Apparatus Theory: MEDIUM COOL (1969)

Ooh, isn’t it horrible? Let me see some more.

Numb to the urgent issues of the people he films, Chicago cameraman John Cassellis (Robert Forster) fervently churns out eye-catching, distressing images of car accidents and violence in the wake of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Upon discovering that his network has been secretly sharing their footage with the FBI, John becomes disillusioned with his profession and the establishment, and slowly reconciles with his own civic detachment. 

Prolific American cinematographer-documentarian Haskell Wexler (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?, Days of Heaven) took up this agitated, docufictional premise during the Vietnam War backlash in the ‘60s. His intervention into this “cool” medium—its title borrowing from the writings of Marshall McLuhan—stitches real documentary footage into its vérité scheme in order to implicate media practices in the ongoing violence against Black communities through sensationalism and revolutionary spectacle. Wexler would reflect on the film decades later with a nearly poetic comment: “I think I’d die if I couldn’t shoot.” (Saffron Maeve)