...say, that's a snappy headline, isn't it? You can tell I'm really in the Mainstream Media, can't you?
We made the mistake of briefly stopping on the beginning of JEREMIAH JOHNSON on the tube last night...as if by hand of the occult, my Sweetie and I sat there and watched Sydney Pollack's and John Milius' masterpiece for the umpteenth time. From mountain man Del Gue:
I ain't never seen 'em, but my common sense tells me the Andes is foothills, and the Alps is for children to climb! Keep good care of your hair! These here is God's finest scupturings! And there ain't no laws for the brave ones! And there ain't no asylums for the crazy ones! And there ain't no churches, except for this right here! And there ain't no priests excepting the birds. By God, I are a mountain man, and I'll live 'til an arrow or a bullet finds me. And then I'll leave my bones on this great map of the magnificent...Amen, brother! Did I mention that our hotel in Cody this week was across the highway from John Jeremiah "Liver-Eating" Johnson's gravesite? He was moved to Cody from his grave in (yeech!!!) Santa Monica, CA, where he died in an old soldiers' home in January 1900.
I had...interesting...dreams. As I've said before, I think that movie had a disproportionate effect in bumping me out of my orbit. When I went to see it when it premiered in 1972, I actually thought I was going to be a citizen, have a 9-to-5 job, retire, etc. See how well that worked out. From Bearclaw:
March is a green, muddy month down below. Some folks like it. Farmers mostly.You have done well to keep so much hair...
...when so many are after it.
l hope you will fare well.
I got it....
ReplyDeleteYeah, us Farmers are a pretty mild and meek bunch. That we are...:)
ReplyDeleteAll The Best,
Frank W. James
APRIL 19th LOCK&LOAD see yah
ReplyDeletetbug
Frank, you would be the exception that proves the rule! Had you been dong the settlin' (as opposed to your outlaw cousin doing the robbin'), the Move West would have been like an episode of "24," the West settled by 3 p.m. the next day!!!!
ReplyDeletemb
Interesting to learn that I'm not the only Geek who was entirely ensorcelled by the movie.
ReplyDeleteMy then-wife and I sent to see the movie the day it came out ... and stayed for the second showing.
The next day we told some friends about it, then paid their way into the theater to see it for a 3rd time
I eventually bought the VHS version, and for years it was a once-a-month ritual to watch it
By now, I have most of it committed to memory; I only watch it every 2 or 3 months.
It still has the power to drag me back, because it so beautifully demonstrates the challenge of one man against the wilderness ... and the high price that a man might pay to live his dream.
You're lucky.
ReplyDeleteApaches would send 50 at once.
Of course, if'n he was engaged in a blood feud with Scots-Irish mountain folk from the American south, instead of Crows, he'd never made it long enough to grow all that hair.
It's not a manhood ritual for us when it comes to our enemies. Ask Patrick Ferguson if you can find him atop King's Mountain.
We ain't into scalpin' so much as we are to good old fashioned shooting and burning.
But yes. I do own that movie on DVD.
let me preface this by saying I LOVE this film. Bought me a TC Hawkin because of it.
ReplyDeleteJohn Milius is a patriot and a genius....
now here comes the big BUT (BUTT?).
Redford is a liberal horses Arse and old Grandpa Walton...Will Geer was a bone smugglin' communist. He portrayed a rugged individual but in reality he was totaly opposed to individualism and our constitutional republic on the whole
I live in Utah, and Robert Redford lives nearby in the forest above his Sundance ski resort. He tends to pop up on the local news from time to time – usually to champion liberal or environmental causes of one sort or another.
ReplyDeleteSomeone once defined environmentalists as those who already had their cabins in the woods and wanted to protect the rest of the woods so they wouldn’t have to put up with other folks building theirs nearby. Redford fits this definition pretty well. His cabin in the woods sits on a rather large plot of pine forest surrounded by a six-foot tall chain-link fence.
He used to own a whole bunch more ground next to his cabin. He must have gotten tired of paying the taxes on it, so he “donated” it to the forest service as an environmental easement. Now, no one else can build there and he doesn’t have to pay taxes on it. All the local TV stations made a big story out of how he was donating land to the Forest Service with a prohibition on any future development. Not one of them picked up on the fact that it keeps anyone from building next door while relieving him of the tax burden.