McCabe and Mrs. Miller

McCabe and Mrs. Miller

Alright, Hussein, it's time for a Golden Oldie.

Hold on, Ralph, you aren't that old yet. This was an early '70's movie.

So was Billy Jack. That was pure gold then.

And just plain old now. Have you done anything new and exciting with yourself since 1971?

Well, last summer I did something that may be too difficult for some of our under-30 readers to be able to stomach.

Ok, let's hear it.

I sent my very first text message.

Wow! I feel sick just imagining you trying to find the spell-check feature.

Well, that was a challenge, but once I figured it out it 's been non-stop, especially during those exciting staff meetings when I can text without it being real obvious. Now I just need someone to text me back.

Well, don't hold your breath, Ralph, but what kept you from being so technologically advanced all this time?

You mean besides having to wait for a phone with spell-check? Money, Hussein. Until I ordered the family text plan and manipulated the boys into paying most of it I wasn't about to pay the 10 cents.

You're a good father. What a champ. So anyone bothering to read this and who has an unlimited texting plan could text you at 763-350-2522 and get to read more drivel.

Yep, but I like the word "dribble" which I found in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure and who has the duke or friar or somebody say, "the dribbling dart of love."

Ralph, some true-blue texters don't know the meaning of fear. You don't know the meaning of pedantry. But what do you think Shakespeare was talking about besides the fact that he was the first one to use the word "pedant?"

The clap, Hussein. Dribbling darts of gonorrhea. He had just introduced us to Mistress Overdone, the madam of the brothel. Of course, he might have meant syphillis which may have been more common then and would explain the incomprehensible English accent which makes English movies needing subtitles.

Did you just insult an entire ethnic group called Anglo-Saxons? Welldone, I say. Movietime now, I say as well.

I wanted to see this movie again since the entire song list is made up of Leonard Cohen songs. I love Leonard Cohen. Good movie but only three Cohen songs. The movie starts out with a beautiful long scene of Warren Beatty riding up to the village of Presbyterian Church while Cohen performs his The Stranger Song which matches the scene so well that it could be a music video. The story I read somewhere on the Internet is that the director, Robert Altman, heard the song while making the movie and realized that it coincidentally fit the movie. Some DVD versions of the movie can be set for French which means you can hear the songs in French. I don't know if Cohen sings them but I'd like to hear it.

Ralph, Wikipedia is kind of wasted on you, isn't it? Good thing you don't need a proton accelerator. That would be 8 billion dollars down the drain.

What? Well, anyway, the movie has gained a following among Robert Altman fans and many film critics. It is good and bears a second viewing. It's supposedly a Western with an "anti-hero" which means Warren Beatty dies in the end to the great relief of those of us who don't care for him. Julie Christie plays the brothel madam, or as one reviewer put it, "the whore with a heart of opium."

The other prostitutes all seem to be portrayed as having hearts of gold. Good thing because they had very little else in those tents they started out with. There was a scene of all the women having fun together while soaking in a hot tub after they upgraded to hotel status. I don't know if that was too show that they weren't badly treated or just to show that they were human beings with the same desire for joy and companionship as everyone else. The movie did make a point of showing the prostitutes as being some of the first on the water brigade when the church catches fire. It is an interesting scene especially since no one ever went to the church yet everyone was anxious to save it when it started burning.

Altman used the novel as a starting point and then heavily interpreted it for his own sense of the story he wanted to tell especially given the era of Vietnam and the strong anti-war movement. He had just finished MASH and was able to get this made on the success of the MASH movie. I found out through the wonder of the Internet that the literary agent for the novel's author was the widow of Richard Wright, the author of Black Boy and Native Son. Wright also wrote several thousand haiku poems in his last year of life. About 800 of them were published in a book called This Other World. I happened to come across it last year in a bookstore. Beautiful poems.

Five Haikus

1.

I am nobody:
A red sinking autumn sun
Took my name away.

2.

I give permission
For this slow spring rain to soak
The violet beds.

3.

With a twitching nose
A dog reads a telegram
On a wet tree trunk.

4.

Burning autumn leaves,
I yearn to make the bonfire
Bigger and bigger.

5.

A sleepless spring night:
Yearning for what I never had
And for what never was.

Here's one of Cohen's poems that I love. Each pair of lines has a double meaning which I know because I actually read about it in a book.

As the mist leaves no scar
On the dark green hill
So my body leaves no scar
On you and never will

Through windows in the dark
The children come, the children go
Like arrows with no targets
Like shackles made of snow

True love leaves no traces
If you and I are one
It's lost in our embraces
Like stars against the sun

As a falling leaf may rest
A moment on the air
So your head upon my breast
So my breath upon your hair

And many nights endure
Without a moon or star
So we will endure
When one is gone and far

True love leaves no traces
If you and I are one
It's lost in our embraces
Like stars against the sun