Evocateur: The Morton Downey Jr Movie
7 /10 1 Votes
Writer Daniel A. Miller Running time 1h 30m Country United States | 6.8/10 IMDb Genre Documentary Duration Screenplay Daniel A. Miller Language English | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Director Seth Kramer, Daniel A. Miller, Jeremy Newberger Release date 21 April 2012 (2012-04-21) (Tribeca)
7 June 2013 (2013-06-07) Directors Jeremy Newberger, Seth Kramer, Daniel A. Miller Music director Marc Ribot, Peter Rundquist Cast Morton Downey, Jr. (Himself (archive footage)), Gloria Allred (Herself), Michele Bachmann (Herself), Glenn Beck (Himself), Richard Bey (Himself), Chris Elliott (Himself)Similar movies Information Violence , EDtv , The Million Game , Quiz Show , The Kentucky Fried Movie , Kein Pardon | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
In the late 1980s, controversial host Morton Downey Jr. rips apart the traditional talk-show format by turning civilized debate and discussion into aggressive and sometimes-violent confrontation.
Contents
Evocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie is a 2012 documentary film that chronicles the history of The Morton Downey Jr. Show and Downeys influence on "trash TV." The film also looks at Downeys relationship with Al Sharpton and other important 1980s figures, as well as Downeys role as a predecessor for conservative commentators like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.
Long before O'Reilly and Beck, Morton Downey, Jr., was tearing up the talk-show format with his divisive populism. Between the fistfights, rabid audience, and Mort's cigarette smoke always "in your face," The Morton Downey Jr. Show was billed as "3-D television," "rock and roll without the music." Évocateur meditates on the hysteria that ended the '80s and ultimately its most notorious agitator.
Similar Movies
American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein (2009). Jeremy Newberger and Seth Kramer directed Evocateur: The Morton Downey Jr Movie and The Linguists. Walt: The Man Behind the Myth (2001). Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992). Lost in Woonsocket (2007).
Synopsis
Evocateur features interviews with Herman Cain, Pat Buchanan, Chris Elliott, Gloria Allred, Sally Jessy Raphael, Alan Dershowitz, Curtis Sliwa, and Richard Bey. Previously unreleased footage reveals Downey’s behind-the-scenes fistfights and foibles.
Evocateur also features an interview with Steven Pagones, the white assistant district attorney who was falsely accused of raping black teenager Tawana Brawley in 1988. Pagones discusses how the case and the related TV debates between Downey and Sharpton affected his life.
In July, 2015 CNN announced that it had acquired the broadcast rights to the film, and that the network would air it for the first time on August 13.
References
Evocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie WikipediaEvocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie IMDb Evocateur: The Morton Downey Jr Movie themoviedb.org