By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
June 8, 1999
George magazine’s motto is “Not just politics as usual,” which may explain why actor Liam Neeson is the quasi-political mag’s June cover boy.
The star of “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace” says in the article, “I’m just a big Irish hick. No, I know. I’m patronizing myself. . . . Politics are, you know, soul issues. That’s just what they are. I had a feeling growing up that we (Irish) were second-class. Intuitively, I felt that. I only intellectualized it when I got to about the age of 19 or 20 and started to analyze it by reading about the history of the country.”
And lest you wonder what the plot of “The Phantom Menace” actually is, director George Lucas adds in the article, “Democracy is losing its edge due to the greedy behavior of politicians . . . That’s one of the features of the film.”
Hmmmm. I must’ve overlooked that portion trying to figure out what the heck Jar Jar Binks was yammering about.
Before Jackie Chan, Jet Li and that guy who hawks those Tae Bo tapes in his infomercials, there was Bruce Lee. And Time pays tribute to the martial arts hero in its current issue, which is the fifth in the magazine’s series of 100 most influential people of the century. Born in 1940, Lee died in July 1973 of a brain edema – a month before the premiere of “Enter the Dragon.” The movie would go on to gross more than $200 million at the box office, establish Lee as an action hero and open the door a crack for other Asian-American actors.
The article states: “In an America where the Chinese were still stereotyped as meek house servants and railroad workers, Bruce Lee was all steely sinew, threatening stare and cocky, pointed finger – a Clark Kent who didn’t need to change outfits. He was the redeemer, not only for the Chinese but for all the geeks and dorks and pimpled teenage masses that washed up at the theaters to see his action movies. He was David, with spin-kicks and flying leaps more captivating than any slingshot. He was the patron saint of the cult of the body.”
Who knew that “E.T.” actually was about divorce rather than a cute extra-terrestrial? But in the June issue of Life, Steven Spielberg says that his breakthrough 1982 film was a message to his father. “The movie was a manisfestation of my feelings about my mom and dad,” Spielberg says in the cover story. “There was a distance between (my father and me). When my father remarried, it separated us even further. I wanted my father to remarry my mother and he didn’t.”
Other highlights include a Frank Sinatra pictorial, a recap on pilot Madge Rutherford Minton (who reported for training during World War II) and an article about a volunteer nurse who has worked in Somalia, Uganda, Sri Lanka and Macedonia.
