Lesson Twenty One

Section One: News in Brief

Tapescript
1. A committee of scientists is calling on President Reagan to launch
a billion-dollar information campaign to keep the AIDS epidemic
from spreading to catastrophic proportions. The National Academy
of Sciences convened the panel which says education efforts must be
used because effective treatment and a vaccine appear to be years
away. The report urges the establishment of a new federal office to
head a nationwide education effort as well as an advisory commis-
sion for research and education. The scientists say the White House
should lead an action campaign the way it has led a new crackdown
on illegal d
ir
2. Gunmen kidnapped a French television photographer today as he
drove from the Christian east to the Muslim western sector of Beirut.
Jean Marc Srucie is the 9th French National missing and presumed
abducted in Beirut. Two women were in the car with him but were
released. No one has claimed responsibility.

3. An Israeli court has indicted a retired auto worker, alleging he was
a Nazi death camp worker known as ' Ivan the Terrible' . Jam
Demjanjuk is in jail in Israel after being extradited and maintains his
is a case of mistaken identity. The BBC's Paul Reynolds has this re-
port from Jerusalem. " The indictment charges Demjanjuk with
crimes against the Jewish people, against humanity, and with war
crimes. He's said to have been responsible for herding Jews into the
gas chambers and often stabbed them or whipped flesh from them as
they went in. It's said that he personally turned on the motors to

discharge the poison gas. The state of Israel-will be calling eight for-
mer Treblinka inmates and an SS guard who will identify Demjanjuk
as "Ivan the Terrible'. Demjanjuk's defense, though, will be quite
simple. He'll say he's somebody else. His American lawyer has been
seeking out other camp survivors who can't support the identifica-
tion, and the whole trial will resolve around this question.
Demjanjuk's trial is expected to begin at the end of the year and
could take as long as six months.'

Section Two: News in Detail

Tapescript
Today, a panel of the @ation's leading scientists and physicians
issued a major review of the government's response to the AIDS epi-
demic. The panel was convened by the National Academy of Sci-
ences. The scientists called for massive increases in funding for AIDS
research and education. They also urged President Reagan to lead
the fight against disease. NPR's Richard Harris has the story:
Six months ago, the Academy decided that AIDS was so serious
a problem that they needed to review that nation's fight against the
disease. They chose Nobel laureate, David Baltimore to head their
panel and enlisted the cooperative of leading health researchers. The
Academy has no control over the federal budget, but they have con-
siderable prestige. And they banked on that prestige today when they
called for a billion dollars a year for AIDS research by 1990. That

trax slates into a four-fold increase in funding over the next thr
years. Today, Chairman David Baltimore said the country should
spend another billion dollars a year for AIDS education.
"We are saying that a program that is at all responsive to the
needs of the situation will cost a billion dollars. And we are not spec-
ifying where that billion dollars should come from because it's made
up of whole lot of little pieces,' pieces that should be shared by local
government and private industry. The panel said education efforts so
far have been, as they put it, "woefully inadequate", inadequate be-
cause officials have spent I / 8 as much money as they should have,
in adequate, they said, because health officials have been too
%,s ue
,q amish,to talk about sex or to promote the use of condoms.
Baltimore said these attitudes must change now, because the AIDS
epidemic is at a critical point.
"The virus has now spread widely as far as we know outside of
the high-risk groups. We are afraid, in fact ,there is perfectly good
evidence'that such spread is possible, and are calling for people to
take precautions in situations where they may not have tho ght they
were at risk.'
Baltimore said that anyone who has sexual @6!ati'onskiih'm@ie
than one partner should take precautions against exposure to the
AIDS virus. The panel said condoms are one way to avoid infection.
The report does not predict that AIDS will spread rapidly by
heterosexual contact in the next five years, but recurring theme in the
report is that now is the time to prevent the epidemic from becoming
even worse. Already more than 25,000 Americans have been diag-
nosed with AIDS. Baltimore called on President Reagan to declare
war on AIDS the way he declared war on illegal drugs.
"We are talking about President taking that form of leaders hip,
and it's clear that when the President speaks out on an issue in such
forceful terms, that the whole nation sees it in the different way."
The National Academy report, like the Surgeon General's rec-

ommendations last week, gives the president a convdnient,way to
take on AIDS as an issue. Both reports stress that AIDS is not just a
disease that can infect gay men and drug abusers. They say now
AIDS is a sexually transmitted disease that can affect anyone. In
Washington this is Richard Harris:

Section Three: Special Report

Tapescript
Hard Choices is a low-budget film that has been well received
by many critics this past summer, but that does not make it a runa-
way hit. In fact, its thirty-four-year-old producer, Robert Michael-
son, has been found at the film's openings passing out fliers in front
of the theaters. Critic Bob Mondello says he shouldn't have to do

that.
ut @en kids who get
In a perfect world, little movies abo nessee
caught on the wrong side of the law would get the publicity they-
need, and film companies would stop hyping pre-sold blockbusters,@',
about psychotic cops. This is not, however, a perfecto@ld.
don't want to imply that Hard Choices is a perfect movie, either.
But it's so much more involving and suspenseful -and just plain inter-
esting than most of tfie
junk Hollywood putsout that it makes you
want to do handflipg'@@it's"'ih'estory of a rural sixteen-year-old,
named Bobby,pla@ed-winninglyby new comer Gary McCleary, who
goes along for the ride one evening with his hell-raising older broth-
ers. When they decide to rob a local pharmacy,, Bobby stays out in
the truck, and that's where he is when one of his brothers panics and
kills a policeman. Bobby's soon on the run with his brothers, and
soon in jail. Now, up to this point, this could be any of a dozen
rebel-rou@ingteen movies, but Bobby's not your average teenyro-
tagonist. He's a sweet kid, so innocent in fact, that he can't even lie
io h-is -mother who's a bit innocent herself.
'Bobby, how come everybody says you boys took drugs? I
know you wasn't sick.'
'Cause it's true. We did.' C- r-@
Now, talking about the innocence of a kid who takes drugs may
seem a little odd, but what made Hard Choices such a compelling
movie is that it doesn't settle for easy answers. Having iobbi s-it -i-n@-
jail is clearly not in anyone's best interests. So when his case is taken
by Laura, a young social worker played by Margaret Clenk, you're
mightily relieved. Unfortunately this kid isn't very lucky in the folks
who take a shine to him. Clenk, who's probably best known as
Edwena Louis in the soap opera "One Life to Live', makes Laura a
tired activist who's so won over by Bobby's lopsided grin and opti-
mism, she's soon doing something supremely dumb: pointing a pistol
at the Sheriff.

Woman: Do you have a gun, Bobby?
Bobby: It's on the wall.
Woman: Go get it.
Bobby: Wait a minute.
Woman: Go get the gun!
Man: Bobby, don't do it. You're making a big mistake. I'm
going to have to come and get you.
Woman: Don't you want to be free?
Since he's being tried as an adult, that is a hard choice. Now,
this may remind you of a real life story recently in which a lawyer in
Tennessee fell in love with her client and helped him escape, or it
may just generally remind you of real life. One of the best things
about Hard Choices is that everything in it seems so utterly natural.
The supporting cast, for instance, which includes Secaucus Seven
director, John Sales. It's generally terrific, which you could also say
about Rick King's casually suspenseful direction. He keeps you just
a little off balance, which is wonderful. Unfortunately, his movie
seems to have its Hollywood's sponsors a little off balance, too. Des-
pite reviews that called the sleeper of the summer, Lorimar Pictures
can"t seem to get handle on how to sell it. And frankly, with major
media advertising costing what it does, if a film can't be described in
a phrase of six words or less'like "crime is the disease, cobra's the
cure'. Tuisel Town often has to throw up its hands. The thing is that
Hard Choices is just what Hollywood needs right now. With idiotic
fantasies about talking ducks costing as much as $ 40,000,000, this is
practically thedefi@tivesmall movie, made for what most
Hollywood epics,gpend-@@o@'n'@atering. I don't want to oversell it. It's
certainly not perfect. But it sure makes the adrenaline flow. And
when you take its budget into account, it's nothing less than
amazing. If the studios can't figure out how to make a picture like
this work, they deserve disasters like Howard the Duck. The problem
is, if you want to see it, you may have to search for Hard Choices

because it's not being released all at once. There are only a few
prints. But it's worth asking your local theater owner to book. With
summer-hold-overs as the alternative, it makes your September
movie going an easy choice. -
Hard Choices opens tomorrow in Chicago and Minneapolis.
Next weekend in San Francisco and at the Boston Film Festival.
Bob Mondello was the film critic for "All Things Considered".