I love the Peckinpah almost as much as I love "The Wild Bunch." it's a shame it was so butchered for its first release...now, it makes a lot more sense. I also really liked the first season of the new series and I like Tom Blyth, a Brit whose ambition was to study acting in Julliard...at this point, you probably get better classical chop…
I love the Peckinpah almost as much as I love "The Wild Bunch." it's a shame it was so butchered for its first release...now, it makes a lot more sense. I also really liked the first season of the new series and I like Tom Blyth, a Brit whose ambition was to study acting in Julliard...at this point, you probably get better classical chops than you do in RADA nowadays, where they do very little Shakespeare. he's going places for sure. the one picture of BTK looks like he was a pretty short guy who was also short on good looks and Tom Blyth is very tall and, of course, good-looking. I read that Barry Keoghan (who was heartbreaking in "The Banshees of Inisherin," which I remember you didn't like) is developing his own Billy the Kid series, and he seems more like MY vision of Billy. I saw a very tough recent western on TV recently that embraced the theory you mentioned about BTK's death being faked and the older Billy was played by Tim Blake Nelson ("Old Henry"...I looked it up). more of a "chamber western," very claustrophobic, dark and gritty as hell.
some of the best and most physically beautiful westerns were the ones made by Anthony Mann in the '50s; most of them had Jimmy Stewart playing much darker roles than he had before the war. but Mann made two other westerns in that decade. one was "The Tin Star," with Henry Fonda and Tony Perkins (okay but not great) and "Man of the West" with Gary Cooper (a masterpiece). a few years ago, I picked up a reasonably priced box set of the six or seven westerns Randolph Scott produced and starred in, all directed by Budd Boetticher. they have more or less the same plot structure and make an interesting binge.
obviously, I've loved westerns all my life. nowadays, when I start to list my favorite movies, the Shocking Truth is that there are at least two or three westerns at the very top of that list, assuming you can count "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" as a western (there ARE guns and gambling and drinking and a big shootout at the end, but...). but even if you can't, "The Wild Bunch" will always be at or very near the top, depending on the day.
The difference between Jimmy Stewart pre-war and post-war is explained by 35 missions over Germany in 1944-45 as pilot-in-command, rising to squadron commander and then deputy group commander of the 445th Bomb Group.
I toldja...he was one of my old man's COs in Wymondham in Norwich, where there's a small shrine for the Eighth Air Force in Norwich Cathedral. I found it very moving. I've always made the same distinction with the same cause whenever I talk about Jimmy Stewart, and that's because,whatever his personal politics, he busted his ass to be a great officer under the most difficult circumstances available and, by everyone's account, succeeded. but he DID take that job very personally and daily proximity to violent death over which one has a tiny measure of control on the best days, topped with the responsibility to save thousands of lives besides his own...it's easy to see that could give somebody pause for the rest of his life.
but then again, I'm the guy who needs to watch "Twelve O'Clock High" at least once a year, so...
I have a couple stories about his time in the Air Force. One is funny: they took an 88mm hit in the nose - the shell went straight through and came out about 3 feet in front of the cockpit. They wondered what the structural damage was, so when they landed back in England Stewart kept the nose high as long as he could, but when he gently dropped it onto the gear, the nose gear and the nose collapsed. According to his wingman, who I interviewed, they all got out and everyone was safe, and Stewart looked at the nose and scratched his head and then "in a perfect Jimmy Stewart movie line" as the guy described it, said "Well, I guess it's true what they say - any landing you can walk away from..."
that IS a very good story. yeah, all my dad's stories have people starting out not very happy they had some fucking movie star trying to show the world how cool he was when their lives were in the balance, but eventually, nobody was skeptical anymore. he actually flew on lots of bomber missions sort of halfway incognito...didn't make any kind of big deal about it. I know a famous story from somewhere else about him trying to get volunteers and saying something like: " it won't be easy and I'm not blaming you for not wanting to but I'm gonna be going..."
with that voice and affect, right away you've got an advantage in trying to get a group to do its best work.
I remember telling you one time about that unexploded bomb on my dad's first mission when he found himself a bombardier who didn't know how to drop a bomb (trained on B-17s, suddenly finding himself in a B-24). when the bomb fell out upon landing and started bouncing down the landing field, Jimmy Stewart was there to witness it and he, very wisely, got the fuck out of there.
I love the Peckinpah almost as much as I love "The Wild Bunch." it's a shame it was so butchered for its first release...now, it makes a lot more sense. I also really liked the first season of the new series and I like Tom Blyth, a Brit whose ambition was to study acting in Julliard...at this point, you probably get better classical chops than you do in RADA nowadays, where they do very little Shakespeare. he's going places for sure. the one picture of BTK looks like he was a pretty short guy who was also short on good looks and Tom Blyth is very tall and, of course, good-looking. I read that Barry Keoghan (who was heartbreaking in "The Banshees of Inisherin," which I remember you didn't like) is developing his own Billy the Kid series, and he seems more like MY vision of Billy. I saw a very tough recent western on TV recently that embraced the theory you mentioned about BTK's death being faked and the older Billy was played by Tim Blake Nelson ("Old Henry"...I looked it up). more of a "chamber western," very claustrophobic, dark and gritty as hell.
some of the best and most physically beautiful westerns were the ones made by Anthony Mann in the '50s; most of them had Jimmy Stewart playing much darker roles than he had before the war. but Mann made two other westerns in that decade. one was "The Tin Star," with Henry Fonda and Tony Perkins (okay but not great) and "Man of the West" with Gary Cooper (a masterpiece). a few years ago, I picked up a reasonably priced box set of the six or seven westerns Randolph Scott produced and starred in, all directed by Budd Boetticher. they have more or less the same plot structure and make an interesting binge.
obviously, I've loved westerns all my life. nowadays, when I start to list my favorite movies, the Shocking Truth is that there are at least two or three westerns at the very top of that list, assuming you can count "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" as a western (there ARE guns and gambling and drinking and a big shootout at the end, but...). but even if you can't, "The Wild Bunch" will always be at or very near the top, depending on the day.
The difference between Jimmy Stewart pre-war and post-war is explained by 35 missions over Germany in 1944-45 as pilot-in-command, rising to squadron commander and then deputy group commander of the 445th Bomb Group.
I toldja...he was one of my old man's COs in Wymondham in Norwich, where there's a small shrine for the Eighth Air Force in Norwich Cathedral. I found it very moving. I've always made the same distinction with the same cause whenever I talk about Jimmy Stewart, and that's because,whatever his personal politics, he busted his ass to be a great officer under the most difficult circumstances available and, by everyone's account, succeeded. but he DID take that job very personally and daily proximity to violent death over which one has a tiny measure of control on the best days, topped with the responsibility to save thousands of lives besides his own...it's easy to see that could give somebody pause for the rest of his life.
but then again, I'm the guy who needs to watch "Twelve O'Clock High" at least once a year, so...
I have a couple stories about his time in the Air Force. One is funny: they took an 88mm hit in the nose - the shell went straight through and came out about 3 feet in front of the cockpit. They wondered what the structural damage was, so when they landed back in England Stewart kept the nose high as long as he could, but when he gently dropped it onto the gear, the nose gear and the nose collapsed. According to his wingman, who I interviewed, they all got out and everyone was safe, and Stewart looked at the nose and scratched his head and then "in a perfect Jimmy Stewart movie line" as the guy described it, said "Well, I guess it's true what they say - any landing you can walk away from..."
that IS a very good story. yeah, all my dad's stories have people starting out not very happy they had some fucking movie star trying to show the world how cool he was when their lives were in the balance, but eventually, nobody was skeptical anymore. he actually flew on lots of bomber missions sort of halfway incognito...didn't make any kind of big deal about it. I know a famous story from somewhere else about him trying to get volunteers and saying something like: " it won't be easy and I'm not blaming you for not wanting to but I'm gonna be going..."
with that voice and affect, right away you've got an advantage in trying to get a group to do its best work.
Yes, everyone ended up respecting him - he never asked anyone to do anything he wouldn't do and likely already had.
I remember telling you one time about that unexploded bomb on my dad's first mission when he found himself a bombardier who didn't know how to drop a bomb (trained on B-17s, suddenly finding himself in a B-24). when the bomb fell out upon landing and started bouncing down the landing field, Jimmy Stewart was there to witness it and he, very wisely, got the fuck out of there.