Scary stuff

I suppose I owe a number of my constant readers an apology. After the stress and anguish of establishing not one, but two alternate blogs to that which was destroyed by the Google monster, I took an entire week off from the Internet. Despite my Irish-Polish background, I am an honorary member of the Cherokee tribe, and like my fellow Injuns, I can not only be politically incorrect by saying “Injuns”, but if some matter requires a great deal of pondering, I can take as much time as I please to consider my next response. I did not always have this luxury during my working days, so it is a double blessing as I get nearer the end than the beginning. I hope I didn't sign on at another another ICQ [“I seek you”] network. I don’t want to be sought. I came in here like gangbusters, posting an old picture of my ambulatory days, and bitching and moaning about the unfairness of Google for eating my two-year-old blog. Then I bailed for a few days. Sorry ‘bout that, gang. To the credit of all my constant readers, no one poked me with some fatuous jibe that I owe my readers anything. I owe my daughters the safety and freedom to live their lives as they see fit; I owe my ex-wives the allegiance I declared to my younger: “I still love your Mom… I just don’t like her much any more.” I promised…er, suggested, something about the scariest gunfights Hollyweird has managed. Otherwise, no one has anything coming.

In descending chronological order, the scariest gunfights are:

Westerns:
Open Range
Unforgiven
The Long Riders
The Wild Bunch
The gunfight scenes in Shane

Contemporary:
Heat—the botched bank robbery escape.
About 90 seconds of Pulp Fiction.
The showdown in Mimi Rogers’ apartment in Someone to Watch Over Me.
James Caan’s last scenes in Thief, and his general demeanor throughout the movie.
All of Robert Duval’s scenes in Apocalypse Now
The last scenes of Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.

At least one director overlaps here: Sam Peckinpah. This emotionally tortured man was a combat Marine during War II; that counts for more than all the slow-motion mayhem he reveled in. Walter Hill, in his skillful directing of those many sets of brothers in “The Long Riders”, stole a lot of Peckinpah’s slo-mo mayhem. The reason his [mostly] accurate account of the Northfield, Minnesota raid makes my list is because of a minor touch added during the editing: I don’t know where they got the tape loop, but there is the constant sound of a horse screaming, or a mule neighing in slo-mo, when the guns start going off. It is blood-chilling to the max.

The rest of my humble list is compiled for two reasons:

(1) They mix the guns loud. Modern, digitalized Hollywood will never get it right. It’s all about sound compression now, and even a Glock, Browning, or S&W .40 caliber sounds like a cap gun. The sound has to fit the theatre, or something. There was an acid test for my kids. I know how to mix movie blood; it’s food coloring and corn oil. I’d mix one pint, and pour it on the linoleum kitchen floor… one pint…the human body contains ten pints of blood. “Multiply this times ten, and now tell me how you feel about violence.”

One daughter says I’m “a death merchant” [her words, accumulated from public school indoctrination; not mine]; the other gets as much range time with me as I can manage. I’m getting old; did I do right? It seemed to have an effect on the kids; they eschew violence, but like true cowgirls, they know what may have to be done when things go very badly.

If you set a high-velocity, high-caliber firearm off in an enclosed room, it will rock your world. Forget the individual you may or may not have shot; the act of pulling the trigger will set your world on edge. Don’t send in questionnaires asking how I acquired this knowledge; think of me as a used car salesman, and trust me. I was never a cop, and never played one on TV, but I know these things. I confess to the TV and movie thing. As relates to the movies, when someone is shot, they do not explode in blood... It appears quite naturally.

(2) The other factor: It is so mundane. The reasons Open Range, and to a lesser degree Unforgiven make my personal list, is that the gunfights are matter-of-fact. The most terrifying thing someone can face is someone else exercising lethal force, and damn you if you’re in the way.

“They” have a phrase for it in these crank-up days of the 21st century.

“Suicide by cop.”

This is all extremely subjective. The real-life equivalents of Sam Peckinpah and Walter Hill’s shoot-outs are impressive to a movie buff, and a former performer. Michael Mann is tapped into a vein of evil, ambiguity, and humanity that I cannot describe. Ridley Scott runs a close second.

I tend to be somewhat cryptic; like other ‘60s flower children, I have the bad habit of assuming others are thinking what I might speak.

I don’t think a Democritter is worth a nickel more than a Republican. Democritters want my tax money to give it to an undeserving species of perceived liberal voters, i.e. the “plantation slaves"; Republicans want my tax bucks to enforce some bizarre morality, i.e. “the ‘moral’ majority”. Both are equally wrong. I tend to vote for Republicans when the issues are pedal-to-the-metal; would-be moral arbiters tend to disappoint me less than clueless descendants of my generation’s flower children. I ain’t a cut-‘n-run Libertarian. I reject the party line; that we never shoulda done this Iraq thing. Hindsight’s quick and easy, like my first wife.

Well, we done it, so let’s clean this hellhole up and start the hairy eyeball on Iran and that greasy Korean dude. I have some cuss words boiling over for the so-called “crucial” election, too. This next-to-nothing isn’t about politics, at least not in the touted sense of a national referendum. There is plenty to follow before next Tuesday’s elections. I have a surprising endorsement to make therein. I felt a personal responsibility that I owed my three constant readers a post at this new blog site. I am too late for Hallowe’en. The notion of going on record as to personal frights is a highly subjective notion. Again, it is best not to inquire too closely, but I have seen the results of gunfire-related trauma, up close and personal, and it lacks the drama of Hollywood. One second there is nothing; the next second there is blood and screaming.

The most effective approach employed by Hollywood is (a) gunfights are louder than 32-track Dolby™ will capture, and

(b) bullets will whiz by and strike with amazingly little drama. For my subjective self, this is the true terror. For me, the scariest gunfights that Hollyweird has ever tried to re-create are the most underplayed, and the noisiest. This trumps all the slasher movies ever made.

Hill and Peckinpah were regarded as masters of slow-motion mayhem. They were trying to capture on film the phenomena commonly called “time compression”. Anyone who has ever endured an auto accident knows this sensation: you either remember every last excruciating detail in slow motion, or your mind has thankfully erased it. The latter are the lucky ones; those who remember everything have passed through time compression. If you have a differing list of scary Hollyweird efforts at recreating gunfights, I’m always open to correction and suggestion. I have left off such noteworthy attempts as Ridley Scott’s Blackhawk Down and Kirk Russell’s valiant support of Val Kilmer in Tombstone.

The latter caught the frenetic hell of history being made in less than a minute; over 60 rounds were fired in that Arizona town in less time than it takes to tell it. My benchmark for judging the technical accuracy of a cinematic gunfight is the deployment of magnesium “squibs” to denote bullet strikes. I don’t know who first had this bright idea, but it has detracted from any element of drama a director could wish to introduce, ever since such squibs were first deployed. That’s another element that makes my list of Hollyweird gunfights so personally scary; it doesn’t look like kids playing with sparklers on the 4th of July. People simply pulled the triggers, and loud noises and death happened.

Some of cinema tries hard, and some go for stylization to emphasize drama. No one has ever gotten it right. I don’t think anyone ever will, and so I’ll try to suspend reality and let the directors who know “less-is-more” continue to disturb my dreams. Happy belated Hallowe’en, y’all! It’s hard to think of “trick or treat” without thinking of radical Islam in possession of nuclear devices.

I hope my old friends have hung in here, and I hope new readers will stay tuned for more rock ‘n roll from Uncle Possum. A few minutes of decent food and decent sleep ought to do the trick. When I’m not listening to my beloved Russian classical composers, I’m dosing on headbanger music. Megadeth is an especial favorite, and after 36-48 hours of wakefulness, I keep hearing their heavy metal chant of “Insomnia”.

“Peace Sells, But Who’s Buying?” Indeed!