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Post Info TOPIC: Bill W. --New Documentary


MIP Old Timer

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Bill W. --New Documentary
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Bill W.

A new documentary.

 

 

http://www.page124.com/

 



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MIP Old Timer

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I plan to see this Sept 19th : )

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MIP Old Timer

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nicely done. Is this going to be in movie theaters ?


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MIP Old Timer

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Thanks Tanin,

Very interesting, I did not know about this. It is playing at a movie dinner theater about 30 min from me next Thurs.

I submitted for a screening request on the website, for the heck of it. There was a option for "AA event". I have no idea what that would cost or what they require, I thought maybe our zone or group could host.

I will let you all know if I find something out.



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MIP Old Timer

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justadrunk wrote:

I plan to see this Sept 19th : )


              Me too.



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Mr.David


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billw16rv2.JPG

In 1999, Bill Wilson was named one of TIME Magazines 100 Heroes and Icons of the 20th Century for his role as co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

 

How the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous became a reluctant icon

 

Published Friday, Aug. 17, 2012 12:00AM EDT

Last updated Thursday, Aug. 16, 2012 05:28PM EDT

We are not saints. With these four words, Bill Wilson, known to millions of recovering alcoholics and addicts as the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, made as wise and reassuring a statement as he ever wrote, and he wrote some of the wisest and most reassuring words ever written. Pity that they never applied to him.

Not that Wilson was a saint, as Don Carracino and Kevin Hanlons admirably measured documentary Bill W. (opening today at the Bloor Cinema in Toronto), makes sometimes painfully plain. (Among other imperfect things, Wilson was an adulterer and early convert to the alleged spiritual upside of LSD.) The pity is that Wilson was regarded as a saint by so many whose lives he saved by asking them to embrace and accept their own fallibility. And who could do this but someone himself infallible?

Without a doubt, Wilson was a genius and maybe even a visionary. Perhaps even as one of the movies interviewees claims one of the key figures of the 20th century. But his central insight, the one upon which he built a program of self-directed recovery that has probably given hope and meaning to more otherwise hopeless souls than any other form of addiction treatment, is that nobodys perfect. The alcoholic, afflicted by an obsessive compulsion to drink unto disaster or death, especially so. So by accepting this imperfection, and by turning ones will over to a power greater than ourselves, even the most abject among us can find something like grace. As another testimonial in the movie observes: stopping drinking is not what AA and the Twelve Steps help the drunk to do. Its not starting again.

Although marred at the outset by the overuse of dramatic re-enactments that portend an extended History Channel special, Hanlon and Carracinos documentary finds its true footing and tone when it settles into the step-by-step (naturally) process by which Wilson, a Vermont-born First World War veteran and pre-crash stock speculator with a tendency to bouts of epic alcoholic abandon, was led out of the wilderness of his own affliction toward a program that passed the flickering candle of sobriety from one struggling sufferer to another.

Getting sober was as simple as not drinking, but staying sober required something much more powerful: the presence of someone else trying to do the same thing.

But the mending of broken lives, especially by means of spiritual enrichment, inevitably leads to devotional gratification. So Wilson found himself in the increasingly untenable position of being the revered spiritual leader of a movement that claimed no denominational affinity and no leaders, and of being a kind of superhuman for stressing that nobodys better or worse than anyone else. If there was a moment when Wilson was prone to drifting himself as he might have with sex and psychedelics this was it. Irony doesnt come much bitterer than finding yourself famous for founding Alcoholics Anonymous.

Its this Bill Wilson who eventually emerges so forcefully and poignantly in Carracino and Hanlons documentary: a once-wrecked, narrow-shouldered man whose gift for inspirational plain-speaking and message of practical salvation suggested anyone could get what he had. All you needed was to accept your imperfection and reach out to others whod done the same.

Surely the man who said that must be perfect.

 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/film-reviews/how-the-co-founder-of-alcoholics-anonymous-became-a-reluctant-icon/article4484789/?cmpid=rss1

 

 



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MIP Old Timer

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Hey all - I got to see this last night - I have done a lot of reading on this - but all anti AA stuff. This was depicted in a more defending way to Bill - so it was good to hear "the other side of the story". I loved it.

What were your thoughts?

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MIP Old Timer

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Going to see it tomorrow night. Pleased to see that it's at a nearby theatre.


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