Jane's Revolution

By Ed Rampell, AlterNet. Posted June 4, 2005.

Jane Fonda, whose trips to north Vietnam during that war propeled her onto the world stage, has returned to public life with her autobiography, My Life So Far, and the release of Monster-in-Law, her first feature film in 15 years. At a special Hollywood double feature of two suppressed documentaries, the feisty two-time Academy Award winner also showed herself to be as antiwar as ever.

The rare screening at the Directors Guild of America's theaters last month was only the third projection of the restored print of FTA (Fuck The Army). Fonda told the overflowing crowd: "I haven't seen FTA on the big screen in thirty-some years."

The 90-minute documentary, made in 1972, chronicles the tour of antiwar entertainers to venues near U.S. bases around the Pacific Rim, where they agitated against the Vietnam War and military policies. The FTA troupe included Fonda, actor Donald Sutherland, singer Holly Near, comic Paul Mooney, Peter Boyle of TV's "Everybody Loves Raymond" and singer/songwriter Country Joe McDonald.

David O. Russell, director of Three Kings (1999) and Soldiers Pay, the other doc on the double bill, declared: "I was shocked by the intensity of FTA, and the fact that all these soldiers were going to this, and by the boldness. It's about a very spirited pinnacle of the counterculture."

Vietnam veteran Oliver Stone, director of the '80s films Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, called FTA "The highest form of free expression we've seen in America in a long, long time."

G.I. Resistance

FTA grew largely out of the G.I. resistance movement to the Vietnam war, as well as the classism, racism and sexism perpetrated by the military brass against soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen and women. The shows consisted of songs and skits, often with a comic panache, always with an anti-militaristic thrust and sometimes with a feminist consciousness. A counterpoint to Bob Hope's pro-war USO tours, the FTA pro-peace troupers performed in Hawaii, the Philippines and Japan, but were refused entry to south Vietnam. The overseas audiences for what Fonda called FTA's "political vaudeville" was composed mainly of 64,000 disaffected servicemen and women.

"There were great reviews of the film made from that tour," said Stone. "And it played exactly for a week in the United States." According to Stone, FTA's director, Francine Parker, said "calls were made from high up in Washington, possibly from the Nixon White House, and the film was just disappeared."

Following the screenings Stone moderated a panel discussion with Fonda, Parker and Russell. Commenting on FTA's removal from distribution, Fonda said, "I must say, looking at it now, it's no wonder. Think of all the propaganda that those of us who opposed the war were 'anti-troops.' When you see thousands of guys and women with their fists in the air who were active duty military personnel, it's a different slant. Now, in the context of Iraq, it's very -- what's the word? Subversive."

"By the way, it's happening today with the Iraq veterans," Fonda added. "For example at the second invasion of Iraq, at Fort Bragg, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, there was the largest [antiwar] rally since 1970, which I was at. This time, all the speeches were made by returned American veterans of the Iraq war, and families and parents. It's an example of what's happening now within the military in Iraq. They're not getting the kind of help that they need."

Fonda denounced "the cutback of hundreds of millions of dollars to the VA administration the day after the troops were sent to Iraq to invade, just after the 'Support Our Troops' resolution. Reach out to military families because they're living it, and give support to them," she encouraged the audience.

Ed Rampell is an L.A.-based film critic and freelancer. His latest book, "Progressive Hollywood, A People's Film History of the United States," was published by DisInfo in May.

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