12:08 East of Bucharest

December 22, 1989, at 12:08 PM was the exact moment that murdering Romanian fuck Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife fled Bucharest, just a wee bit too late to save their asses. (They were executed by firing squad three days later. What a great Christmas present for the Romanian people!) Now its 16 years later, and a third-rate TV talk show in a second-rate Romanian town is taking on the topic: “Was there a revolution in our town?” It comes down to, did the big demonstration in the town square start before 12:08, when it was dangerous, or after, when it was just a celebration? One of the guests says he and three friends were there around noon, shouting “Down with Ceauşescu!” and throwing rocks. People start calling in saying he’s a damn liar and a well-known drunk, which we already know. Soon they are splitting hairs, and it gets pretty funny. It seems to me that the further you get from an historical event, the more people were a part of it. All WWII and Vietnam vets were in the thick of combat. 95% of the French people were in the Resistance, and 95% of Germans opposed the Nazis. Nine million people marched with Dr. Martin Luther King in Selma, and most of them got their heads bashed by police batons. Many people have been caught wearing medals they didn’t earn. This movie explores this sort of confabulation in a sly and funny way.