Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Written by William Goldman
Directed by George Roy Hill

I grew up in a household where westerns always held sway. I have entertained the thought that TCM and AMC were created especially for my father. Later in his life, I would get him on the phone and realize that attempting conversation was pointless. You could hear Audie Murphy or John Wayne in the background and you might as well call back later.

The thing about all those old westerns was that they were in black and white. I was a lot too young and a little too dim to catch many of the subtleties in all those John Ford classics (or even High Noon). I loved them because they were entertaining as all get out though.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid came along as something different, which is a strange statement nowadays. So much of it has become iconic that even the ending won’t ruffle anyone’s feathers anymore. Do we even notice that these were the bad guys anymore? I’m not sure that I even feel comfortable calling them anti-heroes. Bruce Dern in Posse was an anti-hero. Paul Newman and Robert Redford? Can they be anything but heroes?

Something about the movie always stayed in the back of mind, niggling away. Sure, you know it’s good, but have you ever noticed just how smooth it flows? Even the first time watch it, the whole thing feels pre-ordained, which demonstrates some pretty miraculous storytelling. Of course, William Goldman is the genius that ties Butch & Sundance to The Princess Bride.

The two films are a clinic

in how to create character from story and how to drive the narrative forward. Imagine my joy at discovering that Goldman had written about his experiences in Hollywood: Adventures in the Screen Trade. I read it and its sequel and probably learned more about plot and the writing life than from anyone this side of Harlan Ellison.

That’s the important bit, right there- finding someone that will talk about life doing whatever it is that you want to do. I’ve written about creating art plenty, but envisioning yourself as an artist is a lot to ask of anyone. Like doctors and lawyers who learn their profession, but graduate without the faintest idea how to run an office, artists generally find themselves dropped into the morass of popular media with little explanation about how to make a living.

Plenty of people will sell you a book about how to drive traffic to your website or get another ten thousand views of your video, but most of their advice feels a lot like what people tell you after a bad break up: sincerely meant, but devoid of useful content. Memoirs of artists that you respect- digging into the nitty gritty- that’s pure gold.

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 204 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.

In the Desert

Poem written by Stephen Crane

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter — bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.”

That’s the entire poem and it may be my favorite poem. Certainly, it is on certain days. I came along through school when most teachers had stopped having their students memorize poems for recitation in front of the class. I learned a few, preferring Edward Arlington Robinson because he was easier to memorize, what with all the rhymes and the funny, horrible stories that seemed like Dr. Seuss all grown up. I didn’t know about Crane’s poems then. Only later did I learn them all on my own. Of course, brevity is the sole of memory.

The Red Badge of Courage is the book that I knew from school, like everyone else. I liked it well enough because it had action and it was short, but revisiting it later, I was amazed. In many ways, it may be the finest thing that I have ever read. So, I went on a Crane jag while in my twenties as he seemed to know so many things that I did not. Perhaps that was the perfect age for it, since he never made it out of his twenties.

Life is a dark ride, as they say.

Our art has moved through irony and well past it. We plunder old tropes to twist for prescient commentary. Our popular art is so self-referential that half the audience nods along knowingly because they assume every comment is just beyond their grasp, no matter how unnecessarily showy the call-out. The works we value today will only be digestible in a century if accompanied by more footnotes than a Shakespeare folio. I am no less guilty. A good joke stays in- and I’m often the final judge of its quality.

Then I read Crane or Henry James. I know that they knew what irony was. They were all too well acquainted with the dark side of life- horrors beyond death, in fact. And they created these stunning works of art.

I suspect that in real life, Crane was a melancholy challenge. You can imagine being the first person to hear one of his poems. “Steve, you know that doesn’t rhyme, right?” “It makes me feel like drinking more whiskey, Steve. Maybe tomorrow you could write a nice limerick?”

But the art takes you where it will go. Here and in his other work, I find a writer who stares into the abyss and tells the darkness what it can do with itself. He reaches down with his hand and pulls out a palm-full of darkness. Holding it out, he says, “See, this is what you fear and you can face it. Tear off a little piece and give it a good chew. See, that wasn’t so bad, now was it?”

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 205 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.

The Ghost of Stephen Foster

Song written by James Mathus and Andrew Bird
Performed by the Squirrel Nut Zippers

Has it really been twenty years since I first heard the Squirrel Nut Zippers? How recursive can you get to be nostalgic about a nostalgia band? Were they hipster before hipsters or are they part of the genesis of hipster-dom? Or does it all become a muddle as it doesn’t really matter?

The Zippers had something going on that the other retro-swing bands did not. The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies and all the rest are grand, but Squirrel Nut Zippers truly seemed to use the music styles of the early 20th century as a jumping off point. On the other hand, I think the Fat Babies are a bit of a miracle, so I am inconsistent. The Squirrel Nut Zippers are not giving us recreations. They are working in a style to present something new.

As an artist, how do you take something old and present it anew? Realistically, this is an issue more in the realm of the performing arts than the visual and writing arts. We can still read Dickens or see a Michelangelo. We certainly miss out on much of the context, but we have the originals to consider. Theatrical productions and music performances are more ephemeral, even if we have recordings. That communal experience of hearing Mark Twain give a lecture or hearing Bix Beiderbecke live are beyond us now. The closest we can come are recreations. The very nature of great artists mean that they will bring their own spin to those very re-enactments and we should not have it any other way.

I have written about art as communication here before,

and that is the missing piece in our analysis when we judge work on its veracity to some imagined original. Theatrical productions and music performances are artistic collaborations. We might long to hear the message that George Bernard Shaw or Louis Armstrong intended, but those artistic statements were always filtered through their work with other artists. Henrik Ibsen and George Gershwin started from a place where their original work was going to pass through the hearts and minds of other artists.

By now, we should not need persuaded that interpretation and imagination are fine approaches to classic work. The question remains whether or not the re-interpreters deliver the originator’s intended message. I watch a production of A Doll’s House and I want to know what Ibsen intended to the best of the cast and crew’s abilities. On the other hand, if you tell me that your production is using Ibsen as a jumping off point and give me something new and interesting, then I probably forgive you not delivering Ibsen’s message.

So, we land with marketing… When Emerson, Lake and Palmer perform Jerusalem, it re-interpreted William Blake, but you went in knowing that you were getting Blake presented in a way unforeseen by Blake (no matter how visionary he was).

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 206 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.