Open Line

Everything changes for late-night radio talk show host Annette Majoris after she jokingly tells her Twin Cities audience that the Vietnam War was a government hoax. Where Annette had been struggling, careerwise and financially, she quickly finds herself grappling with a multiplying caller-base, national syndication and the romantic attentions of wealthy Republican Party mover-and-shaker Walter Bishop. Guided by Walter, who co-opts Annette's message to launch a presidential hopeful, and supported by Stan Marlin, the erstwhile leader of a radical conservative organization, Annette persists on the air that Vietnam never really happened, provoking outrage and disgust and attracting a following among veterans who, haunted for decades by their participation in the war, find in Annette's questioning the possibility for closure and healing. While Annette defends her argument persuasively for a time, it's a house of cards that comes crashing down. Hawley's characters are fully realized people, with their own set of ambitions, insecurities and competing desires, and her great achievement is to have constructed out of their lives a deft and hilarious sendup of the media and political culture. (May)