Americarnage: A Satirical Serial Killer Triple Bill

Not to want to sound gloomy, but there are some brilliant films about murderers and psychos. From Fritz Lang's M, Hitchcock's Psycho, through to David Fincher's Se7en and Zodiac cinema has a tradition of exploring the depths of human behaviour for entertainment. While some are just about lunatics, today's selection are films about people pushed too far, passing breaking point and doing terrible things, and how it's not always a case of simply good vs. bad.

In chronological order, Falling Down (Joel Schumacher, 1993), Natural Born Killers (Oliver Stone, 1994), God Bless America (Bobcat Goldthwait, 2011) share common DNA and would make a fine afternoon's viewing (probably edging into the evening, too). These are films about people who are driven to their bloody actions by elements of society, culture and modern life, rebelling against them in destructive ways. We as an audience are asked to make moral choices about what they do and how much or little we approve.

The protagonists have different motivations but each is ultimately pushed: Falling Down's D-FENS (Michael Douglas) and God Bless America's Frank (Joel Murray) experience job losses, rejection and the maddening effect of popular culture. There is no joy or particular rage behind their decisions to go goof the map (or get out of the car...), they've just had enough and decide that something has to change. Natural Born Killers' Mallory Knox is driven to her spree by an abusive family life (little is revealed about Mickey Knox's motivations: I like to think his line “I'm a natural born killer”, delivered to Robert Downey Jr.'s vacuous media whore Wayne Gale, is more part of the media satire aspect of the film than a confession). Oliver Stone brilliantly films Mallory's family as a dark sitcom complete with canned laughter; a nod to the numbing effect of television, also seen in God Bless America. The connective (scar) tissue here is the failing American dream; these films all function as dark comedies; satires on what happens when America fails at its own game and the Dream becomes a nightmare.

There is a perverse morality to each film, despite the blood on the hands of each character. Looking at some of the victims, the films present these characters almost as avenging angels, exerting vigilante justice on the various ills of society. Granted, Mickey Knox is genuinely psychopathic and at one point rapes a kidnap victim but, disturbingly, we are still encouraged to sympathise with him and see him as the hero throughout the film, mainly because the majority of the other characters are so repellent. Out of the three films, only Robert Duvall's Prendergast (whose name is a nod to the detective Arbogast from Psycho, as close to a 'good guy' as the film has) represents a traditional moral compass but Michael Douglas is unquestionably the protagonist.

This of course leaves 'good' and 'bad' as an entirely subjective notion, with the director acting as judge. Take some of the on-screen victims in Killers: a misogynist redneck, Mallory's abusive father and enabler mother, violent and psychotic policeman Jack Scagnetti (Tom Sizemore) and media exploiter extraordinaire, Wayne Gale. Granted, there are many others whose characters are not even sketched out, but those are the main victims. Falling Down deliberately targets subjects of disdain in popular culture: gangs (something which was likely to be in popular consciousness in early 1990s Los Angeles), the standards in fast food restaurants, white supremacists (Frederic Forrest's brilliantly loathsome surplus store owner) and unnecessary roadworks among others. Most poignant, though is the fact that D-Fens himself is worth more to his family dead than alive.

There are too many of these to list when it comes to God Bless America. If a major criticism can be levelled the film (other than the often shoddy acting from Tara Lynne Barr) it's that it sometimes comes off as List Of Things Bobcat Goldthwait Doesn't Like rather than a narrative. Granted these things include vacuous and spoilt My Super Sweet 16 realist TV stars, fear-mongering Fox News bullies, American Idol and the Westboro Baptist Church. As I happen to dislike those things as well, I took a perverse pleasure in watching their fictionalised punishment.

And that is exactly the intention of these films: we are forced into sharing the perspective of the killer, encouraged to think that their victims are not innocent at all, and more harmful to society than the killers themselves. So much so that after Mickey Knox kills a wholly good character in Red Cloud, the Navajo Indian trying to exorcise his 'demon' in Killers, Mallory is furious with him for having “killed life,” and in doing so crossing a line.

Tonally, there is an ocean of variety between the three films and depending on your attitudes to violence and satire (some folks just can't see it even when it's pointing a gun at them) you will find these films either hilarious or sadistic. For me they are important and darkly funny shots in the direction of the things that are both wrong with culture but also pervasive and accepted. It's worth noting there is a preoccupation with celebrity and the exploitation that comes with it in both Natural Born Killers and God Bless America. Mickey and Mallory are made famous and lauded for what are terrible crimes, while Frank and sidekick Roxy aim their guns squarely at what they see as the worst examples of celebrity exploitation. That Falling Down's D-Fens slips largely under the radar is kind of the point to his sorry story; he's “not economically viable” enough to be famous.

But the point to all three is this (and this is not exclusive to America): popular culture makes us stupid and lazy, complacent and homogenised; it makes heroes out of killers and makes popular the mediocre. These films present you with visions of popular culture gone wrong and ask you to side with the villains who are holding a gun to its head.

Three films very much worth a watch (and an argument could be made for the inclusion of Terence Malick's Badlands which if you didn't know already is one of the best films ever made), that will hopefully prompt you to think about whose side you are on.

Gig Review: The Fall of Troy

The Fall of Troy w/ Rolo Tomassi and Chon

Newcastle Academy 2, 17^th August 2015

Truly, one of those times where anybody I told about the gig responded with a puzzled “Who?” The Fall of Troy were a band that I loved from the second I heard them and was gutted when they first split back in 2010. Buying their wonderfully unique Doppelgänger album on the strength of good reviews, I was taken with their idiosyncratic sound, nutty song titles and sheer talent. I also kind of liked that nobody really knew who they were; they were my little secret, although I'm pretty sure that wasn't their main goal for a career in music.

A virtuoso three-piece, The Fall of Troy are hard to pigeonhole. For every savage riff they churn out, there's a gorgeous melody; for every schizophrenic tempo shift there's an almost emo singalong chorus. In terms of sheer talent, they're Muse without the operatics, played much faster.  They share some math-metal/screamo elements with Norma Jean or The Dillinger Escape Plan but also the wilful weirdness of mid-period Biffy Clyro. Imagine Biffy on speed instead of weed and you're almost there. They're a band with the talent of a jazz ensemble but the chaotic delivery of hardcore punk. And they're back. And I'm excited.

A brief sojourn to one of the less depressing Wetherspoons outlets in Newcastle gave way to me wandering in mid way through opening band Chon. I'd never heard of them before and decided on an extortionate Academy pint while I took in their instrumental jazzy stylings. With a distinctive clean guitar sound, they play complex tunes with incredible skill. To say their were simply good would do them a disservice, but its also fair to say they're more impressive than enjoyable. Like a less dynamic Animals As Leaders, Chon seem to have learned all the chords the guitar has to offer and seem intent on fitting them into one song. They also have a shyness to them, seeming oddly disengaged from the audience with only bass player Drew Pelisek looking like he enjoys his job or ever interacting with the crowd, who in fairness seemed to be enjoying them. They have talent to burn but a strange attitude tonight, and I can't help but think that The Mars Volta did this sort of thing as an interlude and made it look like more fun.

For some reason a Lisa Simpson moment sprung to mind: wandering into an experimental jazz show, she hears a disgruntled punter complain. Lisa says “You have to listen to the notes she isn't playing.” The punter replies “I could have done that at home.”

Rolo Tomassi are next. I like Rolo Tomassi; a unique band with what I can only describe as a really cool name (it's a James Ellroy reference, trivia fans). Easily one of the more interesting UK bands around and touring their 4^th studio album Grievances, I had seen them before and knew what to expect. An endearing mix of disparate styles, the black metal blast beats of opener 'Funereal' give way to ambient soundscapes and gentle keyboards. Singer Eva Spence is a brilliant performer; standing hand-on-hips and dancing like one would at a salsa club, she lulls you into a false sense of security, staring into middle distance before unleashing a terrifying scream. The band are brilliant too, particularly new drummer Tom Pitts, who nails the black metal and math-core elements of their sound as well as the gentle ambient moments. Ending with the wonderful 'Stage Knives' they do what any good support band should do: leave us wanting more.

No fanfare greets The Fall of Troy as they take to the stage; they don't need one. Singer Thomas Erak, looking like Joey Ramone but playing the guitar like Frank Zappa, is nothing short of an absolute rock star. From the second they kick into 'Wacko Jacko Steals The Elephant Man's Bones' (yes, that's really what the song is called) he is a blur of energy. Most impressive is how he manages to play their complex, jazz-infused, hyperactive mathcore without standing still and concentrating the whole time.

The sound is muddy at times and the vocals are a little hard to pick out but it doesn't spoil the show. Erak's impressive repertoire of guitar techniques coupled with a frenzied delivery is entertainment enough and an energetic moshpit kicks off right beside me, populated by probably the most stoned people I have ever seen in a moshpit. At one point, Erak is playing the guitar one-handed, standing foot-on-monitor and using his free hand to help somebody in the front row headbang. He rarely looks down at his guitar to see what he's doing and he doesn't often miss a note. Performance-wise, it's perfect; an impeccable mix of passion and precision.

Their songs are catchier than I had remembered, too. Such complex, almost prog-y music doesn't often lend itself to hooks or memorable phrases (and I had been hammering their albums on my ipod in preparation) but I found myself singing along to the batshit crazy likes of 'We'd Better Learn To Hotwire A Uterus' (introduced, helpfully, as “a song about vaginas.”) and the stunning 'F.P.C.R.E.M.I.X'. They play a new song, one with no title and apparently no final set of lyrics, but it's good and gives hope for Fall Of Troy to come.

So impressed and lost in the moment am I, that at one point I find my mind drifting to other times where a band hasn't just been good, but has moved me. I'm talking about the likes of Nine Inch Nails, Pearl Jam and a set from a little known stoner band called Solace, who I saw achieve heavy metal perfection one sweaty night in Trillians. This was one of those nights and as they tore into epic closer 'Macauley McCulkin' (a song about a serial killer, apparently) I was disappointed that it was over. And that, my friends, is as good as you can hope for from a gig. The song ends with Erak alone onstage, teasing out the last few chords before thanking us warmly and buggering off to be brilliant at the guitar backstage.

I feel sorry for those of you who haven't heard of these guys (most of you, I know) but they're well and truly back and well and truly brilliant. One last thing: I bought two pints of uber-priced lager in the Academy so can anyone lend me a few quid to help out with the rent?

A Brief History of Heavy Things: how rock music changed my life and who is to blame

A Brief History of Heavy Things:

how rock music changed my life and who is to blame

It all started with Bon Jovi.

Yeah, that's right, Bon freakin' Jovi. At some point in my teenage years (October 1994, accuracy fans. I was 13.) I found myself with £10 in my pocket, walking into a CD shop in the Metro Centre, having heard what in hindsight turned out to be a terrible power ballad called 'Always'. I walked out with my first ever 'rock' CD, Bon Jovi's Crossroads compilation. Before this, my musical tastes were, shall we say, undefined. I was into odd musicians like Kate Bush and whatever was popular at the time. Somebody once asked me what I thought of Pearl Jam and I just kind of shrugged. Bon Jovi, I am slightly ashamed to say, changed my life.

I loved the 'heavier' songs. To this day, I still skip ballads but songs like 'Livin' On A Prayer' and 'You Give Love A Bad Name' were, at the time, the heaviest things I had ever heard. And then... A friend of mine at school, equally bored in a Food Tech class, started telling me about something called Megadeth. Just the name had my 14 year-old head swimming. He graciously allowed me to borrow their Youthanasia album (the pun probably going right over the same 14- year-old head).

Having previously only heard Richie Sambora's voicebox-infused riffs and identikit solos, the effect of hearing 'Train Of Consequences' was nothing short of staggering. I had no idea a guitar could be played so fast, be so heavy. Sorry, poodle-hair, but my tastes were turning darker and nastier by the day.

A chance encounter with Nirvana on a school bus and a channel hop stop on Red Hot Chilli Peppers broadened my horizons a bit but the real clincher was when I read three names in a magazine: Metallica, Pearl Jam and Therapy?. There was no going back for me. Metallica's Black Album was purchased in HMV and despite having not heard much of them, a Pearl Jam's Ten was picked up in Music Zone. One of my more vivid memories, however, was picking up a copy of Therapy?'s Troublegum (I understood the pun this time) in Gosforth library, copying it onto both sides of a 90-minute tape and listening to it in my room. Over and over and over. To this day it remains my favourite album and a more accurate document of my frustrated teenage years than I could possibly write myself. And yes, I have since bought a copy.

I found a copy of Kerrang! The Album, on sale in the Virgin Megastore. It was a double-tape compilation of new and classic rock tunes: Soundgarden, Pantera, Slayer, all in the bag. Some bizarre Christmas present requests saw me enter the world of death metal (and you have to appreciate the irony of being given a Deicide album on Christmas day. Thanks Mam), and stoner rock with Kyuss' Blues For The Red Sun. On separate whims, I bought Nine Inch Nails' Downward Spiral album, Strapping Young Lad's City and Monster Magnet's Dopes To Infinity. I fell in love with all three and explored the genres more and more, much to the detriment of my bank account but the benefit of my frankly exquisite CD collection. I bought early release import versions of Clutch's Elephant Riders and the debut album from some little band called Korn. I was gutted when everyone else caught on with that one; I saw them first! I'm still into Cutch; Korn, not so much...

I don't know how well I'm getting this across, but the reason I remember these things so well is that by now it's in the blood. I have vivid memories of the times and places where I bought the CDs that changed my life and there's a reason for that; this music affected me, changed me and once it's in your blood there's no going back.

So there's a reason my head is mostly filled with song lyrics rather than important life skills, why I get excited about something as trivial as a new release and why I could probably represent England in the noble art of the air guitar. And if anyone is wondering why I'm canny weird, why I don't like the crap on the radio, or why I don't 'Grow out of that shit', you can blame Jon Bon Jovi, his frankly ridiculous hair, 100-watt smile and huge, overwrought love songs. I know I do.

The Great rock and Roll Cliche

The Great Rock and Roll Cliche

A Selection of my favourites

I'm into rock music. Like, really into it. I'm not in the least bit ashamed. I've tried to like other types of music, I really have. I'm pretty sure that at my age (34, thanks for asking) I should have outgrown some of my CD collection by now but much to the embarrassment of anyone who knows me, I haven't and don't intend to any time soon. Anything from Aerosmith to Zyklon; if it rocks, I'm there. My wife has my permission to kill me if I ever fall out of love with Slayer, such is my dedication.

I've sometimes wondered why, though. Much like any genre, rock/metal is littered with cliché, and just as pronounced. Hip hop, for example, is cliché central: songs about attainment, gold, cars, sexual prowess and a distasteful misogynistic undertone. It reminds me of 80s hair metal but with defined pectorals instead of cocaine hangovers. Heavy metal is no exception so I've taken it upon myself to list some of my favourite rock cliches, in no particular order and with hopefully minimal references to Spinal Tap. Here's the first five.

1. Foot on the monitor

The rock pose of choice. When at a gig, there is little more pleasing to my eyes than seeing a rock god frontman stood in this pose while belting out your favourite anthem. Notable proponents are Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden and Slipknot's Corey Taylor. The monitors are those speakers that line the front of the stage. They're supposed to be for there so the musicians can hear how they sound, however for me, they're put to much better use as little footstools to allow better delivery of 'Run To The Hills'.

2. Introducing the guitar solo

I love this. Every once in a while you'll hear a song where the 2^nd chorus is coming to an end and you know there's a guitar solo on the way. To improve your listening pleasure, the singer helpfully calls for 'Guitar!' or commands 'Go!', almost as if giving permission for the lead guitar player to commence shredding. Particularly good examples are: Funeral For A Friend's 'She Drove Me To Daytime Television', which greets the final breakdown riff with a mighty “Go!”; Therapy?'s 'Bad Karma Follows You Around', which introduces the sloppy, sleazy guitar solo with a fine “Mercy!”; and finally a live version of 'Even Flow' by Pearl Jam where Eddie Vedder goes for the understatement of “Let me introduce you to Michael...” before Mick Mcready absolutely slays it.

3. The guitar solo

The cornerstone of any awesome rock song. Seldom adding anything to the song, often self indulgent and nothing more than a chance for the lead guitar player to show off, but utterly indispensable. Where would be 'Sweet Child O' Mine' be without Slash's two-for-the-price-of-one multi-tempo solo? 'Reach Down' by Temple Of The Dog lasts about 11 minutes; roughly 8 of them are guitar solo, and it's epic. 'Enter Sandman' is elevated from great to legendary by Kirk Hammett's wah-heavy widdling and don't get me started on Iron Maiden's twin leads because I'd be on all day. You say self-indulgent; I say art.

4. An obsession with the Dark Side

Slayer aren't Nazis, no more than David Bowie is an astronaut or R.Kelly can actually fly. Suicidal Tendencies weren't actually institutionalised. Black Sabbath are not Satanists and I doubt anyone in Metallica has ever been anywhere near a war. But these subjects that are tapped time and again in the pursuit of great rock songs. Were it not for Therapy?'s tendency to plumb the depths of human experience or Refused's socially conscious fury at the world around them their songs would not have the depth or longevity they carry. In rock, the dark side is your friend.

5. Big in Japan

The cliché of cliches is than whenever a rock band is down on their luck they can always head East, fill venues and charge whatever they like. I've never been to Japan so I don't know what causes this but a pre-breakup Wildhearts made the trip and did very well, famously the closing scene of the wonderful Anvil: The Story of Anvil sees the endearing 80s also-rans play to hundreds of screaming fans. And yes, Spinal Tap did the same.

There are dozens more. There's also no explanation for why I love the music I love, despite or maybe because of its inherent cliches. It gives me endless comfort, and the familiarity of cliché is part of that.

Do you have any favourites? Let me know.

Double Bill 3: Sex and the Sixties

Double Bill 3: Sex and the Sixties

There's really no better reason to watch today's suggestions than they're two of the best films from two of the greatest directors ever to shoot a scene. You shouldn't need more prompting than that, but since I'm the one making the suggestions I should probably give you some more to go on. As tenuous as the link may be, two examples of attitudes to sex, women and femininity in the early 1960s, seen through the lenses of two of masters of their craft, are The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960) and Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960). You would be hard pressed to find a better pair of films to watch together, tenuous link or not.

Alfred Hitchcock deserves his reputation as the master of suspense, earned and sustained over 6 decades of films, and there's not much I could say here that hasn't already been written abut him already, but important to this example is his tendency towards misogyny. Psycho offers an interesting example of this: Janet Leigh's heroine Marion Crane begins the film as a sexual, autonomous character. Practically unheard-of for a film produced in the late 1950s, we first see her post-coitus, partially dressed and discussing running away with her bland lover. She then steals from her boss to facilitate her escape before suffering a moral quandary. Considering the time in which it was made and the prevailing moral guidelines imposed on Hollywood by the Hays Code, this will have been shocking. She's acting of her own accord without any male persuasion.

Ultimately, however, she can't be allowed to get away with this by Hitchcock and famously meets a bloody end in the shower. While in a narrative sense her murder is a crime of “passion, not profit”, in a broader moral sense, she is punished for her sexuality. The attitudes of the time prevail, no matter how much we like or support Marian Crane.

Billy Wilder, after Hitchcock and John Ford, was arguably the third of the great Hollywood auteurs. His take on the established views of the time were sometimes (arguably) a little more cynical than Hitchcock's who, for example, would not have bitten the hand that fed with a film like Sunset Boulevard (1950). The Apartment is rightly regarded as one of the great Hollywood comedies but consider the set up: Jack Lemmon's ambitious, well meaning coward C.C Baxter allows his superiors to use his apartment for their illicit affairs; his home becomes tantamount to a brothel. Men do not come off well in this film; apart from his next door neighbour doctor, all men are all philanderers or in the case of Fred McMurray's Sheldrake, outright callous bastards. Only the wonderful Shirley McLaine's Fran Kubelik comes off as likeable. It takes until the last 5 minutes for Baxter to grow a spine but she is a rounded, emotional character throughout, and gets all the best lines. It would take a hard heart to watch the film and not love her.

Much like Psycho, however she is punished for adultery. Again, not in a narrative sense but her suicide attempt – a bold change of tone, pulled off expertly by Wilder and loveable schmuck Baxter – is a reminder that a woman in 1950s America, wasn't allowed to upset the social applecart with sex. The worst punishment that befalls any man in The Apartment is Sheldrake's final rejection by Baxter and repeated failures to get laid. Hardly lives at risk.

I would argue that the films, while bound by the time in which they were produced, are not entirely conservative in their attitudes. Which characters are you drawn to when watching these films? Marian and Fran. Yes, Fran relies on Baxter for large stretches but ultimately he ends up (quite literally) holding all the cards. Yes, Marian ends up in the swamp but to get there she makes her own decisions and is the only interesting, most human character in the film. These films are nothing without their likeable female characters.

Do yourself a favour and treat yourself to an afternoon in the company of these two masterpieces. If you want a happy ending, watch The Apartment second, if you want to see a cross dressing Oedipal complex writ large, finish with Psycho.

Double Bill 2: Here in my car, where I'm safest of all...

Double Bill 2: Here In My Car, Where I'm Safest Of All

Cinema can do wonderful things. It can show us the most fantastical, otherworldly places, take you to strange, wonderful lands and galaxies far, far away. It can also show you the real world through a different set of eyes, present stories about real world situations and make you relate to a story or character. It can also show you the insides of cars for 90 minutes and make them the most exciting places in the world. Two criticisms levelled at today's double bill picks are that 'nothing really happens' in the films. While this may be kind of true (please keep reading...), I disagree with it as a criticism, because for today's film picks, tension is the driver rather than plot!

Locke (Steven Knight, 2013) and In Fear (Jeremy Lovering, 2013) hail from different genres and tell different stories but share some cinematic DNA. Each of these films is a masterclass in tension in that they begin with real situations and spin stories from there; granted In Fear evolves into a horror-morality play but the films are so effective because they originate from real and relatable situations. Both are also fine examples of limited location films; yes, both of these films pretty much take place inside a car.

There's a skill to setting a film entirely in one setting. Hitchcock explored the idea successfully with Rear Window, Rope and Lifeboat, and Sidney Lumet's 12 Angry Men is a peerless piece of drama which uses its 2-room setting to ramp up the tension for the titular characters and audience alike. The skill is in using the surroundings to maximum effect. In Fear is set almost entirely in a car, so much so that the effect of the characters leaving the car is quite unsettling when it happens: the safety is gone. Have you ever been lost on a country road? Felt like you're going round in circles? The rising panic which comes with every glance at the dwindling petrol gauge? In Fear taps into these elements and basic fears of the unknown. Close ups and unusual camera angles are used, adding to the claustrophobia while giving the impression of being watched from somewhere. The unfolding and climax are satisfying and don't completely resort to horror cliché. For me, this is high praise in a genre ridden with it.

Locke is one of those films which is impossible to recommend via a plot description: a man drives his car through the night, makes 36 phonecalls (source: IMDB. I didn't count them) and, er, well that's about it. But the effective thing about Locke is that Tom Hardy's Ivan Locke is going through real, life changing events, the kind that happen to people every day. There is very little heightened or exaggerated about Locke and that's why it works. Shooting the car from every possible angle, employing every conceivable use of reflected road lighting, and a tour de force of restraint from Hardy, this film is a tough, tense watch despite nothing really happening. Ivan Locke is a good man, trying desperately to atone for an error, to make things right even though he knows what it will cost him. Every other character is a voice on the phone, but each is sketched with just enough of a person behind them to make them matter. Top marks to national treasure Olivia Coleman for making us love her without being able to see her.

So both films are exercises in (kind of) one-location suspense, in tension derived from the unknown possibilities of the Irish country roads, and the known realities of the M6. Locke's integrity and humanity draw us to him, as does the believable relationship between In Fear's protagonists (fine work from Alice Englert and Iain De Caestecker), meaning we relate to them and care about what happens to them. Through this, the films manage to make something as simple as car journeys into pure cinema. I'd recommend Locke first and In Fear second, purely for that final couple of frames. Does she or doesn't she?

DOUBLE BILL 1: The Trouble With Tom, Dick and Harry

I love spotting patterns in films. There's often a degree of connective tissue between certain works of art and film is no different. What I'm going to do with these posts is suggest some double bills, some of which may not seem entirely obvious but for me share some thematic or stylistic DNA. Some may seem completely obvious to the point where you'll wonder why I've bothered writing it at all, but I'll have enjoyed pointing it out so it's really a win for me. What I'm going to avoid is two films by the same director or sequels and series. For example, Casino has a lot in common with Goodfellas in terms of narrative structure, stories of men getting in over their heads, hubris etc. because that's really obvious to me, or anyone with a passing knowledge of Scorsese. Ditto, I won't suggest Die Hard followed by Die Hard 2.

So my first suggestion for a double bill is this: American Beauty (Sam Mendes) and Fight Club (David Fincher, both 1999)

Two brilliant, meticulously constructed films from a year which brought us many brilliant films (The Matrix, Toy Story 2, Magnolia, Being John Malkovich, Eyes Wide Shut, The Insider) these two films stand out for me as portraits of modern masculinity and the problems therein. They approach this subject in different ways but the theme is the same: these are films about the emasculating effect of the modern world, about a loss of male identity, and in an industry of unchallenged male dominance and misogyny, cries for help.

American Beauty depicts the castrating effect of suburban family life through Kevin Spacey's defeated protagonist, Lester Burnham. His is a world where, having fathered a child, he has no function other than to earn money so more stuff can be bought. I'll state here that his wife is an equally fascinating portrait of an ambitious woman smothered by suburban life but that's not really the focus here, so I'm afraid she won't get much of a mention, but she also won't get the blame. Fight Club's 'Jack' sees Edward Norton playing another man with no purpose. Single, 30 years of age and with a meaningless, cynical job which contributes nothing to the world Jack, along with Lester starts as a man with whom a lot of the audience can identify. Nothing defines them other than the places they live and the stuff they own. Their achievements are not medals won nor a house built, they are the carpet, sofa and fridge-freezer. Two scenes summarise this for me: Jack walking though the interactive Ikea catalogue, and Lester's wife interrupting an intimate moment because he's about to spill beer on the sofa. Consumers and facades, not men, or as Tyler Durden suggests “We got no great war, we got no great depression.”

Ever woken up and just thought, what is the point of me getting up today? I know I have. Most days I would rather stay at home and do something I enjoy (like sit and write about films) than go to work. Well in that respect, these films operate as fantasies as well as commentaries on modern masculinity. It's highly unlike that anyone reading this will take it upon themselves to blackmail their boss, willingly quit to go work in McDonalds, start taking drugs and working out in the garage while trying to screw their teenage daughter's best friend, or start a boxing club which mutates into an ironically well regimented anarchist syndicate. But we enjoy watching the heroes here reject their identities, even if one of them does so through an imaginary friend, and just do what feels right. Where romantic comedies or dumb action films offer escapism on another level, probably for a different audience, I would argue that these films offer wish fulfilment fantasies for men who are very self aware. Both, for example, feature brilliant 'I quit' scenes.

However, on another level there is a ridiculousness about what Lester and Jack get up to. There is something inherently childish about deliberately getting into a fight or quitting work to play with a remote control car. Neither can sustain a relationship with a woman on anything other than a sexual level, so infantile and incompatible are they. Are these guys supposed to be role models? If so, then the studios producing these films (and bear in mind that one of them was Fox) are advocating a breakdown of society, starting with the XX chromosome. Perhaps, then, lessons can be learned about the folly of tearing away the masks that make our assumed identities by looking the films' endings. Both tragic and violent to differing degrees, the deaths of Lester and Tyler Durden can be read as conservative; that the world will not allow the rebel to flourish, or quite hopeful and liberal; that a man can overcome his limitations, his 'place' and either enjoy or change the world.

Two of the closing images, of Lester's face reflected perfectly in his own blood, and of the financial institutions being (bloodlessly) destroyed, are eerily beautiful for very different reasons. I suppose these reflect the filmmakers' differing viewpoints on the world. Fincher's arguably more cynical, that something must be destroyed in order for there to be creation. Mendes tells us that there is beauty everywhere in the world if we only stop what we're doing long enough to find it. I'd suggest watching American Beauty second; you'll probably get a better night's sleep.

Terminator: Genisys

Proving James Cameron's Law Of Diminishing Returns

I went to see the new Terminator film a few days back. Not because I thought I'd be seeing a new classic. Not really out of a great desire to see an exciting new entry in a film series (or franchise, if you will) that I really enjoy. It was more a morbid curiosity, having spent probably too much of my youth glued to the untouchable first two films. The concept, the excitement, the iconic characters, the sheer brilliance of the wacky idea of a time travelling assassin robot. Yes, the third and fourth instalments have been misfires but surely this time they'd get it right. I left, to put it mildly, disappointed with what I witnessed.

Within minutes of the start, my eyes were rolling at retcon and re-cast trickery (Kyle Reese's burned Polaroid of Sarah Connor...) and some abysmally portentous scripting (John Connor's uninspiring inspirational pre-war speech). I didn't enjoy the film much: it looks ropey in places, a poor, convoluted plot, bad dialogue and worse acting made it hard to like, but faced with an attempt to post-mortem the film to my wife and colleagues, I found it hard to explain why I was so disappointed. I've managed to come up with something. While Einstein's theory of General Relativity makes time travel extremely difficult, what I'm calling James Cameron's Law of Diminishing Returns makes attempts to recreate past cinematic glories almost as unattainable.

It's probably fair to say that my expectations were lowered by the trailer and I should mention that I have a general lack of faith in re-boots, remakes, re-hashes and Hollywood's current trend for safe bets. But on the superlative strength of Cameron's The Terminator (1982) and T2 (1991), part of me wanted this to be brilliant. Given the director, stars (some of them) and the promise of fresh new ideas, I was convinced that this had potential. I'm going to suggest here that when following up a classic film, mediocre is a greater sin than execrable. For some sequels, stripped of the key creative personnel (writer, director, sometimes stars), expectations are brought down so low that when the series falters and vanishes, nobody seems to care. Examples include the later Hellraiser, Highlander and Crow films, the Psycho, Exorcist and Jaws sequels and Robocop 3. Hell, for me even the remakes of Robocop and Total Recall, with Paul Verhoeven's wonderfully perverted cynicism replaced by franchise-sniffing studio opportunism, didn't make me want to buy either, even for a dollar. I just didn't care about them so their failure meant nothing to me.

Far worse than this is where creative talent is still in place but gets it so very very wrong; this is where it really hurts, because it feels like something you believed in is being diminished by an inferior product. I would cite Spiderman 3, Jurassic Park 3, X-Men 3, Terminators 3 and 4 (seeing a pattern here?) and Indiana Jones 4 as examples. Although all but Spiderman featured new directors to the franchises, there was still a degree of continuity, be it in casting or even just in a general respect for the original plotting or mythology. When something you really enjoy, even love, is followed up with something that just doesn't pass muster, it hurts.

So here lies the problem with Terminator: Genisys: while some of the creatives are missing they have been, on paper at least, well replaced and there is still a lingering public interest in the series to warrant interest and expectation. And there's also the Arnie factor. Such an iconic role will always draw attention. Arnie. Playing the T-800 again. He's going to say the line, he's going to face something harder than him but he's going to win. Please let it be good. Put simply, Genisys is crippled by the success of its predecessors. Ironically, hamstrung by history.

Not only are we lumbered with another colon: subtitle (I suppose a '5' would seem daunting to an audience and also conjure associations with the Rocky film nobody talks about) but also a new cast to get our heads round. The film doesn't expect a huge knowledge of previous instalments (3 and :Salvation are wisely ignored), and although it helps to already know the characters, I get the impression the producers would prefer you to forget. So poor are the new actors' interpretations of Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke) and Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney), they bare little resemblance to the cherished performances of Linda Hamilton and Michael Beihn. While talented Method actor Hamilton brought a humanity and believability to Connor's arc, all Clarke brings is cheekbones and her best 'troubled' face from Game Of Thrones. Jai Courtney is a terrible actor who brings almost nothing to make us like Kyle Reese. He's also so freakin' built that we never really get the sense of inferiority that Beihn had when going up against Arnie back in 1984.

The script tries (weakly, I suppose) to mitigate the retcon changes by suggesting that by messing about with time, they've created a different time stream where all previous bets are off: so far, so Back To The Future 2 (“all bets are off”, the Sports Almanac, geddit? Ah, nevermind...). But while the first two films (and 3, I suppose), despite their sci-fi trappings, were fiendishly simple cat-and-mouse chase stories, Genisys (pain in the arse to type, by the way) throws in new timelines, new Terminators, characters with fuzzy agendas, and jettisons timeless San Winston practical effects in favour of cheap, weightless CGI. That this is the 2^nd reboot of the year which didn't look as good as the 1990s predecessor is another debate for another day. There is so much going on and there are times when the sense of threat is lost. The film opens with mankind's victory over Skynet and goes on to a battle-ready Sarah Connor and 'Pops' (Arnie's T-800, finally drained of all threat) dispatching Terminators with relative ease. They then go on the offensive with a jerry-rigged time machine and some hideously convoluted plotting designed entirely to allow the film to take place in a contemporary setting.

Plot holes generally don't bother me. I can forgive them as long as they don't upset the drama. I'm not one of those morons who thought The Dark Knight Rises was ruined by the question “How did Bruce Wayne get back into Gotham...?”, I just accepted that he had to for the film to have a climax. Time travel films, with the possible exception of Primer (Shane Carruth, 2004) are by nature littered with plot holes. What I can't forgive is poor plotting. Not until the introduction of Jason Clarke's John Connor/T-3000 did I feel a sense of threat in Genisys. On his arrival, I had no idea what his purpose as a Terminator was; he just seemed to want to protect Skynet and offered no direct threat to anyone but Arnie's T-800. The film tries at times to be a protracted chase much like 1 and 2, but we don't really get a sense of who is chasing what, and for what purpose other than 'Skynet' as a giant MacGuffin.

Sarah Connor's story arc was originally brilliant: weak-willed waitress becomes hardened survivor, never loses her maternal instinct but has to rediscover her humanity and choose not to kill Dyson in T2. She's a fascinating character, who develops and changes. In the hands of Emilia Clarke, she's reduced to pretty, shouty, just plain dull and has no arc whatsoever other than by the end of the film she's kissed a boy. Perhaps I'm being unfair to Clarke, who isn't given a lot to do, script-wise and perhaps just looks wrong. Either way, some baffling time hopping aside, her story boils down to tooling up and going to blow up a computer factory. We are never really encouraged to care or truly take her side.

It's not, however, a complete (plastique) bomb, which was my original point. There are several redeeming features, the tragedy being that they're all so half-baked and under-developed. Director Alan Taylor, having made Thor: The Dark World light and fun, manages to pay homage to the original films with several visual nods. Reese's arrival in 1984 is impressively recreated shot-for-shot (although modern digital photography lacks the grungy, dirty feel of James Cameron's cheap film stock). There are several nods throughout, which raise a smile and distract from the mess: Reese's arrival in 1984 and department store escape is neatly subverted, as is the T-800's “Wash day tomorrow, nothing clean...” sequence; the design of the detonator is the same as the one from T2; the T-800 endoskeleton attacking Reese with a pipe harks back to T2's climactic smackdown; even the positioning of its arm as it 'dies' harks back to the end of The Terminator, although Genisys doesn't have the balls to go with “You're terminated, fucker.”

Also worthy of credit are some quite touching moments including one between Connor and a young Kyle Reese, and the way they finally work out how to beat the T-3000 (magnets can do anything!), although the final victory is preceded by an awful fight between Arnie and Jason Clarke's respective terminators, which lacks the drama and impact of the slower-paced scrap in T2. Genisys also has an impressively epic feel, and you don't come away feeling short changed as you did with T3. The writers have admittedly come up with some decent ideas and wisely avoided reference to T3 or Salvation which presumably just didn't happen. Arnie is also given some nice moments of comic relief, which further dilute the character from what it began as, but offer some needed levity.

The problem is that it's all just so half hearted and feels like to work of a committee rather than a visionary. After Cameron decided against making more films, every director has been a hired gun (Jonathan Mostow, McG and Taylor, none of whom are exactly auteurs) and the whole thing seems like it's been geared to franchise potential and not making a solid piece of drama. And without a solid grasp of what they want to do other than retain their option on the characters, the film suffers from a lack of focus. It may also seem like a perry and immature complaint, but the film has a bloodless, almost profanity-free 12A rating, which is clearly another move designed to broaden the audience as much as possible at the expense of visceral impact. The original was 18 rated on release, the sequel compromised to 15 to go with a bigger budget but still brutal enough in places to make you wince (the deaths of Todd and the 'identical twin' asylum guard). At no point does Genisys have a moment as dramatic as “Call to John now,” “Fuck you.”

So it's hard to take when a company gets its hands on something you enjoy and tries to cynically turn it into a moneyspinner. Lessons perhaps could have been taken from Jurassic Word, which turned creative control over to the relatively untested Colin Trevorrow but whose previous film showed the producers enough potential to be handed the keys to a massive franchise. It worked, and his film managed to be both reverential to Spielberg's original and bold and new at the same time. This mess, however, just makes you wish that the proclamation at the end of T2, that the future wasn't set, hadn't been true. They stopped Skynet, and with it any inferior sequels, when Arnie was melted down. On the strength of Genisys, “I'll be back” sounds like more of a threat than it ever did before.

The Counsellor:

Why a sure thing on paper was a dud on film.

Sometimes films just don't work. I'm sure this gives studio executives nightmares, after millions of dollars are invested in transforming paper into moving pictures. I'm also sure that at heart, studio execs, producers et al, aren't bothered about creating art or reflecting reality through the prism of the director's vision; they're bothered about turning a profit. Major movies are made by major companies, whose purpose is always to make a return on investments. The Counsellor (2013) must have seemed like a sure thing.

Executives must have been rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of a film made by the reliable Ridley Scott (I'm being generous here; he hasn't exactly been on great form since 2003's Matchstick Men but remains a big bankable name) and starring some of the biggest names in the world including Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz and Michael Fassbender. The source material, a debut original screenplay by talented novelist Cormac McCarthy whose work has been adapted as recent successes in The Road (John Hillcoat, 2009) and particularly No Country For Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007). Even in terms of subject matter (a man who should know better, out of his depth in a drug deal set on the US-Mexico border) hit the Zeitgeist, echoing the hugely popular tv series Breaking Bad.

So how, given all that talent and cultural currency, did he film turn out to be such a dud? It's a slow paced, confused and confusing film that suffers from a dire lack of cohesion. Parts are painfully slow, parts are hard to follow and in terms of classical narrative cinema, characters are hard to like and motivation for their actions is fuzzy at best, and if you're looking for happy endings or resolution, well, you'd be better off with Spielberg.

One could argue that this is just a bad marriage of parts: a director who is off form adapting a script by somebody more used to working in the more expansive medium of literature. McCarthy's books tend not to follow a very concrete structure; his famed novel Blood Meridian in particular simply meanders from event to event with no meaning or purpose made clear at any point. It's brilliant, but not the sort of thing which would translate well to cohesive cinema.

Even given the likes of Fassbender, Pitt and Javier Bardem, the film struggles to find a 'hero', a protagonist even. Fassbender's eponymous (and nameless) Counsellor fails to convince us of why he does anything that he does. First introduced to us while giving head to the always-brilliant Penelope Cruz, he is clearly a man head over heels in love but soon in-over-his-head when, apparently to supplement his income to cement his relationship with Cruz's Laura character. Two problems emerge from this set up: firstly, the Counsellor is already a criminal defence lawyer and therefore surely not short of cash; and secondly, the film never establishes that his relationship with Laura is strained enough to necessitate resorting to a drug deal to provide an injection of happy capital. She is painted neither as a gold digger nor as unhappy; in fact, she appears almost repelled by Camron Diaz' predatory Malkina and her lavish lifestyle. The only remaining motivation for the Counsellor's actions is therefore a selfish one: he likes the high life and is willing to do something terrible to sustain it. Problems exist here as well: neither Fassbender nor Scott ever really sell his desperation, his greed. And if greed is his motivation, and therefore the root cause of the terrible events that ensue, then this film becomes a morality play, albeit one where the most immoral character ends up victorious.

It is worth considering that casting is a problem with The Counsellor; it's possible that this is an ensemble that is just too, well, good. Fassbender, still riding a deserved wave of success, is just too damn likeable. He manages to find humanity in even the nastiest shits that he plays: Magneto feels like a rounded character in his hands; his Edwin Epps in 12 Years A Slave was remarkable: at no point was he a pantomime villain or anything less than human. Here, we simply don't buy that his character needs or even wants to do his first drug deal with a dangerous cartel. Whereas Breaking Bad's Walter White was driven by desperation and family, the Counsellor seems to be driven by a fondness for Bentleys, making sympathy difficult for an audience. Likewise, Cruz is never anything less than in love with him and loyal. That we like her makes the ending all the more horrifying and tragic, however it makes it hard for an audience to buy that the relationship would be threatened if he didn't become a drug smuggler.

Brad Pitt's Westray is less of a person, more a portmanteau of every seen-it-all-before, too-cool-for-this-shit character he's played since Ocean's 11. His frankly horrible death is surprising for two reasons: one, that he initially seems too inconsequential to have a whole sub-plot of his own, let alone hijack the main plot when Fassbender hits a dead end, and two, that Brad Pitt rarely dies on screen.  Much more successful are the gaudy, life-on-the-edge Javier Bardem, whose death is inevitable very early on, and the serpentine, Machiavellian Diaz, whose ultimate survival and victory leaves a cold, hollow feeling at the end.

The ending leaves something of an unpleasant bitter taste: following the violent unravelling of The Counsellor's plans, his failed attempt to negotiate with the (actually very reasonable-sounding) cartel boss Jefe (Ruben Blades, the coolest name I have ever encountered), the fate of Cruz's Laura is hinted at. In a neat plot device (which is unfortunately played twice, lessening the effect), Westray explains cartel methods of murder and revenge to The Counsellor; both of which then happen later in the film. We are led to think that this wholly likeable character is raped and beheaded (possibly not in that order) and the DVD highlights are posted to our hero in his grotty hotel room. He is a beaten man. Other than the stupidity of getting involved in drug trafficking to begin with, none of what transpires is really his fault; the series of betrayals and wrongdoings effectively punish The Counsellor for the actions of others, with no lesson offered other than “live with the choices you've made.” The final scene of Malkina discussing how she plans to invest her ill-gotten gains, apparently now free from cartel retribution, does not provide a satisfactory ending. Evil triumphs, good ends up headless in a landfill.

One could of course argue that it is admirable for filmmakers to take these risks, subvert expectations. We come in with a latent expectation of a happy ending and we don't get one. Surely its admirable that McCarthy and Scott set out to surprise and even disappoint our expectations? Well, yes it can be but much depends upon the execution. He film is muddled and hard to like. Scott shoots with a coldness and often makes the film hard to follow. The characters give us little to cling to either: the protagonist a debut drug dealer with fuzzy motivation and the antagonists are unknowable assassins, anonymous cartel cronies, the forces of fate, and Cameron Diaz.

My opinion is that Cormac Mccarthy's sparse, brutal prose simply didn't translate to film this time out, as a major mainstream movie. The Coens succeeded in making his work a black comedy, John Hillcoat, a gruelling post apocalypse road movie. Here, a straight glamorous thriller didn't work because our expectations as an audience were not addressed. We need to know why things are happening, we need cause, effect and motivation. We need to see evil punished or at least acknowledged, and we need somebody we can get behind and root for. We get none of this. In Blood Meridian, the loose structure and lack of causality for many of the events succeeds: the world is violent and violence is something that is not caused; it just is. In his screenplay for The Counsellor, violence is often a punishment for something that a character didn't even do and when working with a talented and well-liked ensemble, a mainstream cinema audience just isn't going to buy that. It's just a shame that what should have been a huge and very satisfying whole ended up being so much less than the sum of its parts.

The Wild Bunch: How The Western Ain't How It Used To Be

The Wild Bunch:

How The Western Ain't How It Used To Be

This doesn't often happen with a film but the first and last lines of Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969) sum up just about everything you need to know about the film. An absolutely key film for its time, Peckinpah's brutal revisionist western, along with the likes of Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967) and Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969), signified a change in the representation of American values in cinema. Particularly relating to the mythic West. The Wild Bunch represented a seismic shift in how that most American of film genres worked. The opening line, “If they move, kill 'em!” is a threat of violence spoken by a gang leader to his followers during a daylight bank robbery. Its delivery jolts the film into life; a slap in the face after a slow, teasing, almost twee walk through a deliberately typical Western town during nostalgic freeze-frame credits. It's a great line, capturing the uncompromising nature of the speaker (William Holden's Pike) and his hard-boiled accomplices. The most interesting thing about it, though, is who says it: this line, this threat of violence, this amoral order to a group of criminals, is spoken by the good guy. John Wayne or James Stewart, this is not. The closing line, “It ain't like it used to be, but it'll do,” is a eulogy for a changed American genre; perhaps not edging further West and more, but still wild.

'Revisionist' is a term you might have read in articles about films of this time. It is often applied when a film breaks or challenges the conventions of a genre, daring to do something new and making the statement on what the genre is now. The Western, arguably the purest of genres, is also the most open for revisionism and the reason is because of that purity. In theory, one could watch a short snippet of a Western and immediately identify it as a Western. The same could probably not be said for a musical (if you watched a non-singing bit) or a horror (if you watched a non-frightening bit), but the iconography of the Western has largely remained intact from the 1920s to the relatively rare occasions when they're made today. You tend not to get 'revisionist' horror films; horror is a genre which, along with, say, sci-fi, moves with the times. Evolving and therefore immune to revision. The Western, to a point, remained fairly static in terms of what one could expect. The Western was a portrait of an innocent time, when America was still being built. And this article is about the point where it changed.

It's a cliché of the classic western that the Good Guys wear white hats. Typically, they defend the homestead, the town, the herd, the very essence of civilization in an America expanding Westwards. More so, they defend traditional values, morality and a man's place in the world as a strong individual. Against whom do they defend these things? Quite literally, the wild of the West (the name didn't happen by accident). Depending upon the era: Indians, convicts and their gangs, thieves, Mexicans; anyone who represents the perceived disruption of 'civilization'. It's a very traditional, Conservative viewpoint, and one which was blown open by, among other films of the late 60s, The Wild Bunch.

Director Sam Peckinpah, already something of a Western veteran, pioneered an editing style which is still powerful to watch today. The barrage of jump cuts which accompany shootouts in this film are an assault on the senses, heightening and accentuating the violence. Packinpah uses a simultaneous mixture of slow motion photography and rapid jump cuts to startle and upset the viewer's senses. This is a far cry from the classic western shootout where John Wayne shoots from the hip, his target clutches his stomach before spinning round and falling bloodlessly to the ground. This was both heightened and realistic at the same time and still has a visceral impart today.

So the film is visually brutal, but morally perhaps even more so. This is a film which has no good guys. The heroes are the thieves, and we as an audience are supposed to get behind them and hope for some form of victory. This is largely driven by the charisma and star status of leads William Holden and Ernest Borgnine (as Pike's brother-in-arms, Dutch) but also because we are given no other choice. Relentlessly pursued by Robert Ryan's Deke and his band of Hyena-like bounty hunters and in over their heads with a Mexican warlord they really shouldn't have done business with, the film deals with their way of life coming to an end and their inability to move on. As the audience (of the Western, rather the just the film), we sympathise with them, seeing our nice safe genre coming to an end, and ultimately come to respect their moral code to each other if not the law of the land. Of course, this wasn't the first time a Western protagonist had straddled the line between civilization and wilderness; John Wayne's famous role in The Searchers (John Ford, 1956) touched on the theme but with less conviction and social relevance. There are no good guys, no white hats left in the West; only degrees of bad, lesser evils and shades of grey. And what is this if not relevant to the social climate in America at the time? Vietnam and Kennedy, embedded in the social consciousness, were evidence that America was corrupt and not the mythic utopia once represented in Westerns.

The Wild Bunch has an almost palpable air of finality and despair to it, punctuated only by moments of levity in the camaraderie of the titular group. We are reminded throughout that their ways as outlaws are at an end. As they approach the final confrontation, driven to it by loyalty to their captured friend, Angel (Jamie Sanchez), we know that they face insurmountable odds and that they are sure to perish. The group's decision to return to save an almost-dead Angel from their former employer Mapache (Emilio Fernandez) is one of their only moral decisions. Having provided this warlord with formidable stolen weapons, they return to face him, demanding their companion is returned to them. They are betrayed and one of cinema's greatest bloodbaths ensues. As they fall, the final man's hand still gripping the machine gun they stole for Mapache earlier in the film, we also witness the end of the old West. The Western goes on, but with Pike and Dutch, its moral core dies.

And then then comes the final line; the line to summarise the state of play of the mythic Wild West. Bounty hunter Deke, thwarted at every attempt to capture Pike & Co, arrives just after the battle, failing again to capture them one final time. It's a hollow victory for Pike's crew; they died as free men fighting for their friend, but they still died. Offered the choice between joining Mexican revolutionaries or trying to avoid jail on his own, Deke is offered the enticement “it ain't how it used to be, but it'll do,” and that is the state of the Western in 1969; brutal, morally blurry and with an air of decay and end. John Wayne apparently commented that he thought that the film was “destroying the myth of the old west.” At a time when people were thirsty for the truth and jaded by the myth, I can think of no higher praise. Well, if no higher praise can be found, it'll do.