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Editor’s Note: John Marks is the showrunner for Giuliani: What Happened to America’s Mayor? Former producer of 60 Minutes and US News & World Report correspondent, Marks most recently worked at New York-based production company Left/Right on various cable and streaming staff for his network as his showrunner and director. I was working. The views expressed in this commentary are his.read more opinion on CNN. clock “Giuliani: What happened to the mayors of America?CNN Sunday at 9 and 10 p.m. ET/PT.
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My father, who is a lawyer, said he didn’t like legal movies. With one exception, they were always wrong in some way. But this exception spoke deeply to his years as an attorney in civil court in Texas. That was his 1982 “The Verdict,” starring Paul Newman, directed by Sidney Lumet, and written by screenwriter David Mamet. Newman plays an alcoholic ambulance tracker named Frank Galvin. Frank Galvin, in the middle of a case that should have been opened and closed, suddenly finds that he cares about justice.
“The Verdict” is a movie about redemption. Newman’s closing argument is his confession of his own loss of faith in the law. Surrounded by wide shots of him showing attorneys, jurors, judges, and the grain of the courtroom itself, the symbolism of American justice is revealed.
Over the past year and a half, that image came to mind many times while working on the CNN documentary series about Rudolph Giuliani, former US attorney, former New York City mayor, and former attorney for President Donald Trump. After thinking about Giuliani, I thought about this scene and what it meant to his father.
We tend to think of Giuliani as the mayor, as indicated by the series’ subtitle, What Happened To America’s Mayor? – But for most of his life, in government and personal practice, the mayor was a lawyer. His attorney license is currently suspended in New York and Washington, DC.
Read through this lens, Giuliani’s story can be seen, like the characters in “The Verdict,” as that of a lawyer who has lost faith in the law, but without a Hollywood ending? When asked how one of the most admired (and some feared) leaders in modern American history came to be the subject of federal, state and professional scrutiny. is the answer?
In the last few weeks of 2022 alone, Giuliani has spawned another wave of negative publicity. He attended his DC Bar Association and was under investigation by a Georgia grand jury for trying to overturn the election. When his Jan. 6 committee of the House referred Trump to the Justice Department for possible indictment, Giuliani and five of his other Trump supporters were identified as potential co-conspirators. was mentioned. After his summary of the commission’s final report was released, Giuliani’s spokesman denied in his statement to CNN how the report portrayed Giuliani, It described him as “an honest and good American who has dedicated his life to service and action for others.” good deeds. ”
These post-Jan. 6 headlines don’t tell a story of redemption, but they do highlight a very different series of headlines going back to Giuliani’s past. It was a tragic event, but he revealed remarkable leadership abilities that astounded even his harshest critics.
On September 11, 2001, after serving two highly successful, divisive, and often self-destructive mayoral terms, Giuliani was recast as a hero in a day, momentarily crowned America’s most compelling leader. Appeared. If it’s not a Hollywood ending, I don’t know what it is. As political strategist Rick Wilson says in the documentary, if the story had ended there, the school would have been named after Giuliani.
In the moral economy of public life, does the early moment redeem or somehow balance the latter? Going on, there are old friends and allies loyal to the man and his memory. Others always see his 9/11 as a deviation and his 1/6 as a return to form.
Early on, Giuliani had a sense of civic duty. His Catholic education in Brooklyn gave him a moral compass, and his Jesuit education gave him intellectual commitment and a sense of responsibility. It had a certain innate ferocity.
As a young prosecutor, rooting out police corruption, as a Southern district federal attorney, tackling rioters and hardened criminals, and as Mayor of Law and Order, Giuliani displayed a fearless and often honed moral integrity. If he believes anything he alluded to at the press conference, it must be correct.
In the wake of his most troublesome New York years, especially the police killings of Amadou Diallo and Patrick Drismond, that sense of narcissistic honesty has made Giuliani a cold-hearted bully with racist tendencies. It could sound like a child, or at least a political opportunist. A person who whistles on racism as soon as he needs a political moment. Indeed, many black New Yorkers saw him that way.
Meanwhile, in the aftermath of 9/11, Giuliani’s righteousness is softened by an overwhelming sense of tragedy. More than his actions, his demeanor seemed to reinvent him as a rarity on the American stage, a wholly noble figure above politics.
But the dark side of power was evident in Giuliani’s post-Trump behavior, which has always captured the former mayor’s imagination. Giuliani’s all-time favorite film was Francis Ford’s Coppola mafia epic The Godfather. In the documentary, Republican pollster and political consultant Frank Lantz recounts watching a movie called “Retreat” in the basement of City Hall with Giuliani.
“He sits behind me,” Lantz recalls. And of course, in one story where Sunny explains that he should sell drugs to his godfather, we see this fight within the family, but Rudy starts tapping me on the shoulder and saying, “You know what? keeps it in the family.”
Many love that movie, but few look like the principal architects of one of the most serious sedition incidents in modern American history. Connecting the dots between educational screenings, one can envision a vision of law that is only an instrument for those who wield power, in stark contrast to the vision of “the verdict.”
When Newman’s character makes his closing argument in court and speaks lines written by David Mamet, he speaks as someone who has rediscovered law as salvation, diagnosing the failures that have brought him to this point. “We think of ourselves as victims, we become victims. And we doubt the law.” “In my religion, if you act as if you have faith, faith will be given.” If…if we believe in justice. , we just have to believe in ourselves. and act with justice. See, I believe there is justice in our hearts. ”
That scene is law, my father said, explaining his respect for the film. Its essence: the defenders, the people and the processes in which the rule of law unfolds.
Of course, Giuliani’s story is not a movie. It’s real life and nothing, extraordinary or otherwise, can be easily measured from the outside. You can’t know what’s in his heart. Yet there is a clear divide between Giuliani on 9/11/2001 and his 01/6/2021 man. From the latest headlines about this lawyer, it’s hard to find the beginning of redemptive light that might pave the way.
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