Tivo picked up “Live From Baghdad” on HBO the other night. HBO put this out earlier last year, a movie about CNN covering the first Gulf War. I wanted to see this when it was originally broadcast, but something happened to our HBO or cable or something. Watching it even now is even more interesting, in contrast to the media coverage of this last Iraq War.
Really quite a good movie. Michael Keaton and Helena Bonham Carter play producers for the (at the time very small) Cable News Network. It follows the coverage before the war, and ends on the fateful night where the bombs started dropping.
I was 15 and in high school during the first Gulf War (I did my country report on Iraq that year). I watched the reporting of that night on TV; remember it very clearly. What I always thought was funny (that wasn’t in the movie) was every time there was a knock at the door, Bernard Shaw would say, “I’m going to go hide in the other room!”
After that first night, everyone got kicked out, except for Peter Arnett. He remained in Iraq, for the remainder of the war if I remember, filing (reviewed) stories as the one man voice from the wilderness. This really was the event that made CNN. And now all they have to cover is celebrity molestation trials…
And yes, it is available on Netflix.
