Home > Fonda and "Sir" Support War Vets Then and Now

Fonda and "Sir" Support War Vets Then and Now

by Open-Publishing - Monday 24 April 2006

Movement Cinema-Video Wars and conflicts

by Eugene Hernandez

Any indie filmmaker would love to have an Oscar winning
actress hyping their new film; the presence of a
celebrity can command serious media attention. This
week, actress and activist Jane Fonda has been making
the media rounds, from Good Morning America, Larry King
Live, and The View, to an appearance at the IFC Center
on Monday. While she is also hawking a paperback
version of her recent memoir, Fonda has also been
talking a bit about David Zeiger’s "Sir! No Sir!", the
acclaimeddocumentary that attempts to set the record
straight about the GI movement to end the war in
Vietnam.

"In my mind it takes a special kind of courage to risk
your life in another country, for your own country,"
Fonda explained Monday night after a screening of the
film at the IFC Center in New York, where the film
opened this week (it also had a brief, recent two-week
run in San Francisco). "The men and women who came back
and spoke out were a special kind of hero," Fonda
added. The actress, who drew considerable criticism for
her opposition to the war at the time, met filmmaker
Zeiger and veteran/activist David Cline at the Oleo
Strut coffeehouse frequented by veterans in Texas, back
in 1971. Decades later she appeared in the movie and
continues to support it.

"This movie shows that [troops] were against the war,"
Fonda said Monday, "This was bedrock America." And she
added, "It speaks to the men and women who are in Iraq
now, it gives them courage."

Winner of the best documentary prize at last year’s
Hampton’s International Film Festival and audience
award winner for documentary at the Los Angeles Film
Festival, the movie was also nominated for best doc at
this year’s Independent Spirit Awards. It made nearly
$13,000 in its first week in San Francisco. It will
head to Denver and Madison, WI next weekend, with
bookings in Los Angeles, Nashville, Atlanta, Austin,
D.C., Chicago, Boston and other cities scheduled for
next month.

Greg Kendall of the film’s distributor Balcony
Releasing told indieWIRE that he was tipped off to the
film by consultant Peter Broderick, an executive
producer of the movie. He explained that the support
from Fonda, and the additional media exposure, are a
boon to the film, adding that he is targeting the film
to activists. "It’s not just a movie," Kendall
explained, "They are trying to do much more — it is a
rallying point for activist groups, (which is)
essential to the theatrical life of the film and [the]
enormous non-theatrical life it’s going to have as
well."

Kendall explained that this is just the latest in a
string of political and activist films that he and his
partner Connie White (a seasoned film buyer) have
released through Balcony. While Kendall explained that
he and White don’t exclusively pursue such films,
filmmakers have been drawn to them following their
successes with creating enhanced service deals for such
movies as "Trudell," "Daughter From Danang," and
"Stolen Childhoods."

"Finally, now this story can be told because it needs
to be told," director Zeiger said Monday night at the
IFC Center screening. "Had I made this film in the
1990s it would have fallen on deaf ears. It is a
bittersweet situation — I hope that the film plays a
small part in people looking at the war today, and GI’s
today, in a different light."

http://www.indiewire.com/movies/2006/04/new_this_week_s.html