More Grit

And just who is this lawyer Dagget who until just a few minutes ago I was so blissfully unaware?

I’m not a big western fan. I think I’ve read two western novels and I rarely watch western movies. Western T.V.? Nope. The exception to my western fandom, or lack thereof, in both movies and books is True Grit. I’ve seen the John Wayne version of the movie many times, and not only is it my favorite western, out of a field that I’ll admit is anything but crowded, but it’s also one of my favorite movies from any genre. I’ve only read the book just recently because my brother Steve sent it to me for Christmas as sort of a half gag gift. Thanks Steve, I loved it and read it in about a week. I believe that I'm going to name him Grit, if I ever get a dog, or a horse.

The other western I read was Hombre by Elmore Leonard. I fear Leonard is an acquired taste that I’m still trying to acquire.

This December a new version of True Grit came out in theaters. This past weekend I saw it. I was looking forward to it for a number of reasons; it’s True Grit for God sakes, it has Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon, it is supposed to follow the book more faithfully, and it was made by the Coen brothers who made one of the funniest movies of all time in Raising Arizona and the dialog in True Grit is ripe with humor.

The story, if you haven’t seen the John Wayne version, is simple. A girl’s father is killed by his hired hand while the two of them are out of town. The girl, the just 14-year-old Mattie Ross, travels to the town where he was shot down, collects his things, ships his body back to their home, and then hires a federal marshal to hunt down the man who killed her father and bring him to justice. The marshal (John Wayne/Jeff Bridges) is the shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later, if he asks at all, type who drinks nearly continuously. At first the marshal hooks up with a Texas Ranger (Glenn Campbell/Matt Damon) who is hunting the same man for shooting a Texas senator who chastised him for shooting his dog, and refuses Mattie permission to come along. But she catches up with them at a river ford as her horse is faster, because their horses are loaded down with “fat men and iron.” A line that made it from the novel to the first movie but not the second.

Speaking of dialog, the first bit of dialog uttered in the movie is literally the first words typed in the book. It’s the voice of the grown up Mattie Ross speaking about how unbelievable her story of what she did at 14 might seem to us today, although the today she is speaking in is about 100 years behind us. If I compare how either movie remains faithful to the book I think I would have to say it’s a tie. The old version has nearly all the dialog and the plot is unchanged, with the exception of the older Mattie Ross’ bookend narrations. The newer version includes the older Mattie Ross talking but has the Texas Ranger leave the group twice during their journey, something that didn’t happen at all in the book.

One interesting thing about the new movie is a scene where they find a man who has been hung from a tree branch over the road, about 30 feet up. Pretty high for a hanging. They cut him down and the marshal “sells” the body to an Indian. The Indian then “sells” the body to a traveling dentist who takes out the teeth and offers to “sell” the body back to the Marshal. None of this has any influence on the outcome of the story and none of this is explained. I kind of liked that, because in real life, not everything is explained. (I once saw a guy in a convertible swerve off the freeway in Bakersfield and start beating his empty passenger seat with The Club) This movie is very violent, but I understood that going in and was okay with people getting shot and hung, or having their fingers cut off. The weird thing is when they cut down the body of the hanging victim and it falls 30 or so feet to the ground, I found that much more disturbing than any of that aforementioned violence. Even though he was long dead.

I’d have to say I liked the movie. It was funny like the first one but somehow more somber too. If that is possible.

I think Jeff Bridges did a good job and didn’t look like he was playing John Wayne. There is a scene where he pushes two Indian kids off a porch as he passes by, both ways, that some reviews chock up to the way white people treated Indians in the 1870s, but if you read the book, those two children had been abusing a mule that is tied to the hitching post, something that is shown but isn’t clear in the movie. A more telling example of how white people treated Indians in that time is the triple hanging scene near the beginning where two white men are allowed to speak before the hoods are put over their heads, while the Indian standing to their left barely gets a handful of words out before he is hooded and the lever is thrown.

Matt Damon is big upgrade from Glenn Campbell so I expected him to add more dimension to his character and he did, acting much more of a peacock than the Lineman for the County.

I’ve always thought that Kim Darby did a great job as Mattie Ross in the original so I didn’t expect the new girl, Hailee Steinfeld to add anything. But she did. Her Mattie Ross seemed more a child than Kim Darby’s, but no less commanding when negotiating a deal with Rooster Cogburn or a local horse trader. The scene where she has to roll up the sleeves to wear her father’s coat, and stuff newspaper in his hat so it won’t fall over her ears is touching, and I won’t soon forget her screaming and her tear-streaked face when she realizes her horse has been literally ridden to death to save her.

The Coen Brothers made a more realistic looking Old West. More grit, if you will indulge me. The clothes seem more worn, the town is bustling, and the vistas that in the first movie look like an ad for a national park, in the 2010 movie look closed in and far less welcoming. I don’t think that at any one time you could see more than a few dozen yards, until the reins in the teeth shootout at the end.

This movie is funny but in a different way than Raising Arizona. Raising Arizona is to this True Grit like a circus clown is to one of those scary opera clowns.

Video Killed the Radio Star

I was 19 years old when I landed in Honolulu in the very early morning of July 31^st, 1981. I got off the plane, threw my canvas duffle bag over my shoulder, brutally stiff because it was new, (the bag, not my shoulder) and wandered into the wet heat of Hawaii. I was dressed in what was called my Tropic Coast Guard uniform; navy blue slacks, polished leather shoes, a light blue short-sleeved shirt, clean white T-shirt underneath, and a white bus driver’s type hat. It had all been neatly pressed when I started my journey, but five hours in the middle seat in a row of eleven on the 747 had long ago taken out of it anything resembling a crease. I stood at the curb for a few minutes, wondering how I was going to get to my first duty station, the cutter Jarvis, moored somewhere southeast of the airport.

Cabs were lined up out front like candy in a PEZ dispenser, waiting for their turn to pop out of Donald Duck’s neck, and swing up to the curb for the $20 ride to Honolulu Harbor. I contemplated hailing one but stopped when a beat up Ford van started up and rolled toward me. The driver, dressed in an all navy blue Coast Guard uniform, this one splattered with paint, leaned over, rolled down the passenger side window, and said, “You goin’ to the Jarvis?”

During the drive through the streets and along the highways of Hawaii, the driver, whose name has long ago escaped me, chain smoked with the reckless abandon of a guy in a pie eating contest, only rather than stuffing blueberry or apple filling into his mouth, it was cigarette after cigarette. I kept expecting someone to call out, “time” and a judge with a besashed beauty queen at his side to appear and hand the guy a large blue ribbon. At one point, although I’m not certain because I had trouble seeing in the dark and through the smoke, he may have had two or three in there at the same time. I don’t remember a thing I saw out the windows that night, it was dark, but I do remember the condition of the van; it was like a farm laborers van with less upkeep or regard for safety. I also remember that Foghat’s version of "I Just Want to Make Love to You" was on the radio. Which I’ll get back to in a little bit.

We got to the ship and my driver leapt from the van, scurried up the gangway, and disappeared below. Probably because he wanted to get to his next pack of smokes before the one currently in his mouth went out. I trudged up behind him and was met by a Second Class Radioman who looked me up and down, carefully read my nametag out loud, Wruuiiittt, said, “I knew a guy named Wright in Pensacola. He sucker-punched me one night at a bar. You any relation?”

Having no relatives in Florida, and not being a puncher, sucker or otherwise, I answered, “No sir.”

He barked, “Don’t call me sir goddamnit, I work for a living.” This pleasant gentleman led me to a bunk; affectionately called a rack, and said, “You sleep here. Breakfast is at 6:00 and muster is at 7:00.” His name also escaped me, but I added and abetted in that.

I brushed my teeth and not really feeling tired, although it was something like 1:00AM, I found my way to a small compartment with three couches arranged in a U shape with a TV at the open side. The compartment was about the size of three couches and a TV. On one of the couches was the van driver, watching TV, and (of course), smoking. I asked, “What are you watching.”

The driver/smoker pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and pointing with the two fingers that held it answered, “Some rich fucks getting married.” The TV showed a giant cathedral, filled with people, with Prince Charles and Diana Spencer at the altar.

For the two years I was on that ship, whatever was on that little TV in that little compartment was all the TV I watched. We watched broadcast television while in port, and movies on video while underway. Aside from the two rich…um...people getting married, the only other thing I remember watching on that TV specifically was Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, and the fledgling MTV. Mr. Kirshner’s show was simply a rock concert with no lip-syncing. With real rock bands like the Stones, Led Zep, and one night that I remember while on the Jarvis; Foghat. I remember the intro to “I Just Want to Make Love to You" with the guitar and bass building up over several minutes to the lead singer belting out, “I don't want you, cook my bread, I don't want you, make my bed.” Pure garage band goodness.

Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert was the opposite of MTV. Where his show was pretty much a camera and a band, MTV was processed, prepackaged images of attractive people warbling their commercial jingle quality music while pretty dancers popped and slid around and behind them. MTV led to the single most horrifying and miserable moment in pop music history; Madonna "singing" Don Mclean’s American Pie.

I was taken back to this/these moment(s) when I read this week that Don Kirshner had passed away. He was 76 and living in Florida. Maybe he was a neighbor of those famous Floridians, The Sucker-Punching Wright family. He was credited with making the careers of people like Neil Diamond, James Taylor, Carole King and many others. Plus he created the Monkees who lip-synced but never other artist's songs. He is not, however in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Sadly, Madonna is.

At a time when the Best Rock Vocal Grammy award goes to Coldplay, I’ll raise a glass and say, “Thanks Mr. Kirshner. For a handful of memories of real bands, warts and all, in free televised concerts, at a time when I felt very alone and was questioning my decision to fly to a tiny rock in the center of the largest ocean in the known universe. Seeing those same bands in such a simple, unprocessed, format was like being at home, and I'm sure it helped me make friends in that lonely green chain of rocks.

Looking Backwards

When I was a kid we took a big vacation to Patrick’s Point State Park in Northern California. It was just this side of 500 miles from Fresno, and the drive took nearly 12 hours with rest stops and meal breaks. Every mile of it and every minute of it I spent facing backwards. It wasn’t that I was being particularly unfriendly, far from it. You see we were in our 1968 Chevrolet BelAir station wagon and the third seat, the seat to which two of my brothers and I had been assigned via age bias, faced to the rear.

So my younger brother, Steve, and my older brother, Bill to whom I’m nearly an Irish Twin, and I sat facing not only the other way, but our entire view to the rear was taken by the front of a travel trailer. Only by looking to the side could we tell whether we were rolling along the dusty oleanders of Highway 99 or the massive, dripping redwoods of 101. If we craned our necks all the way around in Linda Blair fashion, we could actually see what some of the signs said before they flashed by showing their silvery backs. “Hey, I saw a Deer Crossing sign,” Bill would yell. “I think that one said something about a junction,” I would counter, raising the bet. Steve, who had the worst seat in the car, facing backwards in the middle, and could see even less than his brothers, would just sulk and whisper something about putting a banana slug in someone’s sleeping bag.

Now if you’ve never had the opportunity to ride for an extended period facing the wrong way, you’ve missed out. Imagine never knowing what was coming next or being the last to know you’ve arrived. Think about never being able to participate in conversations and when playing license plate bingo, you miss out on those Idaho, Colorado, and Texas plates because six people have seen the car bearing it before you even knew it was coming. I didn’t even get a California for Pete’s sake, and I cheated and said I got an Oregon from a temporary paper license plate from Joe Orabone's Haus of Fine Cars dealership. At one point I thought I heard the burp of Tupperware being opened and felt certain I smelled chocolate chip cookies from what I began to call the first class lounge. But down in steerage we only had peanut butter and celery; light on the peanut butter and heavy on the celery.

At some point in the trip our view was directed exclusively out the side windows because an animal had the misfortune to run under our Chevy, get hit, and deposit his mortal coil on the aforementioned trailer’s front end. It was just a few feet away, framed in the back window like a scene from a George Romero movie. Judging by the earthly remains, when I worked up enough stomach to look at it, it was probably a well fed raccoon with penchant for mussels and Slim Jims, designed by Jackson Pollack.

We didn't complain too much though. If we did, dad would open the back window slightly and for some reason that made us really sleepy.

Eventually we arrived at the grassy meadows, giant forests, and pebbly beaches of Patrick’s’ Point. We had a great time and I didn’t want to leave, at least until I discovered that somehow my sleeping bag had become the home of a herd of banana slugs.