imdb-3918 I stumbled onto this at Netflix. WOW! It's not only totally nostalgic seeing the crazy opening credits to the show - apple pies, flags, Ayatollahs, Castro, American icons of all kinds, with MDJ's face in various expressions in stop motion animation, culminating in the open toothy mouth - but it's fascinating seeing the start of the obnoxious style of political commentary we have in the media today.I was not very politically aware when I was younger, so I missed most of the importance of his show when it was first on.The Morton Downey Jr. show at its peak was a bold experiment in audience participation - the one criteria for the show's production seemed to be to get the audience to actively participate in the harshest and loudest way possible.I didn't realize how patrician MDJ's background was - he was a neighbor of Teddy Kennedy's family at Hyannis Port, Mass and his father was a well known Irish singing star from the 1920s and 30s. I thought he had come out of nowhere to speak the truth as he saw it - since I was younger I had no clue about the dad's singing career. But the truth is that he stumbled into the MDJ Show format after stumbling earlier into some talk radio shows and after doing some right-to-life activism that taught him that outrageousness and populism sells.The MDJ Show pioneered the basic idea of the ideologically combative, very one sided talk format that we see today. And leveraged audience participation at an extremely populist level, which we don't see so much. Hannity, The Ed Show, Glenn Beck, Rachel Maddow, and to a lesser extent Bill O'Reilly are all basically the MDJ Show in spirit, but each with a very pure ideological tilt and no live studio audience. And, really, the modern shows make a lot more coherent sense than MDJ ever did.That is another key difference with MDJ and our current popular media left and right wing ideologues: MDJ was not pure in any way ideologically: he usually went to the right but would often adopt leftist or liberal points of view which he liked. The basic idea seemed to be that he postured for "obvious" decency (obvious to the studio audience, anyway) and simple answers to complex questions. For instance, while he usually draped himself in the flag (quite literally), he also backed Al Sharpton in the Tawana Brawley incident.This documentary is not only about the MDJ Show's life cycle but also the rise and the fall of MDJ himself. Watching this film, I was quite sad for him toward the end of his tenure as a public figure. He was quite obviously extremely insecure as a person, and just drank up the publicity, groupies and attention that the show gave him. He was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1996 and passed away in 2001. It's probably too much to say that he was a broken man after the MDJ show but the show caused him to burn himself out with his worst tendencies and appetites.The film never mentioned drug use. I find it difficult to believe that his frenzied attacks on the show were *him*. But apparently they were.I also got the answer to the question as to why the MDJ Show was canceled, since I didn't pay a lot of attention to it in its heyday. Essentially, the format drove away all substantial guests, since they knew that any dissenting opinion would cause them to be crucified by the audience mob and by MDJ himself. So at the end, the show had a lot of novelty acts, like the amputee lady who played patriotic anthems with her tongue on a keyboard, or transsexuals arguing their lifestyles.The life cycle of this show was a great warning to anyone who believes that populism and direct rule by the public is the answer to all complex social issues and debates ... such as current political movements (Tea Party, "Occupy") that are tied directly to anger and outrage. The MDJ Show started with a "high concept" that eventually dissolved because the show lost any credibility it had at the outset. This is a warning to both sides of the aisle to understand that mobs don't have answers, they just have emotions. The things that made the MDJ Show popular for a time were the same things that eventually buried it.In terms of production and the documentary itself - I thought the presentation was exceptionally effective. Several commentaries from Pat Buchanan lend credibility and gravitas throughout the film, and he did a great job of tying MDJ to today's political climate. The weird graphic novel style animations which have been mentioned by other reviewers as distracting - I found them perfectly complementary to the movie. A recurring meme in the animations was the ghostly image of MDJ's father's face, grimly nodding "no" in disapproval to junior. The animations were impressionistic - a reflection of Downey's id and internal obsessions.

The_Film_Cricket I have to admit that ever since new of his death from lung cancer in 2001, I hadn't given much thought to Morton Downey, Jr. I'm not being mean, but truthfully, there wasn't much to think about. Downey's legacy in television history is so forgettable that the subsequent generation has no idea who he was. If you've ever seen "The Morton Downey, Jr. Show" you probably have an idea why.For 20 months from 1987 to 1989, Downey ran a self-titled TV talk show that was part-riot, part-circus, a little bit Jerry Springer, Rush Limbaugh and later Bill O'Reilly and Michael Moore. What would come of his show would be an example, not for others to follow, but for others to correct upon. His show was a loud, obnoxious and fairly monotonous platform of screaming and bullying. The format (he said) was to give a voice to the silent majority, but in reality it was a platform for propagating bad behavior. Downey screamed in the faces of a variety of guests from vegans to the gun nuts to the KKK and even celebrity guests like Ron Paul and Alan Dershowitz. Famously, he clashed with Al Sharpton. Downey's audience, comprised mostly of young college kids, behaved as if they were attending a hockey game.The new documentary "Évocateur: The Morton Downey, Jr. Movie" examines Downey's brief rise and quick demise from television. This is a professionally-made, talking-head documentary that features interviews with former colleagues, family and friends who try to help us get inside Downey's head to figure out what drew him to become the screaming meme of late-night television and what personal demons drew him to television and what led to his eventual downfall.We learn that he was a bitter man, the son of a celebrated Irish Tenor (whom his son loathed) who was a friend and neighbor of the Kennedys. The junior Downey grew up in the shadow of his old man, even attempting to launch a singing career of his own. His singing voice was competent but unremarkable. His looks weren't exactly top drawer either. He bore a strange resemblance to Don Knotts. Despite his familial legacy, Downey would become a walking irony. He would make his living destroying his voice, by screaming on television and chain-smoking four packs a day.Downey would prop himself up as the voice of the angry right-wing Republican, sort of an Archie Bunker with a lectern - even down to the smoking habit and the white collared shirts. His show wasn't exactly insightful. Fellow talk show host Sally Jesse Raphael remarks that his show was "that prurient excitement of not-nice people saying not-nice things." His show would turn talk shows on their heads. The common thread of talk shows in the mid-80s was the polite, conversational style of Phil Donahue, Merv Griffin and a newly minted Chicago-based neophyte named Oprah Winfrey.The difference between Downey and his contemporaries (even Springer) is that they stayed off-stage, letting the audience run the circus. Downey tried to play the role of the ringmaster, the lion-tamer and the lion, and so the show had nowhere to go. His singular quest was ratings and he got them, until the television audience grew tired of the act. The movie doesn't shy away from the facts of why the show – and Downey's career – came to an unflattering end.The movie finds some measure of pity for Downey, but it never backs down from the fact that he was the propagator of his own downfall, particularly with the infamous Tawana Brawly incident in 1988 in which a black woman claimed to have been raped by six white man - an incident that was later found to have been staged. Later Downey would try to become the propagator of his own headlines by claiming to have been beaten up by skinheads in an airport men's room, which he staged to get himself one more headline. The result of this documentary is the pitiful, but not unmoving, story of a man who build his house on sand and got caught in his own trap.*** (of four)

toolooze Actually, the storyline was about what you'd expect, told in an interesting manner. Each narrator had conflicting thoughts about this tortured man.The MDJ talk/insult show was a precursor to the brawls of today's reality shows. Downey also paved the way for the uncivilized anti-PC campaign of the 2000s. It was interesting to see Rev. Al Sharpton and Ron Paul making spectacles of themselves. What did they expect to happen? Or maybe that was the point. It is a fast track to celebrity status.I unexpectedly enjoyed the narrative of Pat Buchanan, especially his characterization of the Tea Party members. If you like documentaries, television, or reality TV, this is a good one to see.

teaguetod Morton Downey, Jr. was a kind of real-life Howard Beale (the mad-as-hell crazy anchorman from the 1976 classic "Network"), and his meteoric rise and fall parallels that of another fictional populist TV personality: "Lonesome" Rhodes, played by Andy Griffith in Elia Kazan's under-rated 1957 movie "A Face in the Crowd." But this story really happened, and Mort really existed.Downey's New Jersey-based talk show was only on the air for two years, from 1988 to 1989. So why is he important? Why watch a documentary about a talk show that ran for just two years, 25 years ago? Understanding this story can help us understand how we got the media we have today.Journalist William Greider called it Rancid Populism. This was the appeal of the Republican Party starting as far back as Nixon. The party posed as the voice of the "Silent Majority," the disaffected common man, while in reality it appealed to the angry, white working class who jumped ship from the Democratic Party following the Civil Rights movement.White working-class people felt "their" country was going down the tubes, and they were partly right. There was a lot to be unhappy about: de-industrialization leading to the decline of manufacturing and the rise of the Rust Belt (go watch "Detropia" for that); the decline of working peoples' wages and the rapid growth of inequality and creation of a new Gilded Age in America. Politicians like Nixon, Reagan, and Bush Sr. were all better at tapping into this anger than the Democrats, making Republicans seem like the party of Joe Sixpack and Joe the Plumber -- instead of the party of Big Business, Big Money, and Wall Street (which is ultimately what both major parties became).The Republicans also understood the marketing of this message better than the Democrats: tap into people's hatred of "the Government" and make the Dems synonymous with Big Government. (How many times already have we heard conservative politicians running for office who say they hate government? Then why run?)The early 90s was when the right-wing Big Media really started up in earnest (what former conservative pundit David Brock has called "The Republican Noise Machine"). Rush Limbaugh, for example, got his start during the Clinton presidency. The Fox News Channel itself also started during the Clinton years, in 1996. Both were part of a generalized conservative backlash against a Democrat in the White House.And this tactic of right-wing populism continues to work today (especially with another Democratic president to attack), and is bigger business than ever -- with billionaire Rupert Murdoch's Fox News channel going strong, the Koch brothers' successful Tea Party movement, and all those TV and radio hosts like Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity who are paid tens of millions of dollars to tell us they're speaking up for the "little guy."Morton Downey, Jr. helped lead the way to this kind of TV "news" or "journalism," even if his show appears obvious and amateurish compared to the slick format and presentation we see today. But a figure like Bill O'Reilly, in particular, owes a tremendous debt to Downey's confrontational, damn-the-torpedoes style of doing "news" and interviews. At the same time trash-talk-show hosts like Jerry Springer and Maury Povich also partly owe their style of crazed three-ring-circuses to Mort. Even the Reverend Al Sharpton, perpetual African-American leader and professional racial ambulance-chaser, owes a debt to Mort, appearing on his show frequently during its short run.The friendship between Sharpton and Downey (briefly shown in the film) offers a clue to the truth behind the image: Mort didn't really believe what he said on the air. Or maybe he did. Anyway, it really didn't matter: it was all just for ratings. Working the crowd into a frenzy, yelling at his guests, having a fight break out in the middle of the show -- Downey knew this was what made for great TV . . . or, at least, it got people's attention. (Most certainly, this is also the case of Bill O'Reilly today: he's a showman who stumbled onto a sure thing; about as authentic as a TV preacher.)At the time, Downey was hated and judged by the "respectable" media. But give 'em a few years, and they'll come around: trash-talk-shows, "reality" shows like "Jersey Shore," Rush, Billy-O, "To Catch a Predator," etc. It's the race to the bottom, the lowest-common denominator, anything in the name of ratings. Entertainment, Infotainment, "News." Who cares if we believe it? Who cares if it's true? He who yells the loudest wins.Mort's show was like an (un-)controlled experiment in pushing the TV talk-show format to its absolute limit, right up to the breaking point -- supposedly in the name of some Archie-Bunker, knee-jerk reactionary-conservative populism that Mort himself didn't even really believe in. Yet, people ate it up, it made him a star and a working-class "hero" almost overnight, and it set the stage for a lot what came later in TV "news" and opinion shows. That's why you should watch this movie.