A million thank yous and a salaam to all who made genre flick suggestions the other day. Would that I could design a whole class that'd encompass them all.
Instead, I punted. Pitching out the "what about a movie from 1986?"idea and admitting to myself there was very little I could teach the 18- to 23-year-old demographic about horror, I followed Horace Greeley's advice and went West.
Not Blazing Saddles. Not Johnny Guitar. Not even Derek's excellent [albeit late] pick, Dead Man. Nope, I went straight [if you'll pardon the pun] for the homosocial-est movie this side of Brokeback Mountain: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. There's that great William Goldman script. The Burt Bachrach-scored chase montages. Katharine Ross at the height of her inexplicable fame. Long shots, vistas, shoot-em-ups aplenty. The ever-shifting notion of the frontier: this week, Bolivia; next week, Australia. Not to mention that film history-saturated, sepia-toned opening. Remember, we get an early actuality/newsreel introduction that'll come in handy once we tackle Kane next week. And it seems to have gone over like gangbusters, based on the youth's laughter.
In fact, one of my students keeps a blog, which the cinetrix, of course, surreptitiously reads. Wouldn't you? I leave you today with this kid's reaction to the Hole in the Wall Gang. Enjoy.
There was much concern yesterday in my Film class as to what we would be seeing later on that afternoon. Would it be another excessively long melodrama with Bette Davis? Would it feature Gene Kelly dancing his way through the plot holes? Would it have more to say about the fragile human condition of Algerian rebels...who also like to dance?
Horror of horrors...it was a Walker, Texas Ranger TV movie!
Just kidding, the movie we were regaled with was Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, which I'd seen bits and pieces of before but never the whole way through. It has now become my all-time favorite Western, and I'm not being sarcastic.
