newcritics - Latest Comments in They rob banks

Re: They rob banks

يوتيوب — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:58:05 -0000

Good & interesting post. Liked it a lot.

Re: They rob banks

1butch1 — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 01:53:50 -0000

Hi.
A few comments after reading what everyone else had to say:
1. James Agee had a great line about Miracle of Morgan's Creek. He said Preston Sturges must have raped the Hays Office in its sleep.
2. The Clyde Barrow-type character in Gun Crazy, a man in love with Peggy Cummings, was portrayed by John Dall, a homosexual. The impotent Clyde was played by notorious stud Warren Beatty (an intentional joke).
3. The other day AFI saluted Beatty. I respectfully disagree on his getting this honor and I believe Faye Dunaway should have received it instead. Bonnie and Clyde is his best film and he didn't write or direct it. Reds and McCabe and Mrs. Miller are good but overrated and I HATE Heaven Can Wait. (Here Comes Mr. Jordan is better.) Dunaway did three undisputed classics: Bonnie & Clyde, Network, Chinatown. Beatty was overpraised because he was considered one of the boys, one of the powerful, studly inner circle and Dunaway was put down and overlooked because she was a woman.
4. Someone should ask Shirley MacLaine who Warren was in another life.
5. No argument that Bonnie and Clyde is brilliant. I can never see why some wildly successful collaborators didn't get together again. Orson Welles and Herman Mankiewicz, Citizen Kane. Quentin Tarentino and Roger Avary, Pulp Fiction. Alfred Hitchcock and Anthony Perkins, Psycho. And the whole Bonnie and Clyde gang - Penn, Beatty, Dunaway, Benton, Newman, Towne.

Re: They rob banks

Lance Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:44:36 -0000

11:40 and things have quieted down. Rick Perlstein's probably up on stage at that bar doing more of his Goldwater jokes. It was great of him to stop by. Read Nixonland, folks. Heckuva book. As is Mark Harris' Pictures at a Revolution. This has been fun, not just tonight, but all five threads. If you're arriving late, remember these threads never shut down. Lots we didn't get to talk about.

Re: They rob banks

Lance Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:34:39 -0000

Sorry to hear that. I've been planning to watch American Gangster. I thought we'd gotten beyond the My Darling Clementine and They Died With Their Boots On approach to history in the movies.

Have you seen The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, though?

Re: They rob banks

Lance Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:29:32 -0000

Cagney sort of does a version of that in Ragtime, come to think of it.

Re: They rob banks

chuck tryon — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:28:48 -0000

Will try to donate soon. I should probably take off, but it has been fun chatting about B&C. I'm actually excited about being able to trot out some new material when I teach B&C next fall (thanks, especially, to Rick).

Re: They rob banks

Lance Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:23:44 -0000

I hadn't thought of the Gus Van Sant connection. But I wonder if Van Sant was aware of this: Clyde wasn't impotent in the original script, he was bisexual.

Re: They rob banks

RickPerlstein — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:23:14 -0000

Is your book about how you pulled out the 1981 Master's? That famous hole-in from the rough was killer!!

Re: They rob banks

chuck tryon — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:20:35 -0000

Hmmm..interesting question. Trying to remember other road-trip/on-the-run type movies (Easy Rider, Butch and Sundance), but it has been a while. Haven't seen Drugstore Cowboy in years. Need to remedy that.

Re: They rob banks

tomwatson — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:19:58 -0000

Bonnie's mother's face looked like the faces of mothers sending their kids to Vietnam....not to campus protests.

Re: They rob banks

RickPerlstein — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:18:32 -0000

Dearborn Vilage, Henry Ford's museum, outside Detroit. Kathy and I saw it last year. The JFK assassination limo, too.

Re: They rob banks

tomwatson — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:18:08 -0000

Love 'em too...brilliant. Enjoyed that video today, Sireen.

Re: They rob banks

Lance Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:16:46 -0000

Interesting. Which is she? Did she go the Jerry Rubin route or did she stay true to her ideals?

Re: They rob banks

chuck tryon — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:16:46 -0000

Yeah, one of my students told me about that last semester. She brought in copies of photos of the car and everything, which was sort of fun. Weird stuff.

Re: They rob banks

tomwatson — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:16:44 -0000

This is a great thread, folks - a quick and (hopefully) painless reminder, since we have a crowd - we're in fundraising mode to pay for the server work that saved us. If you feel so inclined, hit the Sponsor link at the top of the page. Operators are standing by. Please excuse the commercial!

Re: They rob banks

RickPerlstein — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:15:27 -0000

I found the fuller quote from New Left Notes:

"We are not potential Bonnnies and Clydes, we are Bonnies and Clydes, the real thing, challenging America in a real and fundamental way (Which BOnniee and Clyde did not do--which makes us exceedingly dangerous.)

"IN its essential element, Bonnie and Clyde is revolutionary because it defines
possible futures for us based on the reality of conditions under which we struggle. The film does not depict a revolutionary ideology. It does much more than that; it defines a revolutionary's lot."

The left is SO much healthier now.

Re: They rob banks

melissa3 — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:14:51 -0000

Two associations spring to my mind: First, how does 1973's Badlands relate to B&C? Those two are aimless with no hint of the folk-hero. Then of course the Badlands remakes (or versions of the Starkweather-Fugate story) followed. Maybe Badlands and B&C are different animals because the former went on a killing spree, the latter were robbers who killed? I dunno.

Also, Clyde's impotence called to mind a scene in an early Gus Van Sant movie (maybe Drugstore Cowboy?) where the girlfriend complains "I always have to drive and you never fuck me." Is the impotent or uninterested male a minor tradition of on-the run or lowlife characters?

Re: They rob banks

klg19 — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:14:45 -0000

The Code-era film that always shocks me is The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. How on earth Sturges got away with making a film about a woman who can't remember getting married or knocked up is just beyond me.

Re: They rob banks

tomwatson — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:13:46 -0000

The death car toured the country for 50 years - it's in some museum now.

Re: They rob banks

Campaspe — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:13:30 -0000

I love Flatt and Scruggs. Mr. C. likes bluegrass too, it's just about the only country he will tolerate.

Re: They rob banks

Campaspe — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:12:38 -0000

I must go now, I've loved the talk. I am going to leave with this bit from a commenter, Vanwall, at my place:

"Weird fact - the death car was restored to drivable condition and driven in some sort of cross-country car rally in '87, and the damnedest, most creepy thing I heard from the drivers was the eerie whistling noises it made at speed from all the bullet holes."

god that's spooky, isn't it?

Re: They rob banks

Lance Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:12:20 -0000

Probably not a relation to William F.

Re: They rob banks

RickPerlstein — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:10:56 -0000

THe author of the New Left Notes piece was named Neil Buckley--36,000 Google hits for that name. I'm about to check some historical newspaper databases.

Re: They rob banks

Lance Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:10:55 -0000

Oh, and one for the Siren, about the music:

C, I never would have thought of you as a Flatt and Scruggs kind of Southern gal.

Re: They rob banks

Campaspe — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:10:33 -0000

hey, I was in diapers when this movie came out.