June 5

Day 5

I wish we got more of this.

This was originally a live broadcast of the Broadway play, Good Night and Good Luck on CNN and CNN International. I wish that there were more examples of this form, movie recorded as the Broadway play, so we could get more of an exposure to this type of entertainment.

I have been excited to see this since I put it on the Netflix queue and i figured the June Swoon 5 would be a perfect place for it.

This play showed the lead up and eventual confrontation between the junior senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy and CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow, as well as the journalists and news people behind the scenes at CBS.

I found this to be completely enthralling and totally thrilling. The play used videos of Joseph McCarthy as well as other important people of the time to help illuminate the story.

George Clooney starred as Murrow and he was excellent. A personal favorite of mine was also here, Clark Gregg, who was well known as Agent Coulson in the MCU. He played newscaster Don Hollenbeck. There was a scene in this play between Clooney and Gregg that was just amazing and showed off Gregg’s skills tremendously.

Glenn Fleschler played Fred Friendly and his relationship with Murrow was another part of this story. It was some of the best dialogue you will hear and consistently was both funny and poignant.

The only thing that was distracting for me was that fact that every time the character of Joe Wershba, played by Carter Hudson, spoke, it sounded like John Ratzenberger. That did not take away from his strong performance in the play, but it was something that I thought of every time he spoke.

I wish there were more of these type of films. Not just adaptations of stage plays, but actual stage plays as they are presented on Broadway. I would definitely go see something like this in a theater.