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Comment by gdubs | Hacker News Reader

I will forever associate Larry King with the movie “Spin”. [1] It’s a rather brilliant indie documentary about the 1992 (Bill Clinton / HW Bush) election based on a fascinating technological element: back then, Satellite TV feeds would often just keep running during commercial breaks, or warmups.

So the director recorded a TON of footage from these moments where the politicians and news anchors acted themselves, seemingly unaware that anyone was watching.

The segments with Larry King are, um, memorable. Very candid moments.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(1995_film)

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Thanks for the recommendation

This one's pretty good: https://youtu.be/VCUIlV-AKY4

Thanks. I haven't seen it, but this looks like it might be the full documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlJkgQZb0VU

Here's the part where the documentary explains how he got all the behind-the-scenes footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlJkgQZb0VU&t=3m58s. TLDR - raw video from remote studios were first beamed via satellite to the Network's HQ for editing and "packaging". But back in those days, people with satellite boxes could intercept and view the raw pre-packaged feeds.

You should also be able to find it on the Internet Archive.

https://archive.org/details/SPINSpringer1995

In fact it looks like the film was uploaded to IA by Brian Springer (the filmmaker) himself, along with many of the source tapes:

https://archive.org/details/@brnspring

There's a slightly longer version (1hr15 to credits) here. I'm not sure what the differences are. https://mediaburn.org/video/spin/

While the conspiracy theorists seem to love that one, I think he meant "serve" as in "serve on your cabinet".

Obviously... What else do the conspirationists think it mean?

Likely that Ted Turner was offering to have CNN serve as a propaganda machine for the Clinton Administration or the Democratic Party at large, due to their common political sympathies.

They still do that. See https://www.lyngsat.com/america.html

If you guys think "fuck it, we'll do it live" was bad, you should have seen Barbara Walters. I wish I recorded some of it. All these people in media have egos like you wouldn't believe.

Today I watched "Contact". Coincidentally, both Larry King and Clinton appear in cameos (I think that Clinton's cameo was unauthorized, though.)

> Clinton's cameo was unauthorized

Wikipedia has a good discussion on this topic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(1997_American_film)#B...

Looks like a great watch. Unfortunately, I can’t find Spin available anywhere - paid or less public.

Kinda disappointing to see content like this virtually extinguished.

Actually, it may be up on YouTube in full: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uock08dy19s

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