Movies I am willing to discuss will largely be used to address American history and the concept of the hero.
-1. Unforgiven
Clint Eastwood’s epic as a lens on the Hero in the American West, referencing: High Noon, and John Wayne’s work in Rio Bravo, Big Jake, True Grit and the Shootist as a narrative characterization trajectory, as a parallel thread to Eastwood’s Man With No Name work in The Good the Bad and the Ugly, For a Few Dollars More, For a Fist Full of Dollars, High Plains Drifter and Pale Rider, with The Last Hard Men with Heston and Coburn for terminal context.
My associated works: A Well of Heroes
-2. Dystopias in Science-Fiction
A Discussion of James Caan’s Jonathan character in Rollerball along with Twelve Monkeys with Bruce Willis, Outland with Sean Connery and the androids in Blade Runner.
My associated works: Organa, The Sunset Saga
-3. Last of the Mohicans as a window on the Eastern Woodland Frontier: including tribal etymology, the theology of Deginawida and Hiawatha, the Nordic-Iroquois connection, the four colors, King Phillip’s War, influence on Irving, Hawthorn, Cooper and Melville and Robert E. Howard in literature and Panther-passing-across and William Tecumseh Sherman.
My associated works: Thunderbird, the Sunset Saga, Plantation America
-4. The Magnificent Seven as an iteration of the ancient Hellenic theme of Seven Heroes against the Overworld of Man: based on Seven Against Thebes, and including Seven Samurai, The Wild Bunch, Predator and Tears of the Sun, reflected in The Dirty Dozen and degraded in the Expendables.
My associated works: Reverent Chandler, Who Writes the Songs of Night, Ghost Snatcher, Ire and Ice
-5. Jeremiah Johnson, Man in the Wilderness and the Revenant as a discussion platform for real frontier bad-asses: Simon Girty, Simon Kenton, Lewis Wetzel, Hugh Glass, Kit Carson and Liver-Eating Johnson.
My associated works: Plantation America and The Sunset Saga
American History in Man-to-Man Q and A
-1. Combat Arts
Some related works: Twerps, Goons and Meatshields, The Punishing Art, The Combat Space, Being a Bad Man in a Worse World and Winter of a Fighting Life
-2. Crime and Suppression
Some related works: The Logic of Steel, When You’re Food, Taboo You, 40,000 Years from Home, The Last Good Cop novella
-3. False Polarity Nation
Foundational Falsehoods in the American Experience: Magna Carta, Enclosure Acts, Vagabond Acts, Cromwell’s Prosperity Gospel, King Phillip’s War, Bacon’s Rebellion, Washington’s Grift, Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, the Northwest Ordinance, The 14th Amendment, with references to Ezra Pound, Panzram, London, Black, Carlisle and Dempsey.
Related works: Plantation America
-4. The Conquistadors
Columbus, Ponce de Leon, Balboa, De Vaca, Cortez, Pizarro, Coronado and Soto
Related works: A Sickness of the Heart, Our Captain, The Sunset Saga: Big Water Bloodsong and Ghosts of the Sunset World
Ancient Hellas
-1. Agonistics and Arete
Prize-seeking and ritual combat in ancient Hellas from Minos to Varzadates, from roughly 1700 B.C to A.D. 500 Can include a narrative or Q and A on the following athletes: Onamastus, Lygdamas, Hyposthenes, Pythagoras, Arrikion, Glaukos, Milo, Theogenes, Euthymus, Timocreon, Phaylos, Diagoras, Dorious, Antiokous and Stomius, Timasithos, Polydamas and Promachus and Agias, Sostratus, Astyanax, Koragus challenges Dioxippos, Khilon, Klietomachus and Aristonikus, Artimodorus of Tralles, A.D. 68, Damostratus of Sardis, A.D. 172 Asklepiades of Alexandria A.D. 180,
My Related works: The First Boxers, The Gods of Boxing, All-Power-Fighting
-2. Strategy and Tactics
Warfare in Ancient Hellas from Troy and the Sea Peoples to Pydna, roughly 1200-160 B.C.
Including a discussion of Skythians, Amazons, Peltasts, Hoplites, Thucydides, Xenophon, Dorious, Iphicrates, Phillip, Alexander and a postscript on the Alexandrian military revival on late Roman antiquity
My related works: By the Wine Dark Sea, Behind the Sunset Veil
-3. Psyche and Word
Thought, faith and masculinity in Ancient Hellas from Antediluvian Mesopotamia to Stoic Rome: Gilgamesh and Heracles, Enkidu and Samson, Homer, Hesiod, Archilochus, Sappho and Aesop, Simonides, Herodotus, Pindar, Aeschylus, Euripides, Thucydides, Xenophon, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Isocrates, Theophrastus, Pytheus, Menander and Euthymus, Lyko of Troas, Apollonius, Archimedes, Polybious, Diodorus, Plutarch, Galen, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Pausanius and Euthymus, Philostratus, Quintus Smyrneus and Dionysiaca Nonnus, and to cite Wolfe’s Latro cycle
My related works: He: Gilgamesh into the Face of Time, By the Wine Dark Sea, Behind the Sunset Veil
Thank you Rusty, for the query.
I am from the area that Hugh Glass was attacked at and the Thunder Butte he used to guide his crawl back to the Fort to seek his revenge. The fact that he even survived out in no man's land is impressive enough to me. The Revenent movie took way too many Hollywood liberties. I have the book The Saga of Hugh Glass, Pirate, Pawnee, and Mountain Man by John Meyers Meyers, but there are a number of other books about his amazing survival. If you're interested in art, one of our local artists named John Lopez had made an iron sculpture of the attack moment.
The Last Good Cop is a pulse-pounding thrill ride that grabs the reader by the throat and doesn't let him tap out until the end!
I understand that Brad Pitt is in negotiations to play the lead.