Freedom Filmmaker
by William Norman Grigg
June 12, 2006
http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman/publish/article_3908.shtml
After decades in the music and motion picture industry, Aaron Russo found
his calling as a full-time activist for freedom.
One of Aaron Russo's "few regrets" in life, he confided during a lengthy
interview with The New American, was his impetuous decision not to pursue a
career in Major League Baseball.
"I was drafted by the Yankees right out of high school," he recalls. "I was
a catcher in our Babe Ruth league on Long Island, and my last year I had a
batting average of .489. Baseball was something I loved as a kid. Back in
the 1950s, New York was the center of the baseball universe. You had Willie
Mays playing with the Giants, Duke Snider with the Dodgers, and Mickey
Mantle with the Yankees. It was a time of great rivalries."
"Back then," he continued, "baseball was played on real grass in ballparks
that weren't named after corporations. And most of the big stars stayed with
their teams for their entire careers, rather than becoming free agent
mercenaries and playing for the highest bidder. Like every other boy my age,
I dreamed of being a Big League ballplayer - but I actually had a shot."
If he had the shot so many coveted, why didn't he take it?
"Well, as a testosterone-fueled teenager, I had the athletic skills, but no
discipline," he replied, wry amusement coloring his husky voice. "For me at
the time, springtime wasn't for Spring Training - it was for fast
convertibles. I was more interested in hot cars and hot girls than I was in
the daily grind of a baseball career. So I passed on the opportunity of a
lifetime. I've had a good life with very few regrets - but passing up a
chance to play with the Yankees...." As his voice trailed off, it was easy
to imagine Russo, as a wise and experienced 63-year-old, offering a smile
and a shrug as he thinks of the foolish priorities that governed him at age
18.
Born in Brooklyn in 1943 and raised, largely by grandparents, in Long
Island, Russo has fond memories of an America most people living today know
only through the movies. In fact, Russo has crafted depictions of his
memories in film, leaving a mark as a producer and director.
"We were taught the value of a dollar and the importance of hard work," he
recalls. "I remember being told over and over again by my grandparents,
'neither a borrower nor a lender be.' My friends and I loved our old
neighborhood, but we wanted to make something of ourselves on the larger
stage."
Music and Movies
In the late 1960s, following a brief stint as a college student and member
of the Coast Guard Reserve, Russo became owner and manager of the Kinetic
Playground, a Chicago psychedelic music club that hosted concerts by
now-legendary acts, including Jefferson Airplane, The Who, and Led Zeppelin.
At the time, he recounts, "I was aware of the Vietnam War protest movement,
and I was involved in a very modest way. But I was too busy building a
career to be really involved in politics."
In the 1970s, Russo branched out into record production and talent
management, helping to create the vocal jazz group Manhattan Transfer in
1972 and managing singer/actress Bette Midler. He produced an Emmy-winning
television special for Midler in 1978, and began yet another phase of his
entertainment career by producing her feature film The Rose. (He was awarded
a Gold Record for producing the film's soundtrack album.) He went on to
produce several other films, including the 1982 standout comedy Trading
Places featuring Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd, and directed the 1989 comedy
Rude Awakening.
In examining the plotlines of those two films, one is tempted to see a
foreshadowing of Russo's own political awakening. Trading Places involves a
cruel, whimsical scheme by two elitist money managers who conspire to
destroy the career of a rising blue-blooded commodities trader (Aykroyd) and
engineer his replacement by a streetwise huckster (Murphy). Rude Awakening
chronicles the experiences of two 1960s-era hippies who return to the U.S.A.
in the late 1980s after two decades in Central American exile. They are
astonished by the gusto with which veterans of the hippie counterculture
took to the "greed is good" ethic of yuppie materialism.
Russo, an ardent practitioner and defender of free-market capitalism, has
never used the medium of film to denigrate honest entrepreneurship. He is an
outspoken enemy of both materialistic hypocrisy and of the type of elitism
that manifests itself in government control over the economy for the corrupt
enrichment of powerful corporate and political interests.
Into the Political Arena
After directing Rude Awakening, "I left the U.S.A. for a little while and
lived in Tahiti," Russo recounted to The New American. "This was during the
first Bush administration, when I became aware that something was seriously
wrong with our country, although I couldn't really put into words what it
was. We came back in 1991 and I spent quite a while just traveling across
the country with my kids, Max and Sam. It was a wonderful experience. We got
to know our country very well, and I became aware for the first time that
there were millions of Americans who shared my sense that something is
terribly wrong, and who were eager to do something about it."
Russo's misgivings about our country's direction were fortified in 1993 by
the "utterly horrible atrocities committed by the government at Ruby Ridge
and Waco," as well as scores of similar outrages against individual rights -
such as property seizures, businesses being driven into bankruptcy by
federal regulators, the attack on our sovereignty through the UN and trade
pacts like NAFTA, and escalating attacks on privacy and the right to keep
and bear arms.
That growing sense of outrage coalesced into Aaron Russo's Mad as Hell, a
1995 pilot for a proposed television talk show. Russo relates that although
his pilot didn't sell, his potential impact on the national scene was
recognized by some very important people.
"Shortly after I made the pilot, I was approached by one of the younger
members of the Rockefeller family," he told The New American. "He seemed to
think that I had some potential and was offering to mentor me. He even
discussed with me the possibility of arranging an invitation for me to join
the Council on Foreign Relations. And he seemed to be very interested in my
views about a number of subjects I hadn't really given much thought to." One
specific subject of interest was the feminist movement.
"[The Rockefeller family member] asked me what I thought of the 'women's
movement,' and I told him that I support equal opportunity," Russo
continues. "He looked at me and said, 'You know, you're such an idiot in
some ways. We' - meaning the people he works with - 'created the women's
movement, and we promote it. And it's not about equal opportunity. It's
designed to get both parents out of the home and into the workforce, where
they will pay taxes. And then we can decide how the children will be raised
and educated.' That's how they control society - by removing the parents
from the home and then raising the children as the elitists see fit."
Russo recalls conversations in 2000 with his Rockefeller acquaintance that,
in hindsight, seemed to portend 9/11 and its aftermath.
"About a year before 9/11, this guy was telling me that there would be 'an
event' in this country that would change it dramatically," declares Russo.
"He was predicting a war in Afghanistan and in the Middle East to control
the region's energy reserves, and at some points he was actually laughing
about it."
"I know how evil these people are," Russo said grimly.
Although he was intermittently in touch with his "friend" from the
Rockefeller family, Russo continued his new career as a political maverick.
A 1998 bid for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Nevada yielded 26
percent of the convention vote in a four-way race. Two years ago he briefly
considered a presidential run as an independent, and then mounted an
unsuccessful campaign for the Libertarian Party nomination. (After Michael
Badnarik got the Libertarian Party's nod, Russo offered to produce
television ads for the candidate.)
Challenges to Body and Spirit
For the past several years, amid his campaigns to promote the cause of
individual liberty, Russo has been battling cancer, both of the bladder and
the stomach. In both struggles, he has found strength in his maturing
spiritual convictions. To wage his so-far successful battle against cancer,
Russo has turned to holistic and nutritional therapy. In combating the
social cancer of collectivism, he has exercised his abilities as a
filmmaker. In both undertakings, prayer has played a central role.
"I believe deeply in God," Russo explains. "This has been the real source of
my strength in fighting cancer - the hope that comes from understanding that
God made me for a purpose, and the joy that comes in doing what I believe
God made me to do, which is to fight for freedom. I know that someday we'll
all cast off these shells we live in, but that we will continue to live.
I've come to understand that each of us was made by God with talents and
abilities that we are supposed to use in the struggle to promote what is
good and right and true. And it's just as clear to me that we have a
capacity for evil, and that evil is organized as well - which means that
those of us who recognize what God has given us have to organize to defeat
evil."
"I just wish the American people had more faith in themselves, and in God,"
Russo continues. "The top layers of our government and society support the
idea of world government and the destruction of our freedom, but that's not
true of most Americans. Too many have been intimidated into silence because
of a lack of faith - both in God and their own God-given potential. I hope
my film will help them look within themselves and find the strength I know
is there, and inspire them to take action - now - to save our priceless gift
of freedom."
*************************************
Nicolas Leobold .......................................
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ........ tel: 212-228-9255
www.LibertyDollar.org
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