-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Phil, Look, I know you're somewhat anti-private guns and somewhat anti-Right Wing Nuts. I can understand all that. I'm somewhat anti-government guns and somewhat anti-Left Wing Nuts myself. So don't take the word of right wing nuts on WACO. Pay attention to former Attorney General Ramsey Clark as he sues the Feds on behalf of the survivors. Or read the review of the new documentary WACO: THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT which premiered at Sundance. http://www.waco93.com/ http://www.waco93.com/sfbgreview.htm San Francisco Bay Guardian March 12, 1997 (SF's Alternative Weekly) Rewinding Waco New doc Waco turns heads, hearts. By Susan Gerhard "I've always voted Democrat," William Gazecki, director of crowd-displeaser Waco: The Rules of Engagement, told me over the phone last week. "But at this point, all the lines are crossing in my mind." Ours, too. One of the most achingly sad documentaries I can remember, Gazecki's film sounds, on paper, more like a morning with Rush Limbaugh than like an evening screening at the Roxie (where it got its first theatrical run, last week). In Waco's world the gun "nuts" are sane, the conservatives are honest, the liberals are pigs, the children are in danger. The doc left even slackers in Roxie's rep house stunned, their ideologies scrambled and their consciences scarred by a slow-motion,two-hour-plus replay of the slaughter of a peaceful sect. How can a jury look at the Rodney King videotape and not see a police beating? The same way the American people can look at the Waco inferno and see a mass suicide. A radical reframing suited up in pin-striped documentary garb, The Rules of Engagement mixes footage that's already been heavily digested by interested parties: Waco in flames, forward- looking infrared (FLIR) imagery seen by Congress, CSPAN's coverage of the Waco hearings, David Koresh's pleas, Janet Reno's testimony. But this film adds to that tabloid mix some desperate 911 calls by Branch Davidians, sections of the negotiation tapes that offer a dismal perspective on FBI attempts to come to a truce, the Davidians' footage and that of the FBI agents (a SWAT teamster jokes about being "honed to kill," while Davidians inside calmly express fear for their lives). Most crucially, the soundtrack lays new emotional cues over old footage (a Third Reichian drumbeat as federal agents approach, heavy-metal guitar tangle as tanks crash into the building). And in case anyone's sympathy for the Davidians was lagging, the film also has witnesses noting that armed federal agents killed their Alaskan malamute. ********** Showing at THE COOLIDGE CORNER Brookline, MA Showing daily June 27 - July 4 DCF -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 5.0 beta Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBM5YjGIVO4r4sgSPhAQH15wP/fdj32x21ap/1kAJPmB1VqFVY+UmWTApC o9YMRDhyPjHAWQjEynYN5xphasFJqHJfiJbNgPMDNz8j3vbFBwXVeSJGVQMcJAKp 06kgBSd3h8Wenja68vhRvA4XGUQBe4MeRL37U1wyBLhBmT3tA4gGhOW/3g7u6vbX kGOpUGY3T0s= =zGAN -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----