Sunday, April 13, 2008 12:25 AM CDT
COLUMN: I learned the hard way: Don't mess with Moses
By HERB MEEKER, Staff writer
hmeeker@jg-tc.com
It really seemed like a brilliant question — analytical, profound and provocative.
It even had a reference to the movie “Planet of the Apes.” So it was topped off by pop culture.
And everything went fine during that short press conference until my eyes met Charlton Heston’s glare.
He was stumping for Republican candidates in 1996 and happened to be poking his staff in the Red State sea at Effingham one night. I was a member of the local yokel press so I got to enjoy Heston at his best.
His tone shook the speakers in a packed room at Keller Convention Center, leaving hundreds wiping away tears. His eloquence was tall in tone, which was ironic because he was speaking in praise for Senate candidate Al Salvi, who has now become a very short footnote in Illinois political history. And it has nothing to do with his physical stature, either.
I was a little concerned with the the angst in Heston’s speech. So I decided to juxtapose his politics with his past acting parts.
When I gained the floor in the small, convivial press horde I started talking without taking a breath. I opened with praise for his movie career, especially movies predicting a grim future for mankind like “Soylent Green” (one of the reasons I refuse to eat green cookies to this day), “The Omega Man” and the “Planet of the Apes.” Then I meandered into the election campaign practice of predicting a “doomsday” for the country if one party didn’t keep political control.
And I went for the climax, asking whether our future really depended on just one candidate like Salvi.
With his eyes never flinching during my marbles-in-the-mouth monotone, Heston finally broke in and answered firmly, “Yes, and that’s why you have to vote for Al Salvi. Our future depends on it!”
Suddenly, I knew how Roman galley slaves felt after their ship had been rammed and the water started rushing in.
It is unfair to recall Heston as only a political ground pounder for neocon dandies during his final productive years before Alzheimer’s eventually placed him into personal exile. He produced some of the most stirring cinematic performances of my generation.
He seemed divinely inspired as Moses in “The Ten Commandments.” I recall the magic of watching “Ben Hur” as a youth on our first color television at home. It tells a story that never grows old. I remember getting up and cheering at one point during the chariot race.
There was a gritty realism with his roles in “Major Dundee,” and “Will Penny.” And he was brilliant in “El Cid” as a doomed knight and in “The Agony and the Ecstasy” as an obsessed artist determined to finish a work as he envisioned it.
And so what if things haven’t gone to total hell like those futuristic movies starring Heston predicted? Maybe the real apes are computers and robots, instead. They might rule us someday. And then what might we be eating? Just stare in the mirror for the answer.
Critics of Heston this past week have cut into his legacy for his days as National Rifle Association president. But what about his support of the civil rights movement? In his view he was supporting personal freedom in each case.
I never really agreed with some of Heston’s statements during his final years. Some amounted to grandstanding politics. But I was being an arrogant jackass when I tried to dazzle him with that long-winded question. Maybe I should have shot from the hip like many of his movie characters.
“Honestly, Mr. Heston, does Salvi measure up to your standards? Or is he just a political dwarf foisted on your shoulders by party apes?”
I think Heston would have smiled at me for a moment and then, being the true gentleman he was, turned away and said, “Next question?”
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longtimegone wrote on Apr 13, 2008 9:32 AM: