Unfortunate Son

Our country's long fascination with the Weather Underground—the terrorist group that came out of the New Left radical group, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)—evidently continues. Hollywood has been obsessed. In 1988 Sidney Lumet's Running on Empty—whose lead characters were based on the WU leaders Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn—earned Naomi Foner an Oscar nomination for best screenplay. Then in 2012, director Robert Redford directed and acted in The Company You Keep. In press tours, Redford described the real WU as only a passionate anti-Vietnam war group. Finally, 2025's Academy Award for best feature film went to One Battle After Another, which depicts the remnants of a WU-type group, and whose title was taken from an actual WU "communique" issued by Bernardine Dohrn to its members.

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