'Videodrome' & 'Salvador'

Today, most youth see James Woods as the butt of jokes on The Family Guy, as the kids' high school is named after the actor. By all accounts, he plays along with the joke.

To be honest, I don't know a lot of Woods' work outside of Casino and Once Upon A Time In America. Otherwise, he's just a name. Probably not unlike Joe Pesci. I wonder how many 16 year olds know who he is. But they know Woods' from an animated TV sitcom parody.

These are two very different films.

Videodrome is a 1980s sci-fi, 1984-esque with a less-than-ideal view of the future of media consumption and television taking over our bodies and infecting or consuming us in some diabolical fashion.

Salvador's a bit more harrowing. Woods plays a down-on-his-luck photographer, who seemingly kidnaps his friend (Jim Belushi in a role he wouldn't approach until his stellar role in The Principal) to drive to El Salvador in order to get photography work during the civil war that ravaged the country for almost three years.

Salvador is directed by Oliver Stone, his fourth film and probably his first of note before he'd have a string with Platoon, Talk Radio, Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, JFK and The Doors. That's formidable series of films. Although Stone is known for stretching fact for the sake of making a point, I take Salvador at face value. I very much doubt that everything that he shows didn't actually happen (many of the characters were based on real people, some real actions). If not in El Salvador, somewhere. Many times over. Including, most of all, the United States' role in the chaos that erupts all around us, needlessly.

I do wonder if I could ever be a war photographer. I very much doubt it. I'd rather have a gun than a camera if bullets are flying. It's a miracle, actually, that more war journalists haven't been killed than that actually have. Even by accident. The fact that they just wave their arms at people firing the guns to hold up so they can get in a position between the lines is mind blowing.

After watching these twos, I do have a much higher respect for James Woods.