BLADE RUNNER

Available now, and well worth checking out, on Amazon Prime...

Whirlybird--This documentary by Matt Yoka is both a chronicle of the rise of a new form of TV journalism and a fascinating but troubling and uncomfortable character study. The journalistic form, dating from the '80s and '90s, is eye-in-the-sky coverage, from helicopters, of car chases, riots, fires and the like. The character in question is Bob Tur, now Zoey Tur (she transitioned to female in 2014), a pioneering pilot and reporter of this sort in L.A.

As kids, Tur and his then-girlfriend Marika Gerrard (parents of MSNBC journalist Katy Tur) were headlong young stringers shooting video of accidents and crimes for local stations, giving their business the name Los Angeles News Service because Tur thought it sounded official. At some point he grew weary of negotiating streets, learned to fly, bought a helicopter and covered stories like the L.A. riots, the Northridge quake and, perhaps most notoriously, the O.J. Bronco chase, often with Marika, by then his wife, as cameraperson.

The team received many awards, including multiple News Emmys; Tur also had his pilot's license revoked or suspended more than once for reckless flying. His faithful backup pilot during these times was Lawrence Welk III. You can't make this stuff up.

This vivid yet comfortably distanced approach to reporting, with its lordly, omniscient viewpoint, often on the dramas of disadvantaged people, is journalistically problematic. Tur herself admits that witnessing the beating of truck driver Reginald Denny during the L.A. riots "made me feel like a racist." The form quite literally encourages us to look down on people.

But there may be a practical aviation reason to worry about helicopter news. That vintage of Tur--whose voice kept reminding me, somehow, of Owen Wilson's--emerges as a short-fused, barely-controlled maniac, spewing ugly verbal abuse at his wife while she struggled to get the shots. This leads the viewer, naturally enough, to wonder whether a person of this demeanor is ideally suited to be at the helm of an aircraft over a major metropolitan area.

As it happens, I know some people in the helicopter industry who saw Yoka's film. A very experienced professional helicopter pilot of my acquaintance told me, first, that the footage of Tur's "sloppy landings would make any professional pilot cringe." He went on to say that "The film dwells on Zoey's regrets, but not once does she ever express regret about jeopardizing the safety of anyone onboard or underneath the helicopter through her reckless flying or manic behavior in the air. In the end, it's still all about her--what she's lost, and not what she might have cost others."