"Raise Hell" New Documentary On Columnist MOLLY IVINS' Amazing Life
'Laughter is the great unifier'- behind the incredible life of Molly Ivins. Raise Hell, a new documentary about the great Texas columnist, sends an urgent message from the Bush years to a nation under Trump with sharp humour. Martin Pengelly, The Guardian, March 18, 2019. *"Raise Hell" film to be released later this year..
Ivins died of cancer in 2007, at the age of 62. Now, she is the subject of a documentary, Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins, which is making its way around the festival circuit after showing at Sundance and SXSW. The film describes a remarkable life: born into Houston oil money, educated at Smith in Massachusetts, a hard-charging reporter too hard-charging for the New York Times, a champion of the people in Texas, a guardian of human rights with the American Civil Liberties Union, a syndicated columnist and bestselling author, a troubled soul, a brilliant wit who coined a withering nickname for President George W Bush: Shrub.
Director Janice Engel does not mention Bush’s successor-but-one. But she does include shots of liberal dissent of today: the Women’s March, March for our Lives. This, she says, is because she did not want “he who shall not be named … anywhere near my film”. “But I wanted specifically to show Molly’s amazing prescience. The things she wrote, 15, 20, 30 years ago are happening right now. Molly was a student of history. These things don’t go away and people don’t pay attention, but she certainly did. "It’s amazing. I sometimes think she’s more relevant now than when she was delivering her message. Right now, across the world, democracy is in crisis.”
From her home in Austin, Ivins kept note of the Republicans’ hard-right turn, of the consequent Texification of US politics, on the machinations of those with power and the effects on those without it, on the beginnings of the great polarisation which has reached such depths today. It all culminated with Bush’s assault on civil liberties in the name of dubious security, in the years after 9/11. Ivins’ final book, Bill of Wrongs, written like others with Lou DuBose, was a clarion call against suppression of protest and abuse of power that now might even seem quaint...
Ivins’ greatest hits are many. Of one Texas lawmaker: “If his IQ were any lower, they’d have to water him twice a day.” Of Vice-President Dan Quayle: “If you put that man’s brain in a bumblebee, it would fly backwards.” Of Bill Clinton, the withering assessment that he was “weaker than bus station chilli”. As Molly said, ‘I don’t care about who’s screwing whom, it’s about who’s getting screwed and who’s doing the screwing.’ It’s really about the destruction of the middle class over these last 30 years or however long, and, as Robert Reich has said, if you destroy the middle class you destroy the democracy.
“Again, Molly said it: ‘It’s not a left-against-right issue, it’s a top-versus-bottom issue.’ It always has been. It’s about the haves and have-nots.”.. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/mar/18/molly-ivins-raise-hell-documentary
Obit (2007), https://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/feb/02/guardianobituaries.pressandpublishing
Film Promo, "Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins" (2019). V-O-T-E
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