Hey folks, Harry here... about 3 and a half hours of sleep went by and it was time to again return to the Drafthouse. Now, alot of people may wonder why on Earth I would get only a little more than three hours sleep to return to the Drafthouse for a Kiddie Matinee.
Well First, the Kiddie Matinee happens to part of my SATURDAY MORNING FILM CLUB FOR KIDS and two... This is officially part of QT5!
When last I left you I was going on and on about DAY OF ANGER... Well, this morning was an experience to top even that unheralded masterpiece. You see, for this hot arid Saturday Morning within the cool interior of the Alamo Drafthouse would be a screening of Roy Rogers' GOLDEN STALLION, a real Roy Rogers flick on the big screen with a room full of kids and their parents.
Ever since my earliest memories my father has told me of waking up and going to the theater to see Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, the Cisco Kid, Red Ryder, Hopalong Cassidy... And amongst the first trivia I was trained with was knowing the names of the horses to go with the cowboys. Roy Rogers and Trigger, Dale Evans and Buttercup, Gene Autry and Champion, Tom Mix and Tony, Rex Allen and Koko, Ken Maynard and Tarzan and so on and so on... Hell, I even knew that the jeep on Roy Rogers was called Nellie Belle! But I have never seen one on the big screen.
I spent many years of my life on a working Ranch where we'd ride fence line, herd cattle, do the branding... All the real cowboy stuff... And in my head I would always kind of hear SONS OF THE PIONEER or RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE or well... you know... classic old cowboy music... Not Country Western, but COWBOY MUSIC, SINGING COWBOY MUSIC... There's a magic to that stuff, and Roy Rogers was the king of em all.
Here I'd get to finally see one of these the way it was meant to be seen. On the big screen in Tru-Color... a 2 Strip Color without pure reds... more oranges and blues than Pure reds and pure greens.... As Quentin said, "This ain't Technicolor, it's more like WATERcolor, and that's why it is so beautiful!"
Now at these kiddie matinees, Quentin completely drops the sailor tongue, and speaks straight to the kids, "Before there was Pokemon and Power Rangers and Power Puff Girls... Before Television, BEFORE SATURDAY MORNINGS EXISTED, Kids just like all of you had their parents drop them off at the theaters and they'd watch some cartoons, a serial and a COWBOY MOVIE, and that's what they were called. They Were Not WESTERNS, they were COWBOY MOVIES! They were made for the 5 to 12 age range. You had Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy and all the others, but Roy Rogers was definitely the most likable of the bunch!"
He told the kids about Dale Evans, but nearly skipped right over that to TRIGGER, The Smartest Horse In The West! "And he was too. Trigger could make your coffee, write you a letter. Trigger was THE horse! And in this movie, he's the equal co-star to Roy. There are whole scenes where Trigger is off doing his own thing and we're following along!"
Then Quentin mentioned the Director... William Witney. Now, Quentin is a HUGE fan of William Witney. If you were lucky enough to read his piece he did in the New York Times on Witney, then you will have some idea of where I'm coming from.
Now William Witney is one of the key elements of Tarantino and mine's friendship... He brought him up one day and I just started going on and on about how William Witney was the world's greatest serial director of all time! ZORRO'S FIGHTING LEGION, DICK TRACY VS CRIME INC, SPY SMASHER, MYSTERIOUS DR SATAN, ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN MARVEL, G-MEN VS THE BLACK DRAGON, THE FIGHTING DEVIL DOGS and of course KING OF THE TEXAS RANGERS... As a child on the convention circuit of the Seventies... While Quentin was growing up on Exploitation Flicks, I grew up on Serials... Hell I met half the stars. I knew Duncan Renaldo, Dave Sharpe, Henry Brandon, Kirk Alyn, Buster Crabbe, Clayton Moore, Fred Bannon and tons others... These were my heroes growing up, and sometimes they would babysit me while my parents sold comics and movie posters. And Quentin knew Witney's B-Western career inside and out. And he was shocked that just off the top of my head I could rap about Witney. We both agreed that he was one of the great unappreciated genius of the period.
Well Quentin pulled up the lucky girl's ticket who won Horse Riding Lessons... and then it was time for WOODY WOODPECKER'S TERMITES FROM MARS!!!
Ah... Woody Woodpecker rules... The machine gun laugh... kids joyously laughing along. Beautiful Technicolor... bluer than blue blues... Reds that bleed from the screen. And green Martian termites! This rules.
Then it was time for THE GOLDEN STALLION!!!
There was something wholly magical about watching THE GOLDEN STALLION with a room full of children. It was as if time reversed and suddenly I was in 1949, as if I had just forked over ten cents… for the smell of popcorn was in the air and the giggles and energy of little kids was everywhere. The TruColor was from a dream… a memory of times past. In the past couple of years I’ve written obituaries for boy Roy and Dale… but here on the Drafthouse screen they are so young and vital. ALIVE being the most descriptive of words.
Roy gives off an amazing energy from the big screen. Completely involved in the situations and emotions of what is going on. When Trigger is ordered to be put to death, the look in his face was heartbreaking… but in the same turn, when you see Roy astride Trigger riding at the Bat Out Of Hell speed across the prairie attempting to round up a wild herd of horses…. The look is both concentration and glee… as if this was what his life was meant to be. I could not believe how incredibly involved I got in the film. I sat on the edge of my seat, chin in my hands and elbows upon the Drafthouse table. As Roy and Trigger and Dale and Buttercup and Pat Brady in Nellie Belle took off after those horses… tears rolled down my face… This is what Bruce Willis meant in DIE HARD when he said, "I’ve always been partial to Roy Rogers myself." Yeah, Roy is the Errol Flynn of cowboys, the one that hurls himself straight into adventure with a sense of glee. Oh Beautiful!
Now in Quentin’s introduction he had asked kids if they knew what Trigger looked like, and maybe two hands were raised… Quentin smiled and said, "How many of you know what Uma Thurman looks like?" nearly every hand shot up, "Well Trigger looks a bit like Uma, if Uma was a horse she’d be Trigger!" and the audience began laughing… But as the film began and Trigger appears on screen… especially when Roy takes the saddle and reins off him and lets him go out to calm the herd himself… Well, I began to see what Quentin meant. Uma is a sleek elongated beauty of a woman. She is a woman that you wish to see roam free. Trigger has a nearly hypnotic perfection of beauty going on. As if crafted by a God to remind man what perfection is. Trigger is expressive and dynamic and a joy. Watching him on the big screen was as good as it gets.
Dale Evans is also a splendor on screen. She isn’t a beauty in the stand a block away and marvel style… she isn’t a Grace Kelly or Ingrid Bergman… Instead she’s that beautiful school teacher that you fell in love with, that friend’s mother, that librarian beauty. She is that approachable beauty with disarming non-self-awareness. Her smile, voice and body posture throughout this film does nothing, but remind you of how perfect she is to complement Roy Rogers. It is like watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in motion… Each one the yang for the other’s yin. Symbiotic perfection.
And then there is the film itself… Beyond just being a COWBOY KIDS ADVENTURE, this film has heart and emotion and tears in it. Roy is put in jail for 3 years, Trigger turns wild siring a son, whose mother dies in Childbirth… Nothing is for certain in this film, but watching as Roy works on a chaingang while Dale writes letters daily to make his time pass easier knowing that someone who loves him is out there… The updates of Trigger and Trigger Jr… Trigger being beaten and starved and roughed up to make him go wild again… Stark brutal reality mixed into this universe of singing cowboys and lonesome prairie. A completely disarming film experience.
Next up was Quentin’s introduction of the classic Fleischer production of GULLIVER’S TRAVELS.
