Just to Clarify . . .

So I seemed to have opened up a Pandora's Box with my last post.  What I started out writing was about my love affair with westerns in my youth.  Off hand comments about John Wayne seem to have upset a few people who took the time to read my diatribe.  Let me clarify my position from a few days ago.

I loved John Wayne, and still love John Wayne and his movies.  He is an iconic American.  He made great movies.  But, his movies became somewhat campy in the mid-sixties almost through to the end of his life.  His best movies were made in the 40's and 50's, movies like The Searchers, Sands of Iwo Jima, Red River, Fort Apache, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon . . .  the list could go on and on.  Can any of you name a truly great movie he made in the last part of the Sixties or the Seventies?  He made two horrible detective movies, Brannigan and McQ, which was a ploy of the studios to try and piggy back on the success of the Dirty Harry films (which John Wayne wanted to star in, but the producers felt he was too old to play the character, and subsequently gave it to Clint Eastwood).  Obviously there were exceptions -- The Cowboys come to mind -- but most of the movies he made towards the end of his career would have been mostly forgettable movies, if they had not starred John Wayne.  Although I have been chastising his work in the Seventies, in my opinion, he did find redemption at the end . . .

His final two films, Rooster Cogburn and The Shootist, were two of the best of his career.  The banter between he and Katherine Hepburn, who wanted to work with John Wayne in atleast one film before either of them retired, is the stuff of celluloid legend.  The Shootist, John Wayne's final film, was a good bye film.  Contrary to popular belief, John Wayne did not know he had cancer while filming the movie.  He had undergone procedures in 1964 that removed his lung, and was declared cancer free a few years later.

His character was that of a dying gunfighter, diagnosed with an incurable cancer.  Instead of withering away and dying a slow and painful death, he decides to go out on his own terms.  There was a line in the film that has always stuck with me since the first time I heard it as a kid.  John Wayne, gasping for breath after shooting a man who tried to sneak into his room, tells the character, played by Lauren Bacall, "I'm a dying man, afraid of the dark."

John Wayne died before I was born, so when I first saw the movie, I had the knowledge that this was his last movie, and that he would be gone just three years after filming this scene.  I felt, as I was watching him utter these words, that he was not acting.  To me, it was one of those eerie moments on a movie screen, the moment when John Wayne was reluctantly telling the world goodbye.

To retrace and head back to the basis of this blog, mainly books, I have to say that I have had a fairly voracious reading habit the past few months.  After finishing Dead Man's Walk (which I highly recommend to fans of books, not just fans of the western), I decided to take a break from westerns for awhile and went back to Westeros.  I flew through A Storm of Swords, the third book in the Song of Ice and Fire series, better known to everyone as Game of Thrones.

Once again, wow.  Just wow . . . just when you think you might know where the story is going, something happens (usually someones unexpected death) and you are left saying to yourself, "What the f . . .?"

I've been watching the second season on HBO.  It's been true to the books as well as a television series can be to a 1000+ page book, and it has been quite enjoyable.  I even ordered the graphic novel of the first book and am anxiously awaiting its arrival.  I am finding it a fascinating study in the different forms of media that the same story can take.  And I see, from what Amazon is suggesting for me, that even more media is out there for consumption for those who are obsessed with the land of Westeros.  There is a board game, a cookbook of food inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire, CD's of music inspired by the books, books on the philosophy and logic of the stories, satire books and videos . . . the only thing that seems to missing is action figures of the characters.  I don't know about you, but I'd love a little action figure of Peter Dinklage to adorn my desktop.

And with that, I will leave you for the day, an image of a Peter Dinklage action figure in your mind.  How do you picture his action figure looking?  Is he wielding an axe?  Is he dressed in armor, or a red and gold cloak of House Lannister draped over his every day wear?  Or does he come with a glass of wine?