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Who is Timothy Sexton?

Timothy Sexton established himself as one of the most prolific and versatile content providers on the internet.  In January 2007 he was chosen from over 50,000 eligible writers to be honored as the inaugural recipient of the "Content Producer of the Year" Award from AssociatedContent.com, a nationally recognized media company. Mr. Sexton's articles have been reviewed by many respected publications, including The Washington Post, The Winnipeg Free Press, and The VillageVoice.com.  His analysis of the failure of America to embrace soccer netted him a guest appearance on a nationally syndicated radio talk show, and an article he wrote about Dick Cheney's attempt to dismantle the National Archives was chosen to be included in the course packet for a law course to be taught by the Dean of Law at Vanderbilt University.   His work has appeared on MojoHD.com, Dreamcars.com, Disaboom.com, and Zappos.com, among others.  In addition to his content on the internet, you can also enjoy Timothy Sexton's mixture of informative and entertaining writing by playing the 2006 edition of the Disney Scene-It Trivia Game. All questions and answers were written by Mr. Sexton.  He co-wrote an $80,000 education grant with his wife, Skipper Sexton.

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The Greatest Hoaxes of All Time: Orson Welles' War of the Worlds

There is a certain bit of irony in the fact that the producers at CBS around Halloween of 1938 were nervous about their radio star Orson Welles' production of H.G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds.  They felt that the teleplay was rather too dull and boring to capture the interest of listeners who could quite easily turn the channel to hear to something far more entertaining.   In addition, the suits at CBS were also a bit concerned that the show was, well, silly and might make them look ridiculous. 

 

It perhaps should be a vitally important lesson to those who wish to scare the bejebus out of American audiences that Orson Welles quite literally caused a panic without so much as showing anything, much less needing to show blood and gore and disgusting images of the human being torn apart.  Do you know how Orson Welles conducted his radio show that has come to be seen, probably inaccurately, as the single greatest entertainment hoax in history?  For perhaps the only time in history, the suits at CBS were right to be concerned.   Reading the script to Orson Welles' War of the World broadcast is silly and ridiculous and boring.  Heck, even listening to Welles' original War of the World�s broadcast is boring.  And yet, it managed to scare the crap out of thousands of people, perhaps millions.

 

How did Orson Welles pull off this incredible hoax with such a pedestrian script?  There are some say the greatest hoax in history, if it can even be called that, came about precisely because it was so pedestrian.   What Orson Welles' War of the World hoax proved was that the scariest thing in the world is reality?  What the suits at CBS called boring, Orson Welles would probably have described as authentic.  There was an authenticity to the War of the Worlds broadcast that made is so much scarier to the people of its time than these god-awful torture movies that masquerade as horror today.  The direction that horror has taken since its early days is to the extreme, and therein lies the reason why horror films of the past twenty years, American horror films at least, have been boring rather than horrifying.  The direction that horror needs to take to become the dominant cinematic genre it once was needs to be in the other direction.  Instead of making the unreal the norm, it should make the norm unreal.

 

The hoax known as Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast in 1938 reveals this better than anything.   What could be more normal during a radio broadcast in 1938 than an orchestra playing, commercial breaks, and a reporter rushing to Grover's Mill to cover breaking news as it happens.  At no time during the War of the World's broadcast does unreality seem to intrude on the carefully constructed normality.   Nothing is scarier than thinking that something is real and that is why everything from Friday the 13th to Saw fails to terrify anywhere near the number of people totally scared out of their wits by the War of the Worlds broadcast.  It all seemed real, from the music to the commercials to the actual broadcast of the Martians arriving.  It was, perhaps, the greatest entertainment hoax of all time. 




This Article Has Been Featured on IMDB and Maxim's Web Page

This humble little opinion piece has proved to be my most popular article ever, as well as one of my most controversial.  And that last is really saying something as so many of my articles have become lightning rods that have produced fervently emotional responses taking up both sides of a given issue.  Take a look and decide for yourself.
A Brief Overview of the Some of the Most Overrated Movies of All Time

 

 
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