Review -- "Good Night and Good Luck" on DVD

Nick Clooney's boy has made a powerful film.
I only refer to George Clooney and "Good Night and Good Luck," the film which ebuted on DVD this week in that fashion because Nick was a TV anchor in Cincinnati. George, as he tells it in the commentary track of the DVD, used to sit on the floor of the TV studio and watch his dad do the news.
Doing the news is what the movie is all about.
As a boy, I sometimes became frustrated with CBS' news programs and documentaries, the ones people like Ed Murrow and "his boys" from World War II did. Because even then I knew something important was going on but I couldn't "get it" because of my tender years.
This wonderful DVD fills in a lot of those gaps for me.
As a writer, reporter and newspaper editor, I prefer the commentary over watching the film alone, because it is a wonderful education, listening to George and his partner, Grant Heslov, talk about how they made the film and the way the decisions were made.
It is also entertaining to hear the gentle give and take between them. At least twice, George points out that he was voted the "sexiest man alive." You get a sense of their friendship, their passion for their work and their mutual respect. You get the idea you would like to hang out with these guys at some point, hoping their creativity somehow migrates to you.
As a newsman, the film points out how important is the Fourth Estate.
While President Bush seems willing to circumvent the rights given Americans by the Constitution, so did Joe McCarthy.
While TV is still the source of news for most Americans, the film points out that editorial cartoonists and the newspapers they worked for first went after McCarthy, and as Clooney says, TV entered the fray later.
I have never had the opportunity to work for TV news, though I came close a couple times.
In college I worked as a stringer, covering a murder trial for a local TV station. I was a reporter on another station's "radio roundup" years later.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy newspaper work. In fact, we are using TV and radio skills as well as writing and photography on our newspaper Web site and those lines will only blur in the years ahead.
So, I'm thankful to be part -- a very small part -- of an important industry.
If TV was the thing in 1953, what will be the thing this year and down the road. You're using it. Right now.