Page 6 November 14, 2019 EL SEGUNDO HERALD
Entertainment
Check It Out Film Review
The Way Home: Tales from a Life
Without Technology by Mark Boyle
See Check It Out, page 12
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Scandalous Documentary Tells the
True Story of the National Enquirer
By Alice Kate Bristow for cinemacy.com
The news. “Is it entertainment, or is it information?”
asks Fred Friendly in Scandalous,
a question at the heart of this feature-length
documentary about the National Enquirer.
The first half of the film covers the history
of the Enquirer and how Italian-American
businessman Generoso Pope allegedly bought
the newspaper with Mafia money, part of
his plan to develop a publication that would
communicate to mass-market America. After
witnessing a gory car accident -- and the
crowd of passersby stopping to watch --
he realized he “gotta make a gore rag.”
Circulation boomed, but then the subject of
gore was abandoned when the newspaper
became a staple at the front of every supermarket
checkout.
In 1988, their definition of a lucrative story
expanded to include politics, when the Enquirer
published photographs proving Democratic
presidential candidate Gary Hart had lied
about having an affair. The Enquirer, we learn,
either exposed or backed politicians -- and
was prepared to pay generously for either
information or silence. Enter Donald Trump
and the story of how he used the newspaper
to propel himself into the limelight. Trump
was so intent on becoming a star that he
would often call the paper using fake names
to drop stories about himself. The Enquirer
considered him such a good subject that they
assigned Trump his own journalist.
Much of this story is nothing new. We know
that Donald Trump is president, and we know
the media had a lot to do with it. But what
is interesting is watching the interviewees,
mostly ex-employees of the Enquirer, bounce
between pride and mild concern that they
may hold some responsibility. “How did we
get a tabloid subject who’s now President of
the United States? And do I have any shame
in this or potential guilt of my own?” asks
Larry Haley, the employee who was assigned
to cover Donald Trump in the ‘90s. “Hell,
you’re just trying to get a page one that will
sell next week,” he concludes.
Scandalous, opening this Friday at the
Laemmle Royal, offers a thought-provoking
look into a style of journalism that has
greatly influenced the culture we live in
today. But, at a time when the subject of
the media is often the media itself, I wonder
if Scandalous lacks a particular element of
self-reflection that is required, now more
than ever, by all branches of the press. It is,
after all, a film by a media company about
another media company. •
By Roz Templin, Library Assistant,
El Segundo Public Library
Mark Boyle has written columns for The
Guardian (a United Kingdom publication),
contributed to international press, radio and
television, as well as being the author of
The Moneyless Man. He is a former business
graduate who lived entirely without money
for three years.
In this riveting book, Mark describes ‘going
back to the land’, by living on a three acre
smallholding in County Galway, Ireland, near
a village called Knockmoyle. A smallholding
is an area of land that is used for farming,
but is much smaller than a typical farm. This
tale is actually a collection of observations
and reflections that help him realize that “…
instead of spending my life making a living,
I wanted to make living my life.”
Mark Boyle has taken on something far more
than a challenge from a publisher: journaling
about his life with no “conveniences” (he
would term “distractions”) from this modern
age, “… to discover what it might feel like to
become a part of one’s landscape, using only
tools and technologies … that do not make
The Way Home: Tales from a Life Without Technology by Mark Boyle Roz Templin Scandalous, Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures
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Email us at web@heraldpublications.com. We will publish all
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