Where Were You?

This is a good song.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

"When. The fuck. Did he get a poncho?" I asked my darling friend Tristan Marsh as we sat one evening watching the primary installment of Sergio Leone's Man with No Name Trilogy and my very first Clint Eastwood Western ever. Why, off that dying soldier, Mr. Marsh calmly explained. This bit had not exactly registered in my brain, for you see, I was drunk. But I nevertheless learned a great deal from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. (Heck, it even made me reconsider the whole 'comma before the and in lists of three or more' punctuation debate after years of thinking I knew where I stood on that one.)

First of all, I learned that Clint Eastwood used to be attractive. Like really attractive. Like in the vein of Robert Redford and Brad Pitt. According to Tristan, he was the golden boy of something called "Rawhide." I also learned that shooting a gun and splitting the noose around your fellow con-man's neck in two is a pretty neat trick and general handy thing-to-be-able-to-do. Thirdly, that the Man with No Name has a name and that his name is Blondie. Blondie, that's right, call him anytime. He has a heart of glass, but one way or another he's gonna get ya, he'll get ya, even though (Perhaps you were unaware?) the tide is high. Atomic.

When Clint sauntered back on screen in his second-hand Southwestern fashions, I felt a little embarrassed at having missed such an important moment in the action, nay in cinema history. "Is that a real poncho or is that a Sears poncho?" I snickered defensively.

There was a pause.

"Do you listen to a lot of Zappa?" the government protected coastal marshland inquired. Ha. I laughed and smiled enigmatically, "Once upon a time..."

Baby

This is a good song.

The Misfits

A few nights ago, instead of viewing any one of the movies in EW's Top Fifteen, I watched The Misfits. The film's reputation as one of Hollywood's most beautiful and strangely fascinating flops is well-founded--the picture, though remarkably compelling, just does not come off. Yet one is left with an unshakable notion that the film's power is inexplicably tied up in its status as failed art. Its place in movie history is also significant. The Misfits was the final film for two great legends of the screen: Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. Based on a short story by Arthur Miller and directed by John Huston (The Maltese Falcon, Treasure of the Sierra Madre), the movie is dark, cerebral, and not a traditional Western. As Miller himself affirmed, "The preoccupation of the film is not what it usually [is] in a Western. It's about people trying to connect and afraid to connect."

With all of the talent and ambition engaged in the project, the film was expected to be a hit. The original trailer showcases the optimistic anticipation that proceeded its theatrical release:

For a time, The Misfits looked as though it would become the quintessential American epic.

The plot centers around a troubled former exotic dancer named Roslyn Taber and played by Monroe, who, after receiving a divorce, sets out into the Nevada desert with aging cowboy Gay Langland (Gable) and a widowed ex-air force pilot (Eli Wallach). Both men abhor "working for wages" and eventually team up with a rodeo man (Montgomery Clift) to capture a heard of wild mustangs and sell them as pet food for profit. Miller wrote the story while in Reno, obtaining a divorce from his first wife in order to marry Monroe, but by the time the film was in production their relationship was nearly over.

Monroe was eternally late to the set and frequently unprepared. Her prescription drug habit was interfering with the quality of her work. In addition, she was flagrantly carrying out an affair with French singer-actor Yves Montand. Miller was utterly emasculated. Legend has it that tired of waiting for Monroe to show up every day, Gable opted to do his own stunts--brutal exertion which may have contributed to the heart attack that killed him.

Thematically, the film not only deals with the increasing difficulty and ethical cost of maintaining a way of life outside of conventional society, but also questions the cowboy as a heroic ideal. In the first half of the film we find that Roslyn's landlady, Isabella Steers (Thelma Ritter), is exceptionally skeptical.

Isabella: He's a cowboy.

Gay: How'd you know?

Isabella: Ha. I can smell, can't I?

Gay: You can't smell cows on me.

Isabella: I can smell the look on your face, cowboy. But I love every miserable one of ya. Of course, you're all good for nothing...as you well know.

Because it is Clark Gable who portrays this fallen hero, a character now subject to this type of criticism, we not only watch a fictional man looking back on his fictional life and finding himself unsure of its merit, but something more significant. In The Misfits, an actor who once embodied rugged, free-spirited adventure to the American audience appears on screen old, out of step, yet still trying to regain his footing, and asks what it was worth. In this respect, Monroe's part is quite similar: Roslyn is a woman tormented to the point of madness by being valued all her life only for her beauty. That the ending is happy and that the two characters eventually drive off across the desert in a beat-up pick-up truck following the North Star makes little difference--the effect is haunting.

Age of Consent

This is a good song.

Once Upon a Time in the West

When Sergio Leone made Once Upon a Time in the West he was through with Westerns. The screenplay, written by Leone and Sergio Donati (who would later help produce the script for Orca), is based on a story devised by Leone himself, along with the help of two other Italian masters: Dario Argento and Bernardo Bertolucci. Paramount lured the director onto the project by promising him a big budget and a chance to work with Henry Fonda, Leone's favorite actor. Evidence of serious financing can be detected easily in the sets and special effects. At times, when the camera pans out to reveal teeming crowds of extras laying railroad tracks or simply milling about in period clothing, the movie starts to resemble old studio epics like Gone with the Wind. As for Henry Fonda, Leone cast him against type as Frank, the despicable villain of the picture.

The dialog is punchy and amusing, often coalescing in bad ass gems like this one:

Harmonica: The reward for this man is 5000 dollars, is that right?

Cheyenne: Judas was content for 4970 dollars less.

Harmonica: There were no dollars in them days.

Cheyenne: But sons of bitches... yeah.

Yet the plot of Once Upon a Time in the West takes its time to unfold, as the camera habitually lingers on each gritty cowboy face, every textural detail of costume and set. Supported by the film's impressive score, traces of moments secondary to anything remotely touching the principle action are savored and exploited to the last possible degree, at any opportunity. Once things take off, however, we learn that the widow Jill McBain (Claudia Cardinale) is being targeted by the vicious railroad gang that killed her husband and his three children, as she now stands to inherit his property. Cheyenne (Jason Robards), a frowzy escaped convict, and a mysterious harmonica playing loner (Charles Bronson) join forces to protect her. Love triangles are born, conflict ensues, and various scuffles between gunslinging members of the opposing parties lead up to a final showdown between Harmonica and Frank best represented in this YouTube video. Spoiler Alert.

That Cardinale's character is eventually revealed to be a cunning ex-prostitute who likes the feeling of a man's hands all over her so much that she doesn't care if they belong to the man who killed her husband is just a little bit troubling from a certain perspective. At one point Cheyenne tells her, "You know what? If I was you, I'd go down there and give those boys a drink. Can't imagine how happy it makes a man to see a woman like you. Just to look at her. And if one of them should pat your behind, just make believe it's nothing. They earned it." What's more, at film's end, she takes his advice.

And yet above all else, one thing is certain: This is a movie to be enjoyed and treasured. Because it is awesome.

Government Center

This is a good song.

This American Trail of Tears Road Trip with Sarah Vowell

This 1998 episode of everyone's favorite Chicago Public Radio show turned Showtime series, This American Life, follows writer Sarah Vowell and her twin sister as they retrace the Trail of Tears on a road trip from Georgia to Oklahoma. Over the course of the hour, the part Cherokee siblings attempt to reconcile their complicated dual loyalties to country and heritage while navigating a seemingly unrelated modern landscape of tourist traps and superficial memorials. What results is a thoughtful and affecting reflection on the personal ramifications of history in a flawed democracy.

The history of the Cherokee Nation is a supremely interesting one itself, steeped in a culture and democratic tradition of its own. While the tribe's forced removal from the Eastern seaboard at the hands of Andrew Jackson is now guiltily regarded as a national mistake, Vowell's rendering of the events leading up to the Cherokee's march to the Midwest makes the disturbing unconstitutionality of the whole scene devastatingly clear, which is something I, at least, never really considered.

[This American Life Episode 107]

Clint Eastwood on Hulu

PSA: Online video site Hulu currently boasts Sergio Leone's "Man with No Name" trilogy among its many commercial-supported offerings. This small collection of Clint Eastwood Westerns is now available to the top quality streaming video enthusiast. Do not delay.

[The Good, the Bad and the Ugly]

[A Fist Full of Dollars]

[For a Few Dollars More]

Girlfriend in a Coma

This is a good song.

EW's Top 15 Westerns

For the first major phase of the Cowboys and Indians Project at Lost Red Sweater, I've decided to work my way through Entertainment Weekly's "Fifteen Must-See Westerns. Being that I am wholly unfamiliar with the genre, I have no real way of knowing if the list is even any good. From first glance, however, I can see that it's got your John Waynes and your Clint Eastwoods, spans several decades, and, at any rate, is a place to start. At present, I have seen one of these movies...and it is Dances with Wolves. Dances with fucking Wolves. Eighth grade American history required viewing, which I DID NOT enjoy, thank you, but anyway, without further ado, here is the list:

• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1967)
• Red River (1948)
• Lonesome Dove (1989)
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
• Seven Men from Now (1956)
• The Magnificent Seven (1960)
• Once Upon a Time in the West (1969)
• The Searchers (1956)
• Tombstone (1993)
• Shane (1953)
• The Wild Bunch (1969)
• High Noon (1952)
• Unforgiven (1992)
• My Darling Clementine (1946)
• Dances with Wolves (1990)

Barmy

This is a good song.

The Great Train Robbery

So it turns out that one of the first narrative films in all of cinema history was a Western. The Great Train Robbery (1903) is largely remembered for its technical achievements--early approximations of cross-cutting, double exposure, and, you know, moving the camera. The director, Edwin S. Porter, had served as the cameraman at the world's first movie studio, Thomas Edison's Black Maria. The films Porter helped produce at the Kinetographic Theatre in West Orange, New Jersey are extraordinary little gems of art and science. I found this one, of Annie Oakley, endlessly captivating (I mean, it's Annie Oakley! Shooting a gun!):

But to watch these seconds-long clips is to understand the director's ambition in undertaking a film with fourteen separate scenes.

The story follows a band of villains as they hijack a steam engine, nab all the loot on board, force the passengers out on the side of the tracks, and escape into the woods. Aesthetically, the film is a transparent reflection of its time, perceptively caught between the conventions of the stage and the innovative capacity of a new medium. The movements of the actors are dramatic and theatrical, but real trees speed past open railway car doors. Thanks to Porter's habit of meticulously recording action from start to finish, I was struck by the realization that tying someone up probably takes much longer than anyone expects. Producing a rope can now be taken as shorthand for binding and gagging, and directors tend to cut away. I'd be willing to bet that, subsequently, most modern young men and women, when tying up their first victim/hostage/consensual sex partner, are surprised to find it tedious and time consuming process. Let The Great Train Robbery set the record straight.

When a little girl finds the railway dispatcher on the floor of the telegraph office and sets him free, he heads immediately to a dance and rallies the townspeople.

***SPOILERS***

The film's famous surprise ending is terrific. The townspeople locate the outlaws at their hideout in the woods and proceed to gun them down. Suddenly, the camera cuts to a close-up (the film's only) of the last villain standing. He points the gun at the camera and fires--at you! I can't really imagine what that must have been like for audiences in 1903. It's such a severe and threatening instance of breaking of the fourth wall that is in no way predicted by the film's preceding structure. We are wrenched violently from our roles as spectators and then we are dead. Frankly, I found it vaguely unsettling.

You can watch The Great Train Robbery in its entirety, here:

Manifest Destiny

THE COWBOYS AND INDIANS PROJECT

At Lost Red Sweater

Attempting to understand the genre--one Western at a time.

I think my grandfather is the only person in my family who loves movies as much as I do*, only his racket is Westerns, specifically. He's almost completely deaf and has a tendency, once he's located the nearest sturdy armchair, to flip on TMC, crank up the volume, and fall asleep. As a result, many of my holiday memories are accompanied by the curious soundtrack of tinny saloon piano music, gunfire, and snoring.

Somehow though, I've managed to go all this time without paying any attention whatsoever to these films that he loves and of which, I think, he's seen almost all. But because Popee is a man of class and taste, I've resolved to mend my ways and see if I can't figure out this mysterious American lore, chronicling my mission on Lost Red Sweater via the Cowboys and Indians Project. Stay tuned.

*With further consideration it became apparent that my brother is also a major contender for the crown.

Head

This is one of my favorite things: a piece by performance artist Laurie Anderson from 1982 called "Head." It's hardly the summit of her work, she of the tape-bow violin and "O Superman," but when everything's all added up on the Maria von Trapp Value Indication Axis, this little number is what warms my heart after a long night of dancing in the gazebo with my Nazi boyfriend.