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My post-birthday favorite film run has now included The Wild Bunch, The General, and The Maltese Falcon. Hard to choose what to watch next. Big Lebowski? Goodfellas? Seven Samurai? Some Bergman or Hitchcock? Maybe Lawrence of Arabia for like the 13th time? So many choices!
The hardest part about The General is that Keaton changed the story from being about a Union railroad engineer to a Confederate one to gain sympathy with audiences, since white people are awful. And Keaton himself was more than happy to use blackface, though not in The General.
On the other hand, The General was filmed near Cottage Grove, Oregon, which is like 20 miles from where I grew up and seeing the landscape, black and white it may be, makes me homesick. Also, the film is awesome, despite dubious politics.
Meanwhile, the only problem with Maltese Falcon is that Bogart and Mary Astor didn't have great chemistry so his falling for her so hard never makes much sense.
About The Wild Bunch, I will tuck no criticism except that it is kind of racist, which is more or less fair.
I will also save my criticism of Paul Sorvino cutting the garlic too thin with that razor until I actually watch Goodfellas again, despite a brief mention here.
The answer to this question is The Friends of Eddie Coyle
Next on the list of favorite films: Lonely Are The Brave
This series of watching my favorite films was eventually going to lead to Apocalypse Now, which I am starting immediately.
Apocalypse Now is notable for the only decent use of The Doors in popular culture, very much including every Doors album
The one time I went to a School of the Americas protest, Martin Sheen walked right past me. Then he gave a speech. All I wanted—the whole speech-was for him to work in “It was like they gave me the wrong dossier.” I was so disappointed.
It’s at least possible my motivations weren’t sufficiently serious for that protest. But if Sheen had started the speech with: “Georgia. Shit. I’m still in Georgia,” it would have been the greatest moment of my life.
