Category Archives: Art

The Escape Trail

Americana, Art, California

In reading Peter Kuhlman and Ophelia Ramirez’s blog – I think 99% Peter now – post about Peter’s reclaiming of his creativity and his posting of Chupacabra From La Habra, I am inspired to post a Haiku and a short  non-fiction piece I wrote in a Meditation and Creativity class I was in over the Weekend. I brought a bookmark – to class- I made from a photo I took while on a trip into Death Valley last year.

Manly died quietly
on his farm near Lodi CA
fruit trees blooming

Remembering The Escape Trail

The first thing to remember is that we went backwards- from Trona to the Panamint. From busy, dirty, mining town to Peace. Up an easy downhill, over the gentle summit, down the road that was such a struggle for Manly to lead the Bennett and Arcane families in the climb out of their hell. The oxen eaten long ago, the wagons left behind.

The Bennetts and Arccanes didn’t want to die, didn’t want to embrace Eternal Peace in the Panamint. Eternal Peace that sounded so good , sitting in the cool shade, inside Pastor Bennett’s church with its hard pews.

Under the glaring sky of the Panamint, Eternal Peace felt too much like Death. Death accompanied by the Angels of Fear, the hounding fear of thirst. Their thirst for a new life in the goldfields of California, turned into a thirst for water. Any little water.

Water we so easily carried; sloshing in the five gallon containers in the back of the truck. Sitting in front, we smiled and chatted; looking for wildflowers, going up and over the Escape Road.

We had red wine with dinner that night, not sacramental, but still welcome. We talked about Manly and how he had saved Bennett and Bennett’s wife and Bennett’s children and how, years later, when they came back to look for silver, Bennett had betrayed Manly. Leaving him for dead. Just up the road from our bright campfire.

 

It is really hard to make a good movie

Art

Godfatherparty

And it is nearly impossible to make a great movie. That is just a fact. Making a movie, especially a big budget movie – and I don't mean a $300,000,000 big budget movie, just a $30,000,000 – is incredibly complex. If the script isn't almost perfect, the movie doesn't work; if one of the main characters is mis-cast, the movie doesn't work; if the music is wrong, the movie doesn't work; if the cinematography doesn't fit, the movie doesn't work.

Maybe I have read too much Pauline Kael, but I used to think that good movies weren't made because people weren't trying or that they were selling out. There is plenty of that, but making a good movie is really, really hard. 

I was reminded of this after seeing Morning Glory late Sunday afternoon. Both Michele and I were feeling punk Saturday, so we stayed home, built a fire, watched it rain, let the cat out when it stopped raining for a few minutes and let her back in when it started again, and watched three movies. Waiting to Exhale, It's Complicated, and Invictus (for the second time).

All four had aspirations to be very good movies. To be intertaining and say something meaningful. Each of them came close. For me, Morning Glory was the most entertaining, but they were all good. Not great, but good. I am sure that each of the directors, each of the actors,  was trying to make a great movie – or, at least, a very good movie, a better movie than the end result – and fell short. Because it is hard.

Morning-glory-movie-image-rachel-mcadams-harrison-ford-diane-keaton