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This is this.

When my best friend Sharon and I couldn't get into a rodeo in Rigby a couple of weeks ago, we found ourselves instead watching Hairspray from the Edwards Theater in Idaho Falls. We indulged ourselves horribly, giggling at John Travolta in a fat suit and heels with an accent so horrible his career ought to take off again just from how self-deprecating he's become since the cocky days of Vinnie Barbarino and Mista' Kottair. Then, Christopher Walken knocked me gutless with his deadpan slapstic that included x-ray glasses and an ape suit. I remember my first love for Walken transpiring probably about the time I saw him as Max Shreck in the horrible but entertaining Keaton Batman movie II when I was ten. After Hairspray, Sharon turned to me and said, "Now do you want to see a real Christopher Walken movie?"

So we opened an account at Blockbuster and rented Deer Hunter. Darren, you've mentioned that rated R movies are one possible golden ticket to hell, so let me warn you right now that your soul may be at stake for watching this movie. Let me also say that your soul might also be at stake for not watching. Should I suggest Clean Flicks, my Provo man? (I'm not even going to get into that debate.) [AUTHOR'S NOTE: It has come to my attention that friend Darren actually does not disregard films for an R rating and most probably also does not approve of Clean Flicks in general. Or the fact that I called him a Provo man. Even though he is one. My apologies to all for marring this image and associating this my great friend with the large group of people who confine themselves to PG ratings and won't let their children watch Beauty and Beast because Belle's yellow dress is so low cut. If I don't let my children watch Beauty and the Beast it will be because I don't want to foster the deus ex machina approach to solving problems or that death is the great enemy and shedding a tear will conquer it or that pretty girls should always get their way. But that's another can of worms I'm still working out. Bottom line: I retract my statement concerning D.Z. and movie ratings. Apologies, friend, apologies.]



And I'm not going to do the film justice here and now because there is a righteous boiling black cloud thunder/rain/hellfire/damnation/cats-and-dogs storm a-brewing just outside my windows and I must very soon run off to watch lightning crack through the sky from my backyard. It is a royal haunted apocalyptic storm thrashing about.....the kind of day you might catch Tim Curry in a sewer drain. The streets are flooded and I kid you not that I just saw a striking strand of HOT PINK lightning bolt through the air, lighting up my front room windows. I can hardly concentrate on Vietnamese Russian roulette at a time like this.

So let me just say THIS. Rescue Dawn
is an incredible film, especially for Zahn and Bale. But it pales, thins, folds in comparison to Walken, DeNiro, and Streep in Deer Hunter. The pacing, the characters, the music, the language, the pitiful hometown in coal country Pennsylvania are so bitterly human and honest that Sharon and I both stayed wide riveted awake until the film finished at 4:30 a.m. (late even for us). I am changed from this movie, from the poet in Walken, from the diseased, nightmarish evils of warfare and survival. This film deserved all the awards it won in 1978 and it deserves to be remembered and re-viewed. Whatever Rescue Dawn was lacking in spirituality, realism, and heart, The Deer Hunter provides, though the result is necessarily gritty and unbearably disturbing. I just had to back up my last post with this one before going on to a new subject. The sky is still green....I'm going to go heat up a slice of pizza and watch the rain fall now.