沃尔特2019

寒假惊奇地发现老家丽水居然还有Richard Jewell的排片，立马就去看了。 之前只看过东木老爷子的《百万美元宝贝》，对他不甚了解。但单从这部和《百》来看，着实可以看出他的过人之处：不用很多的技巧修饰，利用故事本身来打动观众。在我来看，他是一个具有“内力”的导演；可能也是因为将近耄耋的高龄，他的作品因而显得精准有力。 现实题材与写实主义的风格无疑最大程度体现了他这种“内力”；同时，同等程度地，将演员的演技无限的放大。山姆洛克威尔、乔恩哈姆等人贡献了优秀的表演；保罗沃尔特豪泽（终于不需要演类似于《黑色党徒》《我，托尼娅》里面的胖傻叉了！），本片的男主，堪称完美的人选；而最最让我感动与惊讶的是男主母亲，扮演者凯西贝茨的表演（爆奶今年奥提！）。那段发言的表演过于真实，丝毫没有修饰的痕迹。我看过很多的哭戏，几乎没有一个像这样富有层次与感染力，既内敛同时有张力。就像影片中所说的那样，她的表演完美的诠释了truth而不是fact。 很庆幸能在家乡看了如此动人的新年第一部。可笑的是，家乡当地仅有的三家艺术影院之中，作为丽水地区电影院的“霸主”、本应该引领地区的某两影院，却如同吝啬鬼一般的不给真正的CINIMA一次上映的机会，而给某些辣鸡“视频”（恕我直言）以大量场次。而相比之下一个几乎无人问津的小资影厅，却拥有相当的职业的当担与操守。其实不只是我家乡，全国各地情况都是如此，例如同样加入艺联的著名的某达影院，也几乎没有《朱》与《别》的排片。 我大学不修经济，仅以高中知识，我不是特别清楚这里面供求关系。但我确切地意识到，如果市场只单方面提供娱乐向的“游乐园式”的电影而忽略了这些艺术电影，也行将来的观众们会认为电影只是用来娱乐的，马丁的预言或将实现。我相信这就是艺术电影联盟为艺术电影奋斗的原因，特别是为了中国电影事业的未来。而那部分唯利是图的商人，自以为在经济上为中国电影事业尽一份力，实则可能真的荼毒了万千的观众，断送中国电影的未来。 我看的那个场次，到场的观众寥寥无几；也许都是电影爱好者，出现片尾CAST的时候，许久，大家都没有动弹。在寥寥无几的观众里，我惊讶地发现了两个十多岁的小朋友。在幽暗的影厅里，在他们眼神中，我似乎看到了灼烈的焰火。我没有老到可以感慨岁月流逝白驹过隙、时间的不易，但我看到他们时，我可以说，我看见了电影的某种未来，一种我期待的未来。 有时我会想，这些电影真的就那么“艺术”吗？难道真的就那么无聊、枯燥以至于大家都不想看吗？中国电影票房真的只能靠“话题“流量”来支持吗？我以我亲身体会来看：非也。仅以这部而言，观影的门槛很低，懂电影的人也许能看到更多，不大懂的人也能感受它的魅力。连小孩子都来看，为什么成年人不行呢？更何况最近佳片稀少，《朱》与《别》理应加大排片量。 其实，更重要的，不是供应不足，而是需求不够，是很多人没有做出尝试。横向比较于类似的艺术形式，书的普及应该算是很成功的了。既然书能够做到，为什么电影不能呢？我一直认为电影的商业形式是双向性的，就像没去过海边不知道海有多宽广一样，没多看佳片的人是不知道电影的艺术有多美。我由衷希望未来有更多的人能像从小学习看书、绘画、声乐一样，学会看电影、欣赏电影；把它当做一门艺术，而不是娱乐大众的道具。 以上只是一位初级电影爱好者浅薄的感想。其实自高考以后，我就再也不想写文章了；但是今天今夜，我感受到了信仰的召唤。

On July 30, 1996, the media identified Richard Jewell as the F.B.I.'s prime suspect in the Olympic Park bombing. For the first time, the 34-year-old security guard tells his extraordinary story, to MARIE BRENNER: his brief moment as a national hero, his hounding by the Feds and the press, and his eccentric friendship with the unknown southern lawyer who helped him through his public torment.

FEBRUARY 1997 MARIE BRENNER DAN WINTERS The search warrant was short and succinct, dated August 3, 9:41 A.M. F.B.I. special agent Diader Rosario was instructed to produce "hair samples (twenty-five pulled and twenty-five combed hairs from the head)" of Richard Allensworth Jewell. That Saturday, Atlanta was humid; the temperature would rise to 85 degrees. There were 34 Olympic events scheduled, including women's team handball, but Richard Jewell was in his mother's apartment playing Defender on a computer set up in the spare bedroom. Jewell hadn't slept at all the night before, or the night before that. He could hear the noise from the throng of reporters massed on the hill outside the small apartment in the suburbs. All morning long, he had been focused on the screen, trying to score off "the little guy who goes back and forth shooting the aliens," but at 12:30 the sound of the telephone disturbed his concentration. Very few people had his new number, by necessity unlisted. Since the F.B.I. had singled him out as the Olympic Park bombing suspect three days earlier, Jewell had received approximately 1,000 calls a day—someone had posted his mother's home number on the Internet. "I'll be right over," his lawyer Watson Bryant told him. "They want your hair, they want your palm prints, and they want something called a voice exemplar—the goddamn bastards." The curtains were drawn in the pastel apartment filled with his mother's crafts and samplers; A HOME WITHOUT A DOG IS JUST A HOUSE, one read. By this time Bryant had a system. He would call Jewell from his car phone so that the door could be unlatched and Bryant could avoid the questions from the phalanx of reporters on the hill. Turning into the parking lot in a white Explorer, Bryant could see sound trucks parked up and down Buford Highway. The middle-class neighborhood of apartment complexes and shopping centers was near the DeKalb Peachtree Airport, where local millionaires kept their private planes. The moment Bryant got out of his car, the reporters began to shout: "Hey, Watson, do they have the murderer?" "Are they arresting Jewell?" Bryant moved quickly toward the staircase to the Jewells' apartment. He wore a baseball cap, khaki shorts, and a frayed Brooks Brothers polo shirt. He was 45 years old, with strong features and thinning hair, a southern preppy from a country-club family. Bryant had a stern demeanor lightened by a contrarian's sense of the absurd. He was often distracted—from time to time he would miss his exits on the highway—and he had the regional tendency of defining himself by explaining what he was not. "I am not a Democrat, because they want your money. I am not a Republican, because they take your rights away," he told me soon after I met him. Bryant can talk your ear off about the Bill of Rights, ending with a flourish: "I think everyone ought to have the right to be stupid. I am a Libertarian." At the time Richard Jewell was named as a suspect by the F.B.I., Watson Bryant made a modest living by doing real-estate closings in the suburbs, but Jewell and his lawyer had formed an unusual friendship a decade earlier, when Jewell worked as a mailroom clerk at a federal disaster-relief agency where Bryant practiced law. Jewell was then a stocky kid without a father, who had trained as an auto mechanic but dreamed of being a policeman; Bryant had always had a soft spot for oddballs and strays, a personality quirk which annoyed his then wife no end. The serendipity of this friendship, an alliance particularly southern in its eccentricity, would bring Watson Bryant to the immense task of attempting to save Richard Jewell from the murky quagmire of a national terrorism case. The simple fact was that Bryant had no qualifications for the job. He had no legal staff except for his assistant, Nadya Light, no contacts in the press, and no history in Washington. He was the opposite of media-savvy; he rarely read the papers and never watched the nightly news, preferring the Discovery Channel's shows on dog psychology. Now that Richard Jewell was his client, he had entered a zone of worldwide media hysteria fraught with potential peril. Jewell suspected that his pickup truck had been flown in a C-130 transport plane to the F.B.I. unit at Quantico in Virginia, and Bryant worried that his friend would be arrested any minute. Worse, Bryant knew that he had nothing going for him, no levers anywhere. His only asset was his personality; he had the bravado and profane hyperbole of a southern rich boy, but he was in way over his head. For hours that Saturday, Bryant and Jewell sat and waited for the F.B.I. From time to time Jewell would put binoculars under the drawn curtain in his mother's bedroom to peer at the reporters on the hill. Bryant was nervous that Jewell's mother, Bobi, would return from baby-sitting and see her son having hairs pulled out of his head. Bryant stalked around the apartment complaining about the F.B.I. "The sons of bitches did not show up until three P.M.," he later recalled, and when they did, there were five of them. The F.B.I. medic was tall and muscular and wore rubber gloves. He asked Jewell to sit at a small round table in the living room, where his mother puts her holiday-theme displays. Bryant stood by the sofa next to a portrait of Jewell in his Habersham County deputy's uniform. He watched the F.B.I. procedure carefully. The medic, who had huge hands, used tiny drugstore tweezers. "He eyeballed his scalp and took his hair in sections. First he ran a comb through it, and then he took these hairs and plucked them out one by one." Jewell "went stone-cold," but Bryant could not contain his temper. "I am his lawyer. I know you can have this, I know you have a search warrant, but I tell you this: If you were doing this to me, you would have to fight me. You would have to beat the shit out of me," Bryant recalled telling the case agent Ed Bazar. Bazar, Bryant later said, was apologetic. "He seemed almost embarrassed to be there." As he counted out the hairs, he placed them in an envelope. The irony of the situation was not lost on Bryant. He was a lawyer, an officer of the court, but he had a disdain for authority, and he was representing a former deputy who read the Georgia law code for fun in his spare time. It took 10 minutes to pluck Jewell's thick auburn hair. Then the F.B.I. agents led him into the kitchen and took his palm prints on the table. "That took 30 minutes, and they got ink all over the table," Bryant said. Then Bazar told Bryant they wanted Jewell to sit on the sofa and say into the telephone, "There is a bomb in Centennial Park. You have 30 minutes." That was the message given by the 911 caller on the night of the bombing. He was to repeat the message 12 times. Bryant saw the possibility of phony evidence and of his client's going to jail. "I said, 'I am not sure about this. Maybe you can do this, maybe you can't, but you are not doing this today.'" All afternoon, Jewell was strangely quiet. He had a sophisticated knowledge of police work and believed, he later said, "they must have had some evidence if they wanted my hair. ... I knew their game was intimidation. That is why they brought five agents instead of two." He felt "violated and humiliated," he told me, but he was passive, even docile, through Bryant's outburst. He thought of the bombing victims— Alice Hawthorne, the 44-year-old mother from Albany, Georgia, at the park with her stepdaughter; Melih Uzunyol, the Turkish cameraman who died of a heart attack; the more than 100 people taken to area hospitals, some of whom were his friends. "I kept thinking, These guys think I did this. These guys were accusing me of murder. This was the biggest case in the nation and the world. If they could pin it on me, they were going to put me in the electric chair." I met Richard Jewell three months later, on October 28, a few hours before a press conference called by his lawyers to allow Jewell to speak publicly for the first time since the F.B.I. had cleared him. Jewell's lawyers also intended to announce that they would file damage suits against NBC and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It was a Monday, and that weekend the local U.S. attorney had delivered a letter to one of the lawyers stating Jewell was no longer a suspect. "Goddamn it," Bryant had told me on the phone, "the sons of bitches did not even have the decency to address it to Richard Jewell." I had been instructed to come early to the offices of Wood & Grant, the flashy plaintiff lawyers Bryant had pulled in to help him with Jewell's civil suits. When I arrived, I was alone in the office with Sharon Anderson, the redheaded assistant answering the phones. "Wood & Grant . . . Wood & Grant . . . Wood & Grant"—the calls overwhelmed her. Lin Wood and Wayne Grant were rushing from CNN to the local NBC and ABC affiliates, working the shows. "Everyone has theories of who the real bomber is," Sharon said. "I just write it all down and give it to the boys." When Lin Wood arrived, he was still in full makeup. Movie-star handsome with green eyes and styled hair, Wood has the heated oratory of a trial lawyer. "It's a war! Why in this bevy of stories does not anyone point out the fact that Richard was a hero one day and a demon the next? They have destroyed this man's life!" Watson Bryant had worked with Wood and Grant years before in a local law firm. He admired Wayne Grant for his methodical sense of detail; Grant, a New Yorker, had once forced the city of Atlanta to pay large damages to a man injured while illegally digging for antique bottles in a park. But Lin Wood's suppressed rage was a marvel to Bryant. "He is so tough he could make people cry in depositions when we were kids," Bryant told me. Wood possessed the smooth style of a member of the Atlanta establishment, but he had a hardscrabble past. He was a boy from "the wrong side of the tracks" in Macon who at age 17 discovered his mother's body after his father had murdered her. His father went to jail, and Wood wound up as a lawyer. He went through college and law school on scholarships and with part-time jobs. I could hear Wood on Sharon's telephone: "He's more than innocent. He's a goddamn hero. . . . Everyone is going to pay who wronged Richard Jewell. Besides NBC and The A.J.C., we are going to look into suing CNN and Jay Leno." Through the large picture window, I had a clear view of the remains of the Centennial Olympic Park, where the bomb had exploded on the night of July 26. Where the sound-and-light tower had once been, there was now a flattened dirt field. It was possible to see the Greek commemorative sculpture that Richard Jewell used to describe for tourists at the AT&T pavilion, where he worked as a security guard. Suddenly, Jewell was in the room. "Hi. I'm Richard. I'm a little late. I don't want you to think I am rude. I am not like that." He had an open face, a bland pleasantness, an eagerness to please. "Can I get you a Coke?" he asked me. "How about some coffee?" Jewell wore a blue-and-white striped shirt and chinos. He occupied physical space like a teenager; he sprawled, he lumbered, he pawed through Sharon's candy bowl. On TV his face had a porcine blankness; he appeared suspicious. In person, Jewell has a hard time disguising his emotions. We were alone in the conference room; I noticed that Jewell avoided looking out the window toward the park. He shifted his glance nervously away from the view. He often awakens in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, thinking of the events in the park in the early morning hours of July 27. "It took me days before I could even come in here," he said anxiously. The newsroom atmosphere resembled that at F.B.I. headquarters; there was a frenzy to be first. When Jewell noticed a local ABC reporter outside near Sharon's desk, his face darkened. "I don't want to be around reporters right now. I guess I am a little nervous. What is he doing here?" The atmosphere was now filled with tension; the reporter was escorted out. Moments later, we gathered in the hallway. Wood was steely: "We are going in two cars. Richard, you drive with me. Your mother will go with Wayne. As we walk down the hall right now, if the ABC people are outside, I will tap you on the shoulder and I will say, 'How are you doing?' You will say, 'Fine.' Is that understood?" "O.K., Lin. I understand," Jewell said quietly, head bowed. As Jewell walked down the hall, an ABC cameraman photographed him looking grim. Seconds after the elevator doors closed, Jewell exploded: "What are they doing here, Lin? Did you invite them? They are animals. Why didn't you get them out of here?" "ABC has been good to you. How do I get them out of the office on the day of your press conference?" "That is what security is for!" Jewell said, quivering with rage. "Where is Watson?" he asked in the garage. "I told you: he's at a real-estate closing. He will meet you at the press conference," Wood said. Jewell moved to his mother's side, as solicitous as a child. "Are you all right, Mother?" he asked. "It is all I am going to be able to do not to do something!" she said angrily. When we arrived at the Marriott hotel on 1-75, there was another discussion in the parking lot, about who would walk with whom in front of the cameras. Jewell turned to his close friend Dave Dutchess: "Are you all right, man?" Dutchess, a truckdriver who worked with Jewell years ago, has long hair and a tattoo of a panther on his forearm. "Richard and I are like brothers," he told me. "I would die for him." As the cameras closed in on them, the group fled to a private room in the Marriott. The auditorium was filled with reporters. "Showtime! Showtime!" the cameramen yelled when Jewell, his mother, and all the lawyers took the stage. "I hope and pray that no one else is ever subjected to the pain and the ordeal that I have gone through," Jewell said, his voice breaking. "The authorities should keep in mind the rights of the citizens. I thank God it is ended and that you now know what I have known all along: I am an innocent man." After the press conference, Bobi and Richard Jewell remained in a private room. The bookers from Good Morning America and the Today show pressed Jewell to step before their cameras, and when Watson Bryant told them no, Monica, the G.M.A. booker, began to cry, "I'll lose my job." Then Yael, the Today-show booker, cornered Nadya Light: "Is Richard doing something with G.M.A.?' Upstairs, Jewell and his mother were being filmed by a CBS camera crew for a 60 Minutes news update. "Well, Bobi, did you get your Tupperware back?" Mike Wallace asked by phone from New York. "Richard, you need to lose some more weight." Despite Wallace's festive spirit, the atmosphere was curiously flat. Bryant urged Jewell to talk to a USA Today reporter. Jewell balked: "They can all go suck wind." In the car on the way back to Wood & Grant, Bobi was angry. All of her possessions had come back from the F.B.I. marked up with ink. "Every piece of Tupperware I own is ruined, thank you very much. They wrote numbers all over it, and I have tried everything to clean it—Comet and Brillo—but nothing works." Back at the office, she sat on the sofa and listened as Bryant negotiated with Yael for a flight to New York— Delta, first-class, 9:30 P.M. Jewell was scheduled to appear on three shows in New York, visit the American Museum of Natural History, and then fly to Washington, D.C., for Larry King Live. "I would like to go home, put on my outfit, and walk in the woods," Bobi said. "Richard, we are leaving." "Yes, ma'am," Richard said. One hour later, a telephone call came in to the offices of Wood & Grant. The lawyers had the call on speaker, and it blared through the room. "Goddamn it, Lin. When will this be over?" In the background, you could hear Bobi sobbing. "What in the world?" Wood asked. Jewell explained that a sound truck from ABC had been waiting in the parking lot when the Jewells got home. There had been words and threats, and Dave Dutchess had taken his stun gun off his motorcycle and waved it at the ABC van. The cameraman yelled: Stop harassing us! Dave yelled back: You are harassing us! Now get your ass out of here! Wood shouted into the speakerphone: "Do not meddle! You cannot jeopardize where you have gotten to and what you want to do! All you have to do is put up with this for one more day and the damn thing is over. Bobi, there is nothing you can do about it; you have to stay cool." Bobi cried back, "They are going to destroy me!" The moment they hung up, Wood turned to Bryant. "New York is canceled. No Katie Couric. No Good Morning America. They are losing it. You better call Yael." "No," Bryant said, "they have lost it. All of the above: their patience, their temper and heart." That evening a very testy Katie Couric tracked Bryant down at Nadya Light's apartment, where we had gone to watch the news. "I want you to know that I canceled interviewing Barbra Streisand in L.A. for Richard Jewell. Don't think he is always going to be a news story. No one will care about him in three days," she said, according to Bryant. "Look, Katie, I am sorry. But Richard is in no condition to talk to the press. He is worn out," Bryant told her. Later, Jewell would tell me that that day, which should have been one of his most satisfying, was actually his worst. His notoriety had tainted the triumph; everything positive had become negative. "I was in despair," he said. As he had for most of the previous 88 days, he spent the night confined in the Buford Highway apartment, a prisoner of his circumstances, with his mother, Dave Dutchess, and Dave's fiancee, Beatty, eating Domino's Pizza and watching himself lead the newscasts on NBC, CBS, and ABC. "This case has everything—the F.B.I., the press, the violation of the Bill of Rights from the First to the Sixth Amendment." 'This case has everything— the F.B.I., the press, the violation of the Bill of Rights, from the First to the Sixth Amendment," Watson Bryant told me in one of our first conversations. It has become common to characterize the F.B.I.'s investigation of Richard Jewell as the epitome of false accusation. The phrase "the Jewell syndrome," a rush to judgment, has entered the language of newsrooms and First Amendment forums. On the night of Jewell's press conference, a commentator on CNN's Crossfire compared Jewell's situation to "Kafka in Prague." The case became an investigative catastrophe, which laid bare long-simmering resentments of many F.B.I. career professionals regarding the micromanagement style and imperious attitude of Louis Freeh and his inner circle of former New York prosecutors, who have worked together since their days at the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District. Within the bureau, the beleaguered director now has a new nickname: J. Edgar Hoover with children. Like Freeh, those near him have also acquired a nickname: Louie's yes-men. Two of Freeh's closest associates, F.B.I. general counsel Howard Shapiro and former deputy director Larry Potts, have been severely criticized, respectively, for advising the White House of confidential F.B.I. material and for an alleged cover-up of the mishandling of the 1992 standoff at Ruby Ridge, where F.B.I. agents killed the wife and son of Randy Weaver, a white supremacist. In November and December, the Office of Professional Responsibility conducted an exhaustive investigation into the Jewell affair. Responding to an attempt by headquarters and certain officials to distance themselves, according to F.B.I. sources, several agents, including a senior F.B.I. supervisor in Atlanta, have provided the O.P.R. with signed statements insisting that Freeh himself was responsible for "oversight" during the crisis. These agents "shocked the investigators" because they reiterated, when asked who was in charge of the overall command of the investigation, that it was the director himself. What happened to Richard Jewell raises an important question central to Freeh's future tenure: in the midst of a media frenzy, does the F.B.I. have any responsibility to protect the privacy of an innocent man? Over the last year, this concept was broached with Bob Bucknam, Louis Freeh's chief of staff. During the long Pizza Connection trial in the 1980s, it was Bucknam who handed Freeh files at the prosecutor's table. According to highly placed sources in the bureau, Bucknam's answer was immediate: the F.B.I. has no responsibility to correct information in the public domain. Richard Jewell had a reverence for authority that blinded him to the paradox of his situation. He idealized the investigative skills of the F.B.I. and could not understand that he had become ensnared in a web fraught with the weaknesses of a self-protective bureaucracy. Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter has invited Jewell to Washington to testify at congressional hearings on the F.B.I.'s conduct in the Atlanta bombing. Ironically, the bungling of the investigation might lead to the reshuffling of personalities at the top of the bureau and threaten Freeh's reputation. In October, according to The Washington Post, Freeh sent an unusual memo to all 25,000 F.B.I. personnel: He would not be abandoning his post amid reports of problems with the Jewell case and Filegate, and of a growing dissatisfaction inside the bureau. "I am proud to be the F.B.I. director," Freeh wrote. From the beginning, Jewell was perceived in the public imagination as a hapless dummy, a plodding misfit, a Forrest Gump. On one of the first days he worked as a security guard at the AT&T pavilion, he noticed that his co-workers were covering the steps inside the sound tower with graffiti. On one step Jewell scrawled with a flourish two bromides: IF YOU DIDN'T GO PAST ME, YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE and LIFE IS TOUGH. TOUGHER WHEN YOU ARE STUPID. Soon after he was targeted as a suspect in the Olympics bombing, the F.B.I. confiscated the step. Analysts appeared to believe that the graffiti contained a clue to his character. "They told the lawyers the statement was an obvious taunt," Jewell said. In fact, the second line was an expression he had cribbed from one of his favorite actors, John Wayne. Within the F.B.I., the beleaguered director has a new nickname: J. Edgar Hoover with children. "To understand Richard Jewell, you have to be aware that he is a cop. He talks like a cop and thinks like a cop," his criminal lawyer, Jack Martin, told me. The tone of Jewell's voice drops noticeably when he says the word "officer," and his conversation is filled with observations about traffic patterns, security devices, and car wrecks. Even the vocabulary he uses to describe the 88 days he was a suspect is out of the lexicon of police work, and he continues to talk about his situation then in the present tense: "This is an out-and-out ambush, and I am a hostage." Jewell has a need to accommodate. He can be startlingly opaque. On the afternoon of July 30, Jewell answered the door of his mother's apartment to Don Johnson and Diader Rosario from the F.B.I. "We need your help making a training film," they told him. "I never questioned it," he told me. The next day Rosario appeared again with a search warrant. "The weird thing was that when they were searching my apartment I was, like, 'Take everything. Take the carpet. I am law enforcement. I am just like you. Guys, take whatever you are going to take, because it is going to prove that I didn't do anything.' And a couple of them were looking at me like I was crazy." Leaving the apartment on one occasion, he told the agents, "I am wearing a bright shirt so y'all can see me easier." He recalled feeling anger when he read descriptions of himself as a child-man, a mama's boy, and "a wannabe policeman," but he said, "If I was in the place of everybody else and I saw a 34-year-old guy living with his mother, I would have reservations about that, too. I would think, Why is he doing that?" The December issue of Atlanta magazine reported that there was no record of a Jewell family in Danville, Virginia, where Richard Jewell was born. Atlanta referred to an article in the Danville Register & Bee which asked, "Did Richard Jewell ever sleep here?" "This is a part of my life Richard and I do not like to speak about," Bobi Jewell told me one night at dinner. Richard was born in Danville, but his name was Richard White; his father was Bobi's first husband, Robert Earl White, who worked for Chevrolet. According to Bobi, Richard's father, who died recently, was "irresponsible and a ladies' man." When Richard was four, the marriage broke up. Bobi found work as an insurance-agency claims coordinator and soon met John Jewell, an executive in the same business. Shortly after John Jewell married Bobi, he adopted Richard. From the time Richard was a child, he and his mother were a unit. Bobi, a woman of intelligence and disciplined work habits, is both tender and tough on the subject of her son. She still calls Richard "my boy," but she has a peppery disposition. Richard was brought up in a strict Baptist home. "If I didn't say 'Yes, ma'am' or 'No, ma'am' and get it out quick enough, I would be on the ground," he said. When he was six, the family moved to Atlanta. Richard was the boy who helped the teachers and worked as a school crossing guard, but he had few friends in high school. "I was a wannabe athlete, but I wasn't good enough," he said. He ran the movie projector in the library. A military-history buff, he liked to talk about Napoleon and the Vietnam War and read books on both World Wars. Jewell's ambition was to work on cars, so he enrolled in a technical school in southern Georgia. On his third day there, Bobi discovered that her husband had packed a suitcase. "He left a note saying that he was a failure and no good for us," Jewell said. Almost immediately, Richard moved back home and took a job repairing cars. "My mom and I tried to take care of each other," he said. "I think I handled it pretty much better than she did." Richard took the brunt of his father's abandonment; Bobi pulled even closer to her son. "She hated all men for about three years after that, and she became overly protective of me. She looked at it that I was going to do the same thing that my dad did. I was 18 or 19. I was working. She never liked my dates, but I never held that against her. We have always been able to lean on each other." Richard managed a local TCBY yogurt shop and once stopped a burglary in progress. At the age of 22, he was hired as a clerk at the Small Business Administration, and he impressed Watson Bryant and the other lawyers in the office with his personable nature. They called him Radar because of his efficiency. "You could say, 'I'm hungry,' and suddenly this kid would be by your side with a Snickers bar," Bryant recalled. When Jewell's contract with the S.B.A. ran out, he moved on to be a Marriott house detective. In 1990 he was hired as a jailer in the Habersham County Sheriff's Office, and in 1991 he became a deputy. As part of his training, he was sent to the Northeast Georgia Police Academy, where he finished in the upper 25 percent of his class. He finally had an identity; he was a law-enforcement officer. Jewell was unlucky in love. He presented one woman with an engagement ring, and later, in Habersham County, he would give another a large wooden key with a sign that read, THIS IS THE KEY TO UNLOCK YOUR HEART, but both relationships came apart. In northern Georgia, Jewell worked nights and became wedded to his job. By his own description, he was methodical. "I am the kind of person who plans everything. I like to go from A to B to C to D. This going from A to D and arguing over everything—I say no." Habersham County, a scenic part of the piney woods in Georgia's Bible Belt, was for Jewell like "leaving the 1990s and going into the 1970s in terms of law enforcement." Many rich Atlantans have country houses in the mountains, but the small towns of Demorest and Charlottesville are relatively undeveloped, reminding one of Jewell's lawyers of the scenery in the movie Deliverance. "If you get lost up there, you might find a guy with a bow and arrow," the lawyer said. Recently, Jewell and I took the 90-minute drive from Atlanta to Habersham County, which has acres of apple orchards. The leaves were turning, and the roads were mostly deserted. In the towns, however, were stores, apple stands, and even a good Chinese restaurant. As Jewell's blue pickup truck turned into the parking lot of a shopping center, several people came out to greet him. Jewell had lived in a small yellow house up a steep rocky driveway. On the day we visited, the current resident's Halloween decorations were still up, as were faded white satin ribbons hanging from many trees, remnants of a campaign to clear Richard Jewell organized by area friends. Jewell had lived 50 yards from the Chattahoochee River near a kayak-and-canoe tourist concession on a main road—not in a "cabin in the woods," as several reports stated after the bombing. He worked the night shift, and when he would arrive home at dawn, he told me, he could look up and "see a sky filled with stars." He was not a loner; he made friends with several local families. He would often leave a box of Dunkin' Donuts on friends' porches at four A.M. During the O. J. Simpson trial, he and the other deputies would meet in the turnaround on Highway 985 in the middle of the night and review the day's events and the bungling by the Los Angeles Police Department. Jewell would later be annoyed that the F.B.I. confiscated his copy of former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi's account of the trial. Jewell dated a local girl, Sheree Chastain, and had a close relationship with her family. Jewell had a complex history working at the Habersham County Sheriff's Office. When he was still a jailer, he arrested a couple making too much noise in a hot tub at an apartment building where he did part-time security work. He was arrested for impersonating an officer and, after pleading guilty to a lesser charge, was placed on probation on the condition that he seek psychological counseling. By his own estimation, Jewell's strength as a cop was "working car wrecks." He had his mother's diligence; he worked 14 hours a day and organized a safety fair. Later in 1995 he wrecked his patrol car and was demoted to working in the jail. Rick Moore, a local deputy, advised him to accept the job, but Jewell despised the jailhouse atmosphere. He told me, "It was a small room filled with cigarette smoke. I couldn't take it." He resigned, and in a short time he moved to a police job at Piedmont College, a liberal-arts school with approximately 1,000 students on the main road in Demorest. The college police had jurisdiction only on campus and in an area extending out 500 feet. Jewell chased cars speeding down the highway and had arguments over turf with other officers. He was instrumental in several arrests, including that of a suspected burglar he discovered hiding at the top of a tree. For his work on a volunteer rescue squad, he was named a citizen of the year. According to Brad Mattear, a former resident director, Piedmont was a school of "P.K.'s"—preachers' kids. It was 80 percent Baptist with a strict no-drinking rule. The college had many rebellious students, according to Mattear, kids who were "away from home for the first time and wanted to party and drink." Mattear knew Jewell well and recalled his good manners and playful nature. "It was always 'Yes, sir' and 'Yes, ma'am.'" Jewell would tell students, "I know y'all are going to drink. Don't do it on campus." Jewell felt confined by his boundaries and could be heavy-handed when it came to writing out reports on minor infractions. Once when we were driving by the campus, he pointed to a small brick dormitory. "That was where all the partying would go on," he told me. Jewell would raid dorm rooms and report drinking violations. "I did not hesitate to tell the parents—in no uncertain terms—what their kids were up to," he said. He soon made enemies at the school. "Three or four times a week," Mattear said, Piedmont students were in the office of Ray Cleere, the president of the college, complaining about Jewell and other Piedmont police. After Jewell was admonished for a number of controversial arrests, he resigned. Jewell had an out: his mother was going to have an operation on her foot. He would go home to Atlanta for the Olympics and look for a new job. He called his mother: "Is it all right with you if I stay with you while you have your surgery?" He hoped he might get a job with the Atlanta police or, failing that, work security at the Olympics. "I thought, Working at the Centennial Olympic Park will look really good on my resume." At the age of 33, back in his mother's apartment, he was at first treated like a wayward teenager. Bobi was sharp with him about his slovenly habits, his weight, and his driving. Bobi had carved out a life for herself; she arrived at work by eight A.M. each morning and had many friends. Trim, with short-cropped hair, Bobi Jewell is the kind of woman who labels her clothes and spices and spends much of her spare time baking cakes and babysitting for extra money. She carries on telephone friendships with claim adjusters at other companies. It was somewhat unsettling for her, she told me, to have Richard at home after she had grown used to living with only her dog, Brandi, and her cat, Boots. Bobi was annoyed that he had wrecked a patrol car, and worried about his safety. "Every time he leaves the apartment, I'll say, 'Richard . . . ' And he'll say, 'Yes, ma'am. I know. The person that I am going to see will be there when I get there,'" she said. On one occasion Bobi talked about Richard's return to Atlanta. "What is wrong with trying to revamp your life?" she asked me. Her eyes filled with tears. "Why does everyone in the media think it is so strange?" On Friday, July 26, Bobi Jewell was home waiting for her niece to arrive from Virginia for the Olympic softball competition the following week. In preparation, she had stocked her apartment with food. It was a clear Georgia evening, not as hot as had been expected. As usual, Richard left for the park at 4:45 P.M. and arrived at the AT&T pavilion about 5:30. His stomach was bothering him; he was convinced that he had eaten a bad hamburger the day before. Lin Wood and Wayne Grant had arranged to take their children to Centennial Park that night. The park, in downtown Atlanta, stretches over 21 acres. There were air-conditioned tents, concerts on the stage, and hot-dog and souvenir stands. Downtown Atlanta was usually deserted in the oppressively hot, humid summer, but this year thousands of tourists filled the sidewalks, or sat on benches in the shade of some crape-myrtle trees, or cooled off by a fountain. Tour buses clogged the main arteries, and everyone complained that it took hours to get anywhere; stories were traded about athletes' getting to their competitions late because of the poor planning of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games. As always, Jewell was working the 12-hour night shift near the sound-and-light tower by the stage. He was pleased because one of his favorite groups—Jack Mack and the Heart Attack—was going to perform at 12:45. Jewell had a routine: he would check in and fill the ice chest he kept by a bench at his station. Jewell liked to offer water and Cokes to pregnant women or policemen who stopped to rest. After he arrived at the park, his stomach cramps grew worse and he had a bout of diarrhea. At approximately 10 P.M. he took a break to go to the bathroom. The closest one was by the stage, but the security staff was not allowed to use it. "I really have to go," Jewell says he told the stage manager. "And he said, 'Well, O.K. this time.'" When Jewell came out, he noticed that it was "real calm" and there wasn't much wind blowing. At that time of night, the crowd from Bud World became a little more raucous. Jewell was annoyed when he saw a group of drunks near his bench and beer cans littering the area beside the fence nearby. As he went to report the trash and the group that was carousing, he spotted a large olive-green military-style backpack, known as an Alice pack, under the bench. There had been a similar bag found the week before. Jewell later told an F.B.I. agent that he was annoyed that one of the drunks had tried to get into the lens of a camera crew. Jewell had told them to cut it out. "They were running off at the mouth," Jewell would later tell Larry Landers of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (G.B.I.). "I was light about the package at first," he told me, "kidding around with Tom Davis from the G.B.I.: 'Well, are you going to open it?' At that point, it was not a concern. I was thinking to myself, Well, I am sure one of these people left it on the ground. When Davis came back and said, 'Nobody said it was theirs,' that is when the little hairs on the back of my head began to stand up. I thought, Uh-oh. This is not good. "I never really had time to be frightened. My law-enforcement background paid off here. What went through my head was like a computer screen of this list I had to do. I had to call my supervisor. I have to tell people in the tower that something was going on. I have to be firm with them, stay calm, and be professional." Almost immediately, Jewell and Tom Davis cleared a 25-foot-square area around the backpack; Jewell made two trips into the tower to warn the technicians. "I want y'all out now. This is serious." Two blocks away on Marietta Street, approximately 300 editors, copywriters, and reporters from Cox newspapers around the country had taken over the extra desks in the new eighth-floor newsroom at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution to prepare the special Olympics edition they put out each afternoon. The paper had gone "Olympics-crazy," according to one reporter. The editor, Ron Martin, and the managing editor, John Walter—"WalMart," as they were called—had let it be known that no expense would be spared. Ann Hardie, who normally covers science, had been sent around the world to master the fine points of beach volleyball; Bill Rankin, officially on the federal-court beat, was assigned table tennis. The paper intended to set new standards in its hometown during the games, but in addition there was a hint of redemption in the air. Since Cox newspaper executives had forced the resignation of the distinguished editor Bill Kovach in 1988, the paper had suffered a severe loss of reputation. "We all felt just kind of beaten down," one reporter said. Kovach had been brought to Atlanta from The New York Times to elevate The A.J.C. into being the definitive paper of the New South, but eventually he irritated the local powers. Atlanta was inbred, a city of deals, and he resigned in a blaze of press outrage. Kovach now ran the Nieman journalism-fellowship program at Harvard, and the movie rights to his turbulent years in Atlanta—reported in these pages by Peter J. Boyer—had been sold to Warner Bros. Within the profession, The A.J.C. had become something of a joke. More and more, its emphasis was on what John Walter called "chunklets"—short bits in a soft-news style known as eye-candy. The paper published features on couples massage and how mushrooms grow in the rain. Walter had fired off several terse memos to ensure that there would be no more jumps of news stories to back pages and no more unsourced news stories, except on rare occasions. "I don't see any reason why you can't report hard news in a short form," one editor told me. The A.J. C. style of reporting in declarative sentences had a name, too: the voice of God. It was omniscient, because it allowed no references to unattributed sources. Subjects such as AIDS, which often required confidentiality, could not be covered properly in the paper, in the opinion of several reporters. The A.J.C. picked up news stories with unnamed sources from The New York Times, however, and reporters groused about the hypocrisy of the double standard. On Saturday morning, July 27, Bob Johnson, the night metro editor, left the newsroom at one A.M. The sidewalks were still crowded; Johnson sat on a wall outside waiting for an A.J.C. shuttle bus to pick him up. About 1:25 he heard a strange noise. "It sounded like an aerial bomb at a fireworks show," he said. He recalled thinking, Damn, that is sort of foolish. Then he heard screams and saw people running. Johnson rushed back upstairs to the almost deserted sixth-floor newsroom. Lyda Longa, a night police reporter, was still there. Johnson sent her down to the park and turned on the news, but nothing had moved across the wires. Just after two A.M., Longa called from the park. She told Johnson that one person had been killed and dozens were down—it was absolute chaos. Johnson could hear the sirens and the screams through the telephone; he began to type into his computer. "We were trying to get a bullet into the street edition," Johnson recalled. In the crisis, it took only minutes for reporters to return to the newsroom; several had been at the park when the bomb went off. Rochelle Bozman, an Olympics editor, appeared and took over for Johnson. Soon John Walter was there, as was Bert Roughton, who would assist him in supervising the A.J.C. coverage of the bombing. At the park, Jewell spoke with the first F.B.I. agents to arrive on the scene. The smell and the noise, he remembered, were overwhelming, and sensations blurred together. "It was hard to describe the sound," he said. "It was like what you hear in the movies. It was, like, KABOOM. I had seen an explosion in police training. We had ear protection when it went off. It smelled like a flash-bang grenade. The sky was not filled with black smoke, but grayish-white. All the shrapnel that was inside the package kept flying around, and some of the people got hit from the bench and some with metal." Bobi Jewell had just gone to sleep when the telephone rang. It was Richard. "Mom, they had a bomb go off down here, but I am O.K. regardless of what the TV says." He could hardly speak; he seemed paralyzed. Jewell did not mention to his mother that he had found the backpack and alerted Tom Davis. Bobi was perplexed. "I thought, What does he mean?" All night long she stayed on the foldout sofa watching the news reports. She was frightened by the ambulances, the noise, the bodies in the park. Soon veteran homicide detectives in the Atlanta police arrived at the bomb site. One sergeant was trying to make his way through the crowd when an Olympics official stopped him. "Tell these cops to get the hell out of here," he said, according to a captain in the homicide division. "Well, you get the fuck out of here. Who are you?" the sergeant demanded. Agents from the Atlanta F.B.I. office and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were in a shouting match over jurisdiction. "We are handling this!" one said. "No, this is ours!" an F.B.I. agent snapped. In the command center at F.B.I. headquarters in northeastern Atlanta, there was complete pandemonium. The Olympics were a national convention for law enforcement. Some 30,000 security personnel were on hand. Over the next few days, there would be an internal debate: Who was going to be in charge of the bombing investigation? In Atlanta at that time were three veteran investigators with executive experience: Tom Fuentes, who is credited with helping to bring John Gotti to heel; Barry Mawn, who has worked extensively in organized-crime probes; and Robin Montgomery, the head of the critical-incident unit at Quantico, who at Ruby Ridge in 1992 questioned the disastrous "rules of engagement" which led to tragedy. In the early-morning hours, F.B.I. agents picked up several suspects, including one referred to as "the drunk in the bar." According to F.B.I. sources, Louis Freeh himself got on the telephone to Barry Mawn. Freeh, a former F.B.I. agent, was personally monitoring the initial investigation by means of a series of conference calls from the command post at F.B.I. headquarters. He focused on "the drunk in the bar," who had been making threats the night before, and within hours the information was leaked that the F.B.I. had a suspect. From Atlanta, Barry Mawn contacted his superiors in Washington. "This suspect is not the bomber," he reportedly said, according to a former highlevel F.B.I. executive. Freeh allegedly lost his temper and belittled Mawn's professional abilities. He is said to have told Mawn that he "had handled this all wrong." The words one hears characterizing Freeh's telephone calls to the agents on duty in Atlanta are "abusive," "condescending," and "dismissive." A story went around the command center that Freeh was already saying, "We have our man," according to a source in the bureau. Watson Bryant was thinking, I cannot believe that I know anyone who throws pipe bombs into gopher holes. Freeh made a decision: however experienced Montgomery, Fuentes, and Mawn were, this investigation would be run by Division 5 of the F.B.I., the National Security Division, a former counterintelligence unit that has been looking for a purpose since the Cold War ended. Trained in observation, division members rarely made a criminal case—their strength was intimidation and manipulation rather than the deliberate gathering of evidence to be presented in court. The F.B.I. promptly declared the bombing a terrorism case and placed it under the authority of Bob Bryant, head of the division. David Tubbs of Division 5 was sent to Atlanta to be the spokesman and to augment Woody Johnson, the Atlanta special agent in charge (S.A.C.), who had been trained in hostage rescue and who was awkward in press briefings. Tubbs was not as experienced in criminal cases as Mawn or Montgomery, who returned to Newark and Quantico, respectively, "to get out of the line of fire," according to numerous F.B.I. sources. But Bryant and Freeh were reportedly micromanaging the S.A.C.'s and, later, the case agents Don Johnson and Diader Rosario. 106107 VIEW ARTICLE PAGES On the morning of the bombing, Watson Bryant's alarm went off at six A.M. He was going to the Olympic kayak competition on the Ocoee River with Andy Currie, a friend from his Vanderbilt University days. He learned of the bombing on the radio as he was getting ready to go to Currie's house. "Whoever has done this should be skinned alive," he told Currie. He spent the day in the country, and on Sunday he went out to run errands. When he got home, there was a message on his answering machine: "Watson, this is Richard Jewell. You may have heard that I found the bomb and people are calling me a hero. Somebody told me I might get a book contract." It had been years since Bryant had spoken to Jewell, but he did not immediately return the call; he was busy finishing up some contracts so that he could take a few days off to enjoy the Olympics. In addition, Bryant was annoyed with Jewell. After Bryant had befriended him in their days at the Small Business Administration, Jewell had borrowed his new, $250 radar detector and never returned it. He had promised to pay him $100 for it, but he never had. In the meantime, Bryant's life had changed; he had set up an office as a solo practitioner. Bryant despised corporate politics and had no gift for them. His penchant for taking on pro-bono work for friends annoyed his wife, however. Bryant believed that Richard Jewell had attached himself to him years earlier because he lacked a father, but nevertheless Jewell could get on his nerves. By the summer of 1996, Bryant was preoccupied; his marriage had come apart two years earlier, and he was trying to sort out his life. When he finally returned Jewell's phone call, he said, "Well, damn it, where's my $100?" Jewell laughed uneasily and told him about discovering the green backpack that contained the bomb. "Didn't you see me on the news?" Bryant reminded him that he rarely watched TV. "I am proud of you, Richard," he said. "About this book contract, I think it's far-fetched, but don't sign anything unless I see it first." In the Newsweek cover story detailing the bombing, published Monday, July 29, there was no mention of Richard Jewell. It said only that "a security guard" had alerted Tom Davis of the G.B.I. that no one had claimed the backpack under his bench. By the time Newsweek was on the stands, however, Jewell had been interviewed on CNN. The AT&T publicity department had booked him on TV and told him to wear the shirt with the AT&T logo. Jewell reluctantly agreed. "The idea of going on TV made me nervous," he told me. "I was not the hero. There were so many others who saved lives." In Demorest, Ray Cleere, the president of Piedmont College, was home on Saturday, July 27, watching CNN. Cleere had at one time been Mississippi's commissioner of higher education, but he was now posted at the rural Baptist mountain school. He was said to feel that he had suffered a loss of status in the boondocks, where he was out of the academic mainstream. He called Dick Martin, his chief of campus police. Shouldn't they call the F.B.I. and tell them about Richard Jewell? he asked. Cleere had had a strong disagreement with Jewell when one of the students was caught smoking pot. Jewell wanted to arrest him; Cleere said no. Cleere, Brad Mattear recalled, "worried constantly about the image of the college." According to Mattear, "Cleere loved the limelight. He wanted public attention"—the very trait he reportedly ascribed to Richard Jewell. Dick Martin, who was fond of Jewell, suggested a compromise, according to Lin Wood: he would call a friend in the G.B.I. Cleere then called the F.B.I. hot line in Washington himself. Wood says Cleere later complained that no one had seemed to want to listen to what he had to say about Richard Jewell. But his telephone call would trigger a complex set of circumstances in Habersham County, where F.B.I. investigators fanned out over the hills, attempting to uncover evidence that could lead to Jewell's arrest. "The F.B.I. took his word, and what it actually did was get them both in a bunch of trouble," Mattear said. (Cleere has declined to comment.) For Richard Jewell, Tuesday, July 30, would become a haze in which his life was turned upside down. "The hours of the day ran so fast it is hard to remember what all happened," he told me. He started the day early at the Atlanta studio of the Today show. He was tired; the evening before he had had his friend Tim Attaway, a G.B.I. agent, for dinner. He had made lasagna and had drawn Attaway a diagram of the sound-and-light tower. Jewell had talked into the night about the bombing; only later would he learn that Attaway was wearing a wire. Despite the late evening, Jewell was excited at the thought of meeting Katie Couric and being interviewed about finding the Alice pack in the park. His mother asked him to try to get Tom Brokaw's autograph. "He was a man my mom respected a great deal," he said. When he got back to the apartment, he was surprised to see a cluster of reporters in the parking lot. "Do you think you are a suspect?" one asked. Jewell laughed. "I know they'll investigate anyone who was at the park that night," he said. "That includes you-all too." Jewell did not turn on the TV, but he noticed that the group outside the door continued to grow. At four that afternoon, Jewell received a phone call from Anthony Davis, the head of the security company Jewell worked for at AT&T. "Have you seen the news?" Davis asked. "They are saying you are a suspect." Jewell said, "They are talking to everybody." According to Jewell, Davis said, "They are zeroing in on you. To keep the publicity down, don't go to work." Within minutes, Don Johnson and Diader Rosario knocked on Jewell's door. They exuded sincerity, Jewell recalled. "They told me they wanted me to come with them to headquarters to help them make a training film to be used at Quantico," he said. Johnson played to Jewell's pride. Despite the reporters in the parking lot and the call from Anthony Davis, Jewell had no doubt that they were telling the truth. He drove the short distance to F.B.I. headquarters in Buckhead in his own truck, but he noticed that four cars were following him. "The press is on us," Jewell told Johnson when they arrived. "No, those are our guys," Johnson told him. This tactic would continue through the next 88 days and be severely criticized: Why would you have an armada of surveillance vehicles stacked up on a suspected bomber? It was then that Jewell started to wonder why he was at the F.B.I., but he followed Johnson and Rosario inside. Rosario was known for his skills as a negotiator; he had once helped calm a riot of Cuban prisoners in Atlanta. Johnson, however, had a reputation for overreaching. In Albany, New York, in 1987, he had pursued an investigation of then mayor Thomas Whalen. According to Whalen, the local U.S. attorney found no evidence to support Johnson's assertions and issued a letter to Whalen exonerating him completely, but Whalen believed it cost him an appointment as a federal judge. As Jewell sat in a small office, he wondered why the cameraman recording the interview was staring at him so intently. After an hour, Johnson was called out of the room. When he returned, he said to Jewell, "Let's pretend that none of this happened. You are going to come in and start over, and by the way, we want you to fill out this waiver of rights." "At that moment a million things were going through my head," Jewell told me. "You don't give anyone a waiver of rights unless they are being investigated. I said, 'I need to contact my attorney,' and then all of a sudden it was an instant change. 'What do you need to contact your attorney for? You didn't do anything. We thought you were a hero. Is there something you want to tell us about?'" Jewell grew increasingly apprehensive and later recalled thinking, These guys think I did this. When the agents took a break, Jewell asked to use the phone. "I called Watson four times. I called his brother. I told his parents that I had to get hold of Watson—it was urgent. I was, like, 'I have to speak to him right now.' What was going on was that Washington was on the phone with Atlanta. The people in Washington were giving them questions." Jewell said he knew this because the videotapes in the cameras were two hours long and "Johnson and Rosario would leave every 30 minutes, like they had to speak on the phone." The O.RR. report, however, would assert that no one at headquarters knew about the videotaping or the training-film ruse. Lying to get a statement out of a suspect is, in fact, not illegal, but clearly Johnson and Rosario were not making decisions on their own. Even the procedure of having a fleet of cars follow a suspect was an intimidation tactic used by the F.B.I. Later, according to Jewell, Johnson and Rosario would both tell him privately that they believed he was innocent, but that the investigation was being run by the "highest levels in Washington." Within the bureau, the belief is that during one of the telephone calls Freeh instructed Johnson and Rosario to read Jewell his Miranda rights. Freeh is said to have learned of Johnson's history from a member of his security detail, who had worked in Atlanta. He told Freeh that "Johnson had a reputation for being obnoxious and a problem." In addition, a week after Jewell's interview, Freeh reportedly received a call from Janet Reno, who had learned about the ruse from Kent Alexander, the local U.S. attorney, and Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick. Freeh wondered aloud how it was that, of all the agents in Atlanta, Johnson had been selected to work on the Jewell case. Like Jewell, Johnson had wound up in Atlanta because of his overzealous behavior—according to an F.B.I. source, the Whalen episode had resulted in a "loss-of-effectiveness transfer," an F.B.I. euphemism. (Johnson declined to respond.) On that same Tuesday, Watson Bryant and Nadya Light closed the office early and went to Centennial Park. Light, 35, a pretty Russian immigrant, had never met Radar, Bryant's old friend, and wanted to buy him a celebratory meal. Killing time until Jewell came on duty, they went into the House of Blues and then bought some hot sauce. Walking toward his car, Bryant saw newsboys hawking the afternoon edition of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "It was like out of a cartoon. They were all yelling!" he recalled. "I caught the headline out of the corner of my eye." The headline read: FBI SUSPECTS 'HERO' GUARD MAY HAVE PLANTED BOMB. Bryant borrowed 50 cents from Light to buy the paper and began to read: '"Richard Jewell, 33 . . . fits the profile of the lone bomber.' I could not believe it." At that moment, Bryant's brother, Bruce, who was on his way to the diving competition, got a call from Jewell. "Where is Watson?" As Bruce Bryant walked past a Speedo billboard with a TV screen, he saw Richard Jewell's face filling the screen. "Oh, my God," he said to his wife. At the same moment, Watson was in his car a block away on Northside Drive when he too noticed the Speedo screen. He could not get back to his house—the streets were blocked off for the cycling competition. From his car he called F.B.I. headquarters and demanded to speak to Jewell. "He is not here," the operator said. From his home phone, he picked up his messages and heard Jewell's low, urgent tones. "He didn't leave a number," Bryant told Light. "Call Star 69," she said. The number came back: 679-9000, the number for F.B.I. headquarters, which he had just dialed. Within minutes, Bryant had Jewell on the phone. Jewell told him he was making a training film. "You idiot! You are a suspect. Get your ass out of there now!" Bryant told him. Before The Atlanta Journal-Constitution broke the story of Richard Jewell, there had been a debate in the newsroom over whether or not to name him. One block away, CNN's Art Harris and Henry Schuster had alerted the network's president that Jewell was targeted, but they held the story, because they understood its potential magnitude. At The A.J.C., Kathy Scruggs, a police reporter, who had allegedly gotten a tip from a close friend in the F.B.I., got a confirmation from someone in the Atlanta police. According to the managing editor, John Walter, the first edition of the paper that Tuesday had a brief profile of Jewell. It was dropped in later editions as Walter questioned whether the paper had enough facts to support the scoop. Because of the voice-of-God style, the paper ended up making a flat-out statement: "Richard Jewell . . . fits the profile of the lone bomber." When I asked John Walter about the lone-bomber sentence, he said, "I ultimately edited it. . . . One of the tests we put to the material is, is it a verifiable fact?" One editor added, "The whole story is voice-of-God. . . . Because we see this event taking place, the need to attribute it to sources—F.B.I. or law enforcement—is less than if there is no public acknowledgment." John Walter indicated that he had not seen a lone-bomber profile. I asked him, "Whose profile of a lone bomber does Richard Jewell fit? Where is the 'says who' in this sentence?" Walter said that he felt comfortable with the assertion. The page-one story had a double byline: Kathy Scruggs and Ron Martz. Walter had told these two early on that they would be the reporters assigned to any Olympic catastrophe. Martz, who had covered the Gulf War, had been assigned the security beat for the Olympics; Scruggs routinely covered local crime. Scruggs had good contacts in the Atlanta police, and she was tough. She was characterized as "a police groupie" by one former staff member. "Kathy has a hard edge that some people find offensive," one of her editors told me, but he praised her skills. Police reporters are often "dictation pads" for local law enforcement; recently the American Journalism Review sharply criticized The A.J. C. for the scanty confirmation and lack of skepticism in its coverage of Jewell. The newsroom atmosphere resembled that at F.B.I. headquarters; there was a frenzy to be first. Kent Walker, a newsroom intern, published a story in the same edition, with a glaring mistake in the headline: BOMB SUSPECT HAD SOUGHT LIMELIGHT, PRESS INTERVIEWS. Since Ray Cleere's tip to the F.B.I., the "hero bomber" theory had been circulating among Atlanta law enforcement officers. Maria Elena Fernandez, a reporter, was sent to Habersham County on July 29. By coincidence, William Rathburn, the head of security for the Olympics, had been at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984 when a fake bomb was found on a bus—left by a policeman who sought attention. On the surface, the story had an irresistible newsroom logic: Jewell was clearly looking for recognition. Bert Roughton, the city editor, had answered the telephone when a representative from AT&T called to ask if the paper would like a Jewell interview. According to Walter, Roughton himself typed a sentence in the Scruggs-and-Martz piece: "He [Jewell] also has approached newspapers, including The Atlanta JournalConstitution, seeking publicity for his actions." But he hadn't. Walter explained, "There was nothing wrong with that sentence. That's journalistically proper. It is not common practice, to my knowledge, to ask someone you are interviewing . . . 'Are you here of your own free will?'" Jewell had not contacted the paper—a fact which would have been easy enough to check. Walter became snappish when I described the sentence as "a mistake." "It was not a mistake," he said angrily. Scruggs and Martz quoted Piedmont College president Ray Cleere as backup. According to Cleere, Jewell had been "a little erratic" and "almost too excitable." There was no doubt raised by The A.J.

在我的观影序列里，这应该是老头百万美元宝贝以后最好的一部作品，也是可以提前排进我今年个人观影十佳的电影。

毫无疑问离90周岁还差1年4个月的伊斯特伍德依然有着旺盛的创作欲，而创作于最直接的来源便是他的愤怒，愤怒来源就是他老右棍的政治立场。在好莱坞整体左倾的现实情况下，右翼电影越来越被压制，像约翰韦恩那种说不好就干的演员也在好莱坞销声匿迹。政治正确成为好莱坞自我审查的最大门槛，过了这道门槛电影的上映才有可能。

在拍《被拯救的姜戈》时候，小李子因为说不出“尼格”这个词，电影整体进度被拖慢，吉米福克斯和塞缪尔杰克逊轮流劝，小李子也表示对黑兄弟说不出这个词。最后在昆汀的授意下塞缪尔对小李子说：“你特么说了也没关系，我和你也特么不是朋友。”以后，小李子才勉为其难的完成影片拍摄。

好莱坞整体左转的同时也让文化在肤色表达上越来越多彩，但在立场表达上越来越单一。2019年在艺术上有卓越表达并且重新定义了特写镜头的《小丑》拿下了威尼斯，但是在左轨道奔跑的好莱坞里，可以看到《小丑》基本上与奥斯卡最佳导演和最佳影片无缘了。

话说回来，在好莱坞压抑了那么久的老爷子拍完《骡子》以后总算逮到了一个机会拍了《理查德朱维尔的哀歌》，千载难逢的机会老头的红脖子能不亮一亮么，压了那么久的恶气能不吐一吐么。

无论是什么电影，基底都应该是对人道主义的体现，对良知的赞美、对真相的挖掘和对丑恶的咒骂，而应不是立场的左右，《理查德朱维尔的哀歌》首先表达的第一层就是电影的基底。

电影中的初始事件就是朱维尔的善举，因为一次英勇的拯救才导致了后续诬陷构害的发生，而组成构害朱维尔网的主要有三个节点，一个节点是查尔斯格林饰演的克里尔博士，另一个节点是王尔德饰演的斯克鲁格斯，最后一个节点是乔恩哈姆饰演的肖探员，而他也是整个织网的中心，肖探员从得到朱维尔可能是凶手的信息之后与高级知识分子苟合，到放出消息与新闻媒体互为苟合。三点构成大网一点点的覆盖在理查德朱维尔的身上，而保护理查德朱维尔并且最终破局的尖刀则是山姆洛克威尔饰演的沃森律师，不断挖掘真相，信任朱维尔并引导他建立起自我成长的弧光。

抛开影片里所体现出人的良知，另一个层面上电影表现的也是高知加媒体加体制所联立的精英阶层对于普通红脖子的迫害。

红脖子是最初南方开垦美国的普通农民们，他们在烈日下勤作、山野中拓荒，是着构建美国最基础的价值观之一。红脖子最不能忍受便是对自我领地的侵犯，是对个人尊严的折辱。在决斗之风盛行的19世纪，因为一个眼神不对，红脖子们都会拉开场地干一架，当时有记者曾经说过“在南方找不到一个没有决斗过的议员”。

而电影中FBI不仅侵犯了朱维尔的土地也折辱了他的尊严。在朱维尔一次又一次配合调查，家中的器物一件被一件搬出的时候，沃森律师才会发火大吼：“你不能被侵犯尊严。”这一句嘶吼也是最直接体现导演自我表达的台词。而种种屈辱的积压之后，朱维尔才在联邦调查局的办公室里里对肖探员绝地反击。

跳脱出电影来看好莱坞现况，引领好莱坞向左跑的正是编剧所代表的高级知识分子精英阶层，而社会中白左们的主要口舌也正是各大新闻报纸媒体们，并且这一切都是体制默许甚至主导的。所以老爷子要在电影里特别讽刺的出现一个蠢蛋克里尔博士，要在剧中特别政治不正确构建一个与探员性交易的女记者，要在反派中塑造一个特别狠毒主导迫害行为的联邦探员。

从《百万美元宝贝》阴险的“来自东德的妓女”到《理查德朱维尔的哀歌》里“我们（苏联）的政府认为这个人是有罪的，那么他就是清白的。”伊斯特伍德在电影里表现自己的立场也是时时刻刻，作为2019年末一部老右政治不正确电影，《朱维尔》的表现堪称优秀。

《理查德朱维尔的哀歌》是老爷子的一击勾拳，90岁的老人依然如此愤怒、如此发声，对比之下某些导演年纪轻轻就开始喝养生茶、佛系表达了，实在令人可惜。

后记：

1，对于这片子的喜爱与打分是特别出自私人感情的，爱吃甜甜圈的胖子不就是我么，不拒绝任何美食不也是我么。从电影中朱维尔蠢蠢的跑来跑去让大家疏散开始，自己的眼泪就止不住的流，到最后朱维尔吃着甜甜圈泣不成声的时候，自己的情绪也随着崩溃了。感谢伊斯特伍德，在新年开始就让我看到了那么好的电影。

2，凯西贝茨看的时候就感觉肯定可以拿个表演奖，回来一看果然拿了个金球奖提名，还中了一个评论协会奖。所以说演员的表演一部分看自己一部分看导演，表演效果比美国恐怖故事高到不知道哪里去了。

彩蛋：

1999年6月，披露朱厄尔是作案者的两名记者斯克鲁格斯(Kathy Scruggs)和马茨(Ron Martz)因拒绝透露消息来源而被起诉。

又是一部堪称经典传播学教材的新闻事件类影片，尽管是20多年前的事件，放在今天也十分具有现世意义。舆论所导向的往往并不是“应该相信的”，而成为了“愿意相信的”，更绝对一点，甚至成为了“有利可图的”。

人们需要一个英雄时，就创造一个英雄，然后再压榨这个英雄的可用利益；人们需要一个罪人时，便创造一个罪人，再用一切可以想象的恶言去发泄轰击。很悲哀的一件事，即使是《理查德·朱维尔的哀歌》这个电影本身也是对主人公的又一次消费。可这就是这个世界样子，从不完美。

理查德在最后获得结案书的时候，他肥胖的脸上挤出难看的皱纹笑着，他赢了，他真的赢了吗？他已经被这个社会消磨得失去了原本的自我。他一口咬下的那个甜甜圈，我相信，是苦的。

说说剧作方面的缺点，演讲抒情的情绪渲染过多。说教味还是太重了，老是借角色之口对社会进行直接性的质问。还有角色形象塑造，FBI的形象还是太过呆板了，一味的丑化政府部门，多处关于FBI取证的细节在后续并没有对剧作造成实质性的影响，而成了为了丑化而丑化的设定，有点毁坏剧本条理性，把剧本严谨的逻辑性消解了。

以及凯西所代表的无良新闻传媒业，前期剧本将其塑造成了为了消息不惜出卖色相的唯利是图传媒业符号，其实是很能继续造作的一条线，却在电影一半的时候因为被骂了一顿就出现反转，实在是有毁角色的人物弧光，而在凯西良心发现之后也并没有对理查德的脱罪起到任何舆论导向上的帮助，而是角色直接凭空消失，实在是太浪费太浪费！可惜了好好的这一条线。

《理查德朱维尔的哀歌》由美国导演克林特.伊斯特伍德所执导，上映于2019年的改编电影。本片原型取自于1996年亚特兰大奥运爆炸案中发现炸弹装置的保安，他一直梦想着成为执法者。在这次事件中他先是被嘉奖为梦寐以求的角色：人民的英雄，而后却被媒体诬陷为炸弹凶手的事件。而在不断恶化的社会舆论中，他意识到自己所面对的不仅是公众的质疑，更是媒体和执法机构的联合阻力。在这样重重困境中，他该如何破局？

本片开头即精准地刻画了一位在保守州成长的右翼白人男性。从主角在一所学校中当保安，对学生进行训斥：告诫他们要遵守校园规定并对之保持敬意；到后来镜头一转，描绘了主角在南方广袤的靶场里练枪。再到此后因为学生的投诉，校长把他叫到办公室批评说：现在的学生非常懂得维护自己的权益，你还是尽量不要惹是生非。他答曰：我只知道应该遵守法律，遵守规则。我们不应该挑衅它。从这时刻即已经预示了后面的剧情的发展---这是一个哪怕受到执法机构不公正对待的，也会遵守其规定且对其保持敬意的秩序驯化者。

正是因为处于对秩序和规则的尊敬，才让理查德对于法律的执行者---警察，FBI保持憧憬。然而，由于自身的体型以及能力问题，他并没有成功成为执法者。在被学校解雇后，成为了亚特兰大奥运会的保安。而整个奥运爆炸案的实质性内容在本片并不是重点。在理查德发现炸弹后，他迅速被群众拥趸。在一场媒体疯狂寻找热点进而促进销量的体育赛事中，真正的体育竞技反而显得无足轻重。媒体要的只是热点，而不是实质性体育技巧的讨论。所以炸弹案一出，理查德迅速的登上了各大媒体的头版头条。此刻，风光无限，他终于成为了梦寐以求的人民英雄---“维护了秩序”。理查德母亲热泪盈眶地说道：我亲爱的理查德，我真为你骄傲，我一直知道你能成功。

此后警方的调查却陷入了困境，在全国所有媒体的聚焦下，凶手却一直无法归案。在不断的压力下，一名FBI探员肖恩开始对理查德起疑：是否整个爆炸案事件是他自己自导自演？ 警方转而对这位“人民英雄”展开调查。随着调查的深入，警方发现理查德的嫌疑越来越大：这是一位成年已久仍和母亲一起居住的男性---他可能有心理问题；他小时候为了炸鼹鼠制作过土制炸弹；理查德好几年没缴税了；理查德曾经假扮警察被逮捕；在学校当保安时经常被投诉；家里有手榴弹，哪怕它是空心的；他甚至保留了公园里的椅子碎片作为纪念。种种迹象显示理查德有可能就是凶手。

此后的剧情发展才真正开始进入本片的主线。亚特兰大宪章报的女记者凯西为了抢先在别的媒体前面获得独家信息，决定向FBI探员肖恩套话。通过情色手段，肖恩把他们现在的调查进度告诉了女记者，并嘱咐她不要对公众公布。可第二天亚特兰大宪章报的头版却是：英雄还是罪犯，爆炸案是理查德自导自演的？此时，全国舆论哗然。一夜之间，理查德从人民英雄变为众矢之的。无数媒体将他家门口围得水泄不通---他们等待着FBI什么时候对理查德进行传讯，理查德什么时候会“自曝”。而从未见过这种场面的“红脖”理查德顿时无法招架，只得打电话给曾经给他发广告的律师。律师赶紧前往理查德家中，和他对接下的行动进行法律的准备，教他如何应对FBI的问话。

此后，FBI对理查德的“传讯”开始。这其实并不是传讯，在实行普通法的美国，法治的重要基石之一即为无罪推定，只有在有决定性证据证明一个自然人是罪犯的情况下，才能对其进行逮捕。而以肖恩为代表的FBI以诱导的方式，利用理查德对于执法者的崇拜，在假装对理查德进行一般问话时，支开他的律师，诱导他说出“我（理查德），是放置炸弹的人“，并对其秘密录音。此后，利用这个“决定性证据”，对其发出逮捕令。而此时，FBI对他家进行的无意义的地毯式搜索---拿走理查德母亲的睡衣裤与私人用品，只是为了搜出真正的决定性证据。（因为他们自己心中知道自己的证据是假的，这是彻头彻尾的违法取证！完全违反程序正义）而在这番令人受尽屈辱的对待中，理查德竟然极力配合，理由是肖恩探员对他说：你也知道我们执法者的苦衷，理查德回答说：是的，FBI的命令我是一定会遵守的。他的律师对FBI这样的行为十分愤怒，对肖恩大吼到：你们可以对他进行调查，但是不可以侵犯他家庭的尊严！而对于理查德本身，律师更是问道：你为什么不生气？理查德答道：我只是一个法律的遵守者。

此后理查德被羁押，等待司法系统的正式起诉，而他的律师和律师助理想尽办法证明他是无罪的，而女记者凯西此时良心发现，计算了具体爆炸案的距离和时间，发现理查德根本不可能有机会作案。而理查德的母亲此时在律师的帮助下，召开了新闻发布会，声泪俱下地控诉媒体的偏向报道，不实地指控自己的儿子。令人动容。而律师利用自己收集的证据和新闻发布会推翻了FBI的检控，最终理查德被无罪释放。最后，在联邦调查局办公室里，肖恩对理查德说：“我知道是你干的，我一定会找到证据证明你是罪犯。”而在这场风波的末尾，理查德终于进行了绝地反击---在经历了系统性的不公正对待后，他说道：我确实不是罪犯，如果你找到证据证明我当然不会反抗，前提是，真的证据。

这部影片在当下的美国语境中所敲响的警钟是振聋发聩的，但却遭到了社会舆论的冷遇。单从所获得的奖项与评价就看的出来：烂番茄媒体评价73%，各大颁奖典礼也完全没有水花，美国把控着文化传播的左翼精英很明显地拒绝了这部电影。这部电影更是被部分媒体攻击：片中所刻画的女记者凯西表现了导演本人“鲜明”的厌女立场，从而引发了媒体对于片中所触犯的性别政治雷区进行口诛笔伐。

抛开记者的性别不谈，单是从记者是否有权力通过其他不法手段获取信息来进行报道谈起。奉行三权分立的美国，身为第四权的新闻权理应对司法，行政，立法进行制衡。而片中所表现的非但不是新闻权对于司法权的制衡，反而是和司法权进行媾和，进而对于一个他们自己所不喜的普通右翼男性进行绞杀。这是典型的精英话语权对于普通群众的压制。媒体对于销量和点击量近乎病态的追逐，代表着他们完全对于自己职业操守和做人良心的嗤之以鼻。而司法系统对于达成自己目的而完全不顾程序正义的行为，更是将美国宪法的基石视如粪土。

而在此时此刻的美国，这样一部影片更是警钟长鸣。深挖这些所谓的主流媒体背后的财团：CNN，纽约时报，华盛顿邮报，MSBCN，NPR，Newsweek,大西洋月刊…会意识到媒体不过是左翼政治集团的打手和傀儡，只是为了自己的得势而进行的政治宣传。而为达到目的无所不用其极：对右翼政治人物进行捏造攻击，诬陷。2020年美国大选期间，华盛顿邮报（Washington Post）试图再现第二次水门事件，针对特朗普关于佐治亚州的投票问题录音进行编辑，想要描绘出一个试图作假改变选票的候选人形象。对于特朗普本人更是直接写出一片特稿来对其进行许多不实的攻击，而在短短的一个月后，华盛顿邮报自己又悄无声息的刊登了一篇道歉文章：针对此前的一篇稿件针对特朗普先生的不实指控，以及“不小心”对录音文件进行编辑对民众进行了误导宣传表示歉意。而华盛顿邮报这样的道歉行为实际上算十分罕见，更多的主流媒体，例如CNN，在BLM期间，对非裔美国人的犯罪行为，通过图片编辑将其肤色调亮成为白人；或是纽约时报明显采用的错误的数据误导读者；在此后却继续装聋作哑，假装无事发生。

对于群体陷入狂热，美国的右翼如同片中的理查德一样，是秩序的遵守者，即使这个系统秩序有一定争议。当在媒体的煽动下，被迫卷进事件的主角，选择了法律的武器自证清白。这是在系统内捍卫正义。群体的狂热，激动是可以被理解的，因为绝大多数人没有选择权，是美国宣传机器下的产物。但不管愤怒的群体也好，理性的个体也好，都是生活在系统下。我们应该诉诸系统下的正当手段，这样才有助于一个良性的系统持续运转。一个良性的系统是有自我纠正能力的，他可以进行新陈代谢，通过立法的手段来割掉癌变部位。而通过激进左翼的街头手段，冲击的不仅是系统的病灶，更是将整个系统置于动荡之中。而一旦良性的系统失灵，社会就会陷入不稳中，犯罪率会激升，而此时的左翼却根本没有能力对于这个失控的社会进行管制，左翼的本质其实就是只有破坏，从不治理。对于一个满目疮痍的社会系统来说，这样做或许是最好的选择，而对于一个运转尚可的系统来讲，这样做只会给社会带来负面效应，进而导致众生的陨落，至于激进左翼背后的精英集团对摇摇欲坠的社会却毫不在意---激进集团只是他们夺权的手段。

而在当今的美国，由于左翼媒体占据舆论高地，天然地对于话语权进行垄断。而越来越式微的右翼逐渐被隐形，2016年特朗普的上台左翼媒体被“惊吓”，高呼民粹主义的回归，美国右转。而右转真正是从16年才开始的吗？右翼被隐形了太久，没有媒体，没有大学教授，没有跨国公司，没有好莱坞……这是左翼精英长年累月对于这个右翼群体的刻意忽视，视而不见所造成的。这部影片的主旨当然不是想还原当时爆炸案的完整细节，而是导演本人对于当下美国左翼的栽赃陷害进行反击：急速左转的好莱坞将政治正确奉为圭臬，打着人人都可以做自己的口号，在文化上越来越“多彩”的左倾主义宣传下，实际上是立场越发单一的政治审查。

看了电影后不是很能理解为什么这部电影在颁奖季没有什么水花，所以便在网上搜了搜评论。在烂番茄上，这部电影的媒体评分只有73%，远远不及《利剑出鞘》等电影。我更疑惑了，于是仔细看了看这些媒体的评价。最终引导我看到了一个来自亚特兰大宪章报对这部电影的批评。批评主要针对电影中女记者Kathy Scruggs的塑造。这位女记者不折手段的用性交易的方式从FBI探员那里获取了他们即将对理查德·朱维尔展开调查的消息，从而一手导致了朱维尔从“英雄”到“凶手”的噩梦之旅。实际上，大部分对电影的负面评价都针对于这个女记者的形象。我在看电影的时候已经预感到了，这个女记者的形象触犯到了不仅仅是媒体的职业道德问题，而是已经触犯了目前最敏感的性别政治问题。

这部电影像老爷子的绝大多数电影一样以展现事实真相为中心。所以批评者不可能不注意到这个女记者用性交易来获取信息这一细节是否是真的事实？毕竟人已经去世，之前也没有任何证据。所以很多批评者嘲讽这个电影是“太过戏剧化”的处理了真人真事。有的评论直接点出了“抹黑女性”。以至于饰演这个角色的演员奥利维亚·王尔德不得不站出来撇清：她作为一个演员无法决定和改变剧本的内容。个人觉得老爷子确实不应该在电影里包含这一幕。但同时也认为这可能就是老爷子的一种讽刺。毕竟当年FBI在撤销对朱维尔的调查后，朱维尔转头就控告了包括NBC在内的多家媒体，大部分媒体都和他庭外和解了，只有亚特兰大宪章报坚持认为他们的报道是基于客观事实的推论，并没有捏造和污蔑的地方。所以，一个FBI内部的消息，是怎么被一个女记者知道的呢？老爷子如此推理，恰如当年的记者们通过朱维尔这个笨拙肥胖还与妈妈合住的单身白人男子形象推论他是凶手一模一样。其实这个电影里处处都是这种嘲讽。因为朱维尔本身就是一个不完美的小人物，他除了被不公正的对待外，还有过激的历史，不交税和一屋子的枪。即便到了最后FBI找不出任何可以指控他是凶手的证据，那位FBI的探员还是铮铮有词的指责朱维尔：我知道你就是凶手，虽然我没有证据，但我知道你就是。那位FBI探员并不仇恨朱维尔，也没有理由仇恨朱维尔，他只是对自己深信不疑，这种态度其实是大多数人的写照。如果最后不是真凶浮出水面，多少人会一直怀疑朱维尔的清白？

不过亚特兰大宪章报的那个批评最有意思的其实是后面的读者评论，多达四百多条。而这四百多条评论的焦点大部分转向了特朗普。电影里有一句台词提到了"quid pro quo"。这句话最近不要太火。其实这个电影的剧本早在几年前就完成了，电影的拍摄也是在特朗普被弹劾调查之前就已经完工了。但是谁让老爷子pro特朗普呢？！整个美国的媒体都在骂特朗普，老爷子却说在“希拉里和特朗普之间，他肯定要选特朗普”。这简直就是媒体公敌了。就算没有那个女记者，估计老爷子的这个电影也不会受到媒体的好评。但是有了这句台词，媒体又可以推论：老爷子在借电影讽刺民主党对特朗普的调查。其实个人认为老爷子并非真的支持特朗普，他明确表示过不会以资金或其它任何形式来支持特朗普，他只是表明在希拉里和特朗普之间，他觉得特朗普至少是比较诚实的。个人觉得美国媒体和“言论自由”简直就是矛盾的两级。鲜有媒体是没有自己的立场的，但是你不能有和他们对立的立场。我天天听崔娃的节目，这个节目的立场不要太鲜明，各种嘲讽丑化特朗普，采访希拉里各种夸奖赞美，还要多有倾向性呢？但是你不能批评媒体不客观，这是他们的“言论自由”和“政治正确”。

关于这个电影，它所产生的真实背景，以及现在的舆论背景，都让对它的讨论不可能再是对电影的讨论了。很有意思的是，在浏览这些评论的时候，我最大的感触是对同样的一个事物，人与人之间会有多么多的不同的感受与看法。而我们每一个人在言说自己的感受时就在改变事实的真相，也许下一次的世界大战真的就是“口水战”吧。