I was reading some website of famous comedian interviews, from way back when to at least late 90s, and the consensus seems to be that Garrett was the best. I can vaguely remember one of his routines, before his Condor appearance, and I thought that he was hilarious. I think that his problem, tho, was his delivery; not likable enough, or something similar.
<looks nervously from side to side>*** Shhh!***
(Yes, I misremembered the title…)
Oh, yeah, Ashwell!
(I make a hobby out of spotting Max Headroom alums.)
I’m glad this thread popped up, because it prompted me to rewatch the movie for the first time since it came out (thank you Amazon Prime!). It really has great pace and even though I knew how it would end, it still gripped me…such fun. I’d also forgotten there was a time when Faye Dunaway was both sexy AND could act.
Yep. Even though I knew she was in the movie, it took me a few minutes to realize it was her!
Wow. Amazon Prime has all of the movies from this thread - Condor, Marathon Man, Parallax View and The Conversation. Let’s go retro-paranoid this weekend!
Back to the OP.
The NYT has an incredibly juicy story. And in 1975, they would have definitely published it. If they believe it.
So I think the issue is: Would they believe Joe Turner? Could the verify his story? Would the CIA be able to discredit him in some way?
The key facts the NYT would be able to verify is the body count:
There’s the 6 people dead in the initial hit. These people had normal off work lives. Turner knew their names. Knew one person quite well, it seems. While the Agency did a clean up on them, anyone would be able to easily verify that these people existed and either disappeared or were dead as of the day of the hit.
Sam Barber in the alley. This guy was publically acknowledged to have been killed and by Turner, no less. Suddenly Turner walks into the NYT and no one seems to be searching for him anymore.
The postman. Okay, no one’s going to miss him.
Wicks was shot in the alley by Turner and later unplugged in the hospital. Have to cover up the latter. The former was in the news. And yet Turner is still walking around, again.
Atwood, the CIA Deputy Director of Operation. This one people are going to notice. Joubert assumes a police investigation since he wipes Turners fingerprints, etc. (Not very well, BTW.) Can’t cover up his death. Really hard time trying to explain it as natural causes.
Wicks and Atwood dying so close together and both known by someone clearly involved with Agency. Alarms would go off at the NYT. They know they have a story.
The remaining aspect is: would they believe this was over a plan to attack and control oil fields? In 1975, you betcha.
They’ll print it.
What news outlet would he go to now?
wikileaks.
ETA: well, maybe. I’m not sure he has actual documentation to provide them. I’d give it to a college journalism lab like Harvard’s.
Infowars
Great movie. Haven’t seen it in awhile, but the hit on Redford’s office while he’s stepped out, and his fight with the “mailman,” are what I most remember (and the annoying kid who hit every button in the elevator, stranding Redford there with Von Sydow).
I agree, the NYT would probably run the story, but it’s just enough of an open question to leave the audience wondering.
Stephen King’s Firestarter ends similarly. In that, the protagonist, a young woman, goes to Rolling Stone with her true tale of a murderous government conspiracy. It’s implied they’ll print it.
AlterNet might be one place, but not the best. They’re second-string at best, and the New York Times or the Washington Post would still be infinitely better.
Infowars is Alex Jones’ private blog where he rants about how the [del]Jews[/del] Zionists are taking over the world and how the people killed at Sandy Hook were actually crisis actors and the parents who lost children are faking it for Nefarious Purposes. It’s the definition of self-marginalizing bullshit which only serves to keep the duped sending Alex Jones more money because they’re too wrapped up in knowing secret forbidden knowledge that they can’t ask one simple question: If Alex Jones is so dangerous, why isn’t he dead?
RationalWiki has even more information on the shill and his flock of sheeple, if you can stomach it.
I have this exact series of quotes in my office and about once a week someone asks me where it comes from!
I think Higgins is 100% correct. It’s all well and good to be idealistic when you and your family are well fed, well clothed, warm and without need. But when that is threatned people are much less likley to be idealistic and will worry much less about greenhouse gas emissions and utilizing the big bad military and will just want their food and fuel. It’s niave to think otherwise.
Love this flick.
I think you’re wrong all over the place.
The CIA cleaned up the death office.
The CIA already came up with a good excuse for Sam dying. When the NYT goes to the NYPD, they’ll just say “nah, wrong guy”.
Wicks and Atwood? Plane crash. BTW, who is ‘clearly involved with the Agency’? None of Turner’s friends know where he works, and we can assume that the same with the other 5. Or 6, can’t remember.
A guy comes in, saying the CIA killed their own people. Why? The Embargo? Good reason, but, they’ll want proof. Where is it? BTW, where are the bodies. 6 people died…in NYC? That’ll rock the Agency to it’s very foundation. No connection between any of them, except Condor and the babe. But, she has a different job listed. And, her disappearing may just have been what is needed to set off a nut to imagining some crazy story. Nut’s don’t glom onto names that nobody ever heard of…they all seem to blame the Admin in power, or somebody in the news, never somebody who came from Brussels, or an Agency about which no one ever heard.
All he has is a story that cannot be verified. He’ll just give them six names, that nobody can track down. He’ll go around saying “I’m Condor”. Wow. There were plenty of nuts back then, also, so they’ll check his story out. He won’t have anything more than every other nutcase can grab from the paper.
BTW, E Howard Hunt’s wife died in a plane crash right around that time, and Martha Mitchell went to a nuthouse, and it was all handled by the mainstream as no mystery, just coincidences, etc…
They won’t print.
There is no way of knowing whether they will or won’t ‘print it’. It’s an open ended film; maybe they thought a sequel would be forthcoming.
No plans for a sequel that I ever heard of. I think it ended ambiguously on purpose.
Just watched it again on Friday. It holds up pretty well.
I noticed Wicks has the official portrait of President Ford on his Langley office wall: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Gerald_Ford.jpg
And Higgins has a print of the famous Trumbull painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence hanging on his: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Declaration_independence.jpg
Nice allusion to the backstory of Mr. Wabash’s (John Houseman) previous OSS and CIA service.
The Getty gas station where Redford and Dunaway go has a “Gas: No Lead” sign.
Why would the Major instruct Redford not to hang up the payphone? So they could complete a trace?
The CIA cleanup crew is in a truck marked “Augean Cleaning Service Inc.” - a nice shoutout to Greek myth: Augeas - Wikipedia
Redford overhears Dunaway’s character’s name when the ski supply store clerk calls in her credit card to see if it’s good for her purchase, loudly reading off her name and the card numbers - those were the days!
Still seems to me that Dunaway yields to Redford’s ardor 'way too easily.
McCoy’s restaurant, where Dunaway sits down and surprises Higgins, is still open for business: http://mccoynyc.com/
Bittersweet to see so much of the World Trade Center.
It all got wrapped up very neatly in Redford’s 1982 sequel, “Three More Days of the Condor”.
I love this film, and watched it a few months ago on DVD. Yep- quite ambiguous IMHO. I think he wants to believe very badly that the story will break, and yet he also knows of the incredible REACH of the Intelligence Community at that time. Great expression on his face. One wonders how many takes they let him do of that read with how many different looks and intonations, so they’d have a bunch to chose from.
BTW, Wicks orders up an official helicopter to take him from CIA HQ in Langley, Va. to the World Trade Center in southern Manhattan. Wouldn’t a plane make more sense? Would anyone really take a helicopter that distance?
The book had at least one sequel, so in theory the movie could too.
But IIRC the book ends completely differently. The Redford character tracks down and murders Von Sydow’s character. And I don’t think he ever tried to leak the story.
I think that this was a totally inspired part of the movie, and is one of the greatest lines of any movie. It hints of a mysterious technology/protocol, and the Major doesn’t cheapen it by giving an explanation to Condor. (Your induction is probably the correct one, but, it is the uncertainty that gives this aspect it’s *je ne se quois *[sp?].) Also, the Major being in a wheelchair and being such a by-the-book nerd also gives it a special hyper-efficient branding.