Mighty Ira

Mighty Ira (2020)

Ira is one of America's unsung champions of civil rights and liberties. As his generation retires from the barricades, Ira reminisces on his life at the forefront of defending the rights of all Americans.

Date of release
2020-10-09
Runtime
1h 39m
Genres
Documentary
Director
Nico Perrino, Aaron Reese, Chris Maltby

Casting

Interesting facts

Mighty Ira is a 2020 documentary film by Nico Perrino, Aaron Reese, and Chris Maltby. The film profiles the life and career of Ira Glasser, who was executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) from 1978 to 2001.

Production

The idea for Mighty Ira first originated in 2017, after Perrino met Glasser in New York City at the funeral of writer and jazz critic Nat Hentoff. The film was produced by Perrino and his Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression colleagues Reese and Maltby. Perrino, a millennial, said that he helped create the film because he felt his generation didn't understand why Glasser's generation fought for free speech rights.

The name "Mighty Ira" comes from a line in a poem written by one of Glasser's ACLU colleagues, read at the end of the film. The title of the poem, "Ira at the Bat", is a play on the famous "Casey at the Bat" poem by Ernest Lawrence Thayer that includes a line about "mighty Casey."

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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