Filmmaker Matt Yoka's feature reminds one that while many newspaper/TV journalists capped their career with a memoir, almost as a matter of routine, there have been few equivalents in the documentary field. This slightly skewed slice of Los Angeles modern media history tells of maverick reporters Bob Tur and then-wife Marika Gerrard, freelance videographers who were present at many an accident or emergency scene. This would make a great selection for media studies classes.
Due to the protagonists being video professionals, there is no shortage of high-quality visuals covering almost every key moment of their lives—which literally took flight when nervy Bob invested in a helicopter to raise his camera POV above the highway-traffic snarls and police blockades.
First running their own agency and growing a family in a paycheck-to-paycheck existence (though ultimately joining a high-profile local network affiliate) the household's airborne lenses captured the LA riots after the first Rodney King verdict (the head-smashing lynching here of bystander driver Reginald Denny is shown in unflinching gruesome terms), the OJ Simpson white Bronco chase, the wedding of Sean Penn and Madonna, plus numerous other car/police pursuits (many ending fatally) and fires. Some material Bob Tur enabled was iconic—and it cost him suspension of his pilot license more than once when he disobeyed FAA orders to out-jockey the other news choppers on the scene.
Off-camera, however, the highs of getting big stories were matched by troughs of depression after the psychological comedown (one adult son in the family became a mental-health specialist; alas, his comments are kept to a minimum). The husband part of the operation, mirroring his own dysfunctional father, became verbally abusive, controlling, and overbearing, and ultimately the marriage itself crashed.
Viewers are informed early that Bob Tur is now Zoey, having undergone a sex-change operation in Thailand (he had been radicalized by a visit to the Burning Man festival; buyers should note full-nudity scenes shot at that event).
In the context of the Whirlybird narrative that seems more like symbolic suicide and self-mutilation (and a way for a chronic abuser to take himself out of relationship equations), rather than the trendy triumphant affirmation that other LGTBQ films have lately offered up. Did the risky, high-flying form of journalism these people pursued lead to that dire course-correction? The question hovers onscreen, like the amazing aircraft themselves. A highly recommended title for biography and history library programming, and for those with a special interest in West Coast territories. Aud: C, P.