Young Mr. Bush
I got home from dinner last night (a lovely dinner, by the way, with many members of the Durham blogging community at a venerable Durham institution, the Pizza Palace) to find my daughter watching the classic John Ford movie, Young Mr. Lincoln.
I came in on the scene where young Abe the defense attorney (played by the finest American screen actor of the 20th century Henry Fonda) is getting the prosecution witness John Peter Cass to admit that names don't matter much. "Well, then i suppose i'll just call you Jack Cass," says Abe, in what must surely have been a daring line for a 1939 audience.
And that got me thinking about stories. I have no way of knowing how much of Young Mr. Lincoln is real and how much is made up. Or in today's vernacular, how much truthiness there is in the story. What matters is that this is the way, once upon a time, we told ourselves that true American heroes behaved, defending the downtrodden and weak at great personal sacrifice.
What, one wonders, will the Young Mr. Bush movie look like?
I came in on the scene where young Abe the defense attorney (played by the finest American screen actor of the 20th century Henry Fonda) is getting the prosecution witness John Peter Cass to admit that names don't matter much. "Well, then i suppose i'll just call you Jack Cass," says Abe, in what must surely have been a daring line for a 1939 audience.
And that got me thinking about stories. I have no way of knowing how much of Young Mr. Lincoln is real and how much is made up. Or in today's vernacular, how much truthiness there is in the story. What matters is that this is the way, once upon a time, we told ourselves that true American heroes behaved, defending the downtrodden and weak at great personal sacrifice.
What, one wonders, will the Young Mr. Bush movie look like?
Labels: George Bush
Since 1949, Durhamites have slept soundly, secure in the knowledge that, in our town, erection can be depended upon. Now, thanks to the power of the internets, we can spread that security all over the world.
2 Comments:
Young Bush
By
Anonymous, at 9:31 AM
I think there are a number of candidate films, which someone like Marianne and Cormac Wibberley or Roland Emmerich could rip-off... er, use as an inspiration: Lord of War, The Boost, Less Than Zero, Clean and Sober, Intoxicating, The Lost Weekend, Long Day's Journey into Night, Whisky Galore! and Drugstore Cowboy.
By
Dan S., at 9:39 AM
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