“Actually, I prefer not to have the cooperation of my subjects.” Nigel Nado

In Alexia Anastasio’s new documentary Adventures in Plymptoons, one remark is heard over and over again from the people being interviewed. They marvel that Bill Plympton consistently chooses, as an artist, to reveal all. Guns On the Clackamas is a great example of Bill’s confidence in process, and his thick skin when it comes to criticism. Bill taught himself how to make feature length narrative films. Guns On The Clackamas was part of that journey. Not every art house animator would choose to subject himself/herself to such trials.

Bill’s mock doc about the making of a fictional Western was made in his ancestral backyard. After years of sitting inside drawing frame after frame of films in which you control everything, I can see that going outside to collaborate with friends on a live action film which spoofs the filmmaking process itself would seem irresistible. If you are doing this in the backyard where you grew up playing cowboys and Indians, so much the better.

I am not sure but that Guns On The Clackamas is the first Western written and directed by an Oregonian which was actually shot in Oregon. This credential would be more impressive if Guns wasn’t a spoof.

Guns On The Clackamas was Bill Plympton’s first live action feature. Here’s his description:

Nigel Nado, the notable documentary filmmaker, is trying to make a behind-the-scenes movie about the making of the western “Guns on the Clackamas”. But everything is going wrong. The lead actress has a severe stutter, but since she’s also the Executive Producer’s mistress, when she’s fired, he pulls the plug on the film’s financing. Then, the cast members start dropping like flies, due to accidents on the set and some really bad catering…….

Guns On The Clackamas is not for Bill Plympton beginners. Its not the most important Plympton film to see. It is one of the most peculiar.

I hereby claim Guns On The Clackamas as an Oregon film on the basis of multiple qualifying criteria.

When Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster sit down to the climatic card game at the end of Richard Donner’s big budget valentine to the Western, they are aboard a St. Louis river boat moving down the Columbia Gorge (!)

Geographic sleight of hand aside, the greater importance of Maverick to American film history lies in the friendship which Jodie Foster and Mel Gibson began during shooting. In all their scenes, you can see them having a whale of a time.

It was on the basis of this friendship that Jodie Foster cast Mel Gibson in her 2011 film The Beaver.

The Beaver is the genre defying Hollywood art film about a depressed man who speaks through a puppet. It is in every way, shape and form the exact inverse of Maverick.

Jodie Foster had come to Oregon earlier in her career to play opposite Michael Douglas in Napoleon and Samantha. She played a runaway. Michael Douglas played the wise, helpful, John Day sheepherder who counsels her to go home. I doubt he enjoyed it – he looks bored out of his mind in the role. What we do know: he kept developing a literary property his dad gave him, and three years later he won an Oscar for his first film as a producer. Made in Oregon.

Meanwhile, Foster herself became a producer and a director. The Beaver was her third feature film.

In Maverick, Foster plays a gambler. In The Beaver she is the real deal, staking her reputation as a Hollywood insider on an exceptionally risky project. If someone (say, Richard Donner) sat down and spelled out to Foster exactly what kind of film would be most likely to damage her career, he very well could have come up with a description of The Beaver. Choose a screenplay which tackles mental illness. Accept the screenwriter’s goal without modifying his work to be more mainstream. Cast an actor everyone in Hollywood has come to dislike, and do it because you see him as a) great for the role and b) in need of some therapeutic employment. Once the film is made, and everyone is stupefied by it, go on tour with it and maintain an open, non defensive attitude about the choices you made.

High stakes gambling, indeed!

Gibson would understand this, because he himself also produces and directs.

I hereby claim Maverick as an Oregon film on the basis of the location shooting in the magnificent Columbia Gorge.

When you watch movies for a living, you start to lost track of what you really like. Your job is to watch everything. You don’t have the luxury of following your nose, refining your own taste.

So it is rare to read a review which leaps with enthusiasm. But A. O. Scott just wrote one:

In today’s Oregonian, Mike Russell compares Rango, the new animated Western starring a lizard, to this 1951 Warner Brothers cartoon starring Daffy Duck.

Johnny Depp voices the gun toting reptile. Mel Blanc voices Daffy.

“Hi ho, Tin Foil!”

I hereby claim Drip Along Daffy as an Oregon film, based on the voice acting contributed by Mel Blanc.

This post brought to you by Oregon Cartoon Institute.

An Indian came to us, pointed out the course to [The Dalles] to which he said it was 5 days journey, and so far from refusing to follow the advise of the Indian, at my request he was employed by Mr. Meek to pilot us to Crooked River, which he did for a blanket. Solomon Tetherow, 1845 pioneer

Kelly Reichardt, Jon Raymond and Neil Kopp tell the story of a wagon train which misplaced itself in Harney County. Paul Dano and Michelle Williams star.

Willamette Week let the cat out of the bag last year:

Meek’s Cutoff … is based on the true story of an ill-fated wagon train that attempted a shortcut on the Oregon Trail……the tale includes starvation, a legendary lost gold mine and a Native American scout who might or might not be inclined to save the day. Neil Kopp confirmed that the screenplay, written by Portland’s Jon Raymond, is “loosely based on Stephen Meek…who basically becomes lost.”

Adam Yauch, head of Oscilloscope, the distributor of Meek’s Cutoff has an interesting theory.

“As a side note,” Yauch continued. “‘Meek’s Cutoff’ is so real feeling and looking that I suspect Kelly may have completed work on a time-machine…. and ….‘Meek’s’ is actually a documentary that she went back and shot in 1845. If anyone has any evidence to that effect, please contact me directly ASAP.”

Faithful readers of Oregon Movies, A to Z recognize that the wagon train genre has intersected with the documentary genre at least once before.  James Cruze’s The Covered Wagon had meticulous art direction, far beyond the call of narrative duty, faithfully recreating the living conditions aboard the Oregon Trail prairie schooners. Cruze did this because it was 1923, and some of his audience had actually been in covered wagons, as children, themselves.

Kelly Reichardt was under no such pressure. Yet attention to historic accuracy seems to have been a source of artistic inspiration for herself and for Jonathan Raymond, the screenwriter.

Shot in Oregon, based on real life Oregonians, written by an Oregonian, produced by an Oregonian – not hard to preemptively declare Meek’s Cutoff as an Oregon film.

This feature debut from Chris Eyre is being billed as the first film written, directed, and co-produced by American Indians, but hanging it on the indigenous hook does Smoke Signals a disservice.

Smoke Signals is alight with oddball nuances and wry observations: the reservation’s radio station, KREZ, uses a broken-down van at the deserted crossroads to gauge the (nonexistent) traffic conditions, and Victor’s mother Arlene (Cardinal) is a master in the fine art of flatbread-making. Subtle, lyrically haunting touches like these evoke a palpable sense of loss and the sub-poverty level of Native American life, but also unite the tribe – broken by alcohol and abuse though they may be – in long-held beliefs and rituals. It’s Victor who teaches his inanely happy friend to “act like a real Indian,” and Thomas who forces Victor to confront the ghosts of his past no matter how terrible they may seem. The cast is uniformly excellent in their roles, and Eyre’s persistent use of long, trailing shots reinforces the story’s elegiac tone. Simple and elegant,  Smoke Signals is a delicious, heady debut that lingers long after the tale is told. Mark Savlov, Austin Chronicle

Click here to view the embedded video.

I hereby claim Smoke Signals as an Oregon film, based on the Oregon birth of Chris Eyre, the director.

]]> http://www.talltalestruetales.com/2011/01/smoke-signals-1998/feed/ 0 http://www.talltalestruetales.com/2010/12/day-of-the-outlaw-1959lost-film/ http://www.talltalestruetales.com/2010/12/day-of-the-outlaw-1959lost-film/#comments Thu, 16 Dec 2010 20:12:06 +0000 Anne Richardson http://www.talltalestruetales.com/?p=11186

What happens in a Western where there are no open spaces? Jacques Tourneur contemplated this question in Canyon Passage. Andre de Toth takes it on in Day Of The Outlaw, in which Jack Bruhn (Burl Ives), a self loathing West Pointer gone wrong, finds himself policing the small town he and his gang are using as a hideout.

Set in deep winter, Day Of The Outlaw has a reputation as being cowboy noir, but I think of it more as a horror film. Its all about being afraid.  As nasty as the human beings are to each other, De Toth makes it clear that its what’s outside the door — in this case, snow — that is going to get us in the end.

Robert Ryan is the purported star, but Burl Ives steals this picture handily. See it for him! Yes, that’s Tina Louise (from Gilligan’s Island) playing the married woman Ryan wants all to himself. Further boomer alert: that’s David, not Ricky, Nelson.

I learned about Day Of The Outlaw from Rob Lawson, who sent Oregon Movies, A to Z this recommendation.

Day of the Outlaw was overlooked when it was released in 1959, which was a fairly good year for movies. Ben-Hur was the top attraction; North by Northwest, Anatomy of a Murder, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Nun’s Story, Pillow Talk and Some Like it Hot were all released that year. The top Westerns were Rio Bravo and The Horse Soldiers (actually a Civil War film), so it is easy to see why a somber black-and-white offering didn’t attract much attention.

Thank you, Rob!

I hereby claim Day Of The Outlaw as an Oregon film, based on location shooting around Mt. Bachelor.

Oregon grown Sam Elliott began his career in Westerns. This one is a daisy.

Sam “Moustache Champion Of The World” Elliott plays Virgil Earp, brother to Kurt Russell’s Wyatt Earp in this big budget restaging of the gunfight at the OK Corral. Both Elliott and Russell step aside, and let Val Kilmer’s tubercular, sardonic, ferociously loyal Doc Holliday saunter off with the picture.

Students of the Western can move from Tombstone to the other OK Corral reenactments. Some are straightforward, as in Wyatt Earp (1994) which starred Kevin Costner. Some are revisionist, as in Open Range (2003), also starring Kevin Costner, which tells a similar gunfight story, but from the point of view of the Clantons/outsider figures.

John Ford’s contribution to this Western sub-genre is My Darling Clementine starring Henry Fonda. My Darling Clementine is an Oregon film, by virtue of  Walter Brennan’s ice cold performance as Old Man Clanton.

Why do American directors love this story, and perpetually re-make it? Must have something to do with the fact that a) it is based on a real gunfight and b) Wyatt Earp ended up in Hollywood. Then there’s the death dealing/death seeking ex-dentist, Doc Holliday, who remains one of  the most charismatic enigmas in the history of the West.

I hereby claim Tombstone as an Oregon film, on the basis of Sam Elliott’s performance as Virgil Earp.

Drum Beat is Charles Bronson’s first starring role, and he is by far the best thing in it. Set along the Oregon-California border, this anxious not-quite-a Western, wants to fold history (ie reality) into myth. Yes, Kintpuash aka Captain Jack, the leader of the Modocs, did shoot General Canby during a peace parley. Yes, Toby Riddle, a Modoc woman, did act as an intermediary between the two camps. Yes, Hollywood took this promising material and turned it into mush.

If you want to know more about the Modoc Indian War, read a book. Don’t watch this film, which will take ten points off your IQ. If you want to watch an actor become a star, definitely watch this film. Charles Bronson (as Capt. Jack) is never less than riveting, even though he is up to his ears in narrative dreck.

Leading man Alan Ladd produced. Later he would return to Oregon to make All The Young Men with Sidney Poitier. Ladd was top box office when he made Drum Beat. That might explain how it happened that no one noticed the script needed about a dozen re-writes.

I hereby claim Drum Beat as an Oregon film, based on the inspiration provided by events which took place, in part, in Oregon.

I should be the right audience for Even The Cowgirls Get The Blues, because I hitchhiked across the country myself when I was younger than Uma Thurman is here. Nevertheless I couldn’t make heads or tails of Cowgirls.  I apologize to Gus and  Uma – I am sure I will grow into it.

It is my job to point out that both Gus Van Sant and James Ivory have chosen to work with Uma Thurman. Ivory cast her as the scheming, goal oriented Charlotte Stant in The Golden Bowl in 2000. Quite a stretch from the tender hearted Sissy Hankshaw, the character she plays in Cowgirls! Here’s to Uma, at home with Henry James and Tom Robbins.

If you watched the trailer with your jaw on the ground, unable to keep up with the cast list, here’s some help: Lorraine Bracco, Angie Dickinson, Pat Morita, Keanu Reeves, John Hurt (fabulous, in a role first offered to Peter O’Toole), Rain Phoenix, Ed Begley, Jr., Carol Kane, Sean Young, Crispin Glover, Roseanne Barr, and Buck Henry.

I hereby claim Even Cowgirls Get The Blues as an Oregon film, based on Gus Van Sant’s contribution as director, on Ken Kesey’s and Chel White’s contributions as actors, on John Campbell’s and Eric Edwards‘ contributions as cinematographers, and because it was shot in Central Oregon.