ROGER'S ANGLE

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

FAST-GUN MOVIE SHOOT-OUTS

I had an argument some time back with a buddy of mine about stand-up fast-gun shoot-outs in the Wild West. He believes they took place. I don't.

Both of us grew up on western movies where characters played by John Wayne and Clint Eastwood faced up to the bad guys and fired first.

Would you do that? I would not. I think you'd have to be drunk or high on something to walk out into the middle of the street and bet your life that you could draw first, fire first, and hit the other guy first.

Utter poppycock.

I did some research, and most of the time the old cowboys bushwhacked each other, ambushed each other. One famous lawman, I believe it was Wyatt Earp, would challenge some badass and say something like, "Meet you outside in ten minutes."

Then he would sneak around and climb upstairs and wait on the balcony. When the other guy came out, Earp would shoot the guy from above and behind. Surprise. You thought I was gonna stand and fight. Think again, dead man.

Once the guy is dead, who cares? Especially if Earp is the sheriff and the other guy is wanted for cattle rustling or something. Who cares if he was guilty or not?

I called a famous cowboy museum, I think it was in Wyoming, and the curator there told me that these movie-style shootouts happened very seldom, maybe once or twice, in the Old West.

I took a police shooting class a few years ago, and the instructor, from Long Beach PD, told us that most police shootings these days take place indoors, in people's living rooms, within 10-15 feet, and 80-90% of the shots miss.

Why is that? Because people don't hold still when you shoot at them, and because people shoot back. And it isn't that easy to shoot another human being.

In World War II, the U.S. Army found out that most soldiers, no matter how well trained, could not bring themselves to shoot people when they could actually see them.

So in the Viet Nam war, the U.S. military used a new tactic. They had our guys lay down fields of fire. In other words, the enemy is in those trees. Open fire. And they would blast away, firing like crazy as long as they could not actually see the people they were trying to kill.

Now back to the Old West. Were people that different back then? Were they more accurate and more deadly and more willing to kill people? I doubt it.

I say the Wild West shootout was an invention of the movies, where it worked very well. It was very dramatic.

But did it happen in real life? Horse manure.

-- Roger

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

A SUICIDAL CODE OF HONOR

I've been reading Borges, and most recently found a fascinating story about a Samurai code of honor. The story, based on a Japanese legend, is shocking, to say the least.

The story is variously titled, in translation, "The Insulting Master of Etiquette Kôtsuké no Suké," or "The Uncivil Teacher of Court Etiquette Kôtsuké no Suké."

The emperor sends a master of etiquette to a local warlord's castle to teach him how to handle an emissary from that same emperor, who is due to arrive at the warlord's castle in a few days.

The teacher of etiquette is rude and disrespectful to the local warlord, who finally draws his sword. The master of etiquette runs away, like the coward he is.

The local lord is "allowed" to commit hara kiri, or ritual suicide, and his castle and holdings are decimated. The local lord's Samurai warriors are now reduced to 47 Ronin, or freelance mercenaries, who plot their revenge.

Their revenge takes two years. Finally, the 47 Ronin storm the fortified castle of the etiquette master, who escapes. They find him and ask him to commit hara kiri as an act of honor. He will not, so the warlord's men slit his throat.

The emperor's supreme court finds out and grants the 47 Ronin the "privilege" of committing hara kiri. Amazingly enough, they do. Online, you can see photos of their graves. (Link:)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty-seven_Ronin

At no point in this story, does any man act as I would, or as any normal Westerner would. If I was the warlord, I would have told the emperor to go make love to himself. If I had been one of famous 47 Ronin, I would have done the same.

But these legendary warriors and most honorable men refuse to defy their emperor or to defile their concept of honor. Wow. I keep thinking about it.

We westerners would die for our country, but not many of us would die like that, for a code of honor that doesn't help us or our kin.

I think we all have a code of honor. Mine can be more or less summed up as follows:

"I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other men and I expect the same from them."

-- John Wayne in “The Shootist”

Anyway, the Borges tale is much better than I have summarized it here. It is a great story, and I recommend it.

-- Roger

DID THE NYPD LET MALCOLM X DIE?

When I first saw Columbia University historian Manning Marable on TV, saying that the NYPD and the FBI failed to protect Malcolm X and perhaps even allowed his assassination to take place, I didn't believe it.

I thought it was impossible. But this morning, I listened to another scholar, who has also written a book on Malcolm X. The more facts I hear, the more I think it is possible that the police withdrew their officers, on purpose, the day Malcolm was killed.

Malcolm X was a terrifying figure to many white Americans. So the cops may have thought Malcolm didn't deserve protection. As for the FBI, that other scholar, Michael Eric Dyson, said today (April 5, 2011) on the Madeleine Brand show that the FBI refused to warn Martin Luther King Jr. when they heard credible threats on his life. So it is conceivable that both law enforcement agencies turned a blind eye when Malcolm was in danger.

The white establishment viewed both these black leaders as threats to society. It was dangerous for black leaders to speak out. It was dangerous to be a liberal in those days.

I was a newspaper editor and reporter in the 1960s and was one of the few white supporters of Malcolm X. I thought he was a great leader and a straight shooter, and that America needed his voice. He was as important to civil rights and to the maturity of America as Martin Luther King Jr., I thought.

When I was a young man, all my heroes were murdered: President Kennedy, his brother Bobby, MLK, and Malcolm X. Only the good die young, it seemed to me. I thought all these killings were national tragedies.

Now I look forward to reading both those books, by Dyson and Marable. I think the country should know more about Malcolm X.

Monday, April 4, 2011

WOULDN'T CRIME BE FUN?

I just finished watching the two-part French movie "Mesrine: Killer Instinct" and "Mesrine: Public Enemy #1" starring Vincent Cassel.

This bio-pic raises some interesting questions. What is the personality of a criminal, the character flaw? And why do we admire them?

(I liked the first part best. In the second part, we lose sympathy for Mesrine, and the movie becomes a tad long. Still, I recommend it.)

Why does an intelligent and charismatic man hang out with thugs and gangsters, rob banks and casinos, impersonate cops, beat people up, abuse women, neglect his children, and kill people?

The short answer is because he can, for awhile.

There is something missing in a man like Jacques Mesrine. He has no impulse control and no empathy. He wants something, and he takes it. He hates someone, and he kills them. The cops try to arrest him, and he shoots it out with them.

I don't know anything about the real Mesrine, but I presume the movie is fairly accurate. The Mesrine in the movie is a pretty disgusting character. But in a way he does what a lot of us want to do. He acts on our secret desires, our repressed impulses. Damn the consequences, he pulls the trigger.

In the second part of the movie, he kills a man in cold blood, because he thinks the man has written a magazine article criticizing him. Criticize me? How dare you! Here, taste my fist! Eat lead and die.

Some of us have impulses like that. In the movie, Mesrine does some terrible things, but they are things the rest of us want to do. We all get mad, and we all want to kill people, but we don't.

I think that is our fascination. We want to see what would happen to us if we followed our own worst impulses. The answer in this movie is clear: We would come to a bad end.

It's a lot easier to watch a movie about a criminal than it is to be one. It seems to me that most movies provide vicarious experiences. Here, it isn't really thrilling to be Mesrine, but it is grimly fascinating to watch him tempt fate and defy the law. It may be fun for Mesrine for awhile, but it is not fun all the time, and it is certainly no fun at the end.

Thank God for the cops, or the Mesrines of the world would run wild over the rest of us. Cities would be jungles. We can't allow ourselves to run wild, and we can't allow men like Mesrine to run wild either.

But they sure are fun to watch.

-- Roger

(Links:)
http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/Mesrine_Part_1_Killer_Instinct/70107140?trkid=1457038#height1433

DISNEYLAND MARCHES ON

I heard on the radio today that Disney plans to build a new Disneyland theme park in China. I couldn't believe it. They already have one in Hong Kong, as part of their chain of parks and resorts around the world. You should see the list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney_Parks_and_Resorts

I don't understand how anyone can enjoy Disneyland. I don't like long lines, or parking lots, or artificial experiences, or being fleeced. The original Disneyland, in Anaheim, CA, has all those things, in spades.

The last time I was in Disneyland, 30 or 40 years ago, there was only one ride I liked, and that was "Small World," a dopey ride for kids. It made me cry. I can be such a sentimental fool.

The worst thing was the artificial beaver pond. As you would ride by on some train or other, a wooden beaver would rise up out of the water on a stick. How disgusting. I'd rather go camping and hiking and see real animals in the wild.

The thing I found most interesting about Disneyland was its use of space. Every place you walked or stood or sat in Disneyland, there were rides or snack bars or water rides or a monorail or elevators over your head, underneath you, and every direction you looked. They had engineered that place to death. It was amazing.

They do know how to make money, I'll give them that. I hated their movies, BTW. They convinced Americans that wild animals had the same emotional lives as people, and that animals were like toys. Yuck.

ANGER IN CHARACTER

Now I'm on Page 157, writing my novel, The Prince of Newport, and I realize that I wasn’t taking my characters seriously enough. My protagonist Link thinks the antagonist, Walker Lang, killed his friend Jeannie, whom he loved.

I was forgetting that and allowing Link to joke around with Walker, not to put him at ease, but just because I forgot his anger and fear and suspicion. I got to thinking that the character feels the same way I do. I could learn something from the pop-fiction writers in this regard. Their characters are usually very consistent.

When the character is angry, he needs to stay angry, I think, until something happens that changes his state of mind.

BTW, this novel is going fairly well, although my eyes get tired staring at the monitor all the time.

-- Roger

Sunday, April 3, 2011

BLOOD AND GUTS

In the other room, I'm watching a documentary on the Military History Channel about WWII in the Pacific.

I'm glad that war isn't happening today. That older generation of Americans had the guts and the courage and the determination and the self-sacrificing mentality to fight and to win that war, and the one against the Germans in Europe.

These days, I doubt if we have that courage. At least, I don't see it around me. I see selfishness and greed and narcissism and people who don't care about anyone but themselves. Of course, I live in L.A., which is probably the self-centered capital of the world.

Maybe I'm wrong. We haven't been tested like that since the 1940s. Thank heaven. But it has made us soft, I think.