasting, tension as the German police come barging in to shut them down and the decisions that have to be made – do they show this to the world as it happens, knowing something could go very wrong.

And it did go wrong. No surprise, this is based on true events, so many will already know what happens. But even then, there’s hope that makes you question your memory, what you heard, what you might remember from seeing it as it happened. And then the bottom falls out.

There is not a flaw to be seen in this movie. It’s an adventure back in time in multiple ways. It’s the real-life event, which is a lesson 900 million people saw back in ’72. But it can also be a lesson as you watch how television was done back then. You couldn’t livestream from your phone – you better hope there’s a payphone nearby and you have some change. 

There’s no camera in your phone. Not even a camcorder to record the event, and sound, well that is sold separately. While the event may be recorded on 16mm film, the sound will be on the reel-to-reel. Along with film that has to be developed over 20 minutes, an eternity on live tv, there are gigantic magnetic reels that have to be spooled up and counted down before their stories can make it to the airwaves.

There are radios with multiple channels, no texting. Need to add a caption to a video? There’s actually a dedicated set and camera to make that happen, with a woman carefully placing letters on a black board, then aiming a giant camera at it.

There’s a very interesting bit that could be the history of the “bug,” the logo you see on screen all the time when watching TV. It has me curious enough that I hope someone on YouTube did a feature about it. The bug.

You’ll watch as they struggle to make things work, things we take for granted today with all our gadgets and gizmos. There’s a giant control board and multiple screens that could have cost hundreds of thousands to put together, and now we can do much of the same for, well, you have a studio in your pocket, live streaming to the world. 

This is a look at a moment in time when a group of people, especially Geoffrey Mason, have to get the job done, dedicated to reporting the news as it happens, interrupted once in a while by a message from Texaco. 

For those that don’t know… the games continued while the hostages were being held, only pausing after each competition was complete. 

SEPTEMBER 5 is highly recommended – see it at the theatre.