Long and Tall XXL in the Saddle

The way John Wayne rides a horse is the closest thing lazy big and tall men have to their own form of liquid poetry. Always bumping our heads going down basement steps, cramping our legs in ordinary airplane seats, dangling over edges, looking apish in hand-me-downs from normal size cousins; we're often light-headed from being head in the clouds all the time and John Wayne is all these things, but turns them upside down through sheer moral charisma. He's so tall he seems like he's outgrown the pony below him, even if its a roaring stallion. He forces us to re-examine the sheer surreal strangeness of a man riding a four legged animal like some strange Martian centaur. He's the father who is both fearsome, protective, loving, and just a wee bit of a jokester. All that adds up to perfection, so when Wayne goes rogue on us, like halfway through RED RIVER, we're traumatized in a way we're just not when the diminutive James Mason loses it along similar lines in BIGGER THAN LIFE.

I'd been avoiding John Ford's cavalry trilogy (FORT APACHE, SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON, RIO GRANDE) my whole life, smarting from the childhood terror of Henry Fonda's stern anti-Indian policies and the mix of honor, tradition and whiskey-besotted sentimental blarney that is life in Ford's patriarchal colonialist west, and instant tedium to any kid who doesn't yet know the sweet soul-stirring taste of the 'water of life.'

But I should have known better not to just glance at labels and mustaches. (Wayne's mustache spooked me away from SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON). The problem with assumption means you're always predicting the lowest result. Period westerns with frilly bonnets and well-meaning old matrons stirring pots and yelling at young Jeff Carson to come in from the fields for dinner can be dull, but that doesn't mean Ford's are dull. In fact every aspect of every Ford movie would be dull in the wrong hands. In Ford's hands, however, it's poetic. The iconography comes to life. As he probably invented most of it, I guess that makes sense

To me it's proof that the conservatives and liberals are all mixed up - the neo-cons should making more movies and the liberals saving their sermonizing for the senate floor. And for god's sake, more drinking. If you look at the films of the 1970s compared to the films of now, it's clear what made them cooler, earthier, more poetic, dirty, cool, and real: more Valium, cigarettes (indoor smoking), booze, casual sex, long hair, and whatever the hell else.

In Ford's cavalry pictures we actually see (heaven forefend!) a situation where drinking, dancing, and killing are all socially condoned rituals. Most boys today find themselves stricken as social outcasts, hunted by the cops, the minute they sip their first beer or toke their first joint. Rather than an initiation into the social order with its laws, values, and common enemy (outlaws, Injuns), the first beer or toke casts us forever outside the social order - we become the outlaws.  Is it the drugs that are to blame, or the laws, those nanny state control freak tantrums that result when laws are passed but Americans don't instantly fall to their knees and renounce whatever it is the hysterical old people see fit to demonize? The sentences are lengthened, the fines stiffened, and still Americans cling to their freedom. Whether hurling tea into Boston Harbor, rising up against the whiskey tax, or growing dope in your parent's upstate New York basement, you're a true patriot! And you know who would agree with me? Ben Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, you heard me, and John Ford, John Wayne and BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS star, John Agar, before, that is, the evil brain took over his body.

And especially if you're tall and heavy and don't move so well, let Wayne show you how it's done - and remind you that you don't have to do it. Summer's here, so soak it up the way the west was meant to be, in the dreams of a TV,  with Irish in your air conditioned blood finding itself warmed in every song The Sons of the Pioneers sing to their holy Shirley Temple.

Pilgri-dendum: The Man Who Forgot to Shoot Liberty Valance

Time: The weekend's most precipitous swan dive was executed by Scott Pilgrim. Based on the first of Bryan Lee O'Malley's popular comix, directed by cult-classic auteur Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) and starring Michael Cera, North America's favorite perennial preadolescent, Scott was expected to open in the honorable $15 million range. Those who saw the movie gave it a lustrous A-minus CinemaScore rating. Problem is, few people saw it: the actual first-weekend take was a lame $10.5 million, which put it in fifth place, behind not only the new The Expendables and Eat Pray LoveThe Other Guys and Inception. "Well, this is disappointing," wrote Jordan Rapp of The Film Stage. "In an almost predictable fashion America got the Top 5 completely backwards." - Richard Corliss, 8/15/10 but also two older films, (Read more: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2010830,00.html#ixzz0wmqoj33D)

Since I wrote that crazy Scott Pilgrim Vs. Stallone blog on Friday (see below), I feel guilty even though I'm sure I'm not solely responsible for the bad box office described above (THE EXPENDABLES was #1, PILGRIM below even INCEPTION in its whatevereth week). I expected, based on its hype (and Expendables lack thereof at least in my little sealed-off universe), that Scott Pilgrim would break box office records and Expendables would ride off into the sunset while the Sons of the Pioneers sang "Cactus Rose" and the Michael Cera / Jimmy Stewart / Scott Pilgrim archetype would set up his gaming console in the sheriff's office and our new age of digital combat would begin in earnest.

Man, was I wrong! Like Gore losing to Bush, like the shameful vote to uphold Prop 8, America is always ready to surprise with its penchant for pendulum swings to the right. Imagine a different end to Ford's famous THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (1962) changed, as word gets out that Stewart's lanky lawyer had a little "help" from John Wayne (or CGI) and thus didn't really shoot Valance (Lee Marvin) and thus the sleazy cattleman rancher running against him in the western territory election had won. Can you imagine!? Our west would look, well, not unlike the way it looks now. (Read my piece on VALANCE at Bright Lights, here)

If you read my savage entry last week and wonder how I can change my tune and defend Scott Pilgrim so fast it's because, well, a) I'm a Pisces and cursed to always understand both sides of an argument and b) my hatred of wussiness has a lot to do with the way you "hate" your little brother, but still would defend him in a fight if he was getting picked on. I thought Pilgrim would win, so I jeered him, but I never kick a kid when he's already down. In fact, I switch sides, bloodying my own nose and jeering as I fall to the curb, like Tyler's mirror double in FIGHT CLUB, bitchez!!

I remember getting all mad at Mathew Broderick for his grandiose dancing and lip syncing to "Twist and Shout" during someone else's parade in FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF back in 1986 when I was still paralyzed by self-consciousness and furiously smoking to the Violent Femmes and wearing combat boots and wondering why the world wasn't at my feet. How dare this little schweinhund Ferris presume he had the right to hog so much attention, to be so randomly adored by all, purely for his ability to lip sync a song he had nothing to do with writing or recording? I was a bass player!! To me that's the height of the icky self-aggrandizement, piggybacking on other people's work: The Beatles were still in Hamburg playing their asses off every night, dodging beer bottles and trying to decipher drunken German song requests ("und sie liebt Dich, ya ya ya") when they recorded that song. You, Ferris, just wake up late, skip school and take all the credit like the schweinhundt du bist. I've written about this in the past (2008- Kill all Jonesers). I should stop kvetching, as it will only result in my falling bloodied to the curb once more. 

So yeah, I perhaps squirm when I see Michael Cera (and Jesse Eisenberg) the way I used to squirm watching my little brother doing... well, almost anything. And as Justin pointed out in his comments to my comments below, it's very easy to attack hipsters and sensitive gamers. And yes, while I would like to see them put down their gaming cubes and fight and drink and live up to their trucker hats and giant belt buckles it's mainly because I want them to be cool. I'm worried for them, for their inability to maintain eye contact and for liking Animal Collective while not on LSD. I know that if I ever got in a fight instead of just rallying for peaceful violence, I'd be smashed up pretty good. I got glasses though --disqualified!! Glasses make you immune because any guy who punches you is liable to break his hand and your nose and maybe blind you so he's got to be ready to really get violent because after doing that to your glasses and you're a man you'll either be in a coma or trying to kill him from that day on. Am I right, Scott? Now go and get your fucking shinebox!