On Fri, 28 May 1993 12:05:28 EDT Benjamin Leontief Alpers said: > >1) I just saw _The Searchers_ at the NY Public Theater (on a big screen . . . >it was magnificent!), and was struck by the same line about raising pigs. >It made me think about the opening of _Unforgiven_ . . . do you think >having Munney (Clint Eastwood) farming pigs as his post-gunfighter >job was a reference to Lars Jorgensen's line? Ahhh, that VistaVision! It's stupefying in 35mm, eh? A Munney to Lars connection? I don't know 'bout that... Munney and Lars are such different types of characters that connecting them with an hommage seems a bit unlikely. I think there would be some interesting comparisons/contrasts to be made between Munney and Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), though. They're both condemned to "wander forever between the winds," perhaps? >fascinating if you are at all interested in Welles]. During the discussion >of the Welles film _Mr. Arkadin_ (which I have never had the opportunity to >see but which has just been released on video, I think), the conversation >turned to a story which the character of Arkadin (Welles) tells over dinner. >The story (which Bogdanovich quotes from the film) was very familiar: it was >the frog and the scorpion, which we all know now from _The Crying Game_, which >may even have lifted it word for word from Welles' script for the initial >telling by Stephen Raye to Forrest Whittaker. All of which suggests hommage, >not theft, but why? As I said, I haven't seen _Arkadin_, but from what I >know of the movie, I don't really see any thematic resemblance to >_The Crying Game_ (unless one wishes to see "desire to hide one's past" as a >theme of both, but that seems a little broad). Any ideas why Jordan chose to >lift this story? Has he discussed _Mr. Arkadin_ in any interviews or articles? It's been a long time since I've seen ARKADIN, Ben, so I'm not really qualified to say. But it seems to me that Jordan and Welles are >both< drawing on an older folk tradition. The frog/scorpion story is a very old one. (I wonder what its original root is.) It seems likely to me that Jordan (or CRYING GAME's scriptwriter; who is...?) picked it up from the general culture rather than from ARKADIN. But then again, maybe Jordan is just being crafty... ---------- We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing. --Ralph Waldo Emerson-- ---------- | Jeremy G. Butler - - - - - - - - - - | Internet : [log in to unmask] | | SCREEN-L Coordinator | BITNET : JBUTLER@UA1VM | | | | Telecommunication & Film Dept * The University of Alabama * Tuscaloosa |